By the time they got back, Kane was carrying and dragging three large logs with him. Zoe and the boy, Michael, were sitting along by the fire.
Kane stared at the two for a moment longer, then laid the logs in the center around the fire in a triangle formation.
If Lauren had been here, she would have had a hatchet at least on her, but they would make do.
Kane looked back up at Zoe. She narrowed her eyes at him. She knew exactly what she wanted.
"It's the only blade we have..." he started, taking a step towards her, but the boy interrupted him.
"Let her keep it," Michael said absently. "We needed to go into the city to scavenge supplies anyway. "We can look for an axe or something then too."
Kane glanced at Luke. Neither of them liked that. Zoe wasn't the type to make friends, which meant that Michael was manipulating her, bribing her, convincing her, or tricking her into revealing things.
Or, worse, he was observant.
Kane's own power would never be disclosed, not by him and not by Zoe, but it could be discovered if one looked hard enough.
Kane shifted the logs a bit closer, then sat on one of them.
"Surrounding?" Michael asked, eyes flickering up to Luke before back down to the shifting flames.
"Mostly empty," Luke reported. "We've got plenty of space, and I think that horde yesterday was the largest we'll encounter in the park."
"We walked all the way here from the gate yesterday too, and there was never a group larger than four," Zoe said thoughtfully. She was twirling a small knife between her fingers.
Kane frowned at it, and the second she saw it, she grabbed the hilt, stopping its spin cold, and said darkly,
"Don't even think about it."
Kane smirked, and nodded. Michael was right, if they were going into the city main, they were liable to find some sort of metal weapon with a cutting surface. And that was even more likely now that it was the apocalypse. Besides, they did need food, and although Kane had raided a ranger's home (Well, former ranger, now. He had been dead on the doorstep.) and had a decent stockpile, most of it was jerky so it would be better to save it for when they didn't have time for a real breakfast, a real fire, or real cooking.
That meant more meat, as soon as possible. Other amenities could wait.
"Should we move to a place that has more water?" Michael asked.
"Are you kidding me?" Zoe exclaimed. "I am not going deeper into that."
And she did have a point. While moving, they had two choices. One was to leave their temporary camp here and just move on. The other was to pack up and take it with them.
The problem with that was that they didn't have any sort of collapsible tent or anything like that, they just had a few large trunks. If they wanted to move those, they each needed to work for it, and at least one person should still be protecting them, if they moved efficiently in a pack.
But there was a massive issue with not having them, which of course was that Eve and himself would have to exhaust themselves to collect the wood again. And although there were fallen trees around, based on what they had seen on their little scouting mission, most of them were rotting and infested.
Kane told the group as much, and they all sat and pondered it. Except for Eve. She didn't much mind, unless one of the choices involved her killing more zombies. Everyone knew that at this point, but
Luke opened his mouth, but Michael beat him to it.
"We'll take longer transporting the logs, so there will be a much greater window of time during which we'll be moving around a larger area, which means more opportunities to kill zombies," he said. Because of course he did.
What were those two worried about?
Why were they insisting on using every resource they had at their disposal?
They had to know something that Kane didn't. The possibility of an enemy that was intelligent enough to use their flimsy fortifications, if they could even be called that, and also didn't have the means to build their own, which would likely be much stronger, was incredibly low.
Kane narrowed his eyes, but he did not push. After all, his role was a silent guardian.