Toward dusk, the three of them returned to camp carrying five field-dressed white-tailed deer.

T-Dog and Glenn spotted them and immediately stepped out past the fence to help carry the load.

Merle handed the deer off to Glenn. Every trace of that familiar swagger was gone from Merle's face.

No other reason. Pure exhaustion.

All Merle wanted right now was to get back into camp, pour a couple gulps of liquor down, smoke a cigarette, and soak in the lake.

Daryl was in no better shape, face flushed red, soaked through with sweat, breathing hard. When T-Dog stepped in to take the deer, Daryl stumbled.

Only Lin Feng looked like he was doing fine. The corners of his mouth were still turned up, mood clearly good.

He'd hauled the two heaviest carcasses, and spent every step of the walk back feeding Merle a steady stream of trash talk.

"You doing okay there, man? Don't tell me your legs are already giving out."

"Well, well — look who it is. Our big man Merle, barely managing a juvenile deer."

"Looks like you've still got a lot of reps ahead of you, buddy."

Merle had started off cursing back hard, too stubborn to let it go. Then firing back with less fire. By the end, barely a mutter.

Genuinely out of comebacks. The kid's stamina was something inhuman.

"Whoa, man — you guys go wholesale shopping out in the woods?"

"These bad boys look like enough to feed us for a week."

The camp's four children looked overjoyed. Especially Cathy, who couldn't even remember the last time there had been meat to eat.

Off to the side, Marcus watched Lin Feng with open approval. A successful hunt like this meant the kid wasn't just talking. He genuinely had the strength to protect them.

The choice was already clear.

Daryl didn't rest long. Barely a moment on the ground, Daryl called Lin Feng over to start skinning and butchering.

In this heat, meat spoiled fast.

"Got a spare hunting knife? I can pitch in too."

Lin Feng paused, studied Marcus's calm expression, and nodded.

He headed back to his tent and pulled two bags of salt and a spare hunting knife from his inventory. He tossed the knife to Marcus, then turned to Daryl.

"Marcus and I can handle this. Take T-Dog and Glenn and get a smoking rack built."

Daryl gave Lin Feng a look. The eyes said it plainly: you sure about that?

"Trust me, buddy. I used to work in a slaughterhouse. Is this really harder than breaking down cattle?"

That shifted something in Daryl's expression. A nod, then Daryl grabbed an axe and called T-Dog and Glenn toward the nearby woods to start chopping timber.

Rick and Shane weren't about to stand around doing nothing either. Neither knew how to butcher, but they could haul.

Carol Peletier dug up a large tub from somewhere, took the salt, and headed to the side with Andrea and Amy to work on curing.

Lin Feng's blade moved like water. A full deer hide stripped clean in under five minutes.

Then came the joints, blade tip into the flesh, a deft twist and slice to sever the sinew, one hand wrenching the leg free. One motion. Clean off.

He repeated it, and before long an entire deer was broken down.

Marcus had never done butchering work before, but was sharp about it. After watching Lin Feng demonstrate once and hearing the explanation, every detail was locked away. When Marcus skinned, the cuts were light, careful, almost cautious, terrified of puncturing the hide. But when it came to trimming and deboning, it was like watching a different person entirely.

Every cut ferocious. Every cut exact. Marcus looked even more at ease than Lin Feng.

Lin Feng watched for a moment, then had to ask. "You really never did this before?"

Marcus didn't look up. "Never. But to me, this isn't any different from the anatomy courses I used to take."

"Hold on. What was your last job?"

Marcus's blade paused. Something unreadable flickered in those eyes. "Associate Chief of Emergency Surgery at Grady Memorial Hospital. Though later on, well — things happened. I came back here and opened a small clinic."

Rick and Shane went quiet. Their expressions shifted.

Rick asked before thinking about it. "How old were you at the time?"

"Twenty-seven. What, is that going on the record too?"

Beside them, Andrea looked up. "Holy shit. Whoever fired you had water for brains and eyes jammed somewhere they don't belong. No, that's straight-up corruption rotting the institution from the inside. There is no other way you treat a surgical talent like that."

Lin Feng had completely lost the thread. The knife drifted to a stop.

"What... is happening right now?"

"Lin Feng, the hospital Marcus worked at is the top trauma center in the entire country. And an Associate Chief Surgeon.

