It turned out that this place was indeed just a simple employee cafeteria, but most of those who ate here were foreigners, which was why they had been specifically hired for this location. There are many companies in this building, and the owner of the restaurant is also a very special guy.
The boss of this place hired people from abroad with work visas. Therefore, the food that had to be prepared here was varied, and thanks to that the cafeteria's storage usually accumulated a lot of food, and every week they basically restocked with more supplies.
When the apocalypse broke out, the people here didn't realize the danger approaching from outside. Everything continued normally until the afternoon, when only a few people were left here, and suddenly there were troops downstairs shooting at civilians in the street, and also at the lunatics in the hallway.
There were many of these "lunatics" who bit anyone they saw. The few people in the cafeteria were terrified and didn't know what to do. So, as their first decision, they quickly closed the door and stayed inside, relying on the supplies available here.
These few people were the lucky ones, since the food storage had just been replenished and they had a lot of supplies, but they still faced a serious problem. All the food in this place was fresh food, like potatoes, which had been stored here for a long time. But since it is a very manageable type of food, it can last a long time.
Saying that this Charon is truly talented is an understatement. He suggested processing the ingredients immediately after getting trapped here—after all, they didn't have much else to do—so they processed all the food in large quantities, using the vacuum-pack machines the cafeteria had, according to the portions every adult needed to eat.
After several days of work, all the food had been processed so that it would last much longer.
Then came a long, day-by-day wait, hoping all of this would end, and little by little they began to face a resource crisis—there was no water!
With fear and difficulty, they began to explore the floors within their reach. They were afraid of being discovered by walkers, so they didn't dare block the stairways. They always acted together whenever they left for something they needed, exploring the adjacent floors and consuming whatever water they could find in the building. After that, they were once again in a situation where no water was available.
Just when some people were desperate, Charon rose up again. He suddenly remembered a video he had seen before, which was about using soil to filter wastewater and reuse it. Soil that has been used for a period of time becomes extremely fertile, and can be saved to plant some crops in sunny places.
So they took some earth and sand from the first floor and made a huge wastewater filter. As for where the wastewater came from, none of these people mentioned it specifically, although Rick and the others were curious.
After hearing this group's experience, Jason couldn't help but say that these guys were really lucky.
Jason, who had been silent all this time, suddenly pointed at Charon, who had mistaken him earlier, and said:
"You just said you have nothing left for us. Did someone take it from you?"
Charon's face suddenly became extremely angry; he gritted his teeth and nodded.
"That's right. A group of people broke into the building some time ago and took all our food. Fortunately, I knew something like this could happen, so we hid food in secret, but everything ran out a few days ago."
"You haven't eaten these last few days?"
The six people nodded. Abraham and the others frowned, and Daryl couldn't help but ask quietly, "You'd rather starve yourselves to death than go out and look for supplies?"
Charon shook his head helplessly and then explained to everyone: "It's not that we don't look. We've been searching for the past four days, but it seems that group of people has cleared out all the supplies around here, and we haven't found anything. And we also didn't want to alert that gigantic monster in that building."
Rick and the others shot Jason an inquisitive look. Seeing the latter nod slightly, Rick then unloaded his backpack and handed out food to the six unfortunate ones.
Afterward, several people came in from outside, led by Bob, who was carrying a large backpack. Then he began checking the six people for any wounds.
Chafon and the others were very close to each other, and no one took anything extra. Charon cried as he ate and kept muttering something under his breath.
Jason's hearing was very sharp; he could hear what this guy was saying with only a little concentration. It turned out he was repeating a single sentence.
It's really disgusting. How could I eat something this disgusting?
"Don't you like the taste of shit?" Jason's sentence made everyone turn their heads toward him, and then he walked toward Charon. "You're eating my shit. Don't you like it?"
"Wha… No, it's not that, thank you."
Then the man kept stuffing food into his mouth. Jason then looked at Daryl and said, "He doesn't like our survival rations. This bastard would rather have a slice of pizza."
"We shouldn't let him eat…"
"That doesn't matter. Even we know that food prepared for travel lasts a long time, is nutritious, but doesn't taste particularly good."
During this time, some people even got up and went to the filter to get water, and asked Jason and the others if they wanted to drink. Seeing their disgusted expressions, the man laughed a couple of times and then continued eating.
After finally waiting for some people to eat and drink enough, Jason wasted no time and brought up the question again: "I want to ask you two questions. Who are the nearby raiders, and what do you know about the monster?"
Jason's mind was working quickly, and now he had found someone interesting, so there would inevitably be some action.
Under circumstances in which others didn't know, he had to learn as much as possible about any clue. After all, the danger wasn't just the walkers, but the survivors. But lately Jason was questioning whether humans were still a real danger.
Charon thought for a moment and then told them all the information they had. They didn't know the numbers or strength of the group; they only knew it was a team of ten people, and the leader was a guy named Tony.
As for the monster, it was always in that place and killed anything alive that entered that building.
Tony hadn't harmed them, but he took all their food supplies. But at this point, what he did was basically sentencing them to death in disguise.
That was why Charon was so angry.
He couldn't get any useful information from these people, but they had to leave immediately, because he had already seen a squad of survivors approaching down the street in the distance.
"Zz… We have moving targets."
"Let's go, quickly!"
…
Jason's group wasn't too large when they arrived, but after requesting reinforcements to take over the electric company before coming to Carolina, a few more people had joined them.
But still, even though there weren't many of them, they were all experts at what they did. Charon and the others had just eaten, but they had been starving for several days. As a result, some people couldn't move their legs the moment they ran down the stairs.
Marko felt his head spin, his legs gave out, and he collapsed directly onto the ground. The group who originally brought the stretchers bent down to check his condition. The man's face was covered in tiny beads of sweat, and his breathing was short. His pulse was taken, and they felt his heart beating abnormally fast.
"Normal symptoms—maybe dizziness—so we need to get back to the RV as soon as possible…" Bob said while putting handcuffs on Marko, who was unconscious.
Rosita approached and said, "We have the photos, and we managed to gather some extra samples which have already been secured. Are you okay?"
"Better than Marko… Quite an interesting group, keep an eye on them."
At the same time, a convoy not far away approached quickly. They were three large trucks, and you could see a machine gun on the back of the truck in the middle, and two people standing on the back of the other two trucks.
These guys clearly saw George and the others running toward the RV in the distance. One of the long-haired men showed a cruel smile, raised his weapon, and wanted to shoot at these guys several times.
Bang!
But suddenly, there was a clear gunshot from behind an abandoned car not far away, and the shot tore through the air.
This guy only felt that the gun in his hand had been crushed by something hard; a strong impact made his hands go numb.
Another truck beside him now had a single hole in its hood, which startled the driver, who suddenly slammed the brakes. The truck screeched, drawing a black line across the road before coming to a stop.
An arrogant voice came from the vehicle.
"What bastard dares to shoot at me?!"