Once Merle and the other two located the cartridge cases and bullets, they moved on to search the rest of the building for primers and smokeless powder.

Both were strictly no-flame, no-impact materials, and they would never be stored in the same place, so tracking them down burned extra time.

Lin Feng's side was moving faster. He hauled out four benchtop single-stage reloading presses from the workshop, one backup compact lightweight press, four sets of 9mm dies, and two sets of 5.56mm dies.

As for 7.62mm, it wasn't the standard round here, so there were no dies for it, those had always been purchased factory-loaded.

While moving the presses, Lin Feng could hear Orion and Abraham prying at the lockers in the background. Not loud, but that grinding metallic squeal was the kind that got right under your teeth.

Like a knife scraping bone.

Crane and Jade came up nearly empty on weapons. The gun storage room had been swept clean, not just rifles, they couldn't even turn up a couple of handguns.

What they did find, scattered across several storage rooms, was a solid haul of support gear: firearm maintenance kits, bulk quantities of gun-specific lubricant, rust inhibitor, moisture repellent, padded shockproof storage cases. Leftover protective equipment too, ballistic goggles, tactical vests, armor plate inserts.

Tactical accessories were in reasonable supply, mostly because nobody ever bothered taking those. Rounding it out were critical wear-parts: firing pins, recoil springs, extractors, magazine springs, barrel bushings.

Main objective: zero progress. Side tasks: wildly exceeded expectations.

After Lin Feng finished moving the machinery and instruments, he turned his attention to the steel plates mounted on the range's bulletproof backstop wall.

Perfect for reinforcing fortifications. And they looked detachable. Free materials sitting right there, why leave them?

He grabbed his pry bar and started sizing up the wall, working out where to start.

Marcus watched for a moment. Heavy manual labor. Not his department. He turned around and went to help Orion and Abraham crack open blind boxes instead.

The private lockers delivered a spectacular variety. Long guns ranged from AR-15s and Remington 700 sniper rifles all the way down to Springfield 1903s, M1 Garands, and Ruger 10/22s in.22 LR. Handguns were more consistent — mostly competition Glocks and Beretta 92FSs for the speed-shooting crowd — but there were outliers chasing raw stopping power: a Smith & Wesson M500, a couple of.44 Magnums.

Marcus felt his scalp crawl just looking at the spread. Orion and Abraham, on the other hand, got more animated with every locker they cracked. Like they were hunting buried treasure.

Incomprehensible. So Marcus joined in.

"This one's mine. Let me try."

Orion glanced over with a smile and handed the pry bar across.

Marcus wedged the large pry bar in near the bolt latch, got it seated, and threw his weight inward. Abraham braced the locker steady. Marcus bore down hard, feet planted, every muscle in his body straining. Five seconds in, the latch began to give, millimeter by millimeter, the metal screaming a long, teeth-grinding squeal.

Still hadn't snapped.

Marcus's face went crimson, eyes bulging, legs driving against the floor. Twenty-some seconds later the deformed latch finally lost its grip and blew open.

Orion moved fast, catching Marcus around the waist before he could faceplant straight into the metal door.

Marcus stood there for a second, the world dimming at the edges, strength draining out of him. "That... that thing is really that hard to crack?"

Orion's mouth curved up. He and Abraham looked at each other and broke into easy, satisfied laughter.

"What did you expect?"

"You might want to work on your fitness, Doctor. Ha!"

Marcus caught his breath and ignored the ribbing. He set the pry bar down, opened the locker, and started going through his blind-box haul: one hard gun case, one empty twenty-round magazine, two boxes of ammo, and a cleaning kit.

Without stopping, Marcus pulled out the hard case and set it on the floor. He flicked open the latches.

His expression went still.

Inside was a civilian replica MK12-SPR and a suppressor.

Abraham took one look, both eyes going slightly wide. "Holy shit — you can actually score something like that here?"

Marcus lifted the rifle out with visible delight. The eighteen-inch stainless steel barrel was noticeably longer than a standard sixteen-inch AR-15 carbine. The handguard's inner wall had zero contact with the barrel, full free-float construction. A 2.5-10x variable-power scope sat mounted above the receiver, and a bipod was locked onto the rail underneath the handguard.

A fully kitted-out semi-automatic designated marksman rifle.

Marcus worked the charging handle. The action cycled clean, crisp, no drag, not even a hint of roughness. He dropped the magazine. Empty.

