The pickup headed south through the empty main boulevard. No stalled vehicles blocked the road, so the speed was decent.

Through the rearview mirror, Lin Feng watched a handful of walkers trailing sporadically behind him. Not many, but he didn't relax.

Because behind those scattered walkers, a dense, swarming mass crawled along in the distance.

He shook his head and sighed. Would've been real nice to find a stash of explosives or missiles sometime. Just blow the whole damn horde to pieces, guaranteed level rush.

But that kind of stuff wasn't sitting in any gun shop or shooting club. Mines, military depots, those were the only places it might show up. Or maybe he could recruit someone with a chemical background, a mine blaster, something like that. People who could handcraft the stuff if needed.

Half an hour later, Lin Feng reached Atlanta's industrial district.

No more high-rises here. Just low, sprawling warehouses and unnamed industrial parks stretching one after another, Lin Feng even spotted several lots still mid-construction.

His eyes lit up. He turned the wheel and veered toward one of them.

Parked along the wide asphalt road were rows of heavy trucks. Several were dump trucks still loaded with sand and gravel, sitting fat and full where someone had left them.

The gleam in Lin Feng's eyes could've powered a light bulb. Good stuff.

Why couldn't the farm's infrastructure move forward? Because this basic material was impossible to come by. The four surrounding towns, the two county seats, none of them had anything like this. Gathering it manually was out of the question without industrial equipment, and hand-digging was a worse option than just throwing up wooden frames and nailing on sheet metal.

But right here, right now, it was all ready-made.

Lin Feng hit the brakes and jumped out. He walked over to inspect the loaded dump trucks.

Three hauling sand. Four hauling gravel. And a few others with fully enclosed cargo beds, no telling what was inside.

He picked one at random. Before he'd even gotten close, he heard it: muffled thumping. Inhuman, low-pitched snarling.

He looked up. Three walkers packed into the cab. Doors locked. They'd caught his presence and were thrashing against the glass.

He could piece together what probably happened. Survivors who crawled in there after everything went sideways. One of them got bitten and said nothing — classic, turned, bit the other two, and the whole group wiped out together.

Tragic.

Lin Feng didn't bother with the three unlucky bastards. He walked to the rear of the cargo bed, unlatched the mechanical lock, and pulled the doors open. A rush of fine, dry dust hit him square in the face.

Familiar smell. He knew it instantly.

Cement.

He pulled the doors wider and stared.

An entire truckload of cement. Full to the brim.

"Holy shit!" The words came out before he could stop them. "With sand, gravel, and cement together — even if I can't build a full wall, I can at least throw up a short one!"

The find hit him like a jolt of electricity. His thoughts started running. Why was he even thinking about digging? Just raid construction sites directly!

One trip. Everything he needed, all in one place. All that was left was hauling it, wasn't that infinitely faster than mining it by hand?

Lin Feng locked the cargo doors back up and worked his way down the line. Another full truck of cement further along, and two empties. Whatever those had been carrying was already gone, looked like they'd finished unloading before everything fell apart.

The rush faded. Lin Feng steadied himself and turned his attention to the construction site's interior.

Heavy trucks like these weren't private cars. Drivers didn't leave keys stuffed behind a sun visor. All keys got turned in together and locked in the fleet supervisor's office or the safety officer's.

So that office was his first stop.

Because if he couldn't get those vehicles moving, all of this, every truckload of strategic material sitting right in front of him, would just stay here. He'd lose sleep over it for a week.

He crossed to the main gate and stepped inside.

The complex was barely half-finished. Scaffolding and steel pipe columns framed the exterior. Most sections had no roof yet, let alone any finishing work. Two months of wind and sun since the shutdown had given the whole place a worn, battle-scarred look, something out of a Syrian conflict zone.

He scanned further in. A row of shipping container site offices sat quiet along one edge of the lot. Stacks of hollow masonry blocks lined the wall beside them, alongside bundles of rebar, while timber and plywood lay scattered under tarpaulins. A full set of scaffolding pipes was stacked neatly along the perimeter fence.

Further back in the parking area, dump trucks, skid steers, and excavators stood in a row.

