“Chloe!”
Upon discovering Chloe, Mateo imdiately ran over to her.
He shook Chloe’s fallen shoulders, calling out to her.
“Chloe! Can you hear ? Chloe!”
But Chloe didn’t regain consciousness.
As Mateo stood there, unable to do anything but panic, Aiden approached.
“Step aside. Let check her.”
Saying so, Aiden showed his ID badge to Mateo.
Although Mateo frowned briefly, upon seeing the word ‘surgeon’ written on the badge, he hurriedly made way for Aiden.
“Is this what Arian ntioned?”
The first thing that caught Aiden’s eye was the wound on her side.
While roughly bandaged with torn cloth to stop the bleeding, the area around it was already soaked in blood.
He pulled back the cloth.
Beneath the blood-stained skin was a long gash.
Fortunately, it didn’t seem to be a deep wound penetrating her internal organs. And this amount of bleeding wouldn’t have been enough for her to collapse from blood loss.
As Aiden was making this diagnosis, Mateo, who had been watching nearby, showed an expression of realization.
“Could it be...”
He seed to be assuming the worst after witnessing Chloe’s injury.
After all, he had just seen Oliver’s state earlier.
However, Aiden imdiately dismissed Mateo’s suspicion.
“It wasn’t caused by a zombie. If it was, she would have already turned into one by now.”
The blood that had dripped from her side onto the floor was already completely dried up.
At the very least, it had been more than a day since the injury, past the point of needing to worry about turning.
At those words, Mateo let out a deep sigh.
“Then... why hasn’t she regained consciousness?”
To that question, Aiden first checked Chloe’s body temperature.
Her temperature was normal.
It didn’t seem like the wound had caused any inflammation either.
In that case... there was no imdiately diagnosable critical issue.
For Chloe, it was an incredibly fortunate situation.
“She’s simply exhausted for now. It would be best to disinfect the wound area first.”
Aiden said so as he retrieved so disinfectant from the bag he had brought.
In the anti, Mateo carefully repositioned Chloe’s fallen body into a proper lying position.
That natural gesture made Aiden suddenly wonder.
“By the way...”
“Yes?”
“Are you this woman’s lover, by any chance?”
At Aiden’s question, Mateo nodded with a mixture of relief and apology on his face.
So that’s how it was.
Co to think of it, Aiden should have realized it when he heard they were all university friends.
Aiden let out a brief grunt as he finished disinfecting the wound and wrapped a clean bandage over it.
That was the extent of treatnt he could provide for now.
“Let’s start heading back slowly.”
Aiden had Mateo carry Chloe as he said that.
All that remained was to retrieve the scattered food supplies from the grocery store area.
* * *
A few hours later.
They returned to the camp just before sunset.
“Phew...!”
As he entered the camp, Mateo let out a weary sigh.
On his back, he was carrying Chloe.
The unconscious Chloe had been brought here all the way from Glendale by Mateo himself.
“And it looks like there are people who have set up a clinic nearby. It would be best to take her there.”
“Yes! Thank you so much.”
Having already started treating Aiden with respect, Mateo nodded deeply and hurried off in the direction of the clinic.
The clinic run by the Millers seed to be doing quite well, more bustling than it had been that morning.
“Well then...”
Following that, Aiden turned his gaze towards Sophia.
Although they had found her other companion, her gaze was still gloomy from crying over Oliver’s corpse earlier.
Her sorrowful, grief-stricken eyes remained downcast towards the ground.
“With that, the request is complete.”
Aiden matter-of-factly inford the despondent Sophia.
At that, she belatedly seed to rember and opened her mouth.
“Ah... right, the compensation.”
Sophia only said to wait a mont before disappearing sowhere.
When she returned, she was indeed carrying a backpack in her hands.
“Here.”
Inside was the compensation she had initially promised.
Despite it being a considerable amount of supplies, Sophia handed it over without any reluctance.
After receiving it, Aiden turned away.
He had no more words to exchange with Sophia.
As he was about to leave, Sophia’s voice followed.
“And... thank you.”
“...”
“If it had just been , I wouldn’t have been able to save anyone.”
Aiden looked at Sophia’s eyes as she spoke those words.
It seed she had regained so of her composure.
When Aiden nodded, Sophia followed after Mateo with slow steps.
