Anyone with clear eyes could see what Lin Feng was doing: guarding against anyone with ill intent who might be listening in on this frequency.

It was a public channel, not a private one. Whether someone was listening, there was no way to know.

Merle and Daryl stood quietly to the side. Rather than think, they preferred to wait for orders.

Shane crossed both arms, brow furrowing slightly, expression going cold. "Lin, are these people reliable?"

Lin Feng's face didn't change. He wasn't surprised, this was Shane's bone-deep instinct, the suspicion baked into the core of who Shane was. Shane never trusted outsiders easily, and by default always assumed the worst.

"Frankly, this is the first time I've dealt with them," Lin Feng said, easy and unhurried. "So how they actually are — I still need to observe and figure that out."

Something cracked in Shane's expression. Shane pressed down the anger and asked, "So what you're saying is, you're inviting a group of people whose background you don't even know directly into the camp?"

"Holy shit! Is your brain waterlogged or did a walker chew through it?! This isn't one or two people — it's a whole group! If they cause trouble, who's going to guarantee the safety of everyone here?!"

Lin Feng's expression didn't shift. "Relax, pal. I know what you're worried about. I'm not stupid enough to bring just anyone home. The rendezvous point is King County — we'll have plenty of time to get a read on them."

Shane's brow smoothed out. A single nod.

Rick glanced at an old partner, then glanced at Lin Feng, and got the distinct feeling these two were running a routine together...

"Still," Rick said, "how many people are you planning to take?"

"Merle, Daryl, and Marcus. The four of us should be enough."

"Not taking more?"

"No need. The camp matters more."

Lin Feng shook his head, got up, and headed with everyone to the dining table to take care of dinner.

Contra came out once, ate something, and went back inside.

Still quiet. But not as dead-eyed as before.

After dinner, Lin Feng went to wash up alone. When he came back to the tent, Beth was already sitting inside.

"Beth? Tonight you..."

Beth's face went a little red. "I already talked to Dad. He said it was fine."

Lin Feng turned to look. On the second floor of the wooden house, a curtain was abruptly drawn shut.

Lin Feng let out a sigh. Really putting me through it...

... (10,086 words omitted)

The next morning, a thin mist had settled in.

Lin Feng woke gradually. The night had been tiring, but the body clock didn't care.

Beth was still asleep. Both young, both having newly discovered something they couldn't quite leave alone, restraint had been, understandably, difficult. Things had gotten a little intense.

Lin Feng got up quietly, dressed, strapped on his weapons, and stepped outside.

Through the pale morning haze, the sun was climbing. The whole world sat in amber.

Lin Feng stretched lazily. On the watchtower in the distance, Daryl and Glenn were on watch.

Daryl caught the movement below and was mildly surprised.

Went to sleep that late. Still up this early.

No understanding it. Respected it, though.

Lin Feng walked over to the campfire, poked it a couple of times with a branch, fed in a few pieces of dry wood, then sat back beside it and started thinking.

It had become a reflex, every morning after waking, he mapped out the day's work for the camp.

Today meant looping back to the original plan: harvesters, fuel, grain storage, fuel drums, all of it needed to be gathered. And Molotov cocktail production and stockpiling, too.

As for Crane's side, things had settled for now. Whether the group could arrive before the summer harvest was anyone's guess.

The reason that mattered, though, was simple: hard work showed you who people really were.

At breakfast, Lori managed two bites of pasta before a wave of nausea hit, sudden, unstoppable. Lori shoved back from the table and made it to the side just in time.

The fork in Shane's hand went still in midair. Rick was already moving, crossing to Lori's side.

Lin Feng set his fork down and looked over. Something clicked. "Is that... morning sickness?"

Marcus nudged the Spam around on the plate, with the look of someone who'd just found the culprit. "Right now Lori shouldn't be eating heavy, low-nutrient food like this. And looking at the complexion, it's not good. The psychological state isn't great either. If that doesn't get addressed, prenatal depression is a real risk..."