Lin Feng was quiet for a moment. Something settled in his gut, a sense of certainty. If he could clear this place out and take all of it, he would be done scrambling. Truly, properly established in this world.

He moved toward the container offices with his rifle up. The door plaques pointed him to the fleet supervisor's room.

Shuffling footsteps on the other side of the door. Quiet. Scattered.

He put his hand on the knob, turned it, and kicked the door open. The M4 cracked in short, controlled bursts, every shot a clean kill.

Three seconds. More than ten walkers down. Nothing moving.

Lin Feng swept the room. On the wall near the desk, a small wooden key board had been nailed up. More than ten rings of keys hung from its hooks, all shapes and models.

He smiled and started toward them.

Then he felt it. A gaze on his back. Close, but not hostile. More like curiosity.

Lin Feng turned fast.

A young Black kid stepped out from the corner, thin as a rail, short hair with a slight curl, body caked in grime. Eyes hollow with exhaustion. Lips cracked and crusted with dead skin. Both hands raised, an iron hammer still hanging from one of them.

Daniel turned in a slow, deliberate circle, showing there was nothing hidden, no other weapons, nothing threatening about him.

Lin Feng's brow furrowed. "So?" he asked flatly. "What do you want?"

"Daniel." The voice was careful. "My name is Daniel, sir. You look very capable. Could we follow you?"

"We?"

A brief hesitation. Then a nod. "Yes, sir. There are twelve of us. All construction workers from this site. We're used to hard work — we can handle heavy labor, anything physical. We only... we only need some food."

The last part came out quietly. Daniel tried to smile and couldn't quite manage it. Didn't look at Lin Feng. Just stared at the floor.

Lin Feng didn't answer. He stood there, expressionless, staring at Daniel with a slight crease between his brows, turning something over, or weighing something. Hard to tell which.

The silence stretched.

The air in the room got heavier. Daniel's hands stayed up. The wait pressed down like something physical, but Daniel didn't speak, didn't push, didn't try to fill the quiet. Just stood there and waited to find out whether this man would let them walk away.

Finally, Lin Feng spoke. "Are all twelve of your people here?"

Daniel nodded. Said nothing.

"Half an hour," Lin Feng said. "Get them all together and bring them here. Or you walk out alone and leave me to work. Your call."

Daniel was already nodding. "Yes, sir. I'll go right now."

➤ Next: Begging for Reviews!

Chapter 120 - Begging for Reviews!

After Daniel left, Lin Feng found an empty truck and loaded in the supplies he'd scavenged from the gun store, doing a quick round of securing and sorting before he was satisfied.

He didn't head back when he finished. He stood where he was and raised the binoculars.

Daniel had looked genuinely exhausted, genuinely weak, with real needs behind those eyes. None of that meant anything. Lin Feng wasn't about to let sympathy dull his edge.

What if Daniel was bait?

What if there was a trap waiting?

He wasn't stupid enough to stake his life on a stranger's possible goodwill.

It wasn't long before Daniel really did bring a group of people around to the area near the supervisor's office, even pausing to glance inside as if looking for Lin Feng.

All men. Solidly built, every one of them. They carried cold weapons — iron hammers, axes, steel pipes, machetes — and not a single gun visible among them.

At least, none that showed.

Which only made Lin Feng more wary.

A viper never shows its fangs before it bites.

They stood back-to-back in a tight defensive ring, scanning their surroundings with the kind of alertness that came from real experience. These weren't amateurs.

Lin Feng still didn't move. He wanted to see what happened when these people found that reality didn't match what Daniel had told them. Would they turn on Daniel?

That reaction, in the span of a few seconds, would tell him everything about what kind of group this was.

No problems, and he'd move to the next test. Problems, and he'd have to run liberation tactics to make sure those building materials actually made it back.

Time ticked by. A broad-shouldered white man with a beard, carrying an axe, exchanged a few words with Daniel. The two of them seemed to argue briefly, then nothing. It fizzled out. They settled in to wait.

Lin Feng ran his fingers slowly along the binoculars, filing everything away. Then a gap in his reasoning surfaced.

This group looked more than capable of surviving on their own. So why come to him?

Either they had an angle, or something had shown up that they couldn't deal with.

