Northern West Virginia, a suburb of Marietta County.

It's the end of summer afternoon, and with the faint chirping of cicadas, the emerald green leaves bring an annoying hot wind.

Having just finished a skirmish, looking at the building in front of him, Rick put away his machete and wiped the black blood stained on the machete on the zombie corpses on the ground.

And Sean, who was behind him, also put away the alloy one-handed axe, opened the protective mask on the helmet, lit a cigarette for himself, and said complaining:

"You shouldn't have let those two survivors go."

"We finally saw two living people, and looking at their weapons and the way they didn't have enough to eat, it was certainly not a strong camp."

"Taking them away is equivalent to saving them, and I should even directly incorporate the team they are in, just like our People's Federation did in Georgia."

Rick pulled out a map of Pennsylvania and determined the location of himself and the others, and while patrolling around the building with Sean, he explained:

"Sean, I don't think we should force strange survivors to join our team because we're new to the city, and while that would be more beneficial to them, we're not familiar with each other at all, and trust between people isn't so easy to build."

"If it is not handled well, it may lead to various contradictions and affect the progress of our construction base."

Sean disagreed, and said:

"We have resources, we have equipment, and our combat effectiveness is not comparable to those survivors, and it is their luck to be able to follow us."

"What other contradiction can not be solved."

The two walked along the wall of the building, from the front door to the back door, and found no traces of damage, but the semi-metal fence more than two meters high was not particularly strong, although it could barely resist the zombies, but it could not prevent the invasion of ordinary survivors.

This is a school located in the suburbs, called Ken Adem Private High School, probably because this school adopts a closed elite education, Rick and the two walked around, and only found the front door and the back door of the school, two exits.

While observing, thinking, and killing seven or eight zombies in the way, the two walked into the school's playground to take a look, Rick looked thoughtfully at the school's office building, classroom building, gymnasium and cafeteria, and asked:

"What do you think about choosing this school as a base?"

"It's very close to the city, and the facilities are quite complete, with a little transformation, even if one or two hundred people live here, there should be no problem."

Sean spit out the cigarette butt in his mouth, looked around, blamed the tall trees inside and outside the campus, shook his head and said:

"There's so much space here, and the view isn't particularly good enough to see the surroundings."

"Rick, I don't think we can just think about the zombie threat now, didn't the President say that we have to think about the sneak attack of human organizations like Freemasonry."

"You have to be private enough and safe enough, and the quality of life or the surrounding environment, that's a secondary consideration."

Sean took out an alloy one-handed axe and cut down a few zombies who were attracted by the conversation between the two before continuing to speak:

"We could find a private prison as a base like Ms. Kevira, or something like the CDC that we used to do in Atlanta."

"Only that kind of building can effectively protect us from being attacked by its forces."

Rick thought about it for a while, and finally chose to listen to Sean's thoughts.

He remembered that when he was chatting with Leon, Leon took the initiative to say that some of Sean's ideas are more in line with the concept of survival in the post-apocalyptic era, in such an era, many superfluous extravagances should be abandoned, and only living is the most important thing to consider.

So, he took out the Stinger Squad's specially configured satellite phone and private small radar, and connected to the communication of the satellite command center.

"This is Advance Team 2, Stinger Squad Member, Rick."

"Request, location service."

Soon, a sweet female voice came from the latest call.

"This is operator number two, Tina, Mr. Rick, may I ask if there is anything I can do for you?"

Rick had already finished his manuscript and said without the slightest pause:

"We are now at Ken Adam Private High School in the suburbs of County Marietta, please help us locate the nearest prison to us, where we need to go and find out the information."

After waiting for more than ten seconds, the sweet female voice quickly answered:

"Mr. Rick, the nearest prison to you, Mansfield Public Prison, is still 63.5 kilometers away from your current location, and I have sent the information of this prison past and the corresponding coordinates to your private radar, and have planned the corresponding road route."

"Is there anything else I need to serve?"

"Not yet, thank you, Miss Tina"

It was also the first time for Rick to use this service, and he felt some admiration for the person in charge of the satellite command center, Ms. Peggy, who did not expect that this young girl had developed such a useful function in such a short period of time.

He is worthy of being valued by the president.

After deciding on a new destination, Rick and Sean immediately contacted a team of 5 warriors who were guarding the supplies, and after the two sides converged, they went to the place called Mansfield Public Prison.