No exaggeration, even if you took a bullet right now, as long as it didn't hit somewhere vital, Marcus could find a way to drag you back from the edge."

A flash of genuine delight crossed Lin Feng's eyes. Holy shit. Did he just pull an SSR?

In a world like this, nobody could guarantee they'd never get hit. But having a surgeon of that caliber right here, that was an anchor. The kind that held an entire ship steady.

"Doctor Marcus, you have to join our team."

Marcus smiled, said nothing more, and nodded. The cutting hand moved faster and steadier than before.

Amid the easy back-and-forth, Daryl, T-Dog, and Glenn dragged several felled trees back into camp. Daryl didn't head back out. After a few words with T-Dog, Daryl handed over the axe and sent the two of them back into the woods to keep chopping.

Daryl picked up a shovel and broke through the topsoil, carving out a fire pit, then began assembling the triangular frame. Joints wired tight, frame spread open, base ends sunk into the dirt. Three thinner branches lashed across the midsection as the main crossbeams, then wire strung between them.

The smoking rack was done.

The corner of Daryl's mouth turned up slightly. Satisfied with it.

Then the sound came from the tree line, the groaning drag of timber being hauled through the brush, and the expression was gone. Back to work.

Not difficult. Exhausting. But grounding.

Then T-Dog and Glenn came back at a run from the third trip, no timber in hand, bolting through the camp entrance.

"Walkers coming in from the southeast! A lot of them, at least thirty or forty!"

Lin Feng dropped everything, snatched up the compound bow still strapped across his back, and was on his feet.

"Shit! The fence won't hold that many, we have to clear them before they reach us! Do not let them breach this camp!"

Shane's voice cut across the camp right behind it.

"Every man grab a weapon and get ready to fight! Women, get the kids into the vehicles! Move!"

➤ Next: Night Walker Raid Part 2

Chapter 14 - Night Walker Raid Part 2

As Lin Feng spoke, he exchanged a glance with Daryl and the two of them headed southeast, bows in hand.

They'd talked it over on the way back, whatever had been chasing those white-tailed deer was probably a walker horde.

By their count, the dead should've reached the camp's perimeter by now. But they weren't about to sit around and wait. If anything, there was anger underneath the urgency.

Bust your ass all day to bag a few deer, and now you bastards want to swoop in and take them?!

Eat shit!

Shane ducked back into the tent and came out with a Remington 870, racking a round into the chamber with a heavy clack.

Rick unzipped a gun bag, pulled out an AR-15, chambered a round, and flicked the safety off in under a second. The two exchanged a glance, then followed Lin Feng outside.

They hadn't even reached the fence before they heard it, a clattering, hammering din.

Rapid. Dense. Each impact landing like a drumstick straight against the chest.

Through the tree line, they could already see the shapes converging. Walkers, filtering out of the dark between the trunks.

Shane's face went hard. "What the hell?! Where did all these relentless bastards crawl out from?!"

Nobody answered. The only sound was breathing, slow at first, then heavier.

Because at this point, it didn't matter whether the horde had followed the blood-smell of fresh venison or been drawn in by T-Dog and Glenn. It didn't matter at all.

Lin Feng drew an arrow and nocked it on his recurve bow. "Take out a batch first. If they hit these fences at full force, the whole perimeter won't hold for a minute. Wait until they're close before you shoot — don't waste ammunition."

Daryl nodded, raised the crossbow, lined up the head of the foremost walker, and squeezed the trigger.

The bolt punched through the skull with a sharp whoosh. The walker dropped.

Lin Feng took a breath and started drawing in rapid succession.

With Level 7 Strength and Level 6 Perception and Spirit backing him, he barely needed to aim at this range. Draw, release. Draw, release. Every shot hit.

PRAISE DEEP BLUE!

His speed was blistering. The first arrow flew out, and before Rick and the others had fully processed it, the second had already buried itself in another walker's skull.

"Holy shit." Shane stared. "You're even more insane than I thought. You're practically a walker-killing machine."

The words sounded like a compliment. Only Shane knew how much wariness was tucked inside them.

Daryl glanced over, surprised, and immediately started wondering whether it was worth picking up a proper bow.

Lin Feng wasn't paying attention to any of that. Every second of hesitation was a point of experience bleeding away.

In the span of a breath, fifteen arrows streaked out like falling stars. Walkers toppled in heaps, cut down like wheat.

