The convoy rolled up to the warehouse in a roar of engines and a cloud of dust. A big white guy with a full beard was first out of the vehicle, greedy eyes sweeping over the supply-loaded pickups.

"Hey, pal, what are you doing out here all by yourself? Run into some trouble?"

A nasty grin spread across that fat, bearded face while the eyes kept moving, scanning the area for any sign of Lin Feng's companions.

Before Lin Feng could answer, the rest of the convoy spotted the loaded pickups. Weapons in hand, they piled out and swarmed around to gawk.

Someone whistled. "Whoa, boys, looks like today's our lucky day. Three pickups, all loaded to the brim."

Lin Feng kept an honest, harmless smile on his face. He looked like exactly the kind of guy who wouldn't cause trouble.

His eyes had already done the inventory:

Thirteen people. Three rifles, four shotguns, one vintage scattergun, and three jungle machetes.

Middling firepower overall, nothing exceptional, but nothing to dismiss either. Enough to keep someone alive in this world.

Enough for him to work with.

Some of them were already pawing through the packed supplies like the cargo already belonged to them. The scene was getting rowdy. A few of the guys looked half-starved: they dug out canned food, pried the lids open with machetes, and started wolfing it down right there.

Lin Feng clocked them. Five, not eating with weapons ready.

Seeing Lin Feng just standing there with that quiet, simple expression, the bearded thug's face shifted into something contemptuous. "Hey, pal, you understand me?"

"I understand. Something I can help you with?"

"Great." The man's gaze drifted toward the pickups and kept drifting back. "We're survivors from a small town in Georgia. Long road behind us, and we're clean out of food. You've got plenty here, enough to last a good while. Mind sparing us some? I promise, once we have what we need, we're gone. Won't linger a second."

He said it all with a smile. His feet, meanwhile, were moving, slow, casual, one step at a time. Behind him, hands drifted toward guns.

This Asian guy had probably been an archer or hunter before everything fell apart. The form was solid; the walkers on the ground confirmed it. As for why they hadn't just forced him to drop the bow, that was the old contempt talking. The arrogance of a man with a firearm toward a man with a bowstring.

They didn't believe for a second he could draw faster than they could pull a trigger.

Lin Feng noticed all of it. He let none of it show.

"Hey — you've come all this way. You have somewhere to head to?"

He let just enough uncertainty into his voice. The right amount of calculation, the right amount of caution, like a man who'd just realized the situation and was trying to find a way out of it.

One question was all it took to bump their contempt up another notch. Or maybe greed just finished the job greed usually does.

They eased off their subtle reaching, trying to look harmless now. The bearded leader glanced at the two paces between them and decided that was plenty, close enough to take this guy down with bare hands if it came to it. He stopped advancing.

The young Asian looked lean. Didn't carry himself like a fighter. More like a lookout, the kind of guy a group sent ahead to keep watch.

"No," the man said. "We've been driving straight through, those damn walkers wouldn't let us stop. Why? You got a place?"

Lin Feng let out a slow breath, like a man relieved. He lowered the bow, let it hang loose at his side. The picture of a warm-hearted, trusting soul trying to smooth things over with a friendly face.

Giving up his weapon.

What a stupid, naive kid.

The bearded man held his squinting smile exactly where it was.

Cunning underneath. Greed underneath.

Maybe today they'd walk away with a camp sturdy enough to settle in for a while. Might even be women inside.

Lin Feng sighed. Shrugged. Let his hands drop naturally to his hips, something like pity settling into his expression.

"You guys aren't even going to bother pointing a gun at me?"

"What?" The bearded man blurted it out before he could stop himself.

Had this Asian kid gone stupid with fear? Was he even making sense?

Lin Feng moved.

One lunge, using the big man's body to block the line of fire. Right hand closing around the hilt of his hunting knife, and in a single upward drive, the blade went in beneath the bearded man's chin and kept going, straight to the brainstem.

At the same instant, Daryl's arrow arrived. It punched clean through the skull of a man already raising his gun.

Lin Feng rolled behind a white Chevrolet and let the chaos do the rest.

The sudden violence shattered their already loose formation. They scattered, diving behind vehicles, and opened up on Lin Feng's position.

