Morning mist hung over the farm. Half the sun had crested the distant mountains, red as fire.

Lin Feng drifted awake and looked down at Beth in his arms, still asleep.

He pressed a light kiss to Beth's forehead. Beth made a small sound and tightened the hold around him.

Lin Feng smiled. Same as last night, clearly spent, yet still refusing to let go. Stubborn, even in the middle of all that frenzy.

He carefully untangled himself, got dressed, buckled on his gear, and stepped out of the tent. One long stretch. The air was clean and cool, and he felt good.

He'd still slept in. Not far off, Glenn and Orion had already started training.

Not sparring, though. More like... reaction drills?

Orion had produced a thin wooden stick from somewhere and was working Glenn over with it — slashing, flicking, cutting — like some kind of unhinged Fruit Ninja. The speed wasn't blistering, but every time Glenn's reaction lagged, a fresh welt appeared somewhere on the body.

Leon was up too, though not by choice. Crane had hauled Leon out of bed and jump-started the morning with a series of quick punches. Morning training, officially in session.

Leon spotted Lin Feng, eyes immediately reaching out for rescue.

Lin Feng didn't even glance over. Just turned his head and walked away.

Please. I'm the one who set this up. You think I'm pulling you out?

Abbot Lin let a quiet smile curl at the corners of his mouth, clasped both hands behind his back, and slipped off in silence.

A mutual journey between the Bristleback and Superman Crane, a real shame there was no camcorder. That was footage worth keeping.

Leon was suffering. Crane was nothing like Shane. The strikes came in accurate and sharp, and even without full force behind them, it was still a pure beatdown. The worst part was that maddening, suffocating frustration of having strength and no outlet for it.

Lin Feng took a leisurely lap around the perimeter, checking the trenches, checking the abatis, then strolled back into camp like a retired man with nowhere to be.

"Wow, Leon. You look like you didn't sleep."

Leon was already grimacing, rubbing the chest. One lapse in attention and Crane had tagged a clean hit.

Looking at that teasing expression on Lin Feng's face, Leon flared up for exactly one second.

Then, caught between feeling useless and feeling angry, Leon quietly chose to feel useless.

What else was there to do. The one standing at the top of this camp's food chain was the man right in front of him.

Crane stretched, rolling the shoulders, looking thoroughly refreshed. "When do we head out?"

"After breakfast." Lin Feng said it, then glanced over at Leon, turning it over in his mind, bring Leon along or not?

After a moment, he dropped it.

Not a question of ability. It was that Shane needed capable people around too, and right now both Glenn and Leon only counted for half. The reason was simple: both of them had high moral standards at this point in things. When something messy needed deciding, Shane might already have it handled before these two finished agonizing over it.

After breakfast, Lin Feng pulled together yesterday's original crew plus Glenn and rolled out, one SUV, three pickups, heading for the CDC.

Glenn sat in the SUV and couldn't quite settle. This was the first time joining Lin Feng's group on a run like this. Something hard to name was building in the chest, excitement, maybe, or something close to it.

Marcus, behind the wheel, glanced over and held out a piece of candy with an easy smile. "Relax. Have a candy."

Glenn thought of the last one and felt heat rise to the cheeks, but reached out anyway, took it, and tucked it into the mouth with a grin.

Same candy. Something about it felt different now.

They pushed the speed hard on the way over. By the time Lin Feng's group reached the area near the CDC, the afternoon hadn't arrived yet.

They found a spot to stash the vehicles, raised their weapons, and moved toward the old military position on foot.

The streets ahead were empty and still. Abandoned cars littered the pavement in both directions. A stray piece of paper tumbled past in the wind. Nothing moved that wasn't already dead.

Only three or four months had passed since the collapse. A hundred-odd days. And yet a city without people to maintain it had already gone cold, all steel and silence, a jungle with no living thing left inside it.

Daryl Dixon, walking point, loosed an arrow. It punched through a walker's skull and stopped, only the fletching visible from the outside.

Then another dozen or so walkers rounded the corner in a slow, uneven shuffle, bearing toward them.

Merle Dixon stepped forward with a fierce, mocking edge in the eyes, kicked one walker off its feet, sent a cluster of them tumbling, and started working with the gunstock.

Orion gave Glenn a push and jerked a chin toward the pile.

Glenn pulled an eighteen-inch machete from the hip, swallowed once, and went in.

No real technique at first. Pure speed, physical instinct. The movements were big and loose, the footwork messy, but the blade was sharp, and it did its job. Every swing split something clean.

