Throw the weapon and while it is still in the air, quickly press the appropriate button to access your inventory. To duplicate a melee weapon, start by equipping it from your inventory. You can continue to expand your inventory in this manner, by activating rage mode and swapping out the baton for addition items as your inventory swells. That will add an additional weapon to your inventory, so that you are now carrying more than the usual maximum of 18 weapons. If your inventory is full at that point and another weapon pickup is nearby, you can quickly select that other weapon to replace the baton that John is carrying. John will pull out a staff, which is separate from his standard inventory. When you are playing as John Morgan, enter rage mode. You can keep repeating the process to mass a huge pile of cans that you can use to gain experience and money. They also should be on the ground where you left them before loading your checkpoint save. Scroll down and you should find that the cans are back in your inventory. As the recover process follows, quickly load your last checkpoint and access your inventory. Once you retrieve around 10 or 20 cans, toss it on the ground and then kill yourself.
In an early chapter, you'll meet a girl who asks you to scrounge along the beach for water and food.
