Industrial park, the Scavengers' stronghold.
Cole crouched at the entrance of his "nest," a truck cab converted into shelter, using the last light of dusk to carefully file down a length of stainless steel pipe he had taken from some machine.
He worked with focus, but his eyes kept drifting toward Block B.
The bags of compressed biscuits Gwendolyn had given them had already been divided among the children.
The adults could only lick the crumbs from the corners of the bags again and again, barely getting a taste.
Tony crouched beside him, gripping half a corn tortilla as hard as a rock, but he did not put it in his mouth.
His mind was still stuck on what he had seen that morning.
In the gray-white morning fog, the walkers that usually terrified them, the ones they could only avoid, had moved like sheep driven by a Shepherd Dog. Vast in number, numb and silent, they had marched toward the graveyard of Block D, a place they had never dared approach.
The sight had been too strange. Too powerful.
A power completely beyond anything the Scavengers could understand.
"Boss," Tony finally could not hold back anymore, his voice terribly dry. "How… how did they do that? Was it witchcraft?"
Cole stopped filing and raised the steel pipe to his eyes, blowing the dust from it.
"Witchcraft?" He gave a snort, deep wrinkles pulling across his face. "Kid, in this world, any 'witchcraft' that keeps people alive is called skill. It's called technology. It's called some ruthless trick we don't understand."
Cole set the steel pipe down, took out a flattened cigarette pack, shook out the last cigarette butt, and lit it. He took a deep drag, then coughed twice as the harsh cheap tobacco burned his throat.
"The Red Scarf Gang was ruthless enough, wasn't it? Guns, knives, human lives thrown in like nothing. And even they never cleared out an entire block. They only got one factory running. But look at Rock Fortress. What did they use?
"Some strange thing, and they cleared Block B cleaner than a plate licked by a dog. Zero casualties. Zero casualties, Tony!"
He repeated the words, and if one looked closely, his fingers were still trembling slightly. Whether it was from excitement or fear, even he might not have known.
"Last time we went to the edge of Block C to grab some gauze, we lost George and Tom. All for two boxes of bandages that were almost expired."
Cole's voice was not loud, but it carried a deep sadness. Around him, several Scavengers who had been sitting or lying down stopped what they were doing and listened in silence.
In the dim light, their malnourished faces looked hollow, but their eyes were startlingly bright.
There was fear in those eyes, but even more than that, there was the tremor of people who had been shaken to their core.
"I went to look today." Cole blew out a mouthful of smoke, the haze blurring his complicated expression. "Block B's defensive wall is already up. Barbed wire and barricades.
"There are lights inside. Not torches, real fucking electric lights. And the sound of metal being hammered. Less than a day, and they turned it into that."
He paused, his voice lowering further. "And their real leader is a little girl. Very young…"
Tony thought of that young voice and silently shoved the corn tortilla into his mouth, taking a bite.
A thin woman holding a filthy child could not help asking, "Cole, will Rock Fortress really take us? We don't know how to do anything except pick through junk…"
"Knowing how to scavenge, knowing the roads, knowing how to avoid walkers, knowing how to survive in this damned world, that's a skill!" another weather-beaten man said roughly.
"The Red Scarf Gang treated us like rats. The Throat-Slasher Gang bosses us around whenever they run into us. But Rock Fortress… at least they're willing to talk."
"Talk?" In the corner, a gaunt old man who had been silent the whole time spoke in a sour tone.
"They've just gotten a foothold in Knoxville Industrial Park. They need hands to work. They need us because we know the terrain.
"Once they're done using us, once they've swallowed Block A and Block C too, will scavengers like us still be useful?
"By then, we might end up worse off than we were under the Red Scarf Gang.
"Don't forget, they herded over a thousand walkers into Block D and locked them in.
"People that ruthless, you think they're harmless?"
His words were like a bucket of cold water, making the small spark that had just started to rise in everyone's hearts flicker uncertainly again.
He was right. Their methods were terrifying.
People who could herd a walker horde like sheep would have no more trouble dealing with Scavengers like them than crushing ants.
Tony looked from one person to another before his gaze finally settled on Cole.
Cole only smoked that cigarette butt in silence, until it burned his fingers and he suddenly threw it away.
He stood, patted the dust from his pants, and his figure looked slightly hunched in the deepening dusk.
"What he said isn't wrong," Cole said hoarsely. "When we deal with a major force, we could be swallowed at any moment."
Then his tone shifted. His gaze swept over the children curled up asleep in the corner of the shack, over the woman holding the child, and over the exhausted, desperate faces around him, faces that still carried a trace of longing.
"But look at the life we're living now. We don't know if we'll survive from one day to the next. We don't know where the next meal is coming from. Getting hurt means waiting to die. We even sleep with one eye open.
"Yes, if we go with Rock Fortress, maybe one day they'll use us as cannon fodder. Maybe once we're no longer useful, they'll throw us away. But…"
Cole took a deep breath, as if it took every bit of strength he had. "But they have defensive walls. They have water and electricity. They have antibiotics.
"They have a way to really control walkers without getting themselves killed. They can get production lines running again.
"And us? We have old people, children, sick people. If we keep dragging ourselves along like this, how many years can we last?
"When the next walker horde comes, where do we hide?
"The next time someone gets hurt and infected, who saves them?
"The next time we're starving so badly we're seeing stars, who do we rob?
"Can we even beat those thugs from the Throat-Slasher Gang?"
The barrage of questions left everyone silent.
The gaunt old man opened his mouth, but in the end, he could not find another sharp remark. He only let out a deep sigh.
"I'm old. I don't have many years left." Cole walked to the side of the shack, lifted the torn curtain, and looked at the fully dark sky outside, then at the faint light in the distance from Block B.
"But I don't want to watch Tony and these children end up like us, digging through garbage for food.
"I don't want them to turn into meat in a walker's mouth one day, or die in some deserted corner where nobody even knows they rotted away.
"Before the apocalypse, we were scrap collectors at the bottom of society. After the apocalypse, we're still scrap collectors, still at the bottom. Why?"
He turned back, his face carrying a calm born of having no way back. "Tomorrow, I'll take the structural map of that electronic components warehouse in Block A and go see them again. Not to defect. To make a deal.
"We'll trade the information we know for something real. Medicine, tools, maybe a little protection.
"We'll see what this Rock Fortress really is. A tiger's den that eats people, or a camp that might let us straighten our backs and live a few more days."
No one objected again.
...
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