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Early the next morning.

Lin Feng felt a soft weight settle over him. Before he could fully surface from his hangover, a familiar scent rushed into his nose.

Then came soft, quick touches falling across his face like a sudden rain, finally coming to rest on his lips.

He pried his eyes open, still half-asleep, and managed to make out the person on top of him.

Beth.

The bold girl had walked straight into his tent, climbed onto him, and woken Lin Feng in a way that made it completely impossible to be angry.

Lin Feng wasn't angry. But...

Beth noticed something off a beat too late. That pretty face went a soft red. No movement, but no climbing down either.

"...Lin. Time to get up..."

Lin Feng said nothing. He wrapped his arms around Beth, rolled onto his side, and closed his eyes again.

Yesterday he'd kept Shane company until they were both drinking themselves sick. What was wrong with enjoying a little rest?

Beth struggled briefly, couldn't break free, and then simply settled her head onto Lin Feng's arm and shut her eyes, perfectly content.

It wasn't until noon that Lin Feng opened them again, not because he was rested, but because his arm had gone completely numb and forced him back online.

He looked at Beth lying at his side. His brain stalled for a moment.

When had she shown up?

Didn't matter. Time to collect a little interest.

"Mm~"

Beth opened her eyes too, letting Lin Feng take what was wanted, until breathing got difficult. Then came a smile, face flushed.

"Lin, you really can sleep. Like a pig."

Lin Feng gave that upturned backside an easy smack, stole a quick kiss, and grinned. "Yeah. Just like you."

Beth thumped his chest. "I am not."

He laughed, just about to say something else, when a voice came from outside.

"Lin! Something happened!"

The grin vanished. Lin Feng grabbed his clothes, pulled them on, yanked on his boots, and stepped out.

"What's the situation?"

Otis was still catching breath. "It's Maggie and Jimmy. They ran into trouble in town."

"What kind of trouble?" Lin Feng's voice went flat. "Walkers or people?"

"Last radio contact, they were pinned inside a pharmacy. Five people on the other side. They've got a vehicle and guns."

"Merle, Marcus, Daryl — grab your gear. With me."

The three moved without hesitation, weapons in hand, piling into the pickup. Lin Feng jumped into the truck bed last.

"Marcus — keep trying to raise someone. Doesn't matter if it's that group or Maggie. Anyone who answers."

"Copy, Lin." Marcus grabbed the walkie-talkie and started calling, steady and relentless. "Maggie, Maggie, do you copy, please respond. Jimmy, Jimmy, do you copy, please respond."

Lin Feng drew his pistol, ran a quick check, and kept it in hand.

15 minutes to town, minimum. He hoped they could hold.

Maggie was one of the camp's best fighters. Even if a straight-up fight wasn't on the table, stalling for time shouldn't be an issue...

Hopefully. A rescue from a standoff and a hostage rescue were two completely different animals.

Lin Feng rapped the cab roof with the butt of his pistol. "Merle. Faster."

Merle buried the accelerator. "Holy shit! Lin, we really ought to think about scoring a couple of motorcycles next time! Way better than this thing!"

Daryl nodded hard. "Lin, Merle's not wrong on this one!"

"Put it on the list for the next scavenging run. Now drive!"

That was good enough for Merle. Laughing loud, tearing down the road, weaving around one dead car after another.

Lin Feng and Marcus, riding in the truck bed, had a rougher time of it. Both were gripping the rails with everything they had and still got thrown around. Within a few minutes their faces had gone noticeably pale.

Nobody called for slow down. Nobody stopped to adjust. They plowed straight into town just like that, tires screaming as Merle stood on the brakes near a pharmacy with a vehicle parked out front.

The person watching the car heard them coming. Just as the weapon came up, Daryl put an arrow through the skull, clean, no warning, not even a chance to reanimate.

Lin Feng dropped out of the truck bed, racked the slide on the pistol, and moved toward the entrance.

The voice reached Lin Feng before the door did. A man, slick with mockery.

"Made up your mind yet, sweetheart? Want to experience a little taste of heaven with me?"

Open disgust flashed across Merle's face. "Ball-less piece of shit. I'm going to blow his whole operation to scraps."

Daryl said nothing. Just loaded another bolt, expression locked tight and dark.

The Dixon brothers didn't share much, but they shared this: neither one had any patience for men who went after women and kids.