Orion watched and didn't intervene. That was just how new people started: you had a plan in your head, but your body couldn't execute it, so muscle memory took over and drove the attack on its own.

But the longer it went, the more Glenn's brain started catching up. Started taking control back.

The breathing slowed. The blade found a rhythm. The footwork got purposeful. The whole thing started looking like an offensive instead of a brawl.

Still not clean technique. But it wasn't wild flailing anymore either.

Merle Dixon had drifted to a stop somewhere in the middle of that, watching Glenn with a kind of entertained interest. The mockery in the eyes was still there, but something else had crept in alongside it. Something that looked almost like approval.

Back when they'd first met, Glenn hadn't been able to look Merle Dixon in the eye without flinching. Now look.

Finally showing up like a man.

Glenn put down five or six walkers and then paused, breathing hard. Without being told, Glenn started working the blade through the skulls of the severed bodies on the ground, making sure they stayed down.

Lin Feng's eyes lit up watching it.

Glenn had never been weak. Glenn just needed the right direction to grow into. And this — this result, Lin Feng was satisfied with.

The one thing that did give him pause was the choice of weapon.

A machete. Glenn had strapped an eighteen-inch machete to the hip and gone out on a walker clearance run.

What was that, yardwork?

With the street cleared, Daryl Dixon moved on. Passing Glenn, Daryl clapped a hand on Glenn's shoulder and twitched one corner of the mouth, not exactly a warm smile, but coming from Daryl Dixon, that was high praise.

Merle Dixon didn't say a word. Just let out a low, flat whistle. The mocking grin was still there, but it was different now.

Orion passed by last. "Good work," Orion said, quiet. "Next time, try a shorter blade. Stabbing beats hacking every time."

Glenn wiped the mess off the blade on a walker's clothes. Whatever fear had been sitting somewhere in the chest, it came off with the grime, left behind on that street, for good.

Glenn looked up. The eyes were bright. Then came a single, deliberate nod, and the blade went back into its sheath.

➤ Next: Successfully Finding the M2

Chapter 106 - Successfully Finding the M2

Under Glenn's lead, the group pushed forward along the street.

Small clusters of walkers got put down fast with melee. When the numbers swelled, suppressed M4s swept the area clean, and they kept moving.

From well down the block, Lin Feng spotted the military defensive position outside the CDC entrance, sandbags curved in a half-moon, the M2 heavy machine gun sitting behind them.

"Nice. That's the one, boys!" He said it with a grin, and his pace picked up without him thinking about it.

Moving through a side stretch of street, Daryl caught something in peripheral vision, a walker with an M16 slung across its body, no helmet.

The compound crossbow came around in one smooth motion. Trigger pulled, arrow loosed.

While nocking another bolt, Daryl murmured, "Worth looting. Gear looks decent."

Glenn glanced over, grunted, slung the rifle over one shoulder, and slipped off toward it quickly.

The rest kept moving, crossed the street, and vaulted into the sandbag emplacement.

Up close, everyone's mood dropped straight to the floor.

The M2's exterior was caked in mud, grit, and rust, not just surface rust, but the kind that had fused into solid slabs. Just looking at it, the thing seemed like scrap. Whatever shape the internals were in, that was another story entirely.

Lin Feng swore. "Fuck! We haul ass all the way out here and walk away with nothing? That's not how this is supposed to go."

Abraham reached out and flipped open the feed tray's top cover, dragged the heavy charging handle back, and locked the bolt in the rear position.

A look inside: chamber clear, feed chute empty, no ammo belt anywhere nearby.

Heh. This position hadn't fallen in a firefight. Whoever was here had pulled out on orders, nice and orderly.

The feed channel was packed with rotting leaf debris. The metal surface was blanketed in patchy red rust. None of that killed functionality on its own, clean it, oil it, and you'd be back in business.

Abraham popped the backplate and checked the internals. The extractor pivot was seized solid with rust and grime. The spring hadn't snapped or cracked, at least. Mixed bag.

Two pulls on the charging handle. The action cycled but caught hard both times. Abraham stopped.

The internals were probably rusted over. Keep racking it like that and you'd only make it worse.

Abraham let go and moved around front, peering down the bore. The rifling was hard to make out, rust spots coating the interior, but no deep pitting craters, and no longitudinal cracks along the barrel wall. The muzzle crown was still intact.