Then Lin Feng set the recurve bow aside, drew the Glock 17 from his waist, chambered a round, and started pre-aiming.

That's when he noticed something was wrong. He and Daryl had knocked out over twenty together, and the mass behind them was still a solid wall of black.

"Damn it. There aren't thirty or forty of them — there are at least fifty or sixty. Maybe more."

Rick and Shane saw it too. Neither of them looked happy about it.

As the dark, dense press of walkers began to advance, tension bled through the group.

T-Dog and Glenn, who'd only just arrived, looked the worst of all, cold sweat on their faces, the hands gripping their pistols starting to shake.

From the side, Merle sneered at the sight, though quietly bumped a private opinion of Marcus up a notch.

At least Marcus held the rifle without trembling. And was carrying something real, an AR-15.

The dry snapping of twigs grew louder. Footsteps, dense and shuffling, closing in. The walkers finally broke out of the tree line.

Less than five meters from the fence.

Rick's voice cut through the silence.

"Open fire!"

An AR-15 cracked and a walker's head exploded.

Then the whole line opened up.

The Remington 870 in Shane's hands was something else entirely. Barely needed to aim, just point and pull. Each blast shredded a wide swath and walkers went down in clusters.

Right now, Shane was the team's top damage dealer. The walkers' first and worst obstacle.

Lin Feng's Glock roared in steady bursts, round after round punching into skulls. But the efficiency was nowhere close to what he'd been doing with the bow.

Sometimes a walker dropped and the system pinged him, plus one experience. Other times, nothing. Meant someone else had beaten him to it and the kill was already gone.

His expression twisted. Would you guys slow down a little?!

But at a moment this tense, who was going to hold back and let walkers keep walking?

Everyone was hammering triggers at standing targets without pause. Even Shane, running the lowest on shells, was already reloading the moment the 870 ran dry.

It forced Lin Feng to start pushing his aim further back, targeting walkers still deeper in the pack.

Mine. They're all mine.

Daryl and Rick both noticed the shift. Neither said anything, but they filed it away.

Good instincts. Fast reads. The guy had found a way to work the problem without anyone even asking.

Lin Feng:...Thanks. Never do that again.

The dense fire kept sweeping forward. The walkers that had broken out of the tree line were almost all down.

Against people built like walking carbon-based allergy responses to the undead, these slow, shambling walkers weren't a threat unless they were stacking triple digits. And they weren't stacking triple digits tonight.

"Cease fire! Swap magazines!"

The gunfire wound down in layers. The AR-15 cut out first. Then Shane's Remington 870. Last to stop were the Glock 17s, Glenn and T-Dog.

Combat discipline, laid bare for anyone paying attention.

Lin Feng scanned the tree line. A few walkers still drifted through the shadows in small clusters. "No more wasted rounds. Rick, Merle — let's pick off the stragglers."

No argument from either of them. Magazines swapped in silence, then both raised their weapons and started working through the targets.

Shots came slowly now. Measured. But nearly every one that rang out put a walker on the ground.

Lin Feng watched the bar on his experience panel. It had been sitting at 27 when the fight started. It climbed past 56, still ticking up, until the final shot cracked through the dark and the number stopped at 62.

Done. Walkers cleared.

Rick and Shane both looked pale.

If they hadn't listened to Lin Feng yesterday, hadn't set up those preparations, if T-Dog and Glenn hadn't spotted the horde in advance, what would tonight have looked like? How many of them would still be breathing come morning?

They didn't know. They didn't want to know.

Rick looked at Lin Feng, and the expression in those eyes held more than anyone could say, gratitude, relief, and something unsteady underneath all of it. When Rick spoke, the words came out rough.

"Lin Feng... your foresight saved the camp. Saved all of us. Thank you."

Shane still couldn't quite get there. Face scrunched up like someone had force-fed a housefly. But Shane gave Lin Feng a single nod.

Because at this moment, like it or not, it was this newcomer who had saved them.

All of them.

Lin Feng smiled. "Come on. We just won a fight, let's not make it sound like a funeral. This wasn't on me. It was all of us. So ease up, alright?"

"Hell yeah." That was Merle. "We just blew their heads off with everything we had. That's a damn victory. Cheer up, people!"

It was the first time Merle Dixon had opened his mouth and nobody wanted to throw something at him.

Probably worth writing down somewhere.

➤ Next: A Brief Parting