Corporal Brad spent a minute with his lock-picking tools and opened the slightly rusted padlock.
Saed entered first, sweeping his gun across the dark interior.
Welles held his rifle outside the door while the others filed in one by one.
"Clear," Saed called back.
The room was thick with dust, but the structure was intact.
Most of the window glass was still there, only coated in grime.
Edmund checked the thickness of the walls and nodded in satisfaction. "Concrete brick walls. They'll stop stray rounds. Clear a few firing holes and set up a circular defense."
The other four team members took out their tools and carefully began chiseling several bowl-sized openings into the wall beneath the windows. The holes preserved their cover while giving them a field of fire.
Brad set up a crude tripwire alarm outside the door, tying one end of the line to several empty cans. The slightest disturbance would make noise.
Forty minutes later, the small building that had been forgotten for months had become a solid outpost.
Edmund informed Maya's group that they had secured the second stronghold.
Dawn was drawing near.
Near the center of Block B stood a semi-underground maintenance garage.
It was riskier than the guardhouse, but its strategic value was far greater.
It sat at the intersection of two main roads leading to the major factories at the heart of Block B. The garage itself had thick roll-up doors and maintenance pits, making it easy to defend and difficult to attack.
Maya's group was responsible for this location.
The problem was that there were walkers inside the garage.
Not one, but six. They were trapped inside, and through the shattered side window, the group could see them moving slowly around.
"Forcing our way in will make noise," Lieutenant Welles whispered after observing for a moment.
Shane looked around, then pointed to the garage roof. "There's a vent up there. Michonne and I will go in and clear it. You secure the entrance."
Maya thought for two seconds, then nodded. "Ten minutes. If you go over, we storm it."
Shane and Michonne crouched low and circled around to the back of the garage.
The vent grille was somewhat rusted. Shane used a crowbar to carefully remove the whole thing. Michonne crawled in first, and Shane followed right behind her.
The garage interior was dim. Six walkers were scattered throughout the space.
Two were beside the half-disassembled hood of a car. Three were bumping aimlessly around near the tool rack. One was stuck on the lift platform.
Michonne landed without a sound and closed in on the nearest two like an assassin.
Clang!
The katana left its sheath. With one slash, she split open the backs of both walkers' skulls almost at the same time.
By the time the two walker corpses hit the ground, she had already turned and lunged toward the tool rack.
Shane took the other side.
He did not use his gun. Instead, he drew a long screwdriver with its tip sharpened to a vicious point.
Shane moved quickly toward the walker trapped beside the lift. Before it could turn its head and growl, he drove the screwdriver through its eye socket.
The three walkers near the tool rack heard the movement, turned unsteadily, and dragged themselves toward them.
Michonne flicked the filthy blood from her blade. As the first walker reached out to claw at her, she dropped low and slid forward. The blade flashed coldly, slicing through the tendons behind its knee.
The already rotten flesh parted as easily as tofu.
As the walker lost its balance and fell, she used the motion to rise, then drove her blade backward through the jaw of the second one.
When the last walker lunged, Shane's screwdriver punched into its temple from the side with perfect precision.
From entering through the vent to finishing the cleanup, they took ten minutes to deal with the trouble inside the garage.
"All clear," Michonne said toward the door.
The roll-up door rose just enough to open a gap. Welles and Maya slipped in with two team members, while the remaining two stayed outside to guard the entrance.
They quickly divided the work. Welles inspected the structure of the garage, Michonne and Shane set up defenses, two team members cleared away the walkers and bloodstains, and Maya went to check the maintenance pit.
Inside the pit lay a skeleton that had long since been gnawed clean, with a scattered set of tools beside it.
It was probably some unlucky bastard who had survived the virus outbreak, only to be stripped clean by colleagues who had turned.
The third outpost was fully secured by morning.
The final target was in the northwest corner of Block B, a thirty-meter-tall steel water tower.
It was the high ground. From there, they could overlook all of Block B, and their view even extended into the other areas. But climbing it was extremely risky.
After a winter of snow and freezing rain, the stairs were badly corroded.
There was no cover above. Anyone up there would be completely exposed.
And there was not much space. Only two or three people could fit at the top. Any more would be too crowded.
The task was assigned to Jenson, who often sniped from high positions. He chose Bossie as his partner.
"I hate heights," Bossie said, frowning as he looked up at the rust-streaked water tower.
"That's exactly why you need practice, bro. I'm picking you again next time," Jenson said as he checked the safety rope.
"Fuck!" Bossie glared at him.
This time, Jenson had brought professional outdoor climbing gear. No one knew where the search team had found it, but it had been preserved extremely well.
It took the two of them twenty minutes to reach the top.
Several rungs had rusted through. Bossie nearly missed his footing once, and only the safety point Jenson had set in advance kept him from falling.
The water tank at the top had long since emptied, and the access hatch was half-open.
Jenson held his sniper rifle and looked inside first.
He stayed still for ten seconds, then flipped himself in. "It's safe. Come on up."
The inside of the tank was bigger than expected, roughly four meters across.
A thick layer of bird droppings and dust covered everything. All the water had drained away through cracks split open by freezing, but the structure itself was still sound.
Most importantly, there were eight observation windows around the sides. The glass was filthy, but once wiped clean, the view was excellent.
Jenson carefully cleaned the southeast-facing window with a soft cloth and set up his sniper rifle.
Through the scope, the windows of one of the core factory buildings in Block B were clearly visible. He could even faintly make out the outline of the equipment inside.
"Perfect." He wiped his rifle and began recording the firing sector parameters.
Bossie examined the structure of the water tank, marking possible reinforcement points on the floor and walls with chalk.
"We can set up a backup antenna here. If the negotiation team needs high-ground support, this is better than any building."
He took a small drone from his backpack.
It was one of Rock Fortress's precious strategic assets, and one of Bossie's most treasured pieces of personal equipment from before the apocalypse: Black Raven.
Only for a local operation like this would he be willing to bring it out.
The controller screen lit up. The drone lifted silently into the air, flew out from the top of the water tower, and began the final high-precision scan of Block B.
The images came back, and Bossie and Jenson leaned close to the screen.
"Look here." Bossie zoomed in and pointed to the vent of a factory basement in Block B. "Fresh marks. Less than twenty-four hours old. Someone tried to get in, but they clearly failed."
"Scavengers or the Throat-Slasher Gang?" Jenson asked.
"Not sure. But judging by the method… brute-force prying and smashing. More like the Throat-Slasher Gang's style."
Bossie marked the coordinates. "We need to warn the infiltration group. This entrance may be under watch."
The drone continued flying, sending back more footage. Bossie packaged the images and data, preparing to send them back to Rock Fortress.
By evening, all four strongholds were in place.
Maya and Edmund left enough people behind to guard the outposts, while the rest regrouped at the maintenance garage.
"Today went smoother than expected," Edmund said, checking the garage's heavy roll-up door. "This door still opens and closes normally. We can back vehicles straight inside."
Maya marked the overlapping lines of sight between the outposts on the map. "The guardhouse controls the east side. The water tower overlooks the whole area. This place holds the center. We can form a crossfire network and suppress interference from any direction."
Everything was ready.
The real operation would begin in a little over a day.