How Zombies Survive in the Apocalypse

Arriving at the back of the farm, Aiden crossed a low fence and entered the farm.

A red-walled barn and a tall silo next to it came into view.

On the opposite side was a barn, and beyond that was the entrance to the farm.

Beside the barn, there was a two-story house, possibly where the farm owner lived.

From the direction of the farm entrance, gunfire and shouting were still audible. The people here were all armed with rifles.

With around ten zombies, they wouldn’t be able to last for a long time.

Thinking so, Aiden quickly checked the barn right next to him.

It was a typical barn with a red-painted exterior.

The door was only latched from the outside, so Aiden could open it without any issue. But before opening the door, Aiden first peeked inside through the adjacent window.

While the likelihood of the person inside being Angelo was high, it wasn’t certain.

“Hmm…”

Frowning slightly, Aiden examined the inside of the barn.

A man was haphazardly thrown in a corner from what Aiden could see.

However, the man’s face wasn’t visible from the angle Aiden was looking.

Nevertheless, the general physical conditions, like body build and skin color, matched what Aiden had heard from Amara.

Aiden promptly opened the door and entered the barn to check the man’s condition.

Fortunately, he was still breathing.

He had some injuries, bleeding from various parts of his body, but the amount of bleeding didn’t seem life-threatening.

The most severe injury was a puncture wound on his forearm.

The wound still bleeding suggested that immediate treatment was needed, if only to prevent infection.

Aiden checked the man’s face.

His appearance and race matched the information from Amara.

Ultimately, this man seemed to be Angelo.

“Hey.”

“Ugh…”

When Aiden shook his body, Angelo groaned and opened his eyes.

“Angelo Castro. Is that right?”

“What… what… who are you?”

“I’m a junk dealer, and Amara asked me to bring you.”

At the mention of Amara’s name, Angelo’s expression changed.

“Amara… sent you for me?”

“Your brother came looking for her.”

“Maxim…”

“So, get up now. We need to leave this place.”

Angelo, who had roughly grasped the situation, got up.

He looked around the barn entrance anxiously and spoke.

“So, are you here to… rescue me?”

“That’s the plan. But there are still guys outside who have you cornered. Who are they?”

“Those bastards!”

Angelo glared at the barn door.

“Those guys, looters.”

“Looters?”

Aiden raised an eyebrow.

Looters typically didn’t operate around gang territories, as it wasn’t wise to cross paths with a gang’s exploration unit.

“Are those idiots… picking a fight with the Union? What are they after? Those bastards are targeting junk dealers like us. They hide in a place like this, waiting for a lone junk dealer, and then ambush them.”

Looters targeting only junk dealers.

Since junk dealers usually didn’t exist in large numbers, it was an unconventional survival strategy. But with plenty of them always moving around this area, perhaps even such individuals got entangled.

“Anyway, they’re not affiliated with the Union.”

Aiden’s words made Angelo nod.

“But why did you end up like this?”

“Hah… thought I could take them on alone? Sent one of those guys to his grave. So… cough, I couldn’t kill him cleanly, though.”

Aiden briefly considered if there were any flaws in Angelo’s words, but to some extent, they seemed accurate.

Angelo’s mission was reconnaissance of this farm.

Even if another faction had occupied this place, Aiden had no reason to fight.

He could simply report that an unidentified faction had taken over the farm.

Moreover, isn’t Angelo alone?

Rather than claiming that he initiated a confrontation with the group in the farm, it was more accurate to say that the group attacked Angelo first.

So, there was no corner to doubt Angelo’s testimony.

With that judgment, Aiden decided to evacuate Angelo.

“Get out. Can you walk?”

While swaying, Angelo steadied himself on the ground and got up.

It seemed his legs had some injuries, making his gait somewhat unsteady.

Nevertheless, Angelo, relying on his own strength, walked out of the barn step by step.

“That way. Head into the forest for now.”