Silently watching her retreating figure, Arian, who was beside Aiden, spoke up.
“So is everything done now?”
A hint of restlessness could be seen in Arian’s eyes as she asked.
It was due to having expended most of her blood reserves against the mutant.
Moreover, perhaps because of the lack of blood, her injured arm had yet to fully heal.
“Yeah. We can procure blood right away. Just bear with it a little longer.”
With the compensation from the request, as well as the supplies retrieved from the Glendale grocery store, Aiden’s group currently had quite abundant food supplies.
It was enough to trade for not just blood, but any resources Aiden deed necessary.
“This should be fine for now.”
Aiden began trading with the wanderers as he circled through the camp’s parking lot area.
While the wanderers did question Aiden’s actions of purchasing blood, in Phoenix, the value of food and water outweighed such suspicions.
Thanks to that, blood was quickly acquired.
In an instant, a small plastic bottle was completely filled, and Aiden handed it directly to Arian.
Upon receiving it, Arian smiled and ducked into an inconspicuous building, gulping down its contents.
Soon after erging with the now empty bottle, Arian’s arm had already fully healed.
Seeing this, even Sadie managed a small smile.
The child had likely been constantly worried about Arian’s injury.
“At least the urgent matters are taken care of.”
Aiden muttered under his breath.
The sun had already begun to set, but he still had more to do.
Blood wasn’t the only necessity. He also needed to replenish the weapons and ammunition expended today, as well as disinfectants and bandages.
But as Aiden was about to continue trading...
“...Is that really true?”
“I’m telling you, it’s real! We need to do sothing about it imdiately!”
Ominous shouts could be heard coming from sowhere.
Aiden turned in that direction.
It was towards the camp’s entrance.
A group of wanderers who had just returned were shouting sothing to the others.
“What’s going on?”
Aiden tilted his head slightly as he observed this.
It didn’t seem like a simple emotional dispute between wanderers.
Following Aiden’s gaze, Arian frowned as she looked at the wanderers there.
“Those people... they’re the ones who left the camp for LA earlier today, bragging about their plan.”
Thanks to her unique senses, Arian could overhear most conversations in the camp.
These were people who had remained in her mory.
Just that very morning, they had boldly decided to risk the dangers and use vehicles, planning to take a wide detour around the south to reach LA, boasting about it proudly.
“Reckless fools.”
Upon hearing Arian’s assessnt, Aiden judged their gamble as such.
However, separate from Aiden’s evaluation, he found it odd that they had returned so quickly.
Sensing that sothing must have happened, Aiden focused his attention on the black woman who seed to be the leader of the returned wanderer group.
But Aiden’s group wasn’t the only ones directing their awareness towards her.
By now, nurous gazes had converged on the woman.
Yet she didn’t seem to notice, nor did she lower her voice.
No, she even raised her voice further, as if warning those watching her.
“The area south of the city is completely packed with zombies! It’s unnatural!”
“But isn’t the south supposed to have fewer zombies?”
“Not a week ago, for sure.”
The woman insisted that the zombie density beyond the mountain range to the south of the city had clearly changed compared to before.
That area was an expansive desert.
The woman and her companions had attempted to cross that desert by vehicle but were blocked by an imnse horde of zombies, forcing them to turn back.
“Has anyone here gone south recently?”
At this, the man conversing with the woman looked around and asked.
But most of the people watching didn’t react.
The southern region of Phoenix was known to be dangerous due to its proximity to the mountain range. So hardly anyone had ventured in that direction.
However.
“My... my companions.”
Soone among them spoke up.
A middle-aged man of Middle Eastern descent.
For so reason, his face was solemn as he continued.
“My companions went south for exploring.”
“When?”
“This morning. And... they haven’t returned yet.”
Those words cast a heavy pall over the people.
The sun was already setting in the sky.
If there had been no issues, they should have finished their job and returned long before now.
It was clear that sothing had happened to them.
But whether it was related to what the woman had said, no one could be certain.
The man anxiously followed up with another question.
“Anyone else? Does anyone know anything?”
But no further answers ca forth.
That ominous silence only amplified the unease.
Observing the wanderers, Aiden let out a brief grunt.
Even he couldn’t definitively conclude what had occurred based solely on these clues.
“Um...”
It was then that soone addressed him from behind.
It was Mateo, who had left briefly earlier.
