The industrial park was quiet that afternoon.
Calista walked slowly, her gaze drifting across the factory buildings.
Taking this place had come at a terrible cost, but at least... life was better for those who were still alive.
She reached a relatively open area that had once been the entrance to one of the factory compounds. A few concrete barriers were still standing there.
Calista leaned against one of them and closed her eyes, her mind automatically replaying her conversation with Dr. Jenner that morning.
"The contents of that hard drive. Oak Ridge, the military, the polymer catalyst... and whatever they were trying to create.
"They did it, and they failed. What we're looking at today is the result.
"What I need you to do first is sort out exactly what Black Fire and Wildfire are.
"Also, inside the factory, the Black Fire mutants seemed to give off something that made ordinary walkers keep their distance."
"Pheromone suppression? Or some kind of biological deterrent? That's interesting... If we could isolate and replicate whatever substance is responsible..."
"Give it a try. Weren't you already researching walker repellents?
"I'm not expecting you to produce anything right away, but even something that disrupts them could help with our defenses and with expeditions outside the Base.
"Rickon and the others should have brought back some tissue samples while recovering the bodies. They'll be sent over later."
Thinking about it, Calista took a deep breath.
Handing off part of the burden hadn't made her feel any lighter, but at least they had a clear direction now.
There was still a long road ahead.
Just then, a set of suspiciously quiet footsteps approached and stopped beside her.
The newcomer blocked the light.
Calista cracked one eye open. "Merle, aren't you supposed to be helping inventory the warehouses?"
"Tsk. Calista, can't you think about something other than work?" Merle lowered his voice and leaned in from the side.
Calista opened her eyes and looked at him.
Merle's brows were drawn together, his eyes darting around. His entire face screamed that he had some earth-shattering piece of gossip and was suffering over whether to share it.
"What is it?" Calista straightened and folded her arms.
Merle rarely looked like this. Usually, he was either loud, crude, and swearing his head off, or radiating hostility.
This awkward mix of excitement and disbelief made him look like he was holding in the world's biggest fart and couldn't decide whether it was safe to let it out.
"Uh..." Merle rubbed his hands together. His gaze wandered toward the patrol in the distance, then back again, never quite meeting Calista's eyes. "You had lunch yet?"
"I have." Calista answered patiently, growing more curious by the second.
She knew Merle. He had a big mouth and couldn't keep anything to himself. If he was acting like this, then he definitely had something to say, and whatever it was had apparently shocked him to his core.
When Calista failed to take the bait, Merle grew even more awkward. He scratched his hair, cleared his throat, and edged half a step closer.
"So... Calista. This morning, at breakfast. You were at the command center, right?"
"I was." Calista nodded.
"You saw Daryl?" Merle's eyes immediately lit up as he stared intently at her face.
"I did."
The industrial park had a cafeteria converted from an old factory building in Block B. Most production workers and Defense Force personnel ate there.
The administrative staff sometimes brought food back to the command center when they were too busy to eat in the cafeteria.
Calista had actually been a little surprised to see Daryl at the command center that morning.
"And... Leah?" Merle leaned forward, his voice full of obvious expectation.
Leah?
Calista thought back.
Leah had been sitting across from Daryl, hadn't she?
There was nothing strange about that. Calista had been sitting right beside Leah, eating bread.
"I saw her. What exactly are you getting at?" Calista's patience was wearing thin.
This guessing game wasn't remotely entertaining.
"What am I getting at?!" Merle nearly shouted before forcing his voice back down. His eyes went wide as he leaned even closer. "Jesus, Calista! You seriously didn't notice anything weird? Not even a little?"
He pinched his fingers together to demonstrate "a little," his expression exaggerated enough for a stage performance.
"Weird?" Calista frowned. "The soup was a little salty?"
Merle looked like he might cough up blood.
"No! It's... the atmosphere! The feeling! You know?"
Calista still looked completely lost, and Merle actually stamped his foot in frustration.
"Daryl! Leah! Sitting across from each other! Eating breakfast!"
"The table in the command room isn't that big. What's strange about them sitting across from each other?" Calista stared at him as if he'd lost his mind. "I was sitting there too. I was across from Daryl as well."
Merle let out a strangled noise, looking utterly exasperated.
"Holy shit! That's not what I'm talking about! It's the feeling! Get it? I've been watching them for a while!"
He began counting on his fingers.
"Back when we were clearing Blocks A and C, I noticed Daryl kept sneaking looks at Leah! And at the Singularity Polymers Plant, he stood there like a damn idiot fighting Predators just to cover her!"
Merle was practically spraying spit by now, his eyes gleaming.
"And today! Today was the most obvious! Daryl went to the cafeteria this morning, and I saw him trade for a can of meat. Then at breakfast, Leah pulled that exact can out of her pocket! I damn near fell off the windowsill!"
Windowsill?
Calista immediately caught the important part.
"You were hiding in the hallway first thing in the morning, spying through the command room window?"
"That's not the point!" Merle waved her off, his expression clearly saying not to derail him. "The point is Daryl! And Leah! There's something going on between them! Something big!"
Merle was completely absorbed in the thrill of having cracked the case.
He used to think Leah was far too fierce. She had knocked him unconscious the first time they met. He couldn't imagine anyone willingly falling for a woman like that.
He had never expected reality to prove him wrong so quickly.
His own little brother, Daryl, might actually have fallen for Leah.
And from the looks of it, he was acting like a goddamn lovesick puppy.
