Dawn had only just begun to break, and the dew in the woods was so heavy it felt like you could wring water out of the air.
Zhou wiped his face. The back of his hand came away covered in tiny droplets, leaving his skin prickling.
He crouched behind a dense cluster of sumac and raised a clenched fist.
The three people behind him stopped instantly.
Murphy nearly snapped a dry branch underfoot and froze with one foot suspended in midair, silently mouthing, "Shit."
Leon remained as still as a rock, even softening his breathing.
Leslie crouched slightly behind and to his side, one hand already resting on the grip of the MP5 at his waist.
"Too quiet," Zhou murmured.
He listened carefully. Apart from a few early-rising crows squabbling in the distance, there wasn't a damn sound.
He raised two fingers and pointed toward a jumble of rocks on slightly higher ground to their left.
Most of it was covered in vines, making it a natural observation point.
The four quickly spread out.
Zhou took the lead, Murphy followed, and Leon and Leslie brought up the rear. Using earthen banks and fallen, rotting logs for cover, they slowly worked their way forward.
Once they reached the rocks, Murphy slipped off his bulging backpack and pulled out a pair of binoculars.
He pressed them to his eyes and slowly adjusted the focus with his left hand.
Zhou and Leon lay prone on either side of him, while Leslie stayed farther back.
"Eleven o'clock... about four hundred meters," Murphy whispered as he found the target. "Right side of the old railroad embankment. Got it."
Zhou took the binoculars.
At first, all he saw was a blur of green.
Then the image sharpened.
That sign was clean as hell.
The sky-blue paint looked almost glaringly fresh. The huge white letters spelling "Terminus" were bold to the point of arrogance, with a thick arrow beneath them pointing straight north.
"Damn."
Zhou handed the binoculars back to Murphy.
"That father and son weren't lying."
Leon leaned in for a look and gave a low whistle.
"'Safety, Community, Future'... They sure make it sound convincing. What kind of idiot community puts up a giant sign like this in the middle of nowhere? Worried the raiders might have trouble finding them?"
"It really is too quiet," Leslie said, scanning the block around the billboard. "No footprints. No tire tracks. No noise."
The four fell silent.
Something about this felt wrong.
Very wrong.
After the apocalypse, anything that looked too good usually had a bloody hook buried underneath.
"Stick to the plan," Zhou said quietly. "Murphy, keep watching. Memorize the terrain, the routes, every possible hiding place. Leon, watch the direction we came from.
"Leslie, widen your watch perimeter to... fuck it, five hundred meters. I'll watch the road north.
"We stay here for two hours, whether anyone shows up or not."
"Copy."
Time crawled.
The sun climbed higher, and the woods gradually turned hot and muggy.
Nothing happened.
The billboard simply stood there.
Just as Zhou's neck began to stiffen and he was about to shift position, Leslie suddenly spoke.
"Guys, movement. Ten o'clock, deeper in the woods. Doesn't look like shambling walkers. Those are people."
Zhou snatched the binoculars from Murphy and swung them toward the direction Leslie indicated.
Through gaps in the dense foliage, he could make out several moving figures.
They were a little over two hundred meters away, stumbling unevenly through the woods.
They weren't moving quickly.
They kept stopping and starting, alert and cautious.
"Seven... I can see seven," Zhou said without lowering the binoculars. "All armed. Long guns... look like hunting rifles. Packs are stuffed full. Clothes look like they dug them out of a garbage heap."
"Wow. Now this is interesting." Murphy licked his cracked lips. "Terminus people out for a stroll, or just some random group passing through?"
"Doesn't look like a patrol," Leon said calmly. "Formation's too loose. More like they're lost or scavenging."
The group drew closer.
Soon, Zhou's team could faintly hear their voices and the crack of dry branches under their boots.
Zhou slowly lowered the binoculars and gave a hand signal.
All four immediately withdrew deeper behind the rocks and vines, barely breathing.
The seven people emerged from the woods about fifty meters ahead and to the side, stepping into the cleared block around the billboard.
Now Zhou could see them clearly.
The leader was built like a bull.
He wore a jacket so filthy its original color was impossible to tell, his beard was unkempt, and he carried a hunting rifle in one hand.
The others looked much the same.
Greasy hair, dirty faces, badly worn work pants or jeans.
Their weapons were a mismatched collection of hunting rifles, civilian semi-automatic rifles, and even a revolver tucked into one man's waistband.
