A cluster of people climbed down from the heavily guarded armored trucks parked in the convoy's center.Every one of them wore the same carefully blank expression the kind that said don't talk to me without a single word.Lieutenant Lewis, the same officer who'd spoken with Ryan the day before, was personally escorting them toward the Morrison estate.Ryan wasn't thrilled, watching that. The world had ended. Class hierarchy should've ended with it.As the group disappeared inside, a thought struck him he remembered spotting a listing for a miniature surveillance device back in the Exchange catalog.He pulled up the app.Remote Micro-Monitor Transmits audio and video in real time. Runs 10 hours per charge, recharges automatically while stored. 4 points.Ryan gritted his teeth and bought it.His balance dropped to 79. A small pang of regret hit him.That faded the second the thing materialized in his palm. The device was smaller than a grain of rice practically invisible once activated.

Once the hot porridge settled into their stomachs, the six of them started opening up a little.The mother and daughter were from a neighboring city regular people, nothing extraordinary. The young couple, meanwhile, had apparently been on their honeymoon when everything fell apart; most of the meal, they stayed wrapped up in their own bubble, quietly reassuring each other.Jake had joined the army's convoy earliest out of everyone at the table, and he was easily the most talkative of the group. Right now, he had the floor, and everyone else was content to listen.Ryan listened carefully Jake's rambling was packed with useful intel. Apparently the unit had set out from Boston, sweeping up survivors along the way. Early on, they'd resupplied weapons and ammo at locations Jake clearly still found unbelievable.Once cell service went dark entirely, resupply runs had slowed to a crawl. These days, encountering the infected wasn't strategy it was just bad luck, bumping into them at random.

Ryan was fully out of patience with Jake at this point."Jake. Have you actually thought this through?""Can you actually take care of her?""If it comes down to a life-or-death moment, are you willing to throw yourself in front of danger for her, the way her mother just did?""If the answer's yes genuinely, I'll respect that. That's a rare thing.""But if it's not, then she's not just losing her mom today. She's setting herself up to get abandoned twice."Jake's face fell, clearly rattled."I wasn't thinking that far ahead, man. I just figured it was the right call in the moment.""If you think it's the right thing to do, then you do it. Why'd you bring her to me? This some kind of guilt trip?""That's not what this is.""Ryan, I watched you get out of that mess with the infected earlier and thought man, this guy's the real deal.""Didn't expect you to have zero sense of responsibility, though.""I've never claimed to be some saint, Jake, and I'm sure as hell not going to let you gui

They talked a while longer before finally calling it a night. Ryan wasn't tired, but Jake was clearly running on fumes.Best strategy for holding out against hunger, Ryan had decided, was borrowing a page from tortoises everywhere: stay still, conserve everything.While Jake dozed off, Ryan pulled up the Exchange's search function to see what else might be worth hunting down.With someone else in the room, he found himself narrating his thoughts out loud without quite meaning to."Alright. What am I even looking for.""If I want to find a hidden shelter, I need something that can actually scan for one.""Let's start with 'scan' as the keyword.""...Huh. Multi-function full-spectrum scanning module? Thirty points?!""Okay, let's see what it actually does before I panic about the price.""Multi-Function Full-Spectrum Scanning Module: Adds scanning capability to the Exchange interface.""Includes infrared scanning, ultra-wideband radar, and resonant frequency analysis."Ryan read through

Camp perimeter.The infected horde surged forward like a relentless tide, crashing against humanity's last line of defense over and over.The soldiers fought without a single moment's rest, no breathing room in sight.They'd already thrown heavier ordnance into the fight, hoping to turn the tide. It bought them a temporary reprieve a drop in an ocean against an enemy that seemed to have no end.The brief calm didn't last. The horde surged back, filling every gap in the line almost as fast as it opened, an endless supply that never seemed to thin.The red-muscled ones moved through the crowd like knives, and everywhere they appeared, chaos and casualties followed.The soldiers fought them as hard as they could manage, but against something that fast, losses were unavoidable.At the breaking point, Lieutenant Lewis fired a flare straight into the sky.The blinding streak cut through the smoke like a lifeline thrown into the dark.Seconds later, four fuel tankers barreled into the horde,