Calista listened to Merle's rapid-fire "evidence," her brain struggling to catch up.
Daryl and Leah?
In the original storyline, they really had been a couple.
But ever since Calista arrived in this world, everything had changed beyond recognition.
Leah and Daryl were both reliable core members of the group, but aside from necessary tactical coordination, they barely interacted in private.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Calista had always thought Leah's cold exterior and warm heart, combined with Daryl's introverted personality, made them two parallel lines that would never intersect.
She had never once thought to apply their "original storyline couple" status to the people standing in front of her now.
"But... isn't this way too sudden?" Calista muttered as the delayed shock finally hit her. "They barely talked before... and Leah..."
What she wanted to say was that Leah had never told her anything about her love life.
If something really was developing, shouldn't Calista, as her younger sister, have been the first to know?
"Sudden?" Merle scoffed with the confidence of a self-proclaimed expert. "It's the apocalypse. You think people need some big buildup before they hit it off? I'm telling you, sometimes that kind of thing just hits all at once. Once the spark's there, you ain't stopping it."
He waggled his eyebrows and lowered his voice again, carrying the complicated satisfaction of a man whose pig had finally learned how to dig up a cabbage.
Even if this particular cabbage was a little dangerous to touch.
"I really didn't see it coming. Daryl, of all people, liking Leah... But now that I think about it, makes sense. An ordinary woman couldn't handle a Dixon man anyway!"
Calista rolled her eyes at him.
Merle only grew more excited, as if he could already picture the future.
"Calista, what do you think those two would be like if they actually got together...?"
He rubbed his chin, sinking into a mixture of curiosity and apprehension over the possibility of Leah becoming his sister-in-law.
Objectively speaking, Leah was attractive, formidable in a fight, and dependable as a leader, teammate, and family member.
But Merle had never quite gotten over how much she'd disliked him at first, or how thoroughly she'd beaten him.
What kind of sister-in-law beat the hell out of her brother-in-law whenever he ran his mouth?
For a while there, Leah had nearly beaten PTSD into him. She had even managed to force him to curb his habit of saying whatever offensive nonsense popped into his head.
Calista watched Merle go from stunned disbelief to gleeful gossiping and outright fantasizing about the future, and her own feelings were difficult to describe.
Part of her wanted to laugh at how ridiculous he was acting.
But the news itself left her strangely unsettled.
If it really was true... how was she supposed to feel about it?
When she'd watched the show, Calista had always liked Daryl.
He was a strong fighter, hard on the outside but softhearted underneath, fiercely loyal to his friends, and as far as she was concerned, he had almost no major faults throughout the entire series.
But now Calista found herself unconsciously judging him from the perspective of Leah's younger sister.
Age-wise, he was in his early thirties, not too far from Leah.
+1.
His combat ability was solid.
+1.
She trusted his loyalty and devotion too.
+1.
But Daryl barely bothered taking care of his appearance. Even though the Defense Force now had proper tactical uniforms, he still preferred wearing that battered old leather jacket all day.
-1.
He was quiet, withdrawn, and probably wouldn't know how to cheer Leah up.
-1.
And most importantly, in the original storyline, he killed Leah to save Maggie!
Oh my God.
-10,086!
Sure, the Daryl standing here now hadn't done any of that, and under the current circumstances it would never happen in the first place.
But Calista was already frowning as she ruthlessly deducted points in her head.
At that exact moment, Daryl, who was out on patrol, suddenly sneezed several times in a row and rubbed his nose in confusion.
Without the slightest idea what was happening, he had already lost a staggering number of points with Calista.
Just as Calista continued furiously deducting points and Merle opened his mouth to add something else, a foul gust of wind suddenly hit them both full in the face.
The smell of burning walker corpses.
For disease control as well as battlefield cleanup, the most thorough way to dispose of walker bodies was to gather them together and burn them.
The disposal site had been placed in the farthest downwind corner of Block D, right at the edge of the area.
But today's wind seemed determined to spite them, carrying the stench straight toward the center of the industrial park.
"Ugh!"
Calista's stomach clenched violently as a wave of nausea surged into her throat.
She gagged and immediately clamped a hand over her mouth and nose, but the acrid, rotten stink had already forced its way into her lungs.
In an instant, every trace of their absurd conversation about gossip, couples, and lovesick puppies vanished.
"Cough! Cough, cough! Ugh!" Merle reacted even worse.
He had been about to speak and had inhaled a lungful of the foul air. He doubled over coughing, his face turning red as the gleeful gossiping expression from moments ago twisted into pure misery.
"Fuck! This goddamn wind! Which idiot's burning them? And why the fuck now?"
Calista bent over, struggling to steady her breathing and force down the churning in her stomach.
Merle kept cursing as he covered his nose.
The two looked at each other.
And both saw the same thing reflected in the other's eyes.
That brief moment of lightness, that ordinary human pleasure of gossiping about someone's love life, suddenly felt incredibly small against the overwhelming stench of death that defined the apocalypse.
Merle spat hard onto the ground and wiped away the tears the smoke had forced from his eyes. His usual rough expression returned.
"Well, guess the 'Sister-in-Law Observation Project' is gonna have to wait."
Calista straightened, glanced toward the drifting black smoke, then looked back at Merle.
She said nothing.
She only patted him on the shoulder before turning toward the command center.
The gossip could wait.
Staying alive, and clearing the road that led to tomorrow, was something they had to face every moment of every day.
...
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