"Heh." Marcus grinned to himself. "I'll talk to Lin later. This one's mine."

Abraham looked at that dopey grin, snorted, muttered a curse, and left it at that.

Marcus wasn't bothered. He set the rifle back in the case, latched it shut, and placed it carefully off to the side, separate from everything else.

"Looks like someone's really taken with that one," Orion said, smiling.

"All right, enough of that. Back to work." Abraham picked a pry bar up off the floor and got back to it.

Lin Feng was passing through with a load of steel plates when he spotted Marcus clutching the gun case, wearing the kind of grin that only happened when someone found money on the ground.

"Marcus. What's that?"

"Uh. Semi-automatic precision rifle."

"Right. So is that your excuse for standing around doing nothing?"

Marcus: smile gone.

"Okay, Lin. I'll put this down and come help haul."

Lin Feng grunted and kept walking with the steel plates.

On the way back, he ran into Merle and Daryl carrying a crate between them. Both wore tight, careful expressions, moving like the box was full of live grenades.

Lin Feng looked twice. His guess formed quickly: primers.

Only something flammable and explosive like that could make these two reckless idiots walk this carefully.

They didn't breathe properly until the crate was set down safely in the truck bed.

Lin Feng put his two steel plates down and turned around. "How's it looking on your end? How much ammo can we actually load?"

"Primers are the bottleneck. Handgun and rifle combined, we're barely scraping forty thousand. But the powder and casings could stretch to sixty, maybe seventy thousand rounds."

"What the hell?! Seriously?"

Merle grinned. Then a cigarette appeared in hand, and Daryl delivered a kick, flat and immediate.

"Fuck! You want to die, keep me out of it!"

Merle realized what had almost happened, stuffed the cigarette back into a pocket, and, for once, didn't argue.

"So?!"

"Of course it's real, man. What we pulled out of this place? Calling it an armory raid wouldn't even be an exaggeration."

Lin Feng nodded, already running the numbers in his head, where to go once those rounds were loaded and ready.

The three of them traded another couple of lines and went back to hauling.

It wasn't until dusk that they finally finished everything. The most complicated part was Merle's haul, the sheer volume of materials required two more pickups sourced on the spot just to distribute and pack it all out.

Marcus unlocked the gate, and everyone drove out of the gun club and headed back the way they came.

Midway through the drive, Lin Feng spotted a woman on the street.

Goggles over a headband, several streaks of purple dye running through her hair. Dark T-shirt. An AR-15 cradled in her arms. She was facing toward them, strolling down the middle of the road like she had nowhere to be.

When she saw the convoy coming, she didn't run.

She waved.

Then, as if something occurred to her a beat too late, she moved to find cover.

That outfit. That behavior.

➤ Next: Found Another Treasure

Chapter 110 - Found Another Treasure

At dusk, the vehicle rolled to a stop in front of a residential house.

Jade watched Juanita chatter non-stop, calling herself Princess, and fell into a brief silence.

This woman who called herself Princess was practically a social menace, always managing to say things that sounded strange, yet somehow carried an undeniable thread of logic.

Hard to understand, but worthy of respect.

"Oh~ what's wrong, cool sis? You don't look too happy."

Jade shook their head. "I'm fine. Maybe just... a little tired."

"Alright, then you should rest up. You need the energy to keep living."

Lin Feng rubbed his nose. "Let's head in, then. Rest for the night, and tomorrow... tomorrow we go back to camp first. Those supplies won't keep."

"Crane, talk to Rick later and have him cordon off two separate spots to use as hazardous materials storage."

"OK, Lin. Anything else to pass along?"

"Nothing for now." Lin Feng pushed open the door and led the group inside.

Sunil was sitting on the sofa, eyes closed. At the sound of the door, those eyes snapped open, body going rigid, hand flying to the pistol on the table and raising it.

Then Sunil saw it was Lin Feng's group and relaxed, setting the gun back down. "Sorry..."

Lin Feng didn't mind. "How's the recovery coming?"

"Feeling alright. At least I can walk again."

Marcus stepped over and pressed the back of a hand to Sunil's forehead. Not bad, the high fever from the convulsions and physical crash had already broken.

"How many meals today?"

"Five, like you said."

Marcus turned and glanced at the food. Still more than half left. He gave Sunil a light pat on the shoulder. "Take it slow. Small meals, often. Nurse it back bit by bit. You'll get there."

"Thank you, Doctor."

