***


    Later that day, a group of two fighters, Yu Tong and Ahmed, went to Manma, to check the place to be sure there weren''t any zombies in the area. They are doing this because their Shi Huang commander has ordered them to go there, check the palace to see if it will be sustainable for them to create another outpost that will act as a safe area to hold the possible survivors in there until they''ll be allowed to move in the outpost. That''s how the procedure of the Organization works in terms of outposts, survivors get to live in a safe area as a means to be sure they aren''t infected, to see if they are trusted and can be useful to The Organization.


    Ahmed and Yu Tong enter the land of what it looks like to be a farm by looking at what it looks like barns, fences where animals are used to be put, stables and two tractors who are having their tires stolen. One of the tractors is having their windshields broken by what it looks like, either by bullets or someone just threw an ax at it. Ahmed pointed the tractors to Yu Tong, where she looked at it, then they both shook their shoulders and continued their walking toward a nearby house.


    "Z." says Ahmed to Yu Tong to a zombie who is crawling from them, who was hiding under the tractors.


    Ahmed and Yu Tong both took their machetes, looked at each other, then Yu Tong let Ahmed go and took the kill. Ahmed approaches the zombie, stabs his head with his machete, then cleans the blade with the dirty clothes of the zombies, as he was cleaning the zombie blade, he sees something weird at him, a radio-talkie that is on the belt on the backside. He also notices the legs of this corpse weren''t cut, they looked like they were eaten by zombies. Ahmed takes the walkie-talkie from the corpse, looks at it, then he shows it to Yu Tong, who walks to see it herself.


    "Does it work?" asks Yu Tong to Ahmed.


    "Don''t know." says Ahmed to Yu Tong, then he turns it on. "Worth to try."


    Ahmed turns on the walkie-talkie, some buzzing comes from the device, the two are looking at it for a second, then, before they are about to change transitions, a voice comes from the device in Mandarin language.


    "Hello."


    "Hello." says Yu Tong in Chinese, taking the walkie-talkie from Ahmed because she can speak Chinese. "Who am I speaking with?"


    "No way…" says the person on the other side, sounding surprised. "Hello. Who am I speaking with? Humans? Military? Zombies?"


    "Calm down, sir." Yu Tong says to the person from the other side, who is speaking rapidly. "We are fighters from the Dicang Village outpost. You are speaking with Yu Tong, a fighter of the Shi Huang squad. Who am I speaking with?"


    "M-My name is Machiko." says the voice of a man from the other side of the walkie-talkie. "I''m in Gansu. In a bunker with five more people."


    "Bunker?" asks Yu Tong, who looks surprised at the walkie-talkie. "I heard it right? You said you live in a bunker?"


    "Yeah. I said right. Bunker. We found it three months ago, unlocked and with supplies. Not even us believed this, but then we learned the truth about this bunker. It was built by a crazy man to lock his family in there as a sort of punishment. There was a note in there. But that is not important. We need help."


    "We''ll send a squad there." says Yu Tong, looks over at Ahmed, then she looks at the walkie-talkie. "Tomorrow. Probably."


    "Probably?" asks the person from the walkie-talkie.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    "We don''t know. We need to ask the higher-ups about this."


    "Alright. Alright. Can you tell me how far it is?"


    "Pardon?"


    "How far is this Dicang village you said from Gansu?"


    "We don''t know, sir," says Yu Tong. "But it''s probably far away from here. Like, maybe hundreds of kilometers away. I advise you, it is not a good idea to come here by yourself. It will be better to remain there and wait for a response. We''ll call you later. Over the transmission."


    "Alright." says the person, sounding disappointed. "We''ll talk later. Over."


    Yu Tong closes the walkie-talkie, puts it next to the other walkie-talkie, she looks at Ahmed, who listened to the whole conservation between them. Then, Yu Tong tells him.


    "We found people in-"


    "Gansu?" asks Ahmed.


    "Yeah…" says Yu Tong, surprised. "How did you know?"


    "You forgot I was in the bootcamp with you for six months? I learned some Mandarin there."


    "And? Can you tell me what we were talking about?"


    "About a bunker… a group of five people and… a note."


    "Yeah." says Yu Tong, impressed at Ahmed. "You learned well in the bootcamp."


    "Should we continue our reckoning?" asks Ahmed to Yu Tong.


    "Sure." says Yu Tong.


    Both of the fighters proceed to walk further, both decide to enter a stable. Due to the smell of dead animals that came through the masks air breather holes, both looked away, then they decided to move away from there after they heard a growl from a zombie. The two realize this stable is not worth looking over after this receding smell of dead animals and zombies. Ahmed and Yu Tong walk toward another stable, where they see the doors are wide open, and show a lot of the skeletons of the animals in the interior, with a zombie still munching the bones of a sheep. That zombie senses Yu Tong and Ahmed, he raises up and walks toward them, but is quickly put down by Ahmed, who takes out his handguns with a silencer and shoots the zombie''s head.


    "Should we check the house instead?"


    "Yeah," says Yu Tong to Ahmed. "By the looks of it, all of them must have the remains of animals."


    The two are walking toward the house, they open the main door slowly, revealing the disaster of the main hallway and the living room to the two fighters. The two fighters are looking around, then, they decide to check the other rooms to be sure this house looks empty and without any zombies. First they checked the bathroom, where it revealed only disasters like dust on the sink, curtain on the bathtub, a broken toilet and a broken mirror. The second room they checked was a kitchen, and that showed a body of a zombie, long dead and on the decayed process where the skull could be seen. This room also looks like an earthquake was going there, tables rolled over, chairs broken, plates broken and dark blood all around the floor. The two fighters continued to check the bedrooms, but they were interrupted by a zombie from the kitchen, the one that was long dead. He growled and was rising to his feet, slowly and steadily, but was soon put back to his misery by Ahmed who did a swing with his machete and cut the skull in half with the intact brain.


    "These things don''t know when to die." says Ahmed to Yu Tong.


    "Should we check the other rooms?" says Yu Tong.


    "You don''t?"


    "By the looks of it, there isn''t anything helpful to us."


    "Yeah." says Ahmed. "Let''s just check the other buildings nearby because this one looks like it has been long abandoned by humans. And it smells way nastier than what was in Dicang village in the first days."


    "Not gonna lie, the first day it smelled terrible. But orders were to check these farms for something worth."


    "And we found something." says Ahmed, pointing at the walkie-talkie Yu Tong has on her belt.


    "You are right. But we should look over more." says Yu Tong looking at the window of the house, and sees what it looks like an improvised garage, where it displays a pickup truck. "How about there?" says as she points at the garage. "Don''t we need one of those back at the base?"


    "Yeah." says Ahmed, looking at the improvised garage with a pickup truck under the roof. "Better than taking a big military truck that burns way too much fuel for short runs."


    The two leave the house, walk toward that pickup truck for a minute, kill a zombie without limbs that was in the pickup truck''s backside, then they dump its body away from there and get inside the small truck. Inside, it smelled like someone died in there, but after checking, they couldn''t determine the source of the smell. Ahmed looks over at the truck fuel shortage, sees it has enough fuel for them to get back to the base, but he doesn''t have the key to turn on the motor of this vehicle. Ahmed decides to take off the wires under the pickup truck, and does a thing like hijackers do in the movies to turn on the truck. Yu Tong was skeptical about this, but when she saw the motor of the truck turning on, she looked surprised at Ahmed.


    "How did you learn that?" she asks.


    "From movies, Yu Tong." says Ahmed, starting to cruise away from the garage, and toward the outpost who is not far away from them.