Marcus covered the rear, rifle sweeping the street for anyone tucked into hiding, face focused and controlled.

They were still approaching when the lookout at the pharmacy door heard them, poked half a head out to check.

A crossbow bolt filled that field of vision and kept growing.

The lookout dropped without making a sound.

Thud.

Well. A sound came out in the end, one way or another.

Daryl kept cranking the string and traded the flank position to Marcus without a word.

Enough battles had a way of doing that, filing the rough edges off until the coordination ran smooth and quiet. No cues needed. Everyone already knew their position, already knew their role.

Inside, a man digging through the medicine shelves heard the noise and looked up to find Lin Feng and the others walking in.

"Hostiles!" The weapon swung up.

Before the trigger moved, Lin Feng put him down with one shot.

Reaction speed and accuracy, Lin Feng would show them exactly what absolute fast and absolute precise looked like. Rapid fire with a recurve bow was no trouble at all. A pistol wasn't even a question.

After that shot rang out, Lin Feng's voice cut through the store. "Come out! Surrender and you walk away!"

"Lin?! Is that you?!"

"It's me. Find cover, stay put, don't move. Leave the rest to us."

Pushing deeper into the pharmacy. A figure slipped through a gap in the shelving, and Merle's grin split wide as the Remington came up.

BOOM!

Steel shot punched through the thin metal shelf brackets. The pellets caught the man full. No scream came out. Just a ruined mass hitting the floor.

"Well, well, well." Merle's voice was almost cheerful. "One little rat left. Now where could you be hiding?"

In the back corner, the last one was white-knuckling an old hunting shotgun, cold sweat rolling down the forehead.

"Don't come any closer! I'll shoot! I swear I'll shoot!"

"Throw out your weapon." Lin Feng's voice was even. "Hands up, walk out. I'll let you leave. Otherwise, I don't mind tearing this whole place apart to find you."

"Why the hell should I trust you?!"

"Because you don't have a choice. Five seconds. Five. Four. Three—"

"I surrender! I surrender!"

The old black shotgun slid out from the corner. Then its owner followed, unkempt, clothes in tatters, hands raised high. A Black man.

Lin Feng went quiet for a second.

Good thing this one broke under pressure. Otherwise finding someone in here would have been a genuine problem.

➤ Next: The Pursued Unlucky Bastard

Chapter 62 - The Pursued Unlucky Bastard

One look from Lin Feng was all it took. Merle and Marcus dragged the man into the next room without a word.

"OK, it's safe now. Maggie, Jimmy — you can come out."

Faint, shuffling footsteps came from the back of the pharmacy, and two figures squeezed out of the narrow hallway one after the other.

Lin Feng raised an eyebrow. Was Maggie finally starting to toughen up, or was Jimmy just that spineless?

The moment Maggie spotted Lin Feng, something visibly unclenched. Maggie rushed forward and threw both arms around him, saying thank you over and over.

A vein ticked on Lin Feng's forehead. He tried to peel Maggie off, but Maggie was terrified and locked on tight, not budging an inch.

He gave up and patted Maggie on the back instead. "Okay, okay. It's safe. Trust me, all right?"

Jimmy stood frozen in place, face drained of color, clutching a wooden stick picked up from somewhere or other.

"Aargh!"

A sharp, ragged scream tore out from the next room, then cut off almost instantly, as if someone had crushed the throat that made it.

Maggie let go at once, panic flooding back into Maggie's eyes. Maggie looked toward the wall. "There's someone else in there?"

Lin Feng exhaled quietly. He didn't answer. He looked over at Daryl instead. "Daryl — while we're here, bag everything up."

Daryl nodded once, grabbed a fistful of plastic bags from behind the checkout counter, and started jamming things in. No sorting, no skipping, if it was on a shelf, it went in the bag. Marcus was back at the farm anyway. Let him deal with organizing it.

As if on cue, Marcus sneezed mid-interrogation in the other room and felt an inexplicable prickling at the back of his neck, like something had just been dumped on him.

"Something wrong, Doc? Don't tell me you're the one getting sick," Merle called over with a grin, not even glancing at the man bleeding on the floor.

Marcus crouched and rubbed his nose with one hand. "Maybe this guy just reeks bad enough to do it. Hard to breathe in here."

The man on the floor stopped struggling and looked up, confused.

Merle drove the rifle butt into his forehead. Fresh blood welled up immediately. "You've got something to say?"

