Amara Stone did not believe in paradise. Paradise was a pre-collapse concept, a weakness sung about by dead poets. She believed in terrain. In defensible positions. In resource assessment.
And as she stood in the middle of Leo's farm, her mind, trained for tactical survival, began to map the terrain.
Defenses: The split-rail fence was psychological, not physical. The true barrier was the farmer's aura. It created a circular safe zone approximately 200 meters in radius from the central cottage. Zombies outside the fence showed reduced aggression, turning away. Mutated creatures like the Ravager could be verbally repelled. Conclusion: The farmer is the keystone. Eliminate him, the zone falls.
Resources: Fresh water from a hand-pump well. Multiple plots of fertile soil yielding vegetables, grains, and fruits at an impossible, pre-fall growth rate. A functioning solar array on the barn roof. A chicken coop with living birds. A larder she could smell from here—smoke-cured meat, pickling, fermentation. Conclusion: This is not a survival holdout. This is a thriving agricultural node. It could feed a hundred people. Indefinitely.
Personnel: One non-compliant civilian male (subject: Leo). Four combat-ineffective Bunker Defense Force personnel (including herself, though she'd never admit it). An unknown number of reanimated corpses under the civilian's control, currently engaged in manual labor. Conclusion: Civilian holds all power. Must be secured, coerced, or co-opted.
"Lieutenant?" The whisper came from Kieran, the young man who had wept. He was staring at Big Tom, who was patiently holding a stack of new fence posts like a monstrous butler. "What… what do we do?"
Amara didn't look at him. Her eyes tracked Leo, who was now kneeling by a zucchini plant, talking to it softly. "We follow his rules. For now."
"But the zombies—"
"Are currently a non-threat. The threat is the man who makes them a non-threat." She finally turned, her gaze sweeping over her shattered team. Vasquez, the bleeding one, was propped against the barn wall, his bandages already replaced with clean cloth Leo had tossed them without a word. Miller and Choi, the two rear-guard shooters, looked like children who'd seen a ghost. Their weapons were lowered, but their eyes were huge.
"Listen up," Amara said, her command voice slicing through their stupor. "This is a Priority-Alpha resource site. Our mission parameters have just changed. We are not just surviving. We are establishing a beachhead. We will assist the civilian. We will learn the extent of his capabilities. We will integrate. Is that clear?"
Miller, a grizzled man in his forties, found his voice. "Lieutenant, with respect… he talks to vegetables. The zombies wear overalls. This is insane."
"Insane is a luxury," Amara said coldly. "What this is, is an advantage. Our first real one in three years. Now, move. He said fence duty. So we fix the fence."
She led them to the eastern breach, a section where a fallen tree had crushed the rails. Big Tom stood there, holding the posts. As they approached, he simply grunted and pointed a thick, gray finger at the damaged section, then at the posts, then at a pile of tools: a hammer, a saw, a coil of wire.
His meaning was clear.
Working alongside a zombie was a psychological torture no Bunker training had ever covered. Every instinct screamed to shoot, to run, to burn. Big Tom's sheer presence was a suffocating blanket of wrongness. He smelled of dry earth and old meat. His silent, watchful presence was worse than any snarl.
Kieran couldn't do it. He stood frozen, trembling, as Miller and Choi began, with agonizing slowness, to clear the broken wood. Amara picked up the saw. She worked with mechanical efficiency, but her mind was elsewhere, listening.
Leo was singing.
A soft, off-key tune as he moved between rows, checking leaves, pinching off suckers from the tomato plants. A zombie in a tattered postal worker uniform—Alice—followed him with a basket, accepting the discarded greens.
"...and the green, green grass grows all around, all around…" Leo's voice was peaceful, utterly detached from the hellscape beyond his border.
Amara sawed through a thick branch. The aura is constant. It induces passivity. Can it be overloaded? By numbers? By emotional intensity? She glanced at the treeline. The dead milled there, but none approached the repaired sections. It was as if an invisible line was drawn in the soil.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a low, pained groan. It wasn't from Vasquez. It was from Big Tom.
The giant zombie was staring at his own hand, where a rusted nail from the old fence had gouged a deep, black-lined furrow across his palm. No blood flowed. Only a slow, oozing trickle of viscous, tar-like fluid.
Leo stopped singing. He looked over. "Tom? You okay, big fellow?"
Big Tom grunted, holding up his injured hand, a confused, almost sorrowful expression on his ravaged face.
"Ah, a splinter. Nasty." Leo walked over, completely unconcerned. He pulled a clean rag from his pocket and a small bottle of clear liquid from his overalls. "Hold still now. This'll sting the rot off you."
He poured the liquid—it smelled like pure alcohol and something herbal—onto the rag and took the zombie's massive, decaying hand in his own. With a tenderness that made Amara's stomach clench, he began to clean the wound.
The survivors stopped working. They watched, utterly horrified, as the farmer tended to the monster.
"See? All better," Leo said, patting the now-clean gash. "Try to be more careful. We need those hands for lifting." He looked at the stunned humans. "You lot got first aid? For your friend?"
Amara nodded mutely.
"Good. The well's got clean water. Use it. Don't waste." He turned to go, then paused. "Dinner's at sundown. You work, you eat. You know the rules."
As he walked away, Amara looked down at the saw in her hand. She looked at Big Tom, who was now carefully examining his cleaned wound, then gently picking up a fence post to hold it steady for Miller.
A cold, clear understanding crystallized in her mind.
This wasn't just power. This was culture. Leo had built a system here, a perverse, peaceful ecosystem where the apocalypse was just another pest to be managed. He wasn't just suppressing zombies; he was socializing them. Giving them names. Roles.
He was farming the undead.
And if he could do that to them… what could he do to desperate, hungry, living humans?
The thought was not entirely unpleasant. A controllable population. A secure food source. A sovereign territory, with her as the executive officer to this oblivious king.
She bent back to her work, a new, grim purpose settling over her. The fence wasn't just keeping the dead out. It was penning them in. All of them.
In the cottage window, a soft, golden light flickered on as the pale sun began to sink. The smell of baking bread, real bread, drifted across the field.
Kieran started crying again, silently this time. Not from terror, but from a memory of a world so long lost it felt like a fairy tale. The smell broke him.
Amara inhaled deeply, committing the scent to memory. It was the smell of power.