Marcus looked toward Lin Feng and raised an eyebrow.

Lin Feng understood. He let out a quiet sigh.

A triangle was about as stable as a structure could get, in most situations. This clearly wasn't one of them.

"What if we changed the living situation? Moved Lori over to Hershel's place. A tent isn't really suitable anymore at this point."

"That works. Mr. Greene is a man with real philosophical depth. Might be able to untie some of those knots, and at minimum it'd take the edge off the current situation."

"Right. We shift food and medical supplies to match, whatever's needed, as long as we have it, it gets used. Do everything possible to make sure this child comes into the world safely."

Lin Feng hadn't spoken loudly, but every person at the table could hear it clearly.

"This isn't special treatment because it's Lori. It's not because Lori is Rick's wife. It's because Lori is a pregnant woman, someone who needs care. That's it. That's the whole reason."

"And if anyone else gets pregnant down the line, they get the same treatment. Every single person, no exceptions. That decision doesn't change."

Something flickered in Shane's eyes. Nothing said. But the pace of Shane's hands quickened noticeably.

Across the way, Rick had just come back supporting Lori, and there were a thousand things running through Rick's mind at once.

A guy who looked that hard. Softer underneath than anyone.

Marcus gave a nod, anticipated, entirely unsurprised.

Lin Feng had always been like this. Complicated in some ways, but simple in the ones that counted.

Anyone who threatened his people needed to be put down. His people, he protected.

That was all.

"All right, stop sitting there with that look on your faces. Eat up, and then get to work!"

The small flicker of admiration that had just started rising in everyone's chests snuffed out instantly, replaced, as one, by the very familiar resentment of being overworked.

Well. He was a bit like a cutthroat capitalist sometimes, to be fair.

Then again, who made them choose him?

➤ Next: On the Matter of the Camp's Black-Hearted Capitalist

Chapter 90 - On the Matter of the Camp's Black-Hearted Capitalist

When Lin Feng found Hershel, his nominal father-in-law was cleaning out the stables.

Hershel didn't stand on ceremony. Tossing a brush over without looking up, Hershel said, "Good timing. Give them a brushdown."

Lin Feng caught it and got to work, moving the bristles along the grain of the coat in smooth strokes while laying out Lori's situation.

Hershel's shovel kept moving. "Honestly, I've been meaning to bring this up for two days now. A pregnant woman living in a tent — what kind of arrangement is that? How is that supposed to be good for her?"

Hershel didn't ask about the tangled relationships behind it. The unborn child was what mattered.

Lin Feng choked a little on that and answered with an awkward nod.

Those words weren't entirely about Lori's situation.

But right now, the camp didn't have the capacity or the time for major construction. Not during the harvest. Not yet.

Lin Feng moved on, mentioning Crane's situation, that a wave of new faces might be coming to camp before long.

Hershel had heard enough of that kind of news by now. Just keep an eye on it yourself, was all Hershel said.

Then Lin Feng brought up Abraham, specifically the part where Abraham had put Eugene to sleep with one punch the day before.

"That one's temper seems even worse than Merle's."

The fact that Merle could hold a decent reputation in Hershel's eyes genuinely caught Lin Feng off guard.

Then again, it made sense. Merle had never actually thrown a punch inside camp.

Mostly well-behaved. Mostly.

"Lost his head in the moment. I'll keep an eye on him," Lin Feng said, covering for Abraham.

"Good. When you're handling it, I don't worry."

After a few more exchanges, Lin Feng headed back to camp. When he told Rick the result, Rick's eyes went a little red at the edges.

"Lin... I owe you for this one."

Lin Feng shook his head. "You don't owe me. You owe Hershel. Hershel noticed this a long time ago."

Rick paused, nodded, and made a low sound of acknowledgment. It came out thick.

Lin Feng patted Rick's shoulder, watched the outbound crew load into the pickups, and couldn't help throwing out one last reminder to stay safe before going to find Abraham.