Every one of them had the rough, weathered look of people who had spent a long time struggling in the wilderness.
The leader walked up to the billboard and stared upward, his mouth hanging open.
He stepped closer, letting the muzzle of his rifle hang naturally toward the ground.
When he spoke, his accent was thick with the mountains of eastern Georgia.
"Holy jumping Jesus! Lou, get over here and look at this shit. There really is a damn sign."
Lou shuffled over.
He was a little shorter than the leader and wore a khaki vest so filthy it had turned gray.
Squinting, he struggled through the words.
"S-Safety... Community... Future..."
He stumbled over the slogan.
When he finished, he turned toward the leader in disbelief.
"Joe, this... this looks too damn good. So good it gives me the creeps. You don't think some lunatic put it here just to screw with people, do you?"
"A lunatic wouldn't bother keeping the paint this fresh or clearing all the weeds around it."
The speaker was Len, who wore an oversized black jacket and carried a civilian AR-15 on his back.
Excitedly, he slapped the billboard's metal support.
Clang. Clang.
"Hear that? Solid as hell. Joe, this has to be a real place. People living there, food, the whole deal."
"The arrow points north," Tony said.
A bandana was wrapped around his head as he pointed at the white arrow.
"North... if we keep going north, aren't we getting close to Kentucky? Or are we still wandering around Georgia?"
His sense of geography was clearly shaky.
After so long surviving in the wilderness, state lines and administrative boundaries had lost most of their meaning.
Joe didn't answer immediately.
His gaze moved across the rest of the group.
Every face showed the same two things.
Hunger and exhaustion.
"How much food do we have left?" Joe asked.
Billy sighed and pulled off his hiking pack.
He opened it and checked inside.
"Couple energy bars, half a bag of cornmeal, some salted pork skin... If we stretch it, two or three days. Water's fine. We filled up at a creek earlier."
"Ammo?"
"About twenty rifle rounds left. Less than thirty for the AR. More shotgun shells, maybe forty or fifty. Almost nothing left for the handguns."
"Shit."
Joe cursed under his breath.
Their supplies were nearly gone, and morale was just as low.
They had been drifting from place to place for a long time.
In theory, they should have been able to survive.
They were all able-bodied adults, mostly young or middle-aged, and from time to time they robbed smaller survivor groups.
That was enough to keep people alive in a world full of walkers.
Unfortunately, they had previously run into a heavily armed group of crazed raiders in Virginia.
Several of their brothers had been killed, and the rest had barely escaped.
Just thinking about those lunatics sent a chill down Joe's spine.
They couldn't keep wandering aimlessly forever.
They needed somewhere to rest, replenish their supplies, and finally catch their breath.
The sign looked suspicious as hell.
But right now, it was practically the only direction they had.
Then Dan spoke.
He was a heavyset man who had been standing near the back of the group the entire time, greasy hair plastered against his scalp.
He licked his lips and asked with visible excitement,
"If there's a community, then there are people there, right? Men, women, kids... all of them, right? I heard bigger places usually have more surviving kids."
When Dan said "kids," his tongue seemed to linger on the word.
His eyes flicked toward the billboard before quickly dropping.
For several seconds, the air went dead still.
Joe snapped his head around and stared at Dan with a look sharp enough to cut.
"Dan, shut the fuck up. Take those filthy thoughts in your head and shove them straight back up your ass. We didn't bring you along so you could entertain yourself."
His voice wasn't loud.
It didn't need to be.
The hostility in his eyes was enough.
The others curled their lips in disgust as well.
Dan's particular tastes were clearly no secret within the group, and just as clearly, no one else approved of them.
Dan shrank under Joe's glare and forced an awkward smile onto his face.
He raised both hands in surrender.
"Hey, Joe, relax. I was just saying. Just saying."
Joe ignored him and turned back toward the billboard.
His people's condition, their dwindling supplies, everything was forcing him toward a decision.
"That sign is here for a reason," Joe finally said. "We're going to check it out.
"Everybody stay sharp. Nothing comes free anymore."
The seven adjusted their packs.
The ruthless edge of desperate men quickly returned to their faces.
Lou raised his hunting rifle, took a deep breath, and stepped onto the road indicated by the billboard's arrow.
The others followed one after another, keeping a loose formation as they gradually disappeared into the woods.
...
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