Chapter 3

It's been days, fighting to hold Los Angels, I put a good portion of my mens effort in holding the perimeter of the city where a lot of the neighborhoods were but the biggest issues were the most densely populated areas such as Korea town and other such populated areas.

I had as much of those kinds of places evacuated as possible and incinerated the rest. That would probably give me nightmares for weeks honestly, the expected death count was in the 10s of thousands all around those areas and the population of Los Angeles due to infection is thought to have been cut in half by now, though things are finally beginning to slow down as the infected are slowly wiped out.

I was honestly more worried about the human element than the infected at this point, at least when it came to within my city. The infection, as much as it could be anyways, was under control for the most part.

For the moment, food wise, I had any surviving animals and farmers brought to a more defensible position as well as having animals brought in from whatever herds my people could find on satellite. Thankfully the infection hasn't hit the countryside much yet and has been the worst in cities and large towns.

Many of the farmers hemmed and hawed but capitulated when showed what was actually going on in the world around them as news was sparse at best. I let those farmers deal with the animals, mostly breeding the hell out of them as we would need numbers for when the canned goods ran out in the future and while California had plenty of milk cows about, there was only so many beef cattle. We were having to import them from hundreds of miles away, what a joyous use of military personnel. Thankfully that didn't include me.

I did decide to keep a room in the school, almost a military 'wing' or area that I had kept the satellite hookup as well. The main military area though were large tents outside on the soccer field, where I was the majority of the time when I was working.

I occasionally ran into familiar faces like Madison and Alicia, Travis and the Salazars. liza was currently training to be a nurse under doctor Exner and since i had the military get here so much sooner than in canon, Ofelias mother would probably survive, though her foot will never be perfect she would still be able to walk with a cane or something.

As I was walking through the throng of people I eventually came across Alicia and Ofelia talking quietly to each other. "Ladies." I say as I was walking by. Though they stopped me, obviously wanting to talk about something.

"Admiral Duvall!" Alicia spoke up quickly so I turned around to face them.

"What can I do for you today kiddo?" She fought a pout at being called a kid, I could almost see the gears turning in her head.

"We were wondering… what's next? We know your doing everything you can to hold the city from monsters.. but should the rest of us be doing something besides sitting around?" I thought about that for a minute. I didn't really want to use civilians in any meaningful way but also idle hands were the devils playground and all that.

"Hmmm… well do you have anything in mind exactly? I mean your not wrong exactly, the world will change even if we hold the city. We will need people to learn different skills. Maybe some of my people can take apprentices of a sort, doctors, nurses, engineers, electricians and even plumbers. That doesn't even take into account the fleet will need larger crews than normal, something to think on really. Will also have to find people who are already skilled in such things. Either way it's something to think on, what do you want to do in the future Alicia, Ofelia?" I ask them both.

They both look curious as I actually took their question slightly seriously even though I had already thought about such things somewhat, I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking of the future.

"Well… I don't know exactly. I have some minor medical training but I rather fight or at least learn how to do so." She tells me hesitantly. Her mother would not approve of that last one. Ofelia wanted to learn to fight as well for the most part.

"Maybe a combat medic of sorts for you Alicia? Medical training and weapons training, though more an emphasis on field medicine?" She agreed with that almost giddily. "Anyways take some time to think about it, let me or one of my people know. you are both old enough to decide for yourselves so don't let anyone decide for you." I give them a wink and walk off for now.