At the fire captain’s house, Joe had done a great job of restraining his old captain. Unlike his father, who was at level 1, the old captain was at level 2 and had put up a good fight, trying to bite him. But Joe had managed to restrain him and now had tied his arms and legs.
"Captain, be patient, I don’t want to gag you too..." Joe said, looking at the old man with a black eye, with a look of guilt... When he went to touch his radio to tell Rick that he had everything under control here. Rick’s voice came first:
"Hey Joe, can you hear me?"
"Yes, I can hear you. Everything is ready here, I already have the captain ’ready’."
"That’s good news. Stay there, I’m almost done getting everything we need here, and we’ll meet you there."
"Yes, it’s a surprise..."
Almost an hour later, Rick arrived at the Captain’s house accompanied by six other survivors. Among them, Joe immediately recognized three of them as two veteran firefighters and the last one as another rookie who graduated this year with them. With them were two women, and one of them was holding a baby. This was really good news, it was the first baby they had seen since everything had started...
While Joe and everyone else introduced themselves, he discovered that the two women were the wives of the two veteran firefighters. Rick quietly left and went to a back room, where he found the captain tied up... Paying the high price of another bottle of ZY virus cure potion, he poured it all into the old captain’s mouth while he roared and tried to struggle.
Little by little, he began to calm down and finally lost consciousness. Rick still didn’t release him and took turns with Joe to keep an eye on him until he woke up. Rick also considered that he would no longer use this method to bring someone back. In addition to being risky, it could create unnecessary conflicts...
...Since many had lost relatives to the initial disease. The cost in points was also very high, and soon he would start using those points on base construction skills, and he could no longer spend thousands of them on this exaggerated potion.
Another point to consider was that the cure would no longer have an effect on bites from monsters of level 2 and above, and an alert appeared in the system when he bought the last bottle, saying that there were only a few units left. Rick had already told Joe this before, and now it was just a matter of telling the captain to also keep the secret.
So as not to make the other survivors suspicious when the captain woke up, especially the firefighters. Rick helped reinforce his house so Joe could spend the night there, and led everyone else back to the box truck outside of town... Despite them asking where the Captain was, Rick told them they would see him another day...
With that, the truck was loaded with everything Rick had collected in town, including a large amount of canned food and fast food from the convenience stores, and was then sent back with the new survivors to Pineview. And the first day was considered a great success.
Rick took shelter for the night with Ethan in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town, and the next day, after the box truck returned, he met up with Joe and the now-conscious Captain. Their target today was the hospital in SC12.
"Kid, it’s good to see you’re alive."
"I’m also glad to see you in good shape again... Have you gotten used to your new strength?"
"A little, I never thought I would be stronger than I was in my youth... Besides, I never thought something so terrible would happen to our world..."
"About leading the new base in the city, are you okay with that?" Rick asked.
"Yes, that’s fine with me..."
As they killed several zombies and continued heading towards the hospital, which was in the center of SC12. Rick encountered a real problem for the first time...
After almost 1 month since the apocalypse began, he thought that the hospital would already have its zombie numbers reduced, since they were attracted by almost every kind of noise, but that’s not what they found...
"So what do we do?" Joe asked, looking from afar at the horde of at least 4000 zombies still around the hospital.
"Change of plans... Let’s go to the police station first, and then to the university. We need to equip ourselves better if we’re going to clear a horde of this size. I’ll also check with the base to see if they’ve finished our level 3 equipment..."
"Are you talking about the clothes made from that wolf’s hide?"
"Yes, I hope it works... Its teeth, bones, and fangs are also being carved into arrowheads and spears. I believe they’ll have a better effect than if we forged some kind of primitive metal... After all, we have to adapt to the apocalypse and use what it provides us..."
"Wolf? What are you guys talking about?" The Captain asked, trying to follow Joe and Rick’s dialogue.
"It’s a long story, Rick went out alone one day and came back with the corpse of a giant wolf the size of a truck..."
As Joe told the whole story of the cannibalistic wolf, its cub, and now its corpse that had been in the hands of the craftsmen at Pineview Base for days. We finally arrived at the police station. This time, we were lucky. Around the police station, there were many zombie corpses scattered, piled up, and some even burned in black piles full of ashes...
Rick, with his heightened senses, was the first to realize that there was a group of survivors in the police station, and at that moment, several guns were already pointed at the three of them. Soon, Joe and the Captain noticed them too.
"Raise your hands, I don’t want them to shoot us..." Rick said as he was the first to do so.
"Stop right there, who are you and what do you want here?" One of the police officers, dressed in a black special operations outfit, stood out as he interrogated them.
"My name is Rick, the one on my left is Captain Gustave from the fire department, and on my right is Joe. We are city firefighters, we thought the station was empty, and we came to get some protective gear and weapons... But since you guys took the place first, we can trade some supplies you need in exchange for the weapons and gear..."
Still watching Rick’s group carefully, the man dressed in black removed his helmet and approached the group while being followed by more men. His gaze swept over everyone until it stopped on Rick and became serious.
"A firefighter, huh? Aren’t you the thieving bastard who stole our quantum antenna?"
With just one sentence, even more police officers came out of the building and more guns were pointed at the group, while the Captain and Joe gulped, they looked at Rick with questioning and accusing eyes...