Gunfire exploded across the street.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

"Kill that damn Asian—"

BANG!

Marcus's bullet turned the rest of that sentence into blood. One shot, and silence.

From the second floor of a nearby building, Marcus began working through them with quiet efficiency. High ground, no cover on their side: it was practically the Grim Reaper calling roll.

Shane leaned half a body out and swept the Remington across their general direction. The spread tore through two unlucky bastards who were still eating, cans in hand, guns nowhere near their reach.

A few who got hit didn't go down clean. Screams started bouncing off the street.

Merle would handle that.

The sudden escalation caught Glenn and T-Dog flat-footed. Both flinched, an involuntary full-body shudder, then both drew handguns and started firing on pure faith.

At this point, what was there to think about? Pull the trigger. The bullets would figure it out.

As for a certain cheat-code son of a bitch crouched somewhere they absolutely shouldn't be, they pulled the Glock from their hip and started returning fire with the same calm they'd have cleaning a rifle.

"Holy shit! Lin! You're out of your damn mind!"

An unnatural flush had crept up Shane's face.

"Shut up! Half your body's hanging out — you trying to get killed?"

Shane wasn't listening. Shane had been carrying too much for too long, and right now only one thing existed: fight, and the clean, electric rush of it.

The shotgun kept spitting metal storms, rounds hammering off the enemy's vehicle cover in a violent chorus of clangs.

Lin Feng watched, cursed under his breath, and kept the Glock working, covering Shane because apparently that was his job now.

Half a head poking out from behind a car? Shoot. Physical cooldown, immediate.

A hand snaking out for a blind prayer shot? Shoot. Dangerous behavior corrected. Lesson delivered in the most direct terms possible.

Shell casings hit the pavement in a steady cascade, the sharp clinks swallowed almost immediately by the next report, and the next, each one trailed by a dull impact or a scream.

Two minutes later, a gun barrel appeared from behind a car. A strip of white cloth was knotted to the end, scavenged from god-knew-where.

"Cease fire! Cease fire! We surrender! We surrender!"

➤ Next: Aftermath and Temporary Retreat

Chapter 48 - Aftermath and Temporary Retreat

Lin Feng raised a hand to signal his side to cease fire, then shouted:

"Throw all your weapons out onto the road! Guns, knives, all of it!

Then everyone get out from behind cover! If someone's got a broken leg, drag them out! Right now!"

"OK! OK! We'll do it, please don't shoot! Please!"

The response came immediately after Lin Feng laid out the terms, a voice cracking with uncontrollable terror, edged with something close to hysteria.

They'd been frightened out of their wits by this sudden slaughter. That much was obvious.

Weapons clattered onto the road one after another. Then three figures rose from cover, bodies trembling, hands raised, and shuffled into the small open ground in the middle of the street.

One of them, a Black man, wore an expression twisted with pain, lips gone pale, left hand clamped hard over the right. Struggling to raise both arms, but unable to lift them all the way.

Not surprising. That was almost certainly the one Lin Feng had "advised" earlier.

"We know we were wrong, and we surrender! Please spare us, we beg you!"

Lin Feng let out a short, contemptuous snort. They didn't know they were wrong. They just knew they were about to die.

"Strip off your clothes. Then turn around. Immediately."

The command, both familiar and out of nowhere, made them freeze. They were still trying to process it when Lin Feng raised his weapon and fired, putting the Black man out of his misery on the spot.

A low, furious bark followed. "Right now."

The two survivors didn't hesitate after that. They peeled off their blood-soaked T-shirts, dropped them on the ground, and turned their backs to Lin Feng.

"We're doing it, we're doing it! Don't shoot! Sir, please!"

Lin Feng caught Merle and Shane's eyes. Both read the cue and moved out fast, weapons up.

Merle walked straight up to the nearest man and put the rifle butt into his skull, dropping him cold.

The edge in Shane's eyes faded. Shane stepped over to Lin Feng's side and asked quietly, "What's the plan?"

Flat and calm. Less a question, more a confirmation.

Lin Feng didn't answer right away. Instead, he turned to Glenn and T-Dog. "Glenn, T-Dog — grab your weapons, find some high ground, and count how many walkers are moving toward us. Don't engage. Stay careful and move fast."