At about the same time as Rick and the others, the Jasmine team near Washington was unexpectedly robbed by a marauder.

Jasmine, Carol, and Li, the trio are walking down the road in sci-fi black guardian armor, trying to find out which other cars can be used nearby.

Suddenly, I saw a dozen people on motorcycles and pickup trucks rushing from the intersection not far away, pointing at them with pistols, shotguns, shotguns and other civilian-grade weapons in their hands.

Because they judged that these people were not too threatening, Jasmine and the three did not take the lead, but just raised the muzzle of the assault rifle and confronted these people.

About a dozen seconds passed.

Perhaps four times the manpower of the other gave these marauders some confidence, a middle-aged man with white skin with a big beard walked out of the crowd, he arrogantly pointed to the black skull mark on the leather jacket on his chest, which was sprayed with paint, and said to Jasmine and the others:

"We're all Skull and Bones, and this area is our gang's territory."

"Are you all the ones who got off those helicopters?"

Jasmine raised the muzzle of the assault rifle, looked at the dozen or so people, and quietly dispersed, as if she wanted to surround the three of them, the corners of her mouth couldn't help but show a mocking smile, but her voice said without emotion:

"Who we are, it's none of your business, what do you want to do when you gather around."

The bearded white-skinned middle-aged man heard Jasmine's young female voice, and seemed to become more proud, he repeatedly looked at the guardian armor on Jasmine's three and the various equipment on them, and said:

"In our Skull Clan's territory, everything is ours."

"Now that you're here, you're going to obey our arrangement."

"Hand in all your weapons, and tell you what you know, or we'll kill you."

Judging by their outfits and behaviors, it is estimated that the other party is a relatively low-level predator.

Jasmine sighed in her heart, didn't say anything, and directly raised her gun and shot a bald black man in front of her, and the voice reached the ears of Carol and Lao Li from the intercom device.

"Just leave one alive and kill them."

After speaking, he quickly took a step forward and smashed the bearded white-skinned middle-aged man in the face with the butt of his gun, smashing him to the ground and falling to the ground, and the blood on his face flowed out.

He then raised his gun and shot another member of the Skull Party in front of him.

Tata Tower! Bang bang bang!

More than a dozen guns were firing.

Although they were stunned by Jasmine's ruthless marksmanship for a second or two, and were shot dead by the trio, the other Skull Party members immediately understood the situation, rolled over and hid in the surrounding bunkers, and began to fight back.

But soon, these people don't forget to discover that these three armored monsters who came from nowhere not only have extremely accurate marksmanship, but also the strange black armor on their bodies can withstand bullet shots.

If the bullet hits the black metal armor plate, it will be bounced away immediately, and if it is lucky enough to hit the black cloth that the armor plate cannot protect, it can only make the movements of these three people slightly stagnant or deformed, and it will not stop their killing at all.

In less than two minutes, the dozen or so members of the Skull Party were left with only the bearded white-skinned middle-aged man who had been beaten by Jasmine with the butt of a gun, and he was still lying on the ground.

This guy also seemed to be stunned by the combat power of the three people in front of him, obviously the number of people on his side was four times that of the other party, why was he all killed in a minute or two?

Jasmine didn't care about this, and directly kicked the man in the face with her metal boots, knocking him unconscious.

Then he turned back to his two teammates and said:

"Let's meet up with the soldiers first, bring this guy back, you should be able to learn some information about the neighborhood."

As she spoke, Jasmine smiled and pointed to the motorcycles and pickups that the Skeletons had ridden.

"It just so happens that these guys have sent us transportation, and we need to hide the supplies, otherwise there may be more looters coming to investigate."

…………

Three days later, in the satellite command center of the People's Union base.

President Leon stays in Peggy's office, watching through a dozen monitors on one wall, as they watch the Stinger Squad members go through the situation.

Just like watching a movie, Leon can basically monitor all the Stinger team members in real time through military satellites and cameras installed in the helmets of the team members.

However, you can see the twisted lines that keep bouncing on several screens and freeze frames from time to time.

Obviously, without the support of the necessary signal towers, the transmission of satellite signals is far from as smooth as they expected.

While Leon was still concentrating on the different encounters after the five advance teams landed, Peggy walked in with a smile on her face.

She closed the office door with her heel, then walked briskly to Leon and gave the man a long kiss before she got up happily to pour her husband coffee.

