"Easy now—take your time."
"Careful with those!"
Inside the shopping center.
Elton stood on the third floor, directing the ten male conscripts as they filed into the supermarket, ferrying supplies down to the ground floor in an orderly chain. He kept emphasizing patience—most of what they were hauling was glass-jarred canned food.
The workers understood the stakes. Every hand moved with deliberate care, every step placed with caution. One slip, one dropped crate, and they'd be cleaning up food they desperately needed.
On the ground floor, the six women packed supplies into cardboard boxes, sealed them with tape, and labeled each one in black marker before stacking them neatly against the wall.
The two rookie soldiers stood watch, eyes scanning for anyone trying to pocket something.
Wade stood before a store mirror, tactical jacket stripped off, scrubbing bloodstains from his skin with a damp cloth.
At the center of the ground floor, Mike had assembled a pile of firewood scavenged from outside and built a campfire. The flames crackled and danced, pushing back the gathering darkness inside the shopping center. A large pot hung above the fire, water rolling at a vigorous boil, steam curling upward.
Mike sat beside the fire with several dead rabbits—Norman's contribution, brought back from his sniper's perch—and began skinning them with practiced hands. Tonight's dinner.
Cindy had materialized a chair from somewhere and sat nearby, eyes roving constantly across the scene. She was cataloging everything—faces, positions, routines.
Near the main entrance, Bryan and Norman stood over a makeshift table—a folding surface they'd set up the day before—with a map of Peachtree City spread across it. Colored markings covered the paper: red zones, green zones, yellow zones.
Both men leaned over the map, speaking in voices too low for anyone else to hear. Norman's finger traced the southern portion of the map, where a block of territory had been outlined in red.
"I've been observing all day. The highest concentration of Infected is in the south, around Peachtree Lake—this whole area. I'd recommend we stay clear entirely. The numbers down there are more than we can handle."
His finger moved north, to a region circled in green. "The rest of the town has moderate Infected presence, but the northern sector is almost clean. Given there's a survivor community here, I'm guessing they've been systematically clearing it. Most useful supplies in that area have probably been picked over already."
Finally, his finger settled on a yellow-circled zone in the southwest. "As for the survivor group—finding them was easy. Their base is near Lake McIntosh, at a large golf course complex. They've walled it off, built structures inside, planted crops, and they've even got boats fishing the lake. I couldn't get an exact headcount, but a rough estimate puts them at under a hundred."
Bryan listened without interruption until Norman finished. "Did you spot any other survivor groups? Besides the golf course?"
"Other groups?"
Norman looked up, momentarily puzzled. Then understanding dawned. He shook his head slowly. "I saw individual figures moving through town—appearing and disappearing quickly. Whether there's an organized second group, I couldn't confirm."
"...Got it."
Bryan wasn't surprised. If the outside survivor group was still in Peachtree City, they'd be buried deep—invisible by necessity.
He was about to continue when the aroma of cooking meat drifted over from the campfire, rich and savory and impossible to ignore.
A glance at his watch—nearly eight o'clock. He looked at the civilian workers filing wearily down the stairs with the last of the day's haul and patted Norman's shoulder. "Let's call it."
He walked to the center of the ground floor and clapped his hands once. Every head turned.
"That's enough for today. Everyone rest. Dinner's ready."
The exhaustion on every face evaporated, replaced by something close to joy. But they finished their current tasks before sitting down—discipline, or perhaps just the knowledge that food was earned.
Every eye fixed on the steaming pot with undisguised longing. Inside the QZ, rations were typically cold, packaged, hard. A bowl of hot meat stew was a luxury most of them encountered maybe once a year.
Grrrrrowl.
Sixteen stomachs announced themselves in near-perfect unison—so loud it was almost comical.
Bryan settled into a spot of his own and watched the scene with quiet amusement. He pointed toward the civilians and said to Elton: "Give each of them a fruit cup from the canned goods. And some extra food. Make sure they eat their fill."
"That's... are you sure?"
Elton blinked, glancing between Bryan and the carefully inventoried supplies.
"Just do it. Those supplies are going straight into some bureaucrat's pantry the second we get back anyway. Might as well feed the people who actually did the work. Full stomachs mean better performance tomorrow."
"You're the boss."
Elton shrugged and went to distribute the food. As long as it didn't come out of his share, he wasn't going to argue.
As the civilians received their portions, they stared at Bryan with wide, disbelieving eyes—then turned those eyes grateful. They all knew: without the squad leader's say-so, not a single extra morsel would have left those crates.
They ate with visible pleasure. That first sip of hot, rich broth—the taste was almost enough to bring tears.
The two rookie soldiers watched all of this very carefully. They exchanged a meaningful look, eyes glinting, but made no move to intervene. They sipped their own stew and whispered to each other.
Bryan noticed. He knew exactly what they were thinking—a report to their superiors back at the QZ. Squad leader B12 distributed mission supplies to civilians without authorization. If substantiated, it could mean reprimand for Bryan and commendation for the whistleblowers. A nice boost to their careers.
A cold smile touched his lips. Whether those two made it back to the QZ alive was an open question... and what Bryan's team would be doing once they returned wasn't something outsiders needed to know about.
His gaze drifted to Cindy, sitting not far away, her eyes spinning with calculation.
Another problem to deal with.
He sighed inwardly but felt no real frustration. This was only day one. He'd handle each issue in turn. And at the rate they were collecting supplies, the mission might wrap up ahead of schedule.
...
1:00 AM.
The shopping center's ground floor was dark save for the campfire's dying glow. More than a dozen bedrolls were laid out across the tile, and the soft rhythm of sleeping breath filled the space.
Mike sat beside the embers, head drooping, eyes shut. He'd fallen asleep on watch.
On one of the bedrolls, Cindy lay with her eyes wide open. She kept tilting her head to check on Mike—had been doing so for the past thirty minutes, making absolutely certain the guard was genuinely asleep.
She didn't trust it. QZ military discipline couldn't possibly be this slack. For a while, she'd suspected it was a trap.
But minute after minute passed with no change. Mike's breathing stayed even, his posture slack. He was young—barely twenty—and had the unmistakable energy of someone who hadn't fully outgrown adolescence. Maybe it wasn't an act after all. And after tonight, she might not get another chance this clean.
Her eyes swept the room. The four other soldiers lay in their bedrolls, chests rising and falling in the steady cadence of deep sleep. The civilian workers—same. Norman had gone upstairs, claiming he preferred not to sleep in a crowd.
Now.
Cindy eased out of her bedroll and rose silently, bare feet on cold tile. She crept toward the nearest shop—one with a window that opened to the outside. She'd chosen this sleeping spot deliberately.
At the shop's entrance, she threw one final look at the sleeping soldiers. Confirming nothing had changed, contempt flickered briefly in her eyes. Then she slipped inside.
Three minutes later, she emerged. Something was now clutched in her hand. A quick scan of the room, and she returned to her bedroll. Within moments, she was asleep.
What Cindy didn't know was that the instant she lay down, every soldier in the room quietly opened their eyes.
...
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