They followed the dirt road for about forty minutes. The condition of the road varied constantly, forcing them to rely on broken branches and faint footprints to keep track of the hunters.
Joe and the others were clearly still shaken from what had happened earlier. They moved slowly, but cautiously.
Zhou's team became even more careful, widening the gap to nearly two hundred meters. They relied mostly on binoculars and their sharp eye for tracks to keep tabs on the group ahead.
As they continued north, the forest gradually thinned.
More signs of human activity began appearing along the way. Rusted road signs, collapsed fences, mailboxes swallowed by vines.
The terrain started rising gently.
And there seemed to be something else in the air...
The faint smell of grilled meat.
All four men stopped at once and took cover behind dense roadside brush, exchanging glances.
Murphy quickly raised his binoculars and scanned in the direction of the smell.
He stared for so long that Leon eventually shifted his shoulders impatiently.
"What do you see?" Zhou asked quietly.
Murphy slowly lowered the binoculars, confusion showing on his face.
"A small freight train station. Barbed wire, several buildings, a water tower."
"Anyone there?" Leslie asked.
"Yeah, but not many. I can only see one person. A woman near the gate." Murphy sounded uncertain. "She's... grilling meat?"
"What?!" Leslie almost thought he had misheard.
"She's turning skewers with a pair of tongs." Murphy raised the binoculars again to make sure. "She's wearing an apron. Looks completely normal, actually. Almost relaxed."
The whole thing was bizarre.
In the apocalypse, in an isolated and dangerous place beside some unknown community, a perfectly ordinary-looking woman was casually grilling meat?
"What about the hunters?" Zhou asked.
"Can't see them yet. Maybe they haven't arrived, or maybe they're already inside." Murphy shifted the binoculars. "There are tin cans hanging from the barbed wire. Probably makeshift alarms. The gate's open, but I don't see any guards. Just the woman."
"Trap?" Leslie said coldly.
Zhou nodded.
It looked exactly like one.
For Joe and the others, hungry, exhausted, and fresh from a fight for their lives, an open gate and the smell of roasting meat might as well have been an invitation from heaven.
"We wait," Zhou said.
They remained hidden, watching Terminus closely.
About ten minutes later, something changed.
Joe and the other five hunters appeared through the binoculars, creeping along a side path near the rail yard with their bodies hunched low.
They had clearly spotted the woman grilling meat too.
The six stopped behind several abandoned railcars about fifty or sixty meters from the gate and seemed to begin arguing intensely.
Through the binoculars, Murphy could see Joe gesturing, Lou shaking his head, while Tony and Len stared hungrily toward the grill.
Billy and Harley nervously watched their surroundings.
The argument went on for several minutes.
In the end, hope won out over suspicion.
Joe adjusted his clothes, slung his hunting rifle across his back, and gestured for the others to do the same.
Then he took a deep breath, stepped out from behind the railcars, raised both hands, and called toward the gate in the friendliest voice he could manage.
"Hey! Over there! We came from the south! We saw your sign! We don't mean any trouble, we just need some help!"
The woman at the grill seemed startled.
The tongs in her hand nearly slipped.
She turned toward Joe and the others, looking surprised for a moment before quickly breaking into a warm smile.
"Oh my God! New friends!" she called excitedly. "Welcome! Come on in! The meat's almost ready!"
Joe and the others visibly relaxed.
The six exchanged glances, then stopped hesitating and began walking toward her.
The woman came out to meet them and spoke warmly with them by the gate.
Zhou's group was too far away to hear exactly what she was saying, but they could see her smiling constantly, gesturing toward the brazier where the meat was cooking, then toward the buildings inside the fence.
Joe and the others listened carefully and nodded from time to time.
Their guarded expressions gradually softened.
After they saw the woman eat some of the grilled meat herself, none of them could resist sampling the sizzling, grease-dripping skewers.
The brief reception looked almost impossibly friendly.
The woman appeared to ask them several questions.
Joe and the others responded cheerfully.
After listening, her smile grew even wider, and she gestured for them to come inside.
Joe hesitated for a moment.
He looked around once more, then nodded and walked through the gate first.
The others followed one by one.
The woman went in after them.
Then the gate slowly closed from the inside.
"They went in," Murphy said flatly as he lowered the binoculars.
"Oh, that went way too smoothly," Leon murmured. "Smooth enough to make my skin crawl."
Zhou said nothing.
He stared at the closed gate and the silent train station.
Seconds became minutes.
At first, they could faintly hear indistinct sounds from inside one of the buildings.
Then those sounds gradually faded.
A little over ten minutes later, suddenly...
"Aaaah!"
A short, sharp scream exploded from inside the building.
A man's voice.
They couldn't tell whose.
Several muffled thuds followed, like heavy objects striking something.
Then...
Silence again.
Zhou and the others held their breath.
They had already expected the worst, but hearing that scream for themselves still sent a chill through them.
Every door and window on the train station buildings remained shut.
No one appeared.
It was almost as if the scream had never happened.
They kept waiting.
Another twenty minutes passed.
Just as they were beginning to wonder whether they should risk moving closer for a better look, a small side door creaked open.
Two men stepped outside.
They wore stained work pants beneath thick rubber aprons that hung all the way to their knees.
The kind of aprons worn by butchers or slaughterhouse workers.
Even worse, the fronts and cuffs of both aprons were covered in large patches of dark red, nearly black blood.
The two men walked casually, chatting and laughing as though nothing unusual had happened.
The shorter, stockier one carried a water bottle.
He tipped his head back, took a drink, then handed it to the taller man beside him.
The taller man drank as well and wiped his mouth.
They walked over to an outdoor sink not far beyond the fence, turned on the faucet, and began washing the blood from their hands and aprons.
Bloody water streamed down their arms and into the basin, turning the water red.
They scrubbed carefully, but the darker stains had clearly accumulated over a long time and could not be fully washed away.
The shorter man said something with a grin.
The taller one burst out laughing and slapped him on the shoulder.
No one needed to say the answer aloud anymore.
The billboard.
"Safety, Community, Future."
The friendly woman welcoming strangers with grilled meat.
And these two "butchers," laughing casually while washing blood from their aprons.
Terminus wasn't a community.
It was a slaughterhouse.
And Joe and the other five exhausted hunters were the "meat" that had just been delivered inside.
Zhou stared at the train station, which looked disturbingly peaceful beneath the sunlight.
He decided they would move a little closer, scout the place one last time, then withdraw immediately.
They needed to get everything they had seen back to the prison.
And to Calista.
As soon as possible.