"How's it going, dear? Is the advance team's plan still going well? ”

Leon leaned back on the leather sofa, admired Peggy's graceful figure, and lit another cigar for himself before speaking:

"It should be going well."

"Rick and Sean have begun storming Mosfeld Public Prison."

"Tersi and Sasha, several local survivors have been found, but the location of the stronghold has not yet been determined."

"Michonne and O'Neill haven't made much progress yet, and are gathering supplies."

"Abraham and Chen Jingzhong seem to have set the target in mind, which should be a lakeside town."

"As for Jasmine and Carol, these three guys are attacking a marauder's lair, and it seems that they want to use it as a stronghold."

Peggy brought the coffee to Leon and tilted her head to think:

"Looking at it this way, it should be quite smooth, and when they establish a base, we should be able to recruit new people a lot faster."

Leon put down his cigar, took a sip of coffee, and said lightly:

"It's not that simple, now that two years have passed since the end of the world, the survivors who can survive outside are no longer as simple as they were at the beginning of the end of the world."

"I am ready to train a group of stronghold managers, who must be some smart people with experience in handling affairs and social experience, so that they can manage those outside strongholds for me."

"When the time comes, we will establish a promotion and appraisal system, and transfer those who are qualified in ability and loyalty to our people's union base to contribute to us."

Peggy sat in Leon's arms, thought along his train of thought, and asked:

"Then you have to take precautions in advance, lest those strongholds get out of your control when they are fully fledged."

"The ambition of a smart person is much stronger than that of ordinary people."

Leon smiled and pinched Peggy's little baby fat face, and said:

"Little clever ghost, I can't think of anything you can think of?"

"As long as we have a good grasp of the army and arrange a rotation mechanism for them, there will be no soil for developing strength and power, and no matter how smart people are, they will not be able to make big waves."

Chatting with Peggy about her trivial matters at work, Leon suddenly asked with interest:

"Dr. Amlin is trying to build a new local area network, and he jokes with me that maybe it won't be long before smartphones work again in Georgia."

Peggy's eyes lit up when she heard this, she sat up from Leon's arms, and said:

"That's great, my major in college was artificial intelligence design, and when the time comes, I will definitely design a multi-functional intelligent assistant program for our people."

Leon smiled and said:

"Then you have to come on, don't let the enemy take advantage of the loophole and crack your program."

As she spoke, there was a few knocks on Peggy's door, and Avril's voice rang out from outside the door:

"Your Excellency, there's your newsletter from Florida."

Hearing Avril's words, Leon patted Peggy's thin waist, and after she stood up from herself, he spoke:

"Come in, Avril."

Soon, Avril Lavigne, who was wearing black stockings and a red suit, pushed the door and walked in, bowed slightly to Leon and Peggy, and then handed a satellite phone to Leon.

Before he could hold it down, Konstantin's annoying voice came from the satellite phone.

"Your Excellency, Your Excellency, did you hear that?"

"I am your loyal subordinate, Konstantin."

Leon calmed down and said:

"If there's something, don't talk nonsense, talk about it quickly."

Konstantin laughed and said:

"Boss, didn't you say you need samples of special mutated zombies?"

"We used a lot of tricks this time, and we wasted all our efforts, not only to get a sample, but also a living sample."

"Five types, even the most special black-eyed zombies, have been locked up in thick iron containers by us."

"And I also caught some mutant rats and mutant crabs that were just found on the beach and put them in a container."

"Those mutant crabs have grown very big, and when they are opened, there is a lot of meat in them, and they look very delicious, but we haven't checked whether they are poisonous or not, and we don't dare to eat them."

"But boss, the container is too big and heavy, we can't transport it here, you'd better send a big trailer over."

Hearing the news, Leon's eyebrows raised slightly, he didn't expect that this guy Konstantin was really capable.

"You can actually capture special mutant zombies alive."

Ever since hearing about the new breed of special mutant zombies that have appeared in Florida, Hathaway and Dr. Melfa have mentioned it several times.

He pondered for a few seconds, then spoke:

"You did a good job, wait for the coordinates to be sent to the satellite command center, and I will send two Chinook transport planes over to hand over to you."

"By the way, don't forget about the irradiant seaweed."

Konstantin agreed, and before hanging up the phone, he did not forget to ask for credit, and said:

"Don't worry, boss, do I dare not take what you say to heart?"