Aiden escorted him, leading Angelo towards the forest where Arian was hiding.

However, at that moment.

“What the hell… where did the zombies suddenly come from?”

A voice came from beyond the barn.

It was one of the looters who had finished dealing with all the zombies and was returning to their position.

Impatience crossed Angelo’s face as he staggered.

“He seems to be… coming this way?”

“Keep going. I’ll handle him.”

Aiden drew his greatsword and approached the barn.

Ideally, he wanted to quietly extract only the people, but unfortunately, it seemed impossible.

Aiden quietly hid behind the barn, recalling their initial positions.

If they were returning to their original spots, there was only one person who would come behind the barn.

The other one would be at the farm entrance, and the remaining two would return to the house next to the barn.

As expected, one person’s footsteps gradually approached Aiden.

A man with a rifle slung over his back.

He seemed annoyed by the sudden zombie attack, grumbling as he passed by the side of the barn.

Soon, Angelo, who had been guarded by him until a little while ago, appeared in his sight, moving away.

“What? How did that guy-“

The moment he noticed Angelo, reaching for his rifle, Aiden emerged from behind the corner.

With one hand covering the man’s mouth and the other holding the greatsword, Aiden thrust it into the man’s neck.

The unpleasant sensation of piercing tough muscles and taut skin, along with warm blood.

It was distinctly different from cutting through the decayed flesh of zombies, and made Aiden to furrow his brow.

“Ugh!”

The man, with his carotid artery precisely severed, couldn’t even scream properly and collapsed on the spot.

Aiden casually threw the man’s body behind the barn and joined Angelo.

“What… who’s this girl?”

“A companion. This is Angelo. We’ve successfully rescued him.”

Angelo looked slightly embarassed at the sight of Arian, who was no more than a teenager.

However, Arian nodded nonchalantly and asked:

“So, what about the others?”

Looking at Aiden, she inquired about the fate of the remaining looters.

Aiden didn’t see the barn where he had been, but she was already aware that he had eliminated one of the looters.

However, Aiden didn’t see the need to bring down all the looters present here.

“Well, can’t we just leave it as it is?”

The task assigned to Aiden and his group was simply to safely escort Angelo.

There was no need to engage in unnecessary combat.

However, Angelo, who had been listening to their conversation, voiced his opposition.

“Wait… we can’t just leave like this. I need to recover my car.”

“Your car? Did those guys take it from you?”

Angelo nodded with a distorted face.

Whether Angelo was careless or the looters were cunning, it wasn’t good news.

In this small farm, even if people were not around, taking away a vehicle wasn’t something that could be done secretly.

In other words, to secure the vehicle as Angelo wanted, they would have to deal with the other three before leaving.

It was a somewhat burdensome request.

However, to Aiden, who knew how valuable a vehicle was to a junk dealer in this city, it was a request that couldn’t be ignored.

“That wasn’t in the request.”

So, Aiden subtly tried his luck, and Angelo immediately understood his intention.

“Of course… Let’s handle it separately. I must recover the car.”

“Alright, so where is the car?”

“In the direction of the house. If they haven’t moved it separately… it should be in the garage.”

“Got it. Wait quietly here then. Arian, come with me.”

Aiden and Arian quietly left the forest.

Moving toward the barn, Arian spoke to Aiden.

“I’ll handle the two in the house. You take care of the entrance.”

“…Fine.”

The two people inside the building would be somewhat challenging for Aiden.

However, if Arian took care of them, dealing with the remaining one would be relatively easy.

With a pistol in hand, Aiden carefully walked towards the entrance.

There, he saw a man near the entrance kicking fallen zombies with his foot.

Aiden silently aimed his gun at him.

Lightly pulling the trigger-

Bang!

With a clear gunshot, the looter with a bullet through his head collapsed on the spot.

Aiden casually picked up a few bullets from the looter’s corpse and stood up again.