“What is it?”
“Chloe has woken up.”
“That’s... good news, then.”
It was a welco developnt to hear in the midst of this.
It ant, as Aiden had expected, there were no critical health issues.
However, Mateo’s expression as he said those words wasn’t particularly bright.
“But Chloe is saying so strange things. I thought I should let you know first.”
“Strange things?”
“Yes. That this camp is in danger...”
Mateo’s voice wasn’t very loud.
But those few words imdiately drew the gazes of everyone who had been focused towards the entrance towards this direction instead.
“Why is everyone...”
Mateo looked around in confusion at the sudden attention.
Aiden placed a hand on Mateo’s shoulder.
“Don’t mind them, just tell in detail. What did Chloe say?”
“She said... the zombies are coming.”
“On what grounds?”
“Chloe saw it herself. Last night, from that rooftop.”
Mateo relayed to Aiden precisely what he had heard from Chloe.
Due to unavoidable circumstances, she had been trapped on a building’s rooftop and had originally planned to jump down under the cover of darkness.
However, before she could act on that plan, she discovered an imnse number of zombies approaching from the west.
Under the faint moonlight, like a sandstorm sweeping across the horizon, a sea of undead bodies had been moving during the dead of night.
“...”
At those words, Aiden fell silent for a mont.
Mateo seed to think Chloe had simply hallucinated from exhaustion, but Aiden disagreed.
No matter how fatigued, having such a vivid hallucination wasn’t as simple as it seed.
Moreover, considering the wanderer’s earlier eyewitness account, the possibility of what Chloe saw being real was even higher.
However... there was one thing that bothered Aiden’s mind.
It was the vastly different direction Chloe had seen the zombies coming from compared to the south the wanderer had confird.
“By the way, where was this grocery store you ntioned?”
The man who had been conversing with the wanderer asked.
“North of Glendale, near Route 101.”
“Route 101 in Glendale...? That can’t be right. That’s the northwest of Phoenix.”
As the man said, the location Chloe had been at was the complete opposite direction from where the wanderer had witnessed the zombie horde.
In other words, if both their accounts were true, it ant Phoenix was being surrounded by massive zombie hordes from both the south and the north.
“It can’t be...”
At this, soone dismissed it as an impossibility, while another tried to speculate on the reason.
But Aiden had already guessed the cause.
The sudden marching of zombies like this was forcing a particular city to resurface in his mind.
“Fear... perhaps.”
Aiden’s muttering, though quiet, carried clearly to the wanderers.
The mutant nad Fear, said to be leading countless zombies from sowhere in the mountains of Arizona.
If it was indeed the one controlling the zombies, then causing such an event was entirely possible.
However.
“Fear is on the move?”
“But why would it leave the mountains it’s been confined to?”
Until now, that Fear and its horde had never once set foot in Phoenix or any other city.
Like a highly territorial beast, it had never left the mountain range that was its den.
So the wanderers shook their heads at Aiden’s conjecture, dismissing it as unlikely.
But at that mont.
“????-!”
An indescribably chilling wail assaulted their ears.
A guttural roar transmitted from an impossibly distant location.
To those in the camp, it was but a faint echo, softer than even a bird’s cry.
And yet, they could still recognize it clearly.
This was the distinct howl that had earned the creature the na ‘Fear.’
A haunting screech one would expect to hear only in nightmares.
Even the faint resonance that had traveled such a vast distance was enough to make humans tremble.
At that sound, the mouths of the wanderers who had been dismissing the possibility of it being Fear fell shut heavily.
“Is it really Fear...?”
“You said Glendale, right? Has anyone gone towards Glendale recently?”
In an instant, the wanderers began to falter.
Those who had been idly listening like spectators across a river just monts ago now took the lead in questioning the others for information.
But the results were not favorable.
Before long, reports ca that nearly all the wanderers who had headed south and west had failed to return.
The only ones who had safely co back from those directions were Aiden’s group.
However, the sole survivor they had rescued, Chloe, was still insisting that this camp was in danger.
“Then... what do we do now?”
Soone muttered those words as they looked up at the sky.
The reddish sunset glow was already fading, like a candle about to be extinguished.
The ti of the undead was upon them once more.
“We don’t have much ti to decide. We need to make a decision quickly.”
Aiden spoke.
A chilling air drifted through the wanderers.
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