"By the way, that strength potion and recovery potion are so good, please, give us a little more rations in Florida in the future."

Leon replied lightly and hung up the phone.

To be honest, he still admires the ability and character of this guy Konstantin, but his kind of foolish personality is really not very likable.

Peggy also seems to be very interested in those special mutant zombies, and after hearing the phone calls from Leon and Constantine, she also said that when the time comes, she also wants to go and see them.

After two days, the Chinook transport plane made three trips back and forth to transport the six huge containers to the base of the People's Union.

In order to prevent these special mutated zombies from getting out of control, Leon and the others broke the limbs of the zombies by opening the skylight above the container, and then used firearms to break the limbs of the zombies, turning them into cripples with only their heads and bodies left, so that they could be safely and securely get them out.

However, this method also has a mistake, in the face of the self-detonation zombie, the soldier on the container only fired a few shots, and the bloated fat zombie blew himself up regardless of it.

It was so powerful that even the container was blown out of shape.

This also made the hearts of everyone present faintly chill.

And the last kind of zombie with dark eyes, sharp five claws, and a zombie that looks like a living person is also very special, and its intelligence is obviously higher than that of other zombies, in order not to harm this special precious sample.

Leon directly asked the zombie to freeze with liquid nitrogen and lock it with iron chains.

As for those mutant rats and large mutant crabs, although they all looked very crazy, their combat power was not even comparable to that of wild boars, and they were quickly locked up in cages.

After that, Heatherway and Dr. Mepharah immediately took the samples with the research team and some of the research center's guards.

For these samples, Hathaway and Dr. Melfa are very excited, all kinds of mature samples, to a certain extent, will bring unimaginable breakthroughs to the experimental progress of virus research.

Recently, based on the work of Dr. Melfa, they have developed a special serum that can eliminate the amount of radiation in the human body, so that even patients with radiation sickness can recover well from this serum.

However, unfortunately, this serum has a weak virus infection effect, although the probability of infection is not high, but the user still has a certain chance of being infected with the zombie virus, resulting in death, so it is not suitable for large-scale promotion until this problem is solved.

On the other side, there was also some good news from the five advance teams.

First of all, Jasmine, Carol, and Lao Li, through the common tactics of the Stinger Squad, night zombie encirclement and sneak attack tactics, successfully defeated the Skeleton Party with less than 100 people, and after eliminating half of the marauders, they also captured more than 50 prisoners.

However, considering that they were few in number and the captives were not easy to control, Jasmine asked that the Human Federation could bring these captives back to the base directly, so as not to waste these free labor.

Jasmine also mentioned in the newsletter that the location of the Skull Party's lair is not bad, there is not only a water source nearby, but there are some housing and living facilities inside the stronghold, and the wall is not strong, but it is barely enough.

In the past, it was supposed to be a car repair shop.

As long as they find a few more survivors willing to partner with them, they should be able to build a stronghold in this place.

Moreover, according to the Skull captives, there should be other survivor forces in the nearby town.

Because in the past, their Skull and Bones have robbed the survivors of other forces several times.

After agreeing to Jasmine's request to take in the captives, Leon also gave them several suggestions for recruitment.

For example, setting up recruitment slogans at intersections, hanging banners on buildings with relatively high positions, etc., or even directly using conspicuous signals such as signal flares, as long as the meeting location is set away from the stronghold.

That way, it doesn't matter if you run into a bad guy.

Anyway, if you meet a good person, you will take him in, and if you meet a bad person, you will kill them, and with the strength of their Stinger team, ordinary survivors are basically not their opponents.

Unlike the battle with the marauders, in the past two days, Rick and Shaun and the five soldiers who followed them were like coolies, staying in the Mansfield Public Prison to slaughter zombies, and the seven people relied on the cold weapons in their hands and relied on the terrain advantages they created to kill more than 1,000 zombies in the prison.

And now they are still carrying the corpses of more than 1,000 zombies even harder.

Although the prison is still filthy and chaotic, it is a good place to base based on the structure and environment that Lyon sees from the satellite map.

Far from the town, with a great view, and not far from the prison, there are forests and water sources, and if it is well developed, it will surely become a good settlement.

Unlike the two advance squads, who struggled to find a stronghold, Tersi and Sasha had better luck, and they followed the local survivors to a wanderer camp of about 20 people, both young and old.