The corner of Marcus's mouth pulled into something brief and thin. He raised a hand and gave the man a quick, clean end. "Let's move."

Merle watched Marcus walk away, one eye twitching slightly.

Didn't matter how many times they'd worked together. That man was a special kind of twisted, even by Merle's standards.

On the other side of the pharmacy, Lin Feng and the others had stripped the shelves bare. When the two came back in, Lin Feng looked up and raised an eyebrow.

Marcus gave a small shake of his head. Lin Feng read it immediately. "Then let's head back."

"The hell we are!" Merle shot back. "We came all the way out here and we're not even taking a walk around?"

Merle hadn't put down a walker in a while. The hands were getting restless.

Lin Feng was actually a little tempted. He glanced back at Maggie and Jimmy. "What about you two?"

Maggie's hand had been drifting toward the gun. It paused. "I want to come with you. Jimmy —" Maggie looked over. "Could you do me a favor and bring the medicine back?"

Jimmy swallowed whatever refusal had been forming and nodded. "Sure. Leave it to me."

"OK, let's get moving." Lin Feng stacked all the medicine onto Jimmy's vehicle. "I've been wanting to find some new weapons and gear anyway."

He handed Jimmy his walkie-talkie. "Stay safe on the way back. Radio in if anything goes sideways."

Jimmy took it with slightly red cheeks and nodded hard. "I will."

Lin Feng smiled and clapped a hand on Jimmy's shoulder.

The kid was useless in a fight, sure. But Jimmy pulled weight in other ways, and Lin Feng got it, not everyone was built to be a combatant.

He walked to where the pickup was parked and pulled a fire axe off the rack, gripping it in one hand. He'd left the recurve bow behind in the rush to get out. Today he'd make do.

The five of them moved toward the center of town and started working through it block by block, their routine nearly mechanical at this point. Lin Feng hit the doors with the axe and went in swinging. Merle and Daryl split off to handle whatever walkers were inside. Marcus and Maggie brought up the rear, their close-quarters skills were still rough, so for now they were mostly just present.

A month of brutal conditioning had done real things for their bodies. But physical fitness wasn't the same as a combat mindset, and it wasn't the same as knowing what to do when something was three inches from your face. Lin Feng wasn't about to risk his two best support assets for a street's worth of loot.

Two hours later, he sent Maggie to bring the pickup around. The rest settled inside a shop, scavenged some food, and took a breath.

Lin Feng ate fast and without ceremony, three cans of cold beef, two pieces of bread to cut the grease, then dropped back against the corner of the wall.

He'd barely been sitting a few minutes when Daryl's voice came from the doorway.

"Lin. Someone coming from that direction. Looks like they might be hurt. Twelve, maybe more walkers on their tail."

Merle flicked the cigarette butt to the floor, ground it out, and moved to the doorway with the rifle. One look outside. "Hah. That poor son of a bitch."

Lin Feng grabbed the axe and stepped up to look.

Black man. Lean. Crowbar in his grip, running ragged with a dozen walkers behind him, occasionally twisting back to shout something at them.

"Well?" Marcus asked. Flat, precise. "Do we pull him out?"

Lin Feng didn't answer. He watched, reading the man's movement. Not a canon character.

The gait was off, but not like someone running on an injury. More like someone running on empty. The body giving out from underneath.

Starvation? Illness?

He needed to know which.

---

Orion ran.

One thought in his skull, hammered in on repeat: pharmacy, there was a pharmacy up ahead, ibuprofen, if he could find ibuprofen, he could break this fever and stop dying one block at a time.

Every footfall hit the asphalt like his legs were cast iron. Every breath dragged through his lungs like he was inhaling broken glass. His head was enormous and distant, like a weight balanced on the end of a wire. The stench behind him was getting stronger.

He was going to die here.

WHOOSH!

THUD!

Something heavy hit the ground behind him. Dull and sudden.

Heavy. A walker had gone down?

Orion held onto consciousness with both hands and pushed. His legs found something close to speed. There was a chance, narrow, stupid, possibly imaginary, and he was going to take it.

Then the figures appeared.

Several of them, stepping out from a doorway ahead, armed. And in the center, a man built like a problem, holding an axe.

Orion's legs quit.

He hit the ground.

"Help me..."

The words came out barely above a breath. His eyelids, too heavy to keep up, finally closed.

➤ Next: A Dangerous and Troublesome Fellow