Rick

June 23, Atlanta, King County.

Two weeks later, Leon returned to this small town.

But last time, he had gone to Atlanta alone. This time, he had brought his team back with him.

"Boss, where should we start looting?"

Merle carried a machete over his right shoulder, with a shield strapped to his left arm. The thick Black Bear Armor made his not particularly burly body look exceptionally strong.

Behind him, nine combat team members had formed three squads. They chatted while watching for movement in the nearby buildings.

He had brought quite a few people this time. Besides ten combat personnel, there were also five drivers and five heavy-duty trucks, each with a cargo capacity of over twenty tons.

Since they had come to rescue Rick, they might as well loot some of King County's important supplies while they were at it.

"Let's go to the hospital first. That's where I used to work, and it should still have a decent amount of medical equipment and supplies."

"Yes, boss. We'll follow you."

Leon drove a modified heavy military jeep and led his convoy around the outskirts of town toward the county hospital instead of passing directly through the town center.

Along the way, they encountered more than a dozen Zombies wandering on the main road. Leon ran them all over without mercy with the modified heavy jeep.

When they did not have the advantage in numbers, individual Zombies were not much different from ordinary cloth dolls when faced with a large vehicle.

After driving for about ten minutes, the convoy arrived at the county hospital. It was a large four-story building with front and rear courtyards. Aside from the hundreds of corpses neatly arranged on the ground and the fire-blackened outer walls, it was not much different from what Leon remembered.

Leon carried a long-bladed machete in one hand and strode at the front of the group, leading everyone inside through the hospital's glass entrance.

"Form a Defensive Formation and clear out every Zombie inside."

"Yes, boss."

After receiving the order, Merle gestured several times to his Warriors. The Warriors formed groups of three, with Daryl, Aji, and T-Dog as the pivots. With one shield and two spears in each group, they began advancing from three directions and clearing out every Zombie they saw.

Squad leader Merle held an assault rifle and stood behind Leon. He could protect the boss while also providing support to the other squads at any time.

Ten minutes later, everyone gathered around Leon again, wearing varying degrees of embarrassment.

They had conducted their search with great fanfare, but in the end, they had found only two or three Zombies on the entire first floor. There were also several corpses that had been shot in the head, most likely having wandered in from the streets outside.

Leon thought it over and came to a guess. He remembered that when Shane had last visited Rick, the American soldiers had massacred everyone throughout the hospital. Anyone infected with the virus had been executed without mercy.

The hospital's Zombies had probably all been eliminated at that time.

He did not explain anything and simply continued issuing orders.

"Go upstairs and clear the second floor."

An hour later, the Umbrella Corporation's Warriors had cleared the first, second, and third floors of the county hospital. There had not been many Zombies, fewer than twenty in total.

When Leon led his Warriors toward the fourth floor at the top of the building, a chain and padlock blocked their way.

Merle scratched his chin and said gloomily, "The fourth floor is locked, boss."

"Should we break it down?"

Leon looked at Merle as if he were an idiot and said, "Do you really have to ask?"

With that, he took a Shotgun from behind one of his subordinates.

"Never mind. Everyone move aside."

He aimed the muzzle at the padlock without touching it. After waiting for his subordinates to get out of the way, Leon pulled the trigger.

Bang!

The deafening blast echoed through the stairwell. The smell of smoke and Gunpowder filled the air as the padlock snapped and flew away, smashing a huge hole through the wooden door.

The moment Leon pushed the door open, he saw an elderly woman wearing a nurse's cap peering from a doorway farther down the corridor. Her hair was disheveled, and her face looked haggard.

Her gaze was complicated, and her expression was dazed. Terror and hope mingled together, twisting the stern, responsible face she had once had.

Leon frowned slightly. He knew the old woman in front of him.

"Mrs. Moretti?"

The old woman stared blankly at Leon and the Warriors behind him for more than ten seconds. Her voice was hoarse, like sandpaper scraping against something.

"Dr. Leon Castor, is that you?"

Leon nodded. He looked around in surprise. The hospital's fourth floor consisted of inpatient wards for critically ill patients with serious conditions. Mrs. Moriarty was the hospital's head nurse, and she was already over fifty years old.

It was hard to imagine that such an elderly woman had managed to live here for more than a month.

"It's me, Mrs. Moriarty. Are you the only one here?"

"How did you survive here alone?"

The old woman seemed to accept reality. She let out a breath of relief as the terror slowly faded from her face, then walked out of the hospital room and into the corridor.

Her face was pale, and her nurse's uniform looked somewhat disheveled. She had the overall appearance of a refugee suffering from a lack of food and clothing.

"A lot of those monsters appeared near my home too. I didn't dare stay there alone, so I came back to the hospital."

"After the army left, there were far fewer people here, and some of the critically ill patients were left unattended."

"I collected the fruit baskets and gifts in the rooms as food while taking care of the patients who were still alive. That's how I managed to make it until now."

At this point, a bitter smile appeared on the old woman's face.

"But all that food is gone now. I've been hungry for several days, and I was planning to go out and look for supplies."

Leon nodded calmly. He walked over to the old woman, took some high-energy chocolate, meat jerky, and candy from his waist pouch, and handed them to her.

"It's all right now, Mrs. Moriarty. You can come back with us. We have a safe shelter that accepts all kind-hearted survivors."

"By the way, which patients are still alive? Can they move?"

The old woman nodded gratefully at Leon and accepted the food. She was too reserved to eat it immediately. After thinking for a moment, she said, "I discovered that some patients turned into monsters after they died, so I locked them in their rooms. Without specialized medicine, they could only rely on nutritional IV drips. Now, only four people are still alive. You might remember them."

"Miss Kevira, who broke every bone in her body in a car accident; Mr. Hongke, who became a vegetable and never regained consciousness; Mr. Rick, who fell into a coma because of a gunshot wound; and Mr. Claude, who became mentally disabled because of brain damage from a fight."

They were all disabled people who could neither move nor run away. That made sense. Anyone who could still move would not have stayed here.

Hearing that Rick had not changed and was still alive, Leon felt relieved. He patted the old woman on the shoulder and said, "Don't be sad, Mrs. Moretti. Things have already come to this. There's nothing we can do to change them."

"We're planning to take the hospital's medical equipment and supplies with us. Could you lead my subordinates and pick out the valuable equipment?"

The old woman glanced several times at the fully armed burly men behind Leon, then nodded and said, "All right, Dr. Castor. Which medicines and equipment do you need?"

Leon said matter-of-factly, "Take anything valuable. We brought several heavy-duty trucks this time. If we can't transport everything in one trip, we can make another."

"Take them to the pharmacy first to move the medicines. I'll go check on the patients. In an hour, let's have lunch together."