Frank used the motorcycle's headlight for most of the trek toward Greenburg. He didn't expect any patrols farther out from the town than maybe a couple of miles, and on a Saturday night there might not be any at all. 

Having been part of the Militia's perimeter patrol and scavenging teams, he was familiar with what [i]would[/i] be ahead of him, regardless of the day of the week. When he was just two miles from Greenburg's outskirts, he turned off the headlight and slowed his speed to match the danger of running into or over something. He began idling the bike's motor to quiet the noise, then wrenching back on the accelerator when the storm's rumbling exploded across the landscape, increasing his speed to propel him further. Then, it was only a matter of repeating the procedure with the next roll of thunder.

When he was just under half a mile from the town's westside highway blockade, Frank pulled off the road and hid the bike behind an abandoned car. From there, he'd approach on foot along the shoulder. His path moved deeper into the cover of the scattered shrubbery the closer he got to the blockade. 

Frank paused once he sighted the guard post. Once upon a time, it had been the security shack for the distribution center, but after the Militia took over the town and set up check points around Greenburg, they'd moved it here. He looked for evidence of an active watch, and neither seeing nor hearing anything, not even a lantern or candle, he approached slowly until he was close enough to see inside the window.

He nearly cracked up laughing at what he saw, one of the guards on his knees sucking the cock of the other. Frank would have expected the pair to have one of the town's reluctant whores out here servicing them, but then most people knew what they liked and who was he to say what that was. 

Frank crept around the little shack toward the door. He scanned the area between the post and the town as he listened to the man in the chair moaning in pleasure. He could have left the two to their fun and headed townward, but Frank knew that if he succeeded in his mission, he and the others would be coming back this way again. 

He didn't want complications if the alarm had been raised in Greenburg. So as he listened to the man being serviced grunt out in ecstasy, Frank threw the door open, grabbed the kneeling man hair, pulled his head back, and slit his throat with a butcher knife he'd secreted away from Allison's kitchen. Flipping the blade in his hand as the orgasming man's eyes opened in horror, he stabbed the second guard in the chest. The blade slipped between ribs and cut into the man's heart. He was dead almost immediately. 

Frank backed away, leaving the knife where it had sunk. He'd been splashed with blood and took a moment to clean it off his hands, arms, and chest. He took them men's guns and extra ammo and, knowing there was no time to waste, hurried down the road toward the small city. 

Just a quarter mile from the first houses, Frank left the road and descended to the bank of the Muddy River. This time of the year, particularly after the region's sixth year of drought, the river was little more than a trickle, at the most three feet wide in some places. Using a flashlight Allison had provided him, Frank picked a path that eventually took him to a storm drainpipe that jutted out from a high point in the bank. It was covered with a locked grate. He knew about the grate because one of his duties as a [i]newbie[/i] was coming down to the drain occasionally, unlock the grate, and clear away the debris -- natural and otherwise -- that accumulated there and blocked the flow.

This was where the storm came in. The rains had only just begun, so the flow wasn't at its peak quite yet. It was the thunder that had drawn Frank's interest. Taking out another tool he'd taken from the ranch, a 12-pound sledgehammer, he waited for a flash of lightning, then counted the seconds until the boom of the thunder. 

Waiting a full minute for the next flash, Frank raised the hammer, counting, then brought it down just as the rumble swept over him. The strike bent the fuck out of the gate's latching mechanism but neither destroyed the weld nor broke the lock. He waited for the next flash, again counted, then brought the hammer down a second time. This time the weld gave way, and with the bent but still functioning lock in position, the gate swung open.

Frank tossed the hammer aside and retrieved the shotgun from the bank. He headed up the drainpipe, this time using both the flashlight in his left hand and the headlamp wrapped around his skull and sending a beam forward from his forehead. 

He didn't actually know the path he needed to take, but he knew the general layout of the streets and homes above. After several minutes of making turns this way and that, he stopped below a storm drain grate that he hoped was near to his destination. Frank slung the shotgun and climbed the access ladder, stopping to peek out of the grate as best he could. 

Seeing and hearing nothing of concern, he rose higher, pressed his back to the grate, and used all of his strength to push it up out of its frame. Once it had moved, he paused, looked and listened, then moved it some more. He was eventually able to poke his head out, and again he neither saw nor heard anything of concern. 

Frank smiled when he realized that he was less than two blocks from his first destination. Rising out of the storm drain, he headed close to the nearest house, then through the lawns and hedges and occasionally over a short fence until he was squatting outside the window of his first female [i]rescuee[/i].