After seeing the high-tech equipment on Tersi and Sasha, as well as the soldiers who followed them, the men quickly chose to trust the Tessi siblings.

Then, with the help of local survivors, the team found a resort located in the valley and used their formidable combat power to capture the village.

Although there are no stone walls, the resort is far from the city, has all the amenities, fish from the river next to the resort, and hunting and fruit gathering in the forest, making it a subsistence settlement.

Coupled with strong warriors such as Tersi Sasha and more than 20 wandering survivors, this team is actually easier to form than the other 4 teams.

As for Abraham and Chen Jingzhong.

When the two men arrived in the lakeside town, they immediately regretted it.

Because they found that for some reason, the inside of the lakeside town was already crowded with thousands of zombies, and this town was actually nothing special compared to other towns, and the small lake was still far away from them, and it was not suitable as a settlement for survivors.

However, after the two men were disappointed, they immediately regained their strengths and had a new choice.

The more they discussed, the more excited they became, and it seemed that they had decided to choose an easy-to-defend hilltop as their new stronghold.

It's just that as soon as they said this idea, they were immediately denied by Leon, who was listening remotely.

Jokes aside, although it may be safer to choose a stronghold at the top of a mountain, it will be very difficult to run away from the road, away from the town, and run into the deep mountains and old forests, whether it is to find other survivors or to search for supplies.

In this case, how will the base develop?

If you are looking for this kind of camp, you might as well make a home here.

Thinking so, Leon opened the satellite map, searched for more than ten minutes, and soon found a motel next to a small town more than ten kilometers away from the two of them.

This is the kind of place that is suitable for settlement.

He didn't care what the two macho men were thinking, and directly sent the coordinates of this motel to the radar of the two, and asked them to go to this place to settle down.

As for the team of the last knife sister Michonne and the big man O'Neal, he was even more speechless, these two guys are brainless people, three days have passed, and they are still driving around the city.

Leon decided to give them two more days, and if they hadn't decided on the location of the stronghold by then, they would have to do it themselves.

In this way, half a month passed quickly.

Through their own efforts, each of the five advance teams found their own strongholds.

Among them, Jasmine's team and the Tersi siblings did the best, they not only completed the initial construction of the stronghold, but also connected with the local good survivors, and gathered some lone survivors to join their stronghold, and the number of people in the stronghold had exceeded 20 at this time.

The luck of the two teams, Rick and Abraham, was not good, and they tried many ways to interview outside, but they couldn't find local survivors, and now they have to try their luck.

However, this is not a big deal, anyway, when the time is about the same, he will select a group of teams from the human union base to send to these strongholds, there are few people, and it can be decided according to their situation, anyway, the future will be long, and there will always be other survivor forces.

Of the five teams, the most peculiar encounters were Michonne and O'Neill, two brainless fellows who, after wandering around several towns, struggled over and over again, and finally chose a town as their base.

Unexpectedly, when they collected supplies nearby, they found that there was another group of forces in the town, including the elderly, the weak, women and children, who made a living by growing vegetables, and the name of this force Leon was still very familiar, called the Kingdom of God.

This made him feel the magic of fate, such a big country, two forces can still meet together, it can only be said that it is the arrangement of fate

Originally, Michonne and O'Neill wanted to re-establish their stronghold in another place, but they were stopped by President Leon.

Since you have encountered it, there is no reason to give up.

If you stay here, you will definitely meet more other forces and more familiar people in the future, such as the Alexandria community, such as the Salvation Army, such as the hilltop village, and maybe you can meet some unexpected people.

And just like that, another week passed.

Unexpectedly, before he could wait for the good news that the advance team had completed the mission, he heard another bad news from Konstantin.

"Boss, you can't think of it."

"Those scum from the Shark Gang actually drove the warship to the port of Miami."

"They seem to have taken over the city center and want to establish a base there."

Speaking of this, Konstantin smiled triumphantly.

"According to the news of my spies lurking among them."

"The Shark Gang seems to have changed its boss, that person seems to be very powerful, his intelligence ability is very strong, and he also gave the Shark Gang a batch of powerful equipment."

"It is said that the Shark Gang has taken several desert islands with survivors."

"Boss, you have to be careful, when these scumbags gain a firm foothold, maybe they will bring people to trouble you."

Hearing this news, Leon wondered a little, the Shark Gang was really funny, what was the reason for giving up a safer warship and running to shore?

(End of chapter)