Surviving Dawn part 4

I needed to head out and meet the girls, so I made my way up the hill to grab my deer rifle. When I made to the top, I grabbed my rifle and wiped off the dirt. I searched for a few minutes to find my brass; I found one fired cartridge and one unfired round. Someone else was interested in what was going on. I had faith in the girls to make it safely to the rendezvous. My time needed to be spent on finding anyone else left out here. I made a big circle and came back to the highway. I hunkered down and waited. After an hour of silence, I heard some rustling down by the creek. Then a body slowly appeared from the ditch, and made its way across the road to where I buried the supplies. The person looked around carefully and took their hood off. It was a woman, mid thirties with long blonde hair. She started to dig, when she reached the containers of food she stopped. She filled her small bag with as much food as she could before ripping some open to eat. As she ate, I slowly got to my feet and made my way across the road to her. When I got within 10 feet of her, I said “If you wanted food you could have asked.” She jumped and turned around as she let out a scream. I put my finger to my lips and shushed her. She crawled on her back away from me as fast as she could. I laid down my ar followed by my rifle. To show her that I meant no harm I raised my hands. I told her my name and that I didn’t want to hurt her, after a few minutes the shock wore off and she began to calm down. She composed herself, and we headed back to the house. Her name was Lilly, and she was in the reserves. She had been following the trucks south, watching them take hostages and bring them back to holding camps in the city. There were entire high rise buildings full of prisoners, heavily guarded all hours of the day. I found her some clothes so that she could take off her fatigues and relax a bit. It was almost noon now and we needed to head out, so we gathered up our gear and headed down the back roads. I marked on her map where we were heading, and started taking every short cut that we could to try and catch up to the girls. A dusk neared we decided to stop at an abandoned house for the night. There was a small creek nearby that I gathered water from. When I returned to the house Lilly had a small stove going to sterilize the water. She had changed out of her clothes into a pair of shorts and a really small bikini top.