Glenn and T-Dog swallowed hard, nodded, and headed out together.

Shane frowned, something between confusion and curiosity crossing Shane's face.

"I don't know if what that guy said earlier was true," Lin Feng said. "We need to verify. Conveniently, we've got two people here — we can run them separately."

That did it. Appreciation settled into Shane's expression, and the corner of Shane's mouth curved up. "You really are... different from Rick. At least Rick wouldn't..."

Shane let it hang there. But Lin Feng heard it just fine.

"Did you think I was spinning you a story earlier, pal?" Lin Feng said. "Like I said, maybe my face fooled you. I really am a decent person. My moral floor's just always been a little... flexible."

The two looked at each other. Smirks spread across both their faces.

"I'm starting to like you."

"Get lost. I only like sweet, soft girls."

They both laughed. A moment later, Daryl and Marcus came jogging down from upstairs.

Lin Feng nodded, still grinning. "Good timing. The usual — get them talking."

Daryl and Marcus nodded without a word. The four of them broke off naturally into pairs, dragging the captives toward separate rooms. Lin Feng stayed behind.

He had a battlefield to sweep, weapons to collect, loot to gather. And he needed to wait for the bodies to turn before delivering the finishing blows.

He wasn't about to leave a buffet out for walkers and risk spawning some new mutated strain.

Dealing with that kind of thing was far too dangerous.

Lin Feng moved through the carnage, thoughts drifting, while the muffled sounds of screaming gradually bled in through the walls.

By the time he'd collected most of the firearms, Glenn and T-Dog came sprinting back from down the street. They heard the screaming before they saw Lin Feng. It settled into their chests like ice water.

Like they'd just watched a beast drop its mask. Neither could quite bring themselves to look at Lin Feng directly.

"What happened? Run into trouble?"

Glenn kept eyes down, not quite meeting Lin Feng's gaze. "We made a lot of noise. The walkers in town are all moving this way. Five to ten minutes out, maybe."

Lin Feng took that in. Wasn't particularly surprised. If anything, he thought the walkers were running a little slow.

Then again, the population density out here was low. Made sense.

If this were Atlanta, you'd already be watching a wave of walkers bearing down on you every other minute.

"All right. Then stop standing around, grab whatever else you can and seal this place up. We'll come back tomorrow."

As for fighting through the horde? Not on Lin Feng's agenda. Not today.

He sent the two back to keep moving cargo. A moment later, Marcus emerged from one of the rooms first.

"How'd it go?"

"That's everything," Marcus said, calm as ever.

Shane walked over, steps slowing for just a beat, eyes on Lin Feng with a look that asked the question plainly: has this guy always been like this?

Because during the interrogation, Marcus had been a complete psycho.

Shane was still working out how to even approach it when Marcus had already gone in with the knife. Stabbed first. Asked questions after. Too slow to answer? Another stab.

Was this guy actually a doctor?

Lin Feng just laughed quietly and nodded. "Good. Got it."

Shane opened his mouth, thought better of it, and closed it again.

Good news: a comfort zone, apparently found.

Bad news: Does that make me a psycho too?

Merle came out of another room right then, still cursing steadily:

"That punk says all their people are right here. No camp, just a pack of roaming goons. No, calling them goons is too generous. These bastards are straight-up freaks. Freaks, you hear me, Lin?!"

Merle punctuated it by spitting on the ground, expression dripping with contempt.

Lin Feng had a rough idea of what that meant. A sigh slipped out. "It's fine. They ended up in our hands anyway. Call it taking out the trash."

He was about to say something more when walker silhouettes began creeping into view at the far end of the street, their stench riding in ahead of them on the breeze.

Lin Feng's brow pulled together. He turned toward the warehouse and called out: "Glenn, T-Dog, leave it. Get to the vehicles. We're moving."

The two heaved the last load in, caught their breath, took one look at the dark mass shambling toward them in the distance, and climbed straight in.

"What about the ones still inside?"

Lin Feng gestured toward the bodies already twitching back to life.

"They'll keep watch for us."

➤ Next: The Growth Acceleration Plan