Marcus didn't say anything more. As he stood, his eyes landed on the Glock 17 lying on the table.

It wasn't chambered.

The extractor's outer face sat nearly flush with the slide wall. No protrusion at all.

He looked back at Sunil, eyes wide with shock.

This person didn't even know how to use a handgun?

Sunil caught Marcus's expression. "What is it, Doctor?"

Marcus picked the gun off the table, hooked two fingers on the rear serrations of the slide, and racked it back. The ejection port opened a narrow sliver. No brass inside.

"...Nothing. Once you're back on your feet, you should learn how to use a weapon. A pistol with an empty chamber can't protect you from anything."

"Uh — alright, Doctor."

Merle snorted a laugh. "Where'd this good little lamb come from? Can't even use a damn pistol..."

Sunil's lips pressed together, not daring to fire back.

Yesterday's one-sided beating had left a mark. Not just on the body.

"Alright, Merle. Give it a rest. People survive their own way."

Merle shrugged, grinning, and left it at that.

Lin Feng stepped forward and leaned down until Sunil was fully in his shadow.

"You said you're an architect. I believed you, that's the only reason you're hearing me go to bat for you right now. But now you have to show everyone that was the right call."

"Today we scavenged gunpowder and bullet primers. The camp doesn't have a dedicated storage room, so we need to build one. Before we reach camp tomorrow, I want a design for a hazardous materials storage room on paper. That's not too much to ask, is it?"

Completely swallowed by Lin Feng's shadow, Sunil shrank like a quail and gave a shaky nod.

"How much material? What does the site look like? What building materials do you have? What safety grade does it need to meet?"

"Over a hundred and twenty pounds of gunpowder. Twenty-four cases of primers. Building materials, as long as it's not something impossible to find, just tell me what you need and I'll have people track it down. I don't know grades, but I want it to keep moisture out so nothing becomes unusable, and I want no risk of an accidental incident."

"I can do it." The dull blankness behind Sunil's eyes sharpened. Wheels began turning. Technical terms started spilling out under the breath, low and rapid.

Lin Feng straightened up and smiled. "Pull it off and you're the camp's number-one architect. Fail, and you'll chop trees and dig dirt until you've worked off your debt."

Princess blinked. Something shifted in that expression. When Lin Feng had extended the invitation earlier, he certainly hadn't looked like this.

Had Princess been tricked?

Fingers curled, almost without thinking, drifting toward a weapon, as if that were the only thing that could put the unease to rest.

"I can. I'll make it happen. Trust me." Sunil lifted that chin and looked Lin Feng straight in the eye.

Other things might shake the nerve. Professional expertise did not.

Lin Feng gave a short hum. "Then I'll be watching."

He turned and called the others over for dinner. Sunil drifted alone to a windowsill, produced a pen and a notepad from somewhere, and got to work, writing, sketching, scratching things out and starting again.

"Lin, why are you so hard on them?" Princess said quietly, watching him. "They look so lonely. Like a lost lamb."

Lin Feng didn't look up. "When we found them yesterday, they tried to knife one of my people. So what do you think?"

Princess stiffened slightly. "Sorry... I didn't know. I just thought—"

"It's fine. I'll take the apology." Lin Feng glanced over. "Merle beat the hell out of them yesterday anyway. We're even."

Marcus, who knew Lin Feng well enough not to be surprised, looked up once and said nothing.

There were two reasons Sunil was still breathing: Merle and Crane hadn't been hurt, and this person had actual talent.

Take away either one of those...

Princess didn't pick up on any of it, just laughed awkwardly and went back to finishing dinner with the group.

When the meal was done, Sunil walked over and held out the notepad. "Finished. It's roughly like this."

Lin Feng's eyes went wide. A strange sense of unreality settled over him. One meal. This person had drawn up the whole thing in one meal.

He took the notepad and went through it carefully: site selection, material requirements, overall layout, construction notes, supporting facilities, guard rotations. Every detail was there, laid out with complete clarity.

"Hold on — why drywall, plywood, and earthen berms? Why not reinforced concrete?"

Sunil glanced up and explained, voice still quiet. "Because if an explosion occurs, heavy walls trap the shockwave. That containment amplifies the destructive force. But drywall and wooden planks don't hold, the roof blows off and vents the pressure, so the shockwave dissipates instead of compounding."

Lin Feng's eyes lit up.

Had he actually struck gold?

➤ Next: Arrangements Regarding Carol Peletier