“Bang!”
A muffled thud exploded in the quiet office.
Lynn’s fist slammed onto the thick mahogany desk, his knuckles instantly turning white, leaving a clear indentation.
A mug with a cartoon elephant on it was knocked over, rolling onto the floor with a “clatter,” ceramic shards and water splashing everywhere.
“FUCK! FUCK! FUCK—!!!”
A suppressed roar, hoarse and furious, burst from Lynn’s throat.
His chest heaved violently, his eyes fixed on the faint blue screen that ordinary people couldn't see, the blood-red words “Eradicate” burning into him.
“Lynn?”
Minshan’s voice was tense, filled with surprise.
She was opposite Lynn and only saw his face turn pale, his body tremble slightly, and then suddenly erupt in terrifying fury.
She took half a step back, her hand on the tactical dagger at her waist, her sharp gaze sweeping the empty office.
“What’s going on? What did you see?”
The office door was suddenly slammed open, Davis’s massive figure blocking the doorway.
He held his heavy, oil-stained iron hammer, his facial muscles taut, his eyes like an enraged beast, instantly locking onto Lynn, whose state was clearly not right.
“Boss?!”
Davis’s voice was low, his gaze sweeping over the mess on the floor and Lynn’s heaving shoulders, finally landing on Minshan’s hand clutching her dagger, his thick brows furrowing, “Enemy attack?”
He lowered his body, the hammerhead dragging on the floor, making a harsh scraping sound.
The atmosphere in the office was heavy.
Lynn took a deep breath, slowly exhaling, suppressing the metallic taste in his throat and the urge to destroy.
He looked up, a vein throbbing in his temple, but the fury in his eyes had been replaced by a deep, cold calm.
He raised a hand and forcefully wiped his face.
“No enemy attack.” Lynn’s voice was hoarse, “At least...not the kind you understand.”
He painfully turned his neck to look at Davis and Minshan.
The ferocity in Davis’s eyes had not faded, tinged with worry; Minshan’s lips were tightly pressed, her eyes sharp, trying to find answers on his face.
He needed their trust and strength.
There was no other choice.
“I just… received a… ‘message’.” Lynn chose his words carefully, “A mission that must be completed. If I can’t… I will die…”
The word “die” carried a cold certainty.
Davis’s pupils constricted, his knuckles white on the hammer handle.
Minshan’s fingers curled slightly on her dagger.
“A mission?” Minshan pressed, her voice tense, “What mission? Who gave it to you?”
Her gaze swept the room again.
Lynn didn’t answer the second question, instead, he tiredly uttered the name and location: “Go to the hospital in Georgia… and bring that celebrity sheriff, Rick Grimes… back alive.”
“Rick Grimes?” Davis repeated gruffly, his brows furrowed, “That comatose sheriff? The hospital?”
He suddenly looked out the window, “Boss, are you crazy?! Go to the hospital now? That’s no different from jumping into a meat grinder?!”
“I’m not crazy!” Lynn roared, his eyes bloodshot and filled with the desperation of being driven to a dead end, “I don’t want to go either! But if I don’t… I’m dead!”
He couldn't explain “Eradicate,” so he could only emphasize the consequences with the gravest tone.
He looked at their frozen expressions, a heavy sense of guilt weighing him down.
He suddenly yanked open a drawer, roughly rummaging through it, grabbing out a city map, a few blurry hospital floor plans, and slapping them onto the desk.
“Look!”
Lynn’s fingers trembled slightly from the force, pointing at the Zoo’s location circled in red on the map, then tracing a winding red line that avoided main roads, leading to the hospital marked with a red circle.
“This is the only way. Just cross the edge of the old industrial district, take alleys and abandoned factories. It’s less than ten kilometers in a straight line, but if we go around… it’s at least fifteen kilometers, and we only have less than two days.”
His finger jabbed at the hospital’s red circle, his voice suppressed and urgent: “The hospital’s interior is just an approximation. Rick is on the fourth floor, west side of the inpatient department, in a private room next to the fire escape.
That’s old intel. What’s it like in there now?
God knows! Outside is even more of a damn graveyard.”
“Two days? Fifteen kilometers? Through the city?” Minshan’s voice rose, filled with disbelief, “Lynn! Do you know what it’s like out there?!
Forget fifteen kilometers, if we leave this wall by five hundred meters, we could be torn apart. And we need to charge into a hospital, find someone in that kind of place, and drag him out?”
She pointed out the window, “This is suicide! Pure suicide!”
For the first time, her face lost its composure, filled with anger and pain: “We just managed to establish ourselves here.
We have high walls, supplies, manpower, and safety.
You want to abandon all of this, for a comatose sheriff you don’t even know, and lead us out to die?
All for a damn ‘mission’?!”
Her voice trembled, clearly unable to accept the situation.
The office was silent, with only Lynn’s heavy breathing and the rustling sound of Davis’s hammer dragging on the floor.
