Old Chen contacted us before the smoke even had a chance to finish clearing from the road.
Because of course he did.
Apparently, one corpse full of bugs, a dead vine, a half-eaten zombie, and a burned trench through my property weren't enough problems for one morning. The universe had looked at everything happening around the mansion and decided I was getting lazy.
"Miss Shen," Old Chen's voice crackled through the radio.
He sounded distracted, and several people were speaking loudly somewhere behind him. "Three strangers have appeared near the eastern houses. One man and two women. They're asking for food, water, and medicine."
I looked back across the blackened strip of ground cutting through the edge of my territory. Smoke still rose from the trench in thin streams, but none of the plants had returned. Even the grass farther up the driveway continued leaning away from the section Lingyun had burned twice.
