They never imagined Evelyn Ford would actually pull the trigger, and go straight for a headshot. The fat man collapsed heavily, his eyes wide in a look that suggested he couldn’t die in peace.
"I’ll give you anything you want, just don’t kill us! Please, don’t kill us."
"That’s not an option. You all die today."
With that, the second fat man also fell to the ground.
Fortunately, the remaining men were gagged, so there were no annoying screams. Evelyn tossed the gun to Ronan Kendrick, who dealt with the other two, giving them no chance to beg for mercy or escape.
Just that clean and efficient.
Evelyn yanked the heavy gold chain off the man’s neck; it would serve well to expand her storage space.
"Don’t be afraid. We won’t hurt you." Evelyn untied their ropes and removed the gags from their mouths.
"Do those four go to the refugee camp to kidnap people often?"
Evelyn took a few buns from her bag and offered them to the group. They were afraid to eat, so Evelyn and Ronan Kendrick each took a bite first. Only then did they cautiously accept them.
"Thank you."
Evelyn smiled. "You’re welcome. Go ahead and eat. We’re refugees, too. We were just passing by and saw you were in trouble, so we decided to help. After you’re done, can you tell me about the situation at the refugee camp?"
One of the girls nodded. "What would you like to know?"
"There’s no rush. Eat first."
Ronan Kendrick went up to the second floor. Evelyn did a lap around the warehouse; finding nowhere clean to sit, she simply stood with her hands in her pockets.
She dragged the four dead men into a corner. The sight of the four bodies made the young people tremble with fear.
They looked very young; two of the girls seemed to be only twelve or thirteen. ’Beasts,’ Evelyn cursed inwardly, then continued to survey the warehouse.
Once they had finished eating, Evelyn stood before them and started asking questions.
"How many people have they kidnapped from the refugee camp?"
One of the older girls wiped away her tears and spoke in a small voice. "They come every few days. The people they take are rarely seen alive again. I’ve heard that most of them are thrown into the river. The obedient ones are kept as their slaves, and the disobedient ones are beaten to death. I don’t know exactly how many they’ve taken, but I’d estimate it’s in the hundreds."
Evelyn nodded. "You don’t leave because you’re waiting for the official food aid, right?"
The girl nodded as the others beside her whimpered softly. Just then, Ronan Kendrick came down, having finished collecting things from the second floor.
"The base will hunt you down for killing them. They’re lawless in the base and in Flumen; everyone is terrified of them."
Evelyn shrugged. "What’s done is done. It doesn’t matter anymore."
"Come on, we’ll take you back to the refugee camp."
The group shook their heads frantically. "We can’t go back. We’ll get everyone else in trouble."
"Lots of people saw us get taken tonight. If we go back to the refugee camp, people from the base will definitely come for us, and they’ll take our families, too."
Evelyn had already checked—there were no security cameras along this route, which was why she had acted so brazenly.
Evelyn sighed. "Then you’ll have to leave on your own."
"But we don’t know where to go."
"There are some things on the second floor. You can take those supplies, get out of the city, and go live in another base or village."
Of the items on the second floor, Ronan Kendrick had only taken the doors, windows, light bulbs, and a few cabinets. He hadn’t touched anything else.
After exchanging glances, the group sitting on the floor agreed.
Ronan Kendrick suddenly walked over to them. With a snap of his fingers, the group entered a hypnotic state.
While he stood there muttering something, Evelyn collected the corpses into her storage space.
Once hypnotized, the group went upstairs and started gathering supplies. Evelyn and Ronan Kendrick went to the door. Aside from the cargo truck, Evelyn had put the sightseeing cart and the men’s bodies into her storage.
"What did you say to them just now?"
Ronan Kendrick squeezed Evelyn’s hand. "I just replaced their memories. I made them believe they were the ones who killed those men."
Evelyn raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
Twenty minutes later, the group came downstairs, each person carrying a load of supplies—quilts, clothes, pots and pans, even a kitchen cleaver. Evelyn had them get into the cargo bed of the truck. She and Ronan still had to go to the base; they would have to drop the group off on their way out of the city.
Driving this truck out of the residential area and toward the base was like having an express pass.
Patrols on the road didn’t dare to stop the vehicle. Even entering the base was incredibly easy. The security at the gate was purely for show; the armed guards didn’t even dare to look up at the driver’s cab.
"Our disguises were a waste of time. I didn’t expect it to be this easy to get into the base."
Ronan Kendrick smiled. "It’s the *truck* that gets in easy."
Evelyn had no intention of going on a looting spree here. She might rob Westeria and kill human scum, but she could never bring herself to rob her own people.
They had only come to the base to get a feel for the situation.
Mason Morgan had told them that people who froze or starved to death were taken to the pens to feed the livestock, while those who died of disease were thrown into a mass grave.
She was worried this place would become another Wyrmrest Base. If a nematode or bacterial outbreak occurred, it wouldn’t just affect the hundreds of thousands inside the base—even the surrounding villages would be hit.
And that was to say nothing of the current polar night, where plants and animals competed with humans for oxygen. If the air or water supply became contaminated, it would spell another catastrophe.
After entering the base, Ronan Kendrick parked the truck in a lot and took Evelyn for a walk. The group they’d rescued remained sitting in the cargo bed.
"Let’s check out the large-pen area first." While in the truck, the two had changed into inconspicuous black padded jackets, making them indistinguishable from the base’s other residents.
"Will they be okay being left in the truck?"
Ronan Kendrick shook his head. "They will be. This truck is special; no one would dare try to open the cargo bed. Besides, we locked it."
The Second Base was very different from Wyrmrest Base. It had few high-rises; the tallest building was only six stories. The two wandered for a bit before arriving at the animal husbandry zone.
After climbing over an iron fence, they heard the sound of pigs squealing.
"That must be the pig farm over there. It’s quite large. What is the base feeding these pigs?"
Before the polar night, they had endured several years of extreme cold. Crop yields had been very low, so how could there be any surplus grain to feed livestock?
’Could it be from pre-apocalypse grain reserves?’
Every province and city had grain depots and seed banks. As a major rear support area, Frelia likely had even larger reserves.
Under normal circumstances, a city’s grain reserves are enough to feed its population for five to fifteen years, if not more.
It was now the tenth year of the apocalypse. If Frelia’s reserves were sufficient, they should still be able to feed the residents here for another five to ten years.
Furthermore, The Second Base was under military control, which made the likelihood of it having reserves even higher.
The two quietly approached the pig farm, where a number of workers were busy at their tasks.
When she saw the workers feeding the pigs a mixture of leaves and powdered straw, Evelyn breathed a sigh of relief.
’Thank goodness it wasn’t what I thought.’