Just when Lori's group found the sign, Shane and a small group of people were searching for Rick.
They had left more than half a day earlier, but their direction was different from Lori's group, although the general direction was similar, they were not in the same area.
Because of the horde of walkers, they had to make a long detour before arriving at a farm.
"Zz… Rick, can you receive me?"
"Zz…"
"Damn it! Where did he go?"
"Do we keep looking for him?"
After thinking for a moment, although he was unwilling, he knew there was no point in continuing to search, and that from now on they could only rely on themselves.
"Let's return to the base first, we did everything that was in our hands."
...
Rick and his group slowly entered a small town, it was already night and many people were tired and hungry.
"Find a house for us to settle in first, it will be dark soon."
Although the condition wasn't very good, everyone was encouraged and began clearing the walkers from the surroundings.
A whistle sounded not far away, and Abraham found an open house.
Rick looked around, waved his hand at him, and signaled to go deeper into the town. While stopping and walking, they also searched many closed houses for resources.
While collecting supplies, they looked for a suitable place to stay, after about an hour it was already getting dark, and gradually more and more walkers were wandering around the street.
Finally, they found a suitable house in the middle of the town.
"Quick, get inside quickly."
Rick stood at the door, carefully watching the surrounding streets, there were more than a dozen walkers coming out of the intersection not far away, if they stayed outside all this time, they wouldn't be able to finish eliminating all those walkers without being injured.
After everyone entered the house and closed the door, they relaxed a little, and the next step was to inspect the whole house.
After a careful inspection, the other half of Rick's uneasiness was also relieved.
Abraham looked at them a little strangely and asked in an exaggerated tone.
"Is this necessary?"
Rick looked at him and said nothing, but Guillermo, who was at his side, recounted his experience last night and the room fell silent for a while.
After a while, Abraham said in a low voice.
"I'm the luckiest person in the world!"
The few people who were taking food out of their backpacks suddenly looked at him, and Elen asked a little strangely.
"Why do you say that?"
There was an inexplicable light in the redhead's eyes, who seemed a little sad and hopeful, as if he were remembering something. After a while, he smiled and said something ambiguous.
"Hehe, I just think I'm lucky, at least I haven't met those people who want to kill me, isn't that enough?"
Rick, who was sitting on the sofa, suddenly spoke. "Maybe, but as long as you keep living this life, you'll eventually meet them."
Abraham smiled indifferently and pointed at Eugene beside him.
"As long as he's sent to Washington, what does it matter if I die? An unknown guy like me will be remembered even if he dies."
Hearing Washington mentioned again, Rick shook his head, not accepting those words, he really didn't believe this guy called Eugene.
On the other hand, Elen continued asking curiously.
"You said the things about the virus are confidential, so you should be able to tell us where to go in Washington, right? Didn't Rick say this afternoon that his friend is in Washington now, and that we can contact him and ask him to check it first?"
As soon as Elen's question came up, Eugene's expression became a little unnatural, and these small details didn't escape Rick's eyes.
Now he was more and more certain that something was wrong with this guy. He hasn't mentioned the vaccine to these people until now because of this man named Eugene.
In fact, Elen's question wasn't asked casually, but he explained it—the purpose was to catch this person by surprise and he could take the opportunity to observe the other's reaction.
After being silent for a while, Eugene realized that he needed to have a reasonable explanation, otherwise these people might doubt him.
"Let's not talk about whether your friend can find the place I'm going. Even if he finds it, an ordinary person can't get in at all. In other words, the only way is to send me safely to Washington."
As soon as he finished speaking, Rick, who had been silent for a long time, finally spoke.
"Then, what's your supposed solution? Vaccines? Biological weapons? There must be a general direction, right? How can we believe your words if you don't reveal anything?"
Eugene still had that stupid expression, but he was quickly weaving rhetoric in his mind.
After a while, as if he had made a decision, his eyes grew sharper and he exhaled lightly.
"I'm part of the Human Genome Project Deft-10, and we're tasked with turning known diseases into weapons against some of the biological weapons that already exist—deadly microbes against deadly microbes, as they say. For some time now, I've been working in an organization and I have deep contacts with several departments of the same nature, so I'm very familiar with how this works."
"If everything continues as it did until a few days ago, I think with some adjustments in our lab in Washington, we can turn the tide and kill all the living dead on the planet."
"If everything goes well, that still sounds very good."
Abraham smiled and nodded nonstop. In his opinion, this matter was very reliable and he firmly believed this plan would succeed.
But the trio in the prison didn't think so. Rick stared at the strange-haired guy, constantly weighing the credibility of these words in his heart, and asked after a while.
"The adjustments you requested are the most important part of this matter, right? In other words, you must have other means to kill the virus, right?"
Eugene's expression returned to that dull look again, while Abraham on the side interrupted Rick's questioning.
"Don't bother him, even if he tells you how to do it, will you do it?"
Rick, who had a serious face, laughed at this moment. The labs at the base have been researching the virus for so long. Until now, they constantly go out to look for resources for their experiments, test subjects, subjects with variant infections, but research progress is still slow.
It seems that after the development of the second-level vaccine, it has entered a period of slow research. Candace once said that the development of this vaccine would be a long process, and it was an unexpected joy to be able to quickly produce the second-level vaccine. At this moment, for someone to suddenly jump in and say that the problem of the living dead could be quickly solved seemed a bit funny.
"Hehe, sorry, this reason is really exaggerated. If you say our base has developed a vaccine, what would you say?"
At this moment, except for Guillermo and Morgan, everyone else looked at Rick, who spoke in disbelief.
"What did you say?"
"Vaccine!"
Rick didn't pay attention to the others' reactions, he saw Eugene's expression turn extremely cold, as if it had changed.
"You're just lying, Washington doesn't have the answer, you just want to…"
Before he could finish speaking, Abraham, who had been bowing his head in silence, suddenly jumped up from the chair and his huge fist went straight at Rick.
"Shut up!"