In recent days, Jason's group had been exploring the area around Alexandria. Merle's injury didn't prevent him from training the recruits; his strong character made him well-suited to train the weak, and it didn't require much physical effort.
Jason, for his part, remained calm. According to reports, there was nothing unusual at the Atlanta bases. No sightings had been reported of the special walkers they had recently encountered. Candace and her group of researchers were also eager to discover what kind of mutation they had come across.
Working together with the new recruits, Jason began recruiting more survivors. These individuals were interrogated in a very different and special way to learn as much as possible about their days of survival.
He didn't have sophisticated equipment, but there were other special methods to uncover what these people were trying so hard to hide. That didn't mean they weren't being watched by Jason's group—every eye in the dark was his.
After the uninspiring speech he gave in Alexandria, some people expressed interest in learning, and the number who could be mobilized immediately rose to a hundred. It wasn't a large number, but it already meant a lot.
Not long after today's search operation began, Daryl brought good news. He had found signs of human activity, so Jason, along with Daryl, continued tracking the clues with a special group of people.
"Look, there are more tracks here!"
A group of people walked through the forest and arrived at a place that resembled a small town. Jason recognized it as a school, so the name of the place was immediately clear:
The Kingdom!
Ezekiel's stronghold.
This place had indeed been built by a former zookeeper after everything began.
But at that moment, Jason chose not to make direct contact with them. He needed to approach this place differently. As for the two other survivor groups—the one in the junkyard and the one near the ocean—they were harder to reach, and what Jason considered most important was recruiting them.
Jadis, from the junkyard, was a woman inextricably tied to CRM. Her impersonal demeanor was, in fact, somewhat pretentious and completely untrustworthy.
And the current leader of the seaside hotel wasn't trustworthy at all. In the original storyline, this group consisted of a few wounded women. Yes, all the members were women because all the men in their group had been exterminated by The Saviors. This organization was extremely xenophobic and strongly hostile toward outsiders. The exact reasons for this couldn't be verified—and frankly, Jason didn't really care.
Their extreme xenophobia was also what caused tensions between them and The Saviors. In the end, all the men were wiped out, and the remaining women were so terrified of The Saviors that they never dared to fight again.
Jason wasn't sure of The Saviors' current state, so he had no concrete way of knowing the status of the seaside community. Therefore, he decided to first reach out to The Kingdom and another nearby community; from there, he could gather information about the Salvation Army and its current state.
Now that they had located The Kingdom, it wasn't hard to guess the location of Hilltop. That place was roughly fixed near the area, but Hilltop's leader, Gregory, was a cunning old man—greedy and possibly selfish.
Getting good people from certain shelters was very difficult, so Jason needed to know exactly what those people wanted or needed in order to gain their cooperation.
As Jason thought about all this, he looked out over The Kingdom's grounds and saw many open fields where a group of people was working. There was a farm on one side of the open area, and even from his distance, the smell of animal manure was in the air.
Judging by the scale of activity, the number of people here seemed decent—likely comparable to the population of Alexandria. But when comparing the two communities, the difference was clear.
"This is fertilizer. Looks like this place is run by smart people…"
Daryl watched the productive crowd and, thinking about Alexandria's situation, couldn't help but complain.
Jason patted Daryl on the shoulder, stood up, and walked away. There was no need to observe any further, so the rest of the group left the area. On the way back, Jason reminded his people, "We need to keep exploring the surrounding areas. There should be others nearby."
Glenn, walking beside him, asked in a puzzled tone, "This place is so close to Alexandria. Why didn't they find it if they've been searching for survivors? Or did they know and just didn't tell us on purpose?"
Jason knew very well that the two factions had had no interaction, but he still replied, "The people of Alexandria probably don't know there are other survivors nearby. Otherwise, knowing Deanna's personality, she would've told us."
A heavily armed group walked toward a modified RV and two Humvees equipped with machine guns. After thinking it over, Jason said, "Let's head toward that mountain and see what's there. I want to check it out. We might find something if we're lucky."
"Got it!"
...
"No way. There are people here too."
At that moment, the modified RV and the two Humvees had stopped far enough from Hilltop's gate to remain unseen. Jason, who was driving, led the group to a good vantage point to observe what he wanted to confirm.
Looking out from the woods, they could only see tall wooden walls made of long, upright logs. Several people were patrolling the perimeter. Seeing this, Jason's group didn't dare get too close and could only observe secretly from a safe distance.
Suddenly, Daryl heard a sound coming from the compound.
"I can hear something, but I'm not sure what it is."
Jason didn't pay much attention to that and said, "Whatever it is, this place doesn't seem too bad. It looks clean and seems to be run by decent people. If we strike a deal, they could help us find the right supplies for Alexandria."
"This is the third settlement so close by. Could Deanna really not know about it?" Glenn complained. His distrust toward the people in Alexandria was growing deeper—he found them completely unreliable.
"Relax. This place looks well-organized and doesn't seem like an aggressive group. If there are more places like this, we can get more manpower to bring us the resources we need to improve Alexandria."
Daryl gave Jason a strange look. Suddenly, he had a bad feeling about that sentence: could it be that Jason wanted to enslave people to work for Alexandria?
Just as the three of them were about to keep watching, the settlement's gate suddenly opened, and two men on horseback, carrying bows and arrows, rode out. Behind them came a carriage pulled by two horses. A driver sat at the front, and large sacks—likely grain—were stacked in the back.
The two men, who seemed to be guards, looked around and, seeing no danger, headed down the mountain without much concern.
By then, the spot where the group of three had been watching was already empty.