Something they couldn't handle. A mutated walker?

He rubbed his fingers against the binoculars again. Not a bad probability. So why hadn't they just run?

Unless.

He studied the formation they were holding, then thought back to where Daniel had first appeared, right near the fleet supervisor's office.

Unless that mutated walker was right on top of them. Or hiding inside that abandoned high-rise.

Daniel had originally intended to crack the door, let the walkers spill out, snag the keys in the chaos, and run. Then Daniel had seen Lin Feng's gun. Watched him drop walkers cleanly, one after another. And changed his mind entirely.

Lin Feng lowered the binoculars. He'd put together enough of the picture.

He stepped out to the construction site's main gate and waved.

The group spotted him. A brief hesitation, a fast exchange, and then they were jogging over, the bearded man out front.

Lin Feng didn't raise the M4. His smile was easy, his posture open. Friendly, by every visible measure.

Well. He looked friendly.

What the chambered, fully automatic M4 sitting in his dimensional storage was there for was none of their business.

The bearded man brought the group to a halt about ten paces out. Eyes moved over Lin Feng without apology, taking in the height, the build, the gear, the way he carried himself.

Solid. Well-equipped. Reliable-looking.

Though... he didn't seem nearly as difficult as Daniel had made him sound. Was that a bias thing?

Lin Feng ran his own assessment. Their mental states weren't good, eyes too vacant, too unfocused. Two of them had a grief in their gaze that hadn't gone anywhere.

The bearded man broke the silence with an easy smile. "Hey, man. You heading out too? Why don't we go together?"

Lin Feng's brow lifted slightly. Not a word about food. The first thing out of the bearded man's mouth was leaving.

So the guess had been right.

"So," Lin Feng said. "What is that walker in there? Night only, or does it move during the day? Can it handle sunlight? Speed type or strength type?"

The bearded man's smile locked in place. Pupils pulled tight. Two shades of color drained from that face.

One look at the dry amusement in Lin Feng's eyes, and whatever story had been ready to go got swallowed back down.

No questions about how Lin Feng knew. Just a straight answer.

"It comes out during the day. This morning it took one of our people. Fast — really fast. Not big, but strange. It climbs walls, and it doesn't slow down doing it. My pistol was completely useless against it..."

Images cycled through Lin Feng's mind. He filtered through them quickly.

Viral.

A walker freshly turned by the Harran Virus. Strong mobility still intact, could run, could climb, no reaction to sunlight.

"Guns," Lin Feng said. "Just you with one, or are there more? How many rounds between you?"

"Three guns. Less than 20 rounds left..."

Clatter.

Something heavy hit the ground. The bearded man never finished the sentence.

Every head turned toward the sound.

A walker had dropped from above. In appearance it was ordinary enough, the same rotting frame as any other. But the way it carried itself was something else entirely. Something violent lived in that posture. Something vicious.

Then it ran.

Acceleration, instant and total. Its form was brutal, each stride eating up ground right to the limit of what those legs could physically do.

"Fuck! That's it! That's the thing that killed Tavi!" The bearded man was already yanking a Glock 19 from his waist.

Lin Feng watched the Viral move and felt a faint pull of wrongness. Something about it didn't quite line up with what he remembered. Cross-contamination between strains?

First, rule out the Wildfire Virus, that strain was pure debuff, nothing else.

The Viral closed the distance fast. The bearded man and two others hammered their triggers. Bad aim, or the thing was just that hard to hit, either way, it kept coming, rounds cracking off into nothing.

Slide-lock. One after another, three pistols ran dry.

The three of them grabbed their melee weapons on instinct, bodies already bracing for what came next.

A different sound reached them.

Pfft. Pfft. Pfft.

Rounds with real kinetic weight behind them, moving with the same violence the Viral carried, and the top of its skull went with them.

BOOM!

Like a watermelon splitting open.

The brain was already gone. The body didn't know it yet. Four or five steps more, then it pitched forward into the dirt and lay still, a ring of dust settling around it.

The bearded man stood frozen for several long seconds. Then, slowly, turned around.

"You were... military?"

Lin Feng shook his head. "Just a butcher with decent aim."

➤ Next: The Approaching Walker Horde