Then he moved towards the house where Arian was headed.

When he arrived at the front of the house, Arian, who had already finished her work, was waiting outside.

“Is it done?”

“Yeah. But I discovered this.”

Arian showed something to Aiden.

A blue triangular pattern.

It was undoubtedly the mark of the search party that Amara had mentioned.

“One of them had it.”

“So… were the ones here members of the Union search party?”

Aiden asked with a bit of confusion.

“That’s not all. I checked their memories, and it seems like they were colluding with these looters. Using the information from inside the search party, they were sneaking out supplies from the back.”

“Checked your memories…?”

Aiden asked with surprise at Arian’s casual tone.

Arian, as if it was nothing special, continued speaking.

“I just wanted to make sure whether these people were really bad guys or not. You can’t completely trust the words of a man like Angelo, right?”

Now, Aiden realized that Arian had her own validation process.

Although the process wasn’t entirely sensible, he couldn’t say anything about it.

The content alone was quite perplexing.

“Ugh.”

Aiden put aside the complicated thoughts for now.

There were things he needed to finish first.

He confirmed the garage of the house standing tall in the middle of the farm.

There, an old gray sedan was parked.

Aiden soon brought Angelo to the spot.

Upon seeing the sedan, Angelo let out a deep sigh of relief.

“Ha… yeah, this is it. It’s safe.”

Muttering like that, Angelo caressed the sedan’s engine hood, and Arian handed him something.

It was a small bundle of keys.

“Here, keys. These were with the guys in the house; do they match?”

“Yeah, they do. Thanks a lot.”

Angelo, now smiling broadly, accepted the keys.

Opening the car door and sitting in the driver’s seat, he immediately started the engine.

“Are you going to drive yourself? Your arm seems pretty injured.”

“I can move enough to drive. Don’t worry. Besides, let’s get back quickly.”

Perhaps feeling anxious, Angelo urged Aiden.

Aiden wanted to stop him from driving, but he had no choice.

Arian didn’t know how to drive.

So, if Angelo didn’t drive, they would have to choose between Aiden’s vehicle and Angelo’s.

Unable to do anything, Aiden followed Angelo’s wishes.

And so, the three of them headed straight back to the free zone of Shreveport.

* * *

“You’re back!”

Amara reacted upon seeing Aiden and Arian return to the Convention Center.

She finished her reception duties and immediately took the two inside a room.

Sadie was waiting there, and upon seeing Aiden and Arian return, she smiled.

Amara closed the door and asked Aiden.

“Is everything finished well?”

“That seems to be the case.”

Aiden conveyed that Angelo had returned safely and gone to his place for treatment.

Only then did Amara let out a sigh of relief.

“Thank goodness. But… for treatment? Did he get badly hurt?”

“He lost quite a bit of blood, but it’s not life-threatening. As long as there’s no infection, there shouldn’t be a problem.”

“I see. I should go visit him sometime.”

Afterward, Aiden briefly explained what had happened at the farm.

“There were looters there?”

Amara seemed slightly surprised.

The small farm wasn’t an ideal place for anyone to stay.

If she hadn’t known that the Union search party had cleared the surroundings to use it as a temporary base, it would have been just a passing place.

“Unlucky for us. It would have been a rather inconspicuous place.”

Amara said so, but Aiden shook his head.

“No, it wasn’t just bad luck.”

Aiden pulled out the mark of the search party from his pocket.

It was a fact that he didn’t need to disclose if it were just an ordinary request.

However, finishing this request quietly didn’t align with his ultimate goal.

His ultimate aim was to unravel the nature of the Union, the survivor group.

Therefore, this request was a test thrown by Aiden at the Union.

Such a request was the perfect opportunity for Aiden to scrutinize the true nature of this survivor group.

“One of those guys had this mark. Do you think you know the reason?”

So Aiden handed the blue triangular mark to Amara.

Her expression stiffened upon seeing it.