Traveling northward for several days, there was no need to scavenge for gas or supplies since Selene could always retrieve supplies from her spatial storage, further solidifying rle and Daryl’s resolve to stick with her.
"rle, how much longer till we get there? Didn’t you say we were close?" Daryl’s impatient voice sounded in Selene’s ear.
rle responded, "For crying out loud, hurry, hurry, all you know is hurry; why don’t you co and try!"
"I was in jail, not on a field trip; how am I supposed to know exactly where it is? I can only get an approximation based on the map."
With their bickering continuing, the trio traveled onward.
Suddenly.
Daryl, who was closely watching for any movent, spotted sothing. "Huh? rle, look over there!"
Hearing this, rle also turned his gaze. "Is that..."
Not far away, smoke was rising from the edge of a small village. Seeing this, rle couldn’t help but glance at Selene, curiosity in his eyes.
"Let’s check it out." Encountering people outside the original storyline piqued Selene’s curiosity. She instructed rle to park, and the three of them quietly approached the village.
Unlike Rick’s group camp, this was a small village in the wilderness with no defenses and no pedestrians in the streets, not even any zombies.
As they moved deeper into the village towards the source of the smoke, the aroma grew stronger.
"It slls like at." ×3
Getting closer, they saw the firelight, and Selene stopped at the corner of a wall to observe. She soon noticed a number of survivors. About twenty ters away on the other side of the street, a group of ragged people was gathered around an animal pen.
There were eight n in the survivor group, all adults, no won or children. The oldest was an elderly man with noticeable wrinkles and graying hair.
All eight n looked malnourished, their clothes filthy, and hair unkempt, resembling refugees. They gathered in the fenced courtyard of the village’s animal pen, with one man relieving himself in a corner while another squatted by a makeshift stove, tending a fire beneath a pot with boiling water, from which the aroma emanated.
"They’re survivors!" rle and Daryl took out binoculars to observe the new group of survivors.
In the apocalypse, with people not producing goods, resource shortages were inevitable. Furthermore, a small village like this likely had limited supplies.
In the collapse of order, petty theft, food robbery, and looting were common, but the scene unfolding next was even more horrifying and left Selene’s group in shock.
Among the bones piled on the nearby ground, alongside obvious animal remains, were so bones that unmistakably resembled human limbs?!
Selene was overco with a sense of foreboding. Shifting her gaze, she noticed a bloody spot on the ground, but it was clearly not the site of animal slaughter!
It was human!
A middle-aged woman, armless and naked, was bound to a tree. A rag was stuffed in her mouth, her head tilted against the trunk, eyes wide open—she had clearly been dead for a while, with a wound on her temple as the fatal blow.
Seeing this, Selene could hardly believe it. In such a short ti after the apocalypse, people had resorted to cannibalism! The middle-aged woman had been used as food by the survivors.
Amidst the scent of cooking at, the survivors joked and laughed without any sign of remorse.
"Damn, why kill her? Isn’t her husband still there as reserve food?"
"Ha, serves her right for struggling!" soone spat, licked their lips, and rubbed their growling stomach, making a crude joke, "Sending them all down there so they can be reunited isn’t bad, huh? Can’t wait, can you?"
"What a sha... Wonder if we’ll co across such a fine catch again..."
"Don’t worry, just lure so more fools here next ti, and we’ll save a woman for you!"
"Tough luck; it’s getting harder to fool people in these tis..."
Upon hearing this, Selene realized the human bones belonged to the middle-aged woman’s husband. The family had been deceived into coming here.
Nearby, rle and Daryl were breathing heavily in anger. Even though they were roughnecks, they had a bottom line and would never resort to cannibalism.
They turned to Selene, eyes burning with a desire to eliminate the scum.
"Kill them!" At Selene’s command, rle charged forward with a roar, ignoring the survivors’ stunned expressions, and opened fire with his submachine gun.
Those joking by the fire were imdiately riddled with bullets. The rest, snapping out of their stupor, grabbed makeshift weapons like baseball bats and rushed to gang up on rle.
The eldest survivor, more cunning, tried to slip away unnoticed. Seeing Selene erging from the corner, he grew bold, planning to take her hostage. He drew a pistol and rushed toward her.
But before he could take a few steps, a bolt whizzed into his chest, and he collapsed, crying out in pain.
Shortly after, more cries of agony followed. Clearly, those attempting to attack were no match for the fully-ard, enhanced rle, and they were quickly incapacitated, left gasping for their last breaths.
"Wait... I’m a citizen... you have no right to kill ..." The elderly survivor, seeing Selene standing over him with a gun aid at his head, babbled about citizen rights, struggling desperately.
"You don’t deserve it."
Bang!
His voice was cut off. Without waiting for more protest, Selene shot him through the skull.
Silently, with no hesitation, she delivered a bullet to each survivor, ensuring none would turn into zombies.
In Selene’s eyes, they no longer deserved to live. No, they couldn’t even be called human anymore; they were beasts, ghouls, and demons.
Walking slowly to the side of the woman, who died with her eyes wide open, Selene felt a complex mix of emotions but didn’t play the part of the savior, lanting about her arrival being too late.
She quickly dug a shallow pit, burying the middle-aged woman, the "food" in the pot, and the human bones in the ground, topping it with a simple mound.
"Is this the true face of the apocalypse?" Selene stood motionless before the mound, lost in thought.
In the original series, the narrative followed the protagonist’s group, led by the compassionate Rick and the moral exemplar Dale, who managed to uphold their humanity.
But what about the other survivors in the apocalypse? Those glossed-over characters, how did they survive? The scene today profoundly shocked Selene.
This experience was unlike anything from her previous life or even her life in Academy City...
Finally, rle’s voice snapped Selene back to reality. Turning, she saw rle and Daryl with furrowed brows and sorrow etched on their faces. The earlier scene left even these two hardened n unsettled.
"Let’s go; such commotion will soon attract a horde..." Selene said, walking past them.
"How can things like this happen!" Daryl exclaid.
Unlike rle, who had seen war, Daryl had a softer heart. Today’s events filled him with bleakness. The apocalypse halted production, depleting food reserves, which would eventually run out. Cannibalism might beco increasingly frequent.
"This is the apocalypse in the collapse of order!" Selene replied, throwing several incendiary grenades as they left the yard.
Boom!
In the flas, it seed as if all sins were being burned away, yet Selene knew she would never forget this scene...
...
Back in the car, the atmosphere was heavy as they watched the village burn in the distance.
After so ti, solitary zombies began appearing on the road, seemingly drawn by the noise. Seeing this, Selene sighed deeply, "Let’s go, keep moving."
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