"Colonel!" a soldier suddenly ran towards Colonel Russell."What is it, Sergeant?" Colonel Russell who was reading through the reports of the base for the week turned around and said.
"You need to come and hear this, Colonel?" the Sergeant said while looking at him.
"Oh? Lead the way then" Russell said as he started feeling intrigued. After all, his men wouldn"t want to call out to him if it isn"t something important.
Then the soldier then lead him through two corridors before they arrived in a room called "Military Communications".
In this place, people would notice that the most important equipments are running through solar batteries with only a few lights switched on with torches and lamps providing most of the illumination around the base. The place was literally giving off the vibe of an ancient buildings back when light bulbs wasn"t invented yet.
Then the two of them entered the room and the first thing that the Colonel heard was a voice of a woman blaring from a nearby radio.
[This is Colonel Wood reaching out to you today from Dawn Survivor Base! We have food, shelter, medicine and most of all security! Dawn Survivor Base is located in Manchester City and if you"re near here then you just need to follow the signs that our soldiers set at different locations! You won"t need to worry about your safety anymore once you"re inside our base because our soldiers and our towering walls would keep you from harm"s way!]
After that, the same message came on the radio every three minutes and in between those minutes would only be white noises.
"Sir! What do you think about this message, sir? Should we send someone to check the place out? I don"t think I know someone in the army with that name, sir" a man with an insignia of a Captain said while looking at Colonel Russell.
Colonel just smiled and said, "Well, I do. She and her husband was a good friend of our family but her rank back then before she left the army was only a Major and not a Colonel"
"Does that mean she went rouge, sir?" the soldiers exclaimed in surprise as they weren"t expecting that!
"Rogue? Even if she did went rogue, the chain of command is already broken. We can"t even make any contact with the royal army for the past couple of months so I"m not surprised if there are more soldiers erecting their own bases and becoming the Warlord of the surrounding lands" Colonel Russell stopped talking and observed the soldiers who are of the highest rank inside the base in front of him and he noticed that a couple of them had eyes full of desire of probably becoming its own ruler of a land like a n.o.ble after hearing what he said while some of them just have bewilderment plastered on their faces as they didn"t expect a revelation like that.
This group of soldiers are just below him in terms of ranks as two of them are Majors and the rest are just Captains and this is what worried the Colonel the most as he didn"t know how long he could keep this ambitious people from rebelling as he didn"t really want a bloodbath to happen on his base especially at a time like this.
"Good thing I already found out about this soon before them or else this would be trouble. I wonder how Reed and his men are doing? Had they arrived safely at Manchester yet?" Colonel Russell thought worriedly as he left the room after leaving them some instructions for later.
*****
Dawn, the next day.
"Come on, get up guys" Rick carefully woke up his companions.
A few minutes later, this group of seven experienced soldiers are finally up and ready and had just finished their short and an unappetizing breakfast.
Reed and his men immediately and carefully left the house that they had stayed up for the night and on the road, they stealthily avoided where there are more zombies and chose the routes where there are only a few of them wandering around the road.
This seven soldiers luckily left the village through the nearby forest as they moved through pa.s.sed the trees, trying not to veer too much from the main road just a few couple of meters away from them.
This soldiers are truly experienced that they are even using the cover of the forest just so that the zombies would have a hard time spotting them but they also knew at the same time that what they are doing are also dangerous because if the roads and other open areas are where zombies are mostly located at then the forest would be the territories of the mutated beasts.
They travelled for over an hour without talking much as they just focused completing their mission to come here as they only rested for a few minutes every ten minutes and if Leo saw their situation right now, he would probably be amazed at how lucky they are that they haven"t even meet even a single more dangerous mutated monsters other than rabbits, rats, foxes and the like.
While they were running through the forest, Vin suddenly stopped in his tracks and his companions also following behind him also stopped and Vin called out, "Captain! Look!"
Captain Reed, who was leading on the front and the others who were in front of Vin also stopped and looked towards the direction where Vin pointed out and they were shocked to see a huge wall made of stones and logs just a couple hundred meters away from them!
"What is that!?" Captain Reed asked with a startled voice but no one answered him because the others are also looking at the scene in front of them in shock.
"Take cover, someone"s coming" Captain Reed as he noticed a group of armed men heading towards their direction so they immediately took cover behind the trees as they readied their weapons in case a fight break out.
*Kachik* *Kachik* *Kachik*
Then those group of armed men also stopped fifty meters away from Reed"s group as they also looked for cover and pointed their weapons towards the location where Reed and his men are hiding.
Suddenly, someone yelled.
"We know you guys are over there! Come out and put your hands and weapons up in the air or we"ll open fire! You have ten seconds!"
At the other side.
"What do we do, sir?" Ned looked at Captain Reed with his right shoulder leaning on the tree.
Captain Reed didn"t immediately reply but just looked at his men and then the group of opposite and then the place where they came from and then he sighed helplessly to himself.
He looked at his men and showed them a helpless smile and said, "We should just reveal ourselves. We can"t fight them especially with their base just behind them, that would just be suicide if we do that. What do you guys think?"
He asked their consent on the matter and didn"t immediately issued a surrender. After all, this is lives their talking about especially with how far they had gone already to get here in the face of many dangers along the road.
In the end, they all came to an agreement to surrender and at the same time they also wanted to check the place out because this place wasn"t mentioned before or it had not even existed at all before the "Fall".
"Seven!"
"Alright! We"re coming out! Don"t shoot! We are American Soldiers!" Captain Reed yelled as he was the first to step out with his hands and rifle above his head, closely followed by his men.
The soldiers at the other side slowly stood up and pointed their weapons at them.
"Don"t move" a soldier who seems to be the leader of the group said as they circled around them.
Then some of them confiscated their weapons as the others kept a close watch at Captain Reed and his men.
"Move!"
Then the soldiers led them towards the Stronghold.
And once they got near, they saw statues of warriors around the wall with soldiers manning and patrolling around the place and the most eye catching of all are their modern weapons and those hooded people with arrows and bows on their backs!
"Wow~ the wall looks like it came out of a castle wall" Rick said with an astonished voice as he marvelled at the sight before him like his other companions.