STEP ELEVEN

Once you have cleared out the store and packed up the vehicle, have two people quickly do a second check on what you left behind. Make sure there isn’t useful left. Clear out all the water and anything that doesn’t expire. Make sure to grab any small items like scissors/knives/blunt objects. Don’t bother stealing the money/cash register; it will take ages to open without a key. Besides, money has no value anymore.

If the particular store you have broken into happens to have other stores beside it, take a quick look through the windows. Look and see if you can find anything interesting in the stores; stuff you haven’t already found. If there is one particular item you see, such a sword, break the widow, climb in, take it and leave with your group. I know I said not to break in and create noise, but if there is just one thing you need, take it and leave immediately. But if the stores you look into seems like there are many things you could take (like more food) remember the store and come back. There is no point trying to fit more stuff into your vehicles. If you’re vehicle becomes too heavy you will burn gasoline faster, and soon there won’t be much gasoline to spare.

Either way, if you find things or not, the next stop is home.

If you did find more things in the other stores, dump everything and go back. Don’t leave it for another day, someone else might take it.

Once you have finished all your trips, stay in for the night. Sort everything you have found in the past couple of days. Organize the food that will expire and the food that won’t. Sort the weapons. If you found cars at the auto shop, take a look and see if they are drivable. If they aren’t, keep them. There will be a use for them.

STEP TEN

Once you effectively break into the small-time store, slowly and quietly enter. Before stealing anything, check the entire store for zombies and humans. Obviously kill the zombies, and if there are any humans you need to kill them too. Whoever is in the store is also wanting to claim the food and will fight you before they let you take it. Kill them as fast as you can before they get a chance to kill you. DO NOT let them just walk away. They might come back with a bigger group. It might be tough, but you got to do what you got to do.  

Once you’ve made sure the store is empty, someone in the group get in the vehicle and back it up to the store front door. Open the trunk and all the door so loading is fast. Have someone watching outside from INSIDE the store. Don’t wait outside the store because if a group of zombies see you, they will come after you; trapping you in the store. But their brains are too damaged to recognize a backed up car to a store door. As long as someone knows it’s clear to momentarily walk outside and put stuff in the car, you will be safe.
 
Load up everything you can in the car/truck. Talk as little as you can about what to take. Whisper if you must talk but it won’t hurt to take as much as you can.
 
But be quick, people could come at any moment, and the zombie infection is continuing to grow.  

TIP: BREAKING IN

In this quick “TIP” you will learn how to properly break into a building without raising alarm.

If you are reading in continuation from "STEP NINE", you are just about to break into a local, small business. You are there to get supplies: Food, water, appliances, etc. But you don’t want to raise awareness to yourself. You need to break in, without being heard by zombies, or even worse, humans. If you are loud, someone might hear you, watch what you’re doing, and then once you have done all the heavy lifting, they’ll come up to you, point a gun in your face and force you to give them all your findings. You don’t want that. So you need to be SAS and infiltrate stealthily.

If you can pick a lock, great! See if that will work, but chances are it won’t: most businesses that lock up at night and go home, have better security than just a lock. Some places might have a few locks behind the door, as well as on the front.  Picking the front lock might not be enough. You will have to break a window.

Don’t be a dumbass and throw a brick into the window and jump in. That is loud. And people/zombies will come for you.

To break in properly you will need duct tape and a blunt object, like a brick or baseball bat. A brick would be the best.

First: find the smallest section of glass on the building. If you are going through the side window, pick one that is big enough for someone to climb into it. If you are going in the front door, only use the glass on the door, or at least close enough to stick your hand in and unlock the door.

Second: once you find your section of glass, cover it with duct tape. The smaller the glass, the less duct tape you use, and the easier it is to handle. Cover the section in two layers: going vertically and horizontally. Attach it to the window frame and leave a lip on the edge so you can peel it off.

Third: with your blunt object, lightly hit the window until you can hear it crack. Lightly, don’t hit heavy. Once you hear it crack, continue to tap the sides of the window until all the glass seems like it cracked off.

Fourth: slowly peel the tape off the window: the glass should still be stuck on the glass.

And there you go! Now you have opened the window without making any noise! You can now enter the building and loot!

Continue to “STEP TEN”.

STEP NINE

Once you have collected the required items from the auto repair shop, regroup at your base. Unload everything. If your team is up for it, get ready to go back out there. But don’t go back out if it is already dark outside. I don’t care if you are all hyped up or in the mood to kill some zombies; you are not ready yet to fight at night. If your team is not up to it or it is dark, stay in for the night and go back out tomorrow.

Either way, this is the next step.

Leave you newly found cars from the auto shop (if you found one or two) at base. You don’t know the cars well; use the ones you can rely on. Leave who ever knows the most about cars at the base, so if there is anything wrong with them, they might be able to fix it. If they can’t fix the car, make sure they know where the manuals/guidebooks to repair vehicles that you stole from the auto shop are. Internet/power is still working, so they could even Google it.

Get your Bad-Ass outfit on, get your weapons, and go out into zombie-vile. For this run, you are hitting up any small-time convenient stores in your area. This might take a bit of driving around, so keep it local and quick. If you see any with broken windows/a lot of cars in the parking lot, leave it. Don’t risk the fact that there may be people hiding inside with better weapons than you. If there are a lot of scattered cars in the parking lot that means people have tried to go in, and have failed to get out.  Go to a place that not many people know about, or have a really nice owner. You are living in hell now. If you are nice and polite, you will die. You need to be mean to survive. If you know of a store with a nice owner, that is the place to attack. No decent person will break into a small time business with a generous shop keep. No decent person would. But the days of decent people are extinct now. It is time to think for you self. Anyone who gets in the way of your survival must be pushed out of the way.

Once you have found that perfect store, slowly and quietly break in. Don’t know how to break in quietly? Good.

Follow for “Step 10”. That will be what to do once you have broken into the store.

Read “Tip: How to break in quietly” on how to break in to any place, without raising awareness of other people or zombies.

STEP EIGHT: AUTO SHOP

After dropping off what you can from the hardware store, get your BAD ASS outfit on the day is not over. If you don’t have a BAD ASS outfit yet, put that on your “To Do” list.

Now that you’ve geared up and hit the road, drive to a local auto repair shop. There you will find valuable items, such as car parts. It seems like a dumb idea, but eventually, you WILL need them and they won't be around forever. Also, car parts make really good weapons (mostly). You can find spare tires, car batteries, oil, manuals/instructions to fix certain parts, tools, car ordainments, etc. Stereotypically, car mechanics carry around guns: so if you’re lucky, you may just find one! If you’re really lucky, there might even be a working car lying around. Since this is only day two, and your phone still has service/power, you can Google “how to hot wire a car”. Or save yourself some time, and hot wire the tow truck the auto repair shop most likely has, and tow the car along. Now you got two extra vehicles; a car, and a heavy tow truck that will come in great use for running over masses of zombies.

Gather what you can, but be careful of other people with the same intentions.

Once finished, go back to base to drop off your newly found gear. If it’s too late, or maybe you’ve had a lot of encounters with other people and you need a rest, take the night off. If you and your group are up for it, go right to the next step: “Step 8”.