Free Web NovelChapter 22: Adding Heroes
"Well, that’s two more members for our little team. Welcome, James, Rick. You can get settled back into your dorms, or move into the first year building with the others here.
It would be easier for logistics if we were all in one building. But other than that, there’s no immediate reason to cluster up.
Spreading will help us defend all the buildings in case of an emergency, but it will make defending each individual building more difficult," Sergeant Sanchez explained.
"Good to meet you, Colonel Sanders!" Rick replied happily.
Kalli chuckled, while Sanchez sighed. "You know, that’s the first time I’ve had that one applied to me. Possibly because there was a Sanders in my training unit."
"I uh, I don’t suppose that you have food that isn’t hotdogs and chips?"
Kalli gave him an incredulous look. "Did you not manage to stock up before you fled, or did you only pick up hotdogs and chips?"
The two students looked sheepish. "The second one. My entire backpack is full of frozen hotdogs, while James has a storage item that we filled with bags of chips."
"Take the hotdogs to the cafeteria freezer. We’ve got the power back on for now, and they’ll stay frozen there. You can put the chips in the storage there too if you want. We’ve got lots of pork from killing these monsters, and apparently the one food student in the class knows how to butcher an animal."
Really, Gerry had never butchered an animal before in his life. But he had watched some documentary videos about it.
And now he was regretting bragging about his skills.
He did get the pigs properly butchered and hung in the cooler, so they wouldn’t be short on meat, but it was far more difficult than he had expected, and now he had a whole bin full of offal, and there wasn’t going to be any garbage disposal anymore.
They would have to dispose of it somehow. He had sorted everything so that there was as little refuse as possible, but there was still a lot of the animal that was simply inedible.
Fortunately, the Academy had plenty of safety and testing equipment, plus a full processing facility, for the students to learn how to make every part of their own kitchen supplies. As a top University, training future Master Chefs, things like making their own bone broth and sausage were simply essential parts of building a brand.
So, the school had the facilities to teach them.
The soldiers hadn’t been lying about this place being set up to be self-sufficient, and at the moment he was delighted for that thoroughness.
He had ground and spiced a bunch of the worst cuts of the pig, and intended to serve Hamburg steaks for dinner, to be sure that the monster meat agreed with everyone. The school’s lab equipment said that it was safe to eat, and he had tested a small bite of it so he knew the taste, but there was no telling how it would agree with everyone’s stomach.
It was also a simple dish, something that he could make with just the monster meat and rice, plus spices while they had them.
Gerry was a practical man, and had no intentions of starving. If he could find a sustainable way to keep himself fed, he would focus on that first.
He hadn’t gotten this big by accident.
The two new arrivals went to the side door. It was their usual entrance, but also one that led to the lower level kitchen storage, and Sanchez turned his attention to the situation at the Academy.
Night would fall soon, and they no longer had a whole company of soldiers plus a unit of riot police here to secure the property.
They were desperately short on manpower to secure the Academy.
The only advantage they had was that it was designed as a castle, so it had an actual solid wall around it, with only one proper entrance. It was a defensible position, but they needed someone at every corner, and they were short on night vision gear.
His team had it, but the Commander hadn’t left them any spare gear.
Worse, the night vision headsets were notoriously flaky. When they took impacts, they often stopped working, and sometimes they would just die at random. Even with full batteries.
It was bad enough that every night mission carried at least one spare headset with them.
Lowest bidder junk.
"Who is willing to sleep early after dinner? We need four people to wait in the towers overnight and watch for enemies," He asked the students.
Giving them orders would just panic them, and he wanted them to feel like part of the team, not civilians under his protection. It would help them get along with his men, who were likely to need their protection when the ammunition ran low.
After all, he was the only one on his team with a Class. fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm
It was a shame that the others hadn’t awakened. If they had, he would feel much more secure. A full team of special forces soldiers meant absolute security in nearly any situation.
Just not one where they couldn’t kill the enemy.
"We will take first watch, but we need someone to come on for the early morning shift, so my guys can sleep," he added when nobody rushed to volunteer.
Kalli raised her hand. "I will take early morning watch. My night vision is pretty decent, and it’s a full moon tonight. If the clouds hold off for a bit, we shouldn’t have problems seeing."
"Good point. Alright, we need at least three more volunteers. Do the towers have a bell or something?"
Reggie laughed. "There are air raid sirens in all four towers, if that counts. They’re left over from last century, but they still work. The Academy tests them a couple of times a year and uses them when there are major storms."
"Well, that would certainly do the trick. If there is a monster attack, sound the siren.
I don’t know if the monsters will attack at night, but there is a chance that there are nocturnal predators we haven’t seen yet, and they might make the Academy a target."
What the soldier didn’t mention was that it likely wouldn’t be a priority any time soon, as there were so many better targets scattered around the city. Why go for the fortified Academy when there were people huddled in wooden houses with huge glass windows?