Full inspection done, Contra straightened up and said, "Gun's still usable. But before that, it needs a thorough clean and a proper lube job. Accuracy won't be guaranteed, and the service life isn't going to be great. Hard to put a precise number on it — but three, four thousand rounds? That's doable."

Three or four thousand rounds. Translated into trigger time, that was less than twenty minutes.

Lin Feng didn't care. Eyes lighting up, he said, "Then what are we waiting for? Strip it down. This thing is coming back with us — goes right at the camp gate."

"Daryl, stay on perimeter watch. Marcus, Jade — every spent casing on the ground, pick it up. Take them back and see if we can reload them."

Contra and Orion traded a look, shrugged in unison, pulled out their tools, and got to work pulling the big gun off its fixed position.

Contra moved like someone who'd done this before. The receiver came off the mount in no time.

Lin Feng scooped it up and held it against his chest, grinning wide, looked every bit like a landlord clutching a bag of gold.

The tripod mount came apart even faster. A few quick moves and it was done.

"Merle, go with Crane and bring the truck around. Watch yourselves on the way."

Merle nodded with a smirk. "Hold on. Just wait for your Uncle Merle to roll up and drive your new bride home."

A few suppressed laughs rippled through the group, because the way Lin Feng was cradling that machine gun genuinely did look like a bridal carry.

Lin Feng rolled his eyes and didn't take the bait. Instead, he turned and directed Abraham and Orion toward the adjacent emplacement.

The second M2 was in slightly better shape. Still operational, though the remaining service life was about the same, neither gun was going to last long in a sustained fight.

Lin Feng set the M2 down on the sandbags and let his fingers run slowly over the metal.

Yeah, it had flaws. Couldn't shoot straight, wouldn't last forever. But it could fire. And that one fact was enough to bury every complaint.

Glenn had slipped back at some point, carrying a chest rig and a set of body armor, with an extra M16 across the back and a new tactical belt around the waist, M9 bayonet hanging off it. The magazines and handgun had probably already gone into the pack.

"Fuck! Lin, you might want to come over here. Crane and I caught a little rat. Mouthy little bastard, too, bared its teeth at me. Fuck! What the hell are you looking at?!"

Merle's voice came through the radio, barely keeping a lid on it.

"Where's Crane? Everything okay?"

"Crane drove off to come get you guys, should be there any minute. Fuck you!"

"Agh!"

"Shut up!"

Merle kept talking over the radio, clearly interrogating someone while simultaneously reporting in. No real danger then.

Lin Feng grunted, clipped the radio back to his waist, and waited.

Crane had a solid moral compass. The fact that Crane had gone along with however Merle handled it meant whoever this was had tried to jump them both first.

A stray wanderer? Someone from another group?

Hard to say. But if it was another group...

Sigh. Trouble.

Lin Feng was still turning it over when Crane pulled into view in the pickup, rolling to a stop alongside the group.

They loaded the dismantled M2 into the truck bed, climbed in, and followed it back to where the vehicles were staged.

In the alley nearby, a gaunt figure lay flat on the ground, not moving. A small smear of blood beside the body, not much. Probably a busted nose.

Lin Feng stopped walking. "Dead?"

Merle plucked the cigarette from between the lips, exhaled a slow stream of smoke, and said, "Nah. Kid just passed out."

"So what happened?"

Merle looked at Crane and flicked a glance that said, you tell it.

"When Merle and I came back for the vehicles, this guy burst out of the alley with a knife," Crane said, shrugging. "Looked like a robbery attempt."

Lin Feng looked down at the knife and went quiet for a moment.

In a world where practically everyone was carrying a handgun or a hunting blade, this person had tried to pull a robbery with a plastic-handled fruit knife.

The absurdity of it pulled a short laugh out of him.

Either completely hopeless or flat-out tired of living.

Lin Feng stepped closer and looked the figure over. Male. Face grimy, jaw covered in stubble. Probably mid-twenties to early thirties.

He crouched down and jolted the man hard enough to force him awake. The eyes that opened were full of fear and flinching dread. Lin Feng's voice came out cold and even.

"I'm in a good mood today. So I'll give you one chance. Tell me what you did before all this."

The light in the man's eyes slowly drained away. The voice that came out was barely there.

"Architect..."

Lin Feng froze for a full second. Then turned to look at Merle. "You didn't go too far, did you?"

"...Shouldn't have, I think."

"...Marcus. Get over here and tell me if this guy's going to make it."

➤ Next: What Are the Old Rules?