The sounds of walkers hitting the window were exceptionally clear.
Davis remained silent, he looked at the red line on the map, at the deep fear and determination in Lynn’s eyes, and then at Minshan’s flushed face.
He suddenly raised his hand and heavily slapped his own chest, making a dull thud.
“Boss,” Davis began, his voice deep and firm, “You saved my life from those ‘wild dog’ bastards.”
He was referring to Lynn saving him when he was under attack at the beginning of the apocalypse. “Wherever you say we go, we go. Whatever you say we kill, we kill.”
His eyes fiercely swept over the hospital’s location, “Hospital? walkers? Ha! My hammer hasn’t smashed one of those things’ heads yet! Good time to try!”
He bent down, picked up a flattened empty can from the floor, and with a squeeze of his rough fingers, the hard metal deformed with a creak, then he tossed it aside.
Minshan suddenly turned to stare at Davis, as if he were insane.
Her lips moved, finally settling into a suppressed growl: “Fucking hell!”
She closed her eyes, her chest heaving. When she opened them again, the anger still burned, but deep within, there was a hint of cold resignation and resolve.
“Alright… alright!” Minshan gritted her teeth, each word forced out, “You’re the boss, you call the shots.
Davis, this idiot, wants to go die, and I can’t stop him, but I’m telling you, Lynn,”
She called him by his first name, her gaze cold and piercing, “If this mission of yours gets all three of us killed out there, or brings a horde of walkers back to destroy this place… I’ll haunt you even as a ghost.”
She no longer looked at Lynn, abruptly turning and striding towards the medical supplies piled in the corner, roughly pulling open a large first-aid kit, and quickly stuffing in tourniquets, powerful antibiotics, morphine, and a Suture kit.
The lines of her profile were taut.
Lynn watched their reactions, his heart clutched by an icy hand, but he had no time to dwell; the blood-red word “Eradicate” hung over his head.
“Davis, prepare weapons, shotguns first, carry as many bullets as you can, and find two machetes.”
Lynn’s voice was cold and hard, his words rapid, “Minshan, the first-aid kit isn’t enough. Take all the antibiotics, cardiac stimulants, and glucose.
Especially morphine, take plenty. If that guy wakes up and starts moving around halfway, give him a shot.”
He grabbed the map, pointing at an intersection near the industrial district: “In one hour, take the modified jeep, rush out the west side door, follow this route?
Remember, there is only one goal: to rescue Sheriff Rick Grimes, and bring him back alive. Everything else, abandon.”
Davis nodded, grabbed his iron hammer, and turned to leave.
Minshan, with her back to them, paused in her stuffing motion, then stuffed things in even more forcefully.
The two still didn’t understand the reason, but out of trust, they didn’t say anything more.
After all, the apocalypse Lynn had “predicted” had indeed arrived, which was why they trusted him so much.
Lynn took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down.
He walked to the window, his gaze sweeping over the barbed wire fence and high wall, towards the grey haze over the distant city.
The wind carried clearer roars and screams of the walker horde.
Beyond this wall was hell.
One hour later.
On the west side of the Zoo, a hidden, heavy iron door was pushed open a crack.
Outside the door was a secluded path, overgrown with weeds on both sides, with no walkers visible for the moment, but the sweet, putrid smell of decay was thick and pungent.
A dark green military jeep, its body welded with steel plates and windows covered with wire mesh, rumbled its engine.
Davis sat in the driver’s seat, his arms firmly gripping the steering wheel, the passenger seat piled high with shotgun shell boxes and machetes.
In the back seat, Lynn tightly gripped a modified silenced pistol, his palms sweating.
Minshan clutched a bulging first-aid kit, curled up beside him, her face pale, lips tightly pressed, her eyes fixed on the path ahead.
“Hold on tight.”
Davis’s voice came through the engine’s roar, low and filled with a sense of killing intent.
Lynn took one last look at the towering walls of the Zoo, the Fortress he had built, a symbol of safety.
Now, it stood behind him like a tombstone, the people still inside watching the three departing, their eyes filled with confusion and incomprehension.
He withdrew his gaze, his eyes sharp and cold, fixed on the depths of the grey, haze-shrouded city ahead.
“Go.” Lynn squeezed out a single word through gritted teeth.
Vroom—!
The jeep’s engine roared suddenly, tires scraping the ground, kicking up dust and gravel, crashing through the iron door that separated life and death, and speeding onto the overgrown path, plunging into the gloomy, death-filled air ahead.
Almost at the moment the jeep burst out, behind an abandoned bus stop less than fifty meters from the path, several ragged, stiff figures were startled by the engine sound, slowly and grotesquely turning around.
Their hollow eye sockets in their rotting faces “looked” towards the speeding jeep.
Hoarse, hunger-filled howls ripped through the silence, stirring a chilling response from the ruins and shadows further away.