Surviving the Apocalypse with my Multiplier System - Chapter 87

Chapter 87: Registration
Ella nodded and went back to the car. Her mother greeted her as she got back, “Ella, honey! How did it go? Are we all set?”

“Almost, we just need to pay the registration fee. I’m here for the items now,” she replied as she began to rifle through the boxes.

“Oh, is it a lot?” she asked worriedly. She knew it had taken both her daughter and husband a lot of effort to secure many of these supplies and hoped they wouldn’t be losing too many.

Ella pulled out a few small bags of rice and a few cans of tuna and corn. “It’s a little pricey, but not too bad for us. It’s about a month’s supply of food per person,” she explained as she looked for a few other items they had a decent amount of.

Her mother watched her dig through various bags and boxes, pulling out different packets and cans of food. “Tell me what you’re looking for. Let me help you,” she said. She had finally begun to come to terms with the world around her and felt a little useless compared to her husband and daughter.

“Thanks, Mom! Can you help me find the small bags of flour?” asked Ella, happy that her mother seemed more cheerful.

About 10 minutes later, Ella came back to her father’s side with a rather large bag filled with food. “Hey, Dad, this should be enough,” she said, placing the bag on the desk.

Reginald quickly took a peek through the bags and nodded, agreeing with Ella’s choices. “Yes, this looks good.”

He took the bag of food and the three filled-out forms and walked back to the registration counter, but queued in the second line, which was much shorter.

He only had to wait for about five minutes before he was greeted by a different administrative assistant.

“Hi, please hand me your filled-out forms,” he greeted.

Reginald handed the three forms over and watched as the man looked through them, adding the provided information to his computer.

“Do you have an ID on you to verify your identity?” he asked calmly, looking up from his computer.

Reginald fished out his wallet from his pant pocket and handed over his driver’s license. The administrative assistant took the ID and scanned it into the computer.

“Thank you, your identity has been verified. You will be registered as the head of the household, and it will be your responsibility to care for anyone under your care… in this case, your wife and daughter. In the future, they will be able to set up their own households if needed.”

Reginald nodded while placing his driver’s license back into his wallet.

“As for the registration fees, it will be roughly a month’s supply of food per person,” he said. Just as he was about to continue explaining that the details were written on the paper, Reginald placed the large bag of food on the counter.

“Please look through this. According to the information written on the paper, this amount should be enough,” he said, cutting off the administrative assistant.

The admin took the bag and sorted through it, placing the non-canned items on a scale. After recording each item into the computer, he looked up and smiled. “Yes, thank you. This is enough for you and the two others registered with you. Here are your resident cards. Please do not lose them; everything is tied to these cards here.”

Reginald listened closely, storing the three resident cards safely in his pocket. “So where do we go now?” he asked the admin.

“You can pull in further into the base. Your resident card will let you in. Once inside, you can visit the housing office and see if you can rent or purchase a room. Just giving you a heads-up, space is limited, and it’s quite pricey,” answered the admin.

Reginald frowned but thanked the administrative assistant for the help. Ella ran up to him as he walked away from the counter.

“How did it go, Dad? Did we have enough food?” she asked quickly.

“Yes, it was enough to get registered. I have our residency cards. Let’s get back to the car, and I’ll explain more,” he said.

They quickly walked back to the car, noticing the line for registration had nearly doubled in length. Once they both sat down inside the car, Ella turned to look at her father to hear what the next course of action would be.

“Here are our residency cards. These are going to be extremely important inside the base, so do not lose them no matter what,” he said while handing Ella her card.

“I’ll hold on to mine and your mother’s cards,” he continued. “Now we can enter the base as residents, and from there, we will need to find the housing office to either rent or buy a room. The admin just now said that it’s expensive, so I’d like to see exactly what it will cost us.”

Ella nodded, excited to finally be in a place with some sort of societal structure, and quickly urged her father to drive.

“Let’s head straight for the housing office! Since space is limited, we need to get there before the rest of these people make it over!” she said.

They quickly drove out of the parking lot and into the base. There was another checkpoint to get inside the base, requiring anyone wanting to get inside to scan their residency card.

After Reginald scanned his card, they were allowed to drive inside, taking in the sights of their new home.

The first thing they noticed was the large number of tents set up in the large field in front of the resort building. Ella frowned. “It seems either all the rooms are accounted for, or they’re too expensive.”

They continued to drive until they found the main parking lot for the base. Thankfully, there were still plenty of spaces available, so they found a spot very quickly.

“I think that main lobby area is where we can find the housing office,” said Reginald. This time, all three of them went inside, excited to find their new home.

The lobby of the resort had been converted into many different department offices for the base, each labeled clearly for easy navigation. It only took Ella a few seconds to spot the bright red sign that read Housing Office.

“Dad, over there!” she said, pointing to the sign.