Chương 192: Embers

"Hank, how's that favor I asked of you coming along?" Carrying three single-edged longswords, Vince, alongside Seth—who was still hauling two spears—returned to the makeshift workshop outside the pet clinic. Hank, Cody, and the rest were still hard at work in the open space out front. The three buses were fully prepped. Since they were electric and couldn't recharge on the road, they had to be reinforced with the lightest possible materials.

Adding too much dead weight would drastically reduce their range, and breaking down halfway to the Quarantine Zone would be a joke. Now, this miniature chop-shop was churning through the fleet of SUVs. Since aesthetics were irrelevant, they simply took an angle grinder to the A, B, and C pillars, cut chain-link fencing to shape, and welded it right over the windows, reinforcing it with rebar. They then welded steel strips and iron plating over the front bumpers.

Using scrap tires collected from around the complex, they fashioned impact cushions to protect the engine blocks and radiators during low-speed collisions. Currently, they were sealing off the rear window of a Tank 300 SUV, welding a final layer of steel mesh over it. The air was thick with the acrid stench of burning metal, welding fumes, and scorching paint... Hank was completely absorbed in his welding and didn't hear Vince.

Cody, who was helping out nearby, noticed the two approaching and put down his tools to greet them.

"Vince, the scabbards are done. I left them inside the clinic..." This was the exact project Vince had tasked Hank with earlier when he borrowed the megaphone. Vince could store his own one-handed sword in his spatial inventory, but Claire and the others couldn't. At the same time, they couldn't just walk around holding bare blades all the time. They needed some sort of hip-mounted sheath or harness. Cody jogged into the clinic and quickly returned carrying three white scabbards.

One of them already had a sword sheathed inside it.

"Here they are, here they are," Cody said as he walked out.

"Try this out, Vince. Hank and the guys figured out a way to make them out of PVC pipes..." Vince took the sheathed sword, drew the blade, and inspected the scabbard closely.

"We took the right size PVC pipe, heated it with a blowtorch until it was soft, and then flattened it to shape. Used a small angle grinder to cut off the excess, and lined the inside with a layer of leather. Good to go..." Hank finally put down his welding torch and noticed Vince.

"I haven't sealed the ends yet, just in case they didn't fit perfectly. You mentioned each sword had slightly different details..." Even though the contour of the blade looked familiar, the texture of the material felt bizarre. It felt like powder metallurgy that had been CNC-machined to perfection. And if he factored in the insane density, he couldn't begin to understand how it was made. So, Hank still asked zero questions, merely detailing the scabbard's manufacturing process.

"Let's test the fit first. I can seal the ends myself, it's easy enough..." Cody placed the remaining scabbards on the ground, pointing to the open bottoms of the PVC pipes.

"And we still need to wrap the outside in duct tape or cloth strips to fashion a belt loop, so they can hang right off your waist."

"Alright... not bad at all." Vince tested each sword one by one. The blade he had left with them as a mold was the greatsword he had forged for himself—the thickest and widest of the batch. Since that one fit perfectly, the rest naturally slid in without an issue. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. After testing them all, he handed them back to Cody to finish up. He also passed Cody a few rolls of the system-dropped [Duct Tape].

Vince had tested it before; the system-generated tape was incredibly durable and reliable.

"You're a master craftsman, Hank..." Vince clapped his hands, admiring the assembly-line efficiency of the crew.

"Where's Bruno? And Ben?" he asked, scanning the area but failing to spot the conspicuous giant.

"Ah... Bruno and a few guys took a truck to haul back another load of materials. We've got experience now, so we're only grabbing the lighter stuff," Hank replied with a polite smile. He flipped up his welding mask, looked around, and pointed toward a brightly lit area a short distance away.

"Ben should be over there." Dusk had already settled. Several outdoor floodlights and the glaring headlights of the vehicles illuminated half the alleyway. People were still bustling about, constantly shifting supplies between the various SUVs and cargo trucks. Ben and a few others were actively directing the flow of goods, ensuring every single vehicle was stocked with a baseline survival cache.

This way, if anyone fell behind or got separated from the main convoy, the two or three people in that vehicle would still have enough basic supplies to survive. The makeshift cafeteria near the supermarket entrance was still churning out plumes of smoke. In addition to the massive pots cooking dinner for the hundred-plus survivors, several smaller pots had been added to the fire. A chaotic pile of disassembled solid wood furniture lay nearby. A few men were chopping it up with axes to fuel the fires.

Looking closely, several figures wearing tactical vests mingled with the crowd. They weren't carrying weapons; they were simply standing by the road, chatting with the survivors, and occasionally lending a hand moving supplies. Whether this harmonious integration was simply because most of the soldiers were originally civilians, or if it was a direct order from Evelyn, Vince couldn't say. However, this kind of organic mingling did far more to stabilize morale than ten pre-battle mobilization speeches ever could.

Vince highly doubted this was happening without Evelyn's explicit orchestration. Some of the survivors in the crowd clearly had significantly lower Health Bars than the others—likely the civilians from Evelyn's buses. They were fully integrated into the group now. Those with the strength helped out with the labor, while the weaker ones grabbed stools and sat by the walls, relaxing and savoring this rare moment of peace. There was no rioting. No fighting over supplies.

No one selling their bodies or dignity for a few bites of food. There was only laughter, chatter, and the fiery energy of communal effort, temporarily barricading the apocalypse outside their little alley. Vince looked past the floodlights, gazing into the distance. He remembered that area used to be a bustling commercial district filled with office buildings. The subway station was over there too. A cluster of a dozen high-rises, each twenty or thirty stories tall.

In the past, right around this time, those buildings would be lit up with dazzling, multi-colored LED displays. Occasionally, they would scroll massive slogans like "Building a Harmonious Society Together," or flash gaudy, oversized digital flowers. Now, there was only a sea of suffocating grey darkness. Towering, pitch-black monoliths. Thousands upon thousands of windows, not a single light shining through.

The tiny pocket of illumination before Vince's eyes, contrasted against the boundless, suffocating darkness, felt less like a safe haven and more like a solitary campfire. It was using its meager warmth to comfort this small huddle of people who were either lucky or unlucky enough to survive. But Vince knew this campfire was rootless. Ten kilometers away, a black tide was already moving.

Within a hundred-kilometer radius, tens of millions of zombies could surge forward at any moment, drowning them all in an endless abyss.

"Dage, there's still like fifty or sixty pounds of meat left in the fridge. Claire wants to know what you want to do with it. We definitely can't finish it all..." Zoe poked her head out from the clinic behind him and asked.

"Fifty pounds... and you're telling me you can't finish it?" Vince snapped out of his melancholic thoughts, looking at Zoe with mock astonishment.

"I... ugh..." Zoe tried to retort, but a loud rumble from her stomach interrupted her. While she had been starving upstairs, the prospect of having a massive hotpot feast tonight had completely killed her appetite for MREs and instant noodles. She had just wiped the dirt off her face and was currently sprawled on the sofa upstairs, crying out to be fed. She was absolutely famished.

If Claire hadn't forced her to come down and ask Vince, she would have just laid on the sofa, drooling over the raw meat until dinner was ready.

"Alright, alright. Go back upstairs and eat a snack or something first. If you pass out at the dinner table later, nobody's going to carry you."

"My... my brother will carry me," Zoe shot back weakly.

"No I won't," Cody stated flatly from a few feet away, having overheard the entire exchange. Vince chuckled. He was just about to tease her again when his brow suddenly furrowed.

"Hm?" Under the distant floodlights, he spotted a familiar figure dressed in a crisp, sleek combat uniform... Evelyn? Why is she here?