Not empty-handed, though. There was an empty glass bottle in hand.

Contra glanced at the thing and frowned slightly. What was that for, an invitation to drink nothing?

Lin Feng caught the look and held the bottle up. "I'm thinking of putting together some Molotov cocktails. Any suggestions?"

Contra studied the empty bottle for a moment, then asked, "What are you using as a thickener? Rubber inner tubes?"

"How did you know?"

"I watched those two girls slicing them up for most of yesterday."

"And you just sat there watching?"

"..."

Contra looked at the grin on Lin Feng's face, sighed, and stood up. "Fine. I'll handle it. How many do you need?"

"Twenty, thirty or so. Does the rubber actually work, though?"

"It's passable. Motor oil would be better."

Lin Feng nodded and tossed everything over. "Then it's yours."

And with that, Lin Feng dropped the job on Contra and walked away.

Manpower was tight right now. Sitting idle wasn't an option, every pair of hands counted.

Two days slipped by quietly.

Merle, Glenn, T-Dog, and the others swept several locations and hauled back over a dozen drums of gasoline and four drums of diesel. At the unloading end, a pulley-and-lever rig brought the drums down one by one, and everything was stacked inside Hershel's thatched shed.

Andrew pulled apart a car engine and rebuilt it into a generator. The output wasn't massive, but it ran the UV lights without breaking a sweat.

The noise, though, was something else. At full load it sounded like standing next to a chainsaw.

Andrew noticed, and got to work. Cut rubber blocks from a scrapped truck tire and padded the base. Ran the exhaust through two salvaged muffler canisters in series. Then built a small insulated shed against the outside wall of the barn, packed the walls with dried hay, and routed the exhaust pipe out through the wall on its own.

After all that, the noise dropped by more than half. What had been a teeth-rattling chainsaw shriek came down to something close to normal conversation.

Lin Feng gave it a thumbs-up. Rough, improvised solutions, getting this far with them was genuinely impressive. Good enough for now. When Phase Three got underway and the camp had room to build properly, it could be sorted out for good.

The grain storage barrel count eventually reached 17 usable ones. Marcus went through each carefully — full inspection, full cleaning and disinfection — then sealed them all and put them into storage.

Worth mentioning: while Merle had been out hunting for a harvester, the haul came with an unexpected bonus, two working Stihl portable gas chainsaws.

That put a real smile on Lin Feng's face. Come Phase Three, those would make a serious dent in the logging workload.

The noise-attracting-walkers problem was a concern, but a manageable one. Once Crane and the runners arrived and started sweeping the surrounding area, the local walker count would drop sharply enough that drawing a major horde wouldn't be a real risk anymore.

For now, though, the camp's people were just going to have to push through.

The barrels were secured, but Hershel's thatched shed and the barn were already packed wall to wall with supplies. A new storage barn wasn't optional, it had to happen.

That problem had been circling for a while. It finally landed.

Lin Feng asked around. Nobody had construction experience. The closest anyone came were Orion and Abraham, both of whom had built field bunkers and trenches, which had nothing to do with this. Left with no better option, Lin Feng fell back on what he'd learned putting up the watchtowers and worked outward from there.

Hershel had warned him upfront: waterproofing and moisture control were everything in a grain barn. Once damp got into the grain, there was no coming back from it. A disaster without remedy.

So Lin Feng went all in. The single waterproof tarpaulin layer became three. Drainage ditches were dug along the outside. Cross-ventilation gaps were left on the inside. Old pallets were sourced and laid down to raise the floor off the ground and cut off rising moisture.

Hershel heard all of it and said nothing. Just nodded.

The schedule was tight, and everyone showed up without being asked. Nobody complained, they all knew what this barn meant. Lin Feng stayed at the front of it, taking the hardest, dirtiest work for himself.

It was rough going again for Hershel and Dale, though. Both had thought the last round of construction was the finish line.

Turned out it was just the starting gun.

➤ Next: Crane Arrives — The Conversation