In the prison's communications room, Rick rubbed a hand over his face, put on his headset, and prepared to report the outcome of the battle to Calista.
The fight was over. They had won, and not a single person from the prison had been lost. By all rights, Rick should have been able to relax, but he simply couldn't. Images of what he had seen at Terminus kept replaying in his mind, one after another.
The slabs of cured meat and ribs hanging from hooks. The gutted corpse on the table, its eyes still wide open. The huge pot of soup with grease and pieces of human tissue floating in it...
His stomach churned again at the thought. Rick swallowed hard, forcing the acid back down his throat.
It was worse than dealing with walkers.
Walkers were dead, at least. They were monsters. But what happened at Terminus had been done by people. Living, breathing people who treated other living human beings like livestock, butchering and eating them.
The Walking Dead. The Walking Dead!
Which were truly the walking dead? The rotting corpses shambling around outside, or the demons who had lost every trace of humanity and lived on with nothing but human shells?
If you aren't the butcher, you're the lamb.
Was that really how those people saw the apocalypse? Were those the only two choices they believed anyone had?
Rick shook his head, pushing the thoughts aside. Once again, he found himself impressed by Calista. That young woman had laid the foundations long ago and led all of them down a third path.
So when he reported to Calista, he casually mentioned the two pitiful survivors they had rescued. Deep down, he even thought it gave the whole operation something resembling a good ending.
Rick had no idea how much chaos that casual remark would cause on the other end of the radio.
...
Rock Fortress Communications Room.
Rick's slightly weary voice came through the radio.
"...Oh, right. We also brought back two survivors. They were locked in a container.
"One of them has completely lost his mind and keeps babbling nonsense. The other one is named Greg. He's pretty young and seems all right, just badly shaken. We're about to have Bob examine him..."
Clatter!
The pen Calista had been idly twirling fell onto the table. She didn't even bother picking it up.
The instant the name "Greg" reached her ears, her entire body visibly stiffened, as though she had just been hit by a high-voltage current.
Greg! Jesus Christ!
That Greg. The worst of the worst, the cannibal leader of Terminus!
When Rick and the others stormed in, that bastard must have realized things were going south and immediately slipped into the shipping container to play the victim. The corpse lying outside might even have been an actual survivor whom Greg had dragged out and killed.
That would keep the real survivor from identifying him while also giving Greg an explanation for why he hadn't escaped earlier.
The container had been locked from the outside before then. The people inside couldn't get out!
Once Greg slipped inside, however, he had no way to lock the door from the outside. So he simply claimed that he had been "terrified" by all the gunfire and hadn't dared to leave.
If he had tried to run, he probably couldn't have escaped from the prison group with their vehicles anyway. Pretending to be a survivor was a much safer option.
As for why he hadn't killed the tattooed madman, the reason was obvious. The man had already completely lost his mind and couldn't recognize anyone properly. Even if he acted terrified of Greg and babbled accusations, no one would believe the words of a lunatic.
Besides, if Greg had been the only survivor, it would have looked far too suspicious.
Damn, that bastard had pulled off quite the escape act!
Calista didn't even know what to say.
Rick, oh Rick. You hardly ever bring strangers home, and the one time you do, you manage to pick up a major character!
This was bad. It was almost more troublesome than failing to wipe out Terminus in the first place. Rick had practically brought a ticking bomb straight home!
Calista's head buzzed as one disastrous scenario after another flooded her mind.
Greg fooled everyone, learned the ins and outs of both the prison and Rock Fortress, then hid among them like a venomous snake, waiting for the perfect moment to strike and leave a disaster behind...
Kill him.
Kill him right now!
Come up with an excuse. Have him "die from his injuries" at the prison, or simply "fail to pull through."
That would be the cleanest and easiest solution.
Calista knew exactly how to arrange it. She could already think of several plausible accidents.
But a moment later, an even greater sense of helplessness washed over her.
She couldn't say any of it.
She had no evidence. What was she supposed to tell them? "I just have a feeling he's a bad person"?
Or rely on all the things she somehow "knew" but could never explain to anyone?
The prison wasn't Rock Fortress. Greg hadn't exposed himself at all yet. What would Rick and the others think if she suddenly ordered his death?
That she was some lunatic who decided whether people lived or died based on intuition and premonitions?
Damn, this was annoying.
She couldn't exactly have him killed in front of Rick and the others, and there was no way to secretly contact Zhou and tell his team to quietly dispose of Greg either.
Not having cell phones in the apocalypse really was a massive pain in the ass!
If Greg were at Rock Fortress, this would be easy. She could get rid of him whenever she wanted.
If he were at Rock Fortress...
An idea suddenly struck Calista.
"Rick, send both of them to Rock Fortress!
"We have better isolation and medical facilities here, along with personnel who can conduct proper psychological evaluations. More importantly, Rock Fortress has tighter security and stricter discipline, which means we can minimize the chances of anything going wrong.
"The prison has just gone through a battle. You need time to recover and focus on defense. There's no reason to divert more attention to those two. You know what they've been through. After being exposed to that kind of horror, they may have suffered serious psychological trauma and could be mentally unstable."
The reasoning sounded perfectly reasonable. Considerate, even.
Moving two potential problems, including someone who might be mentally unstable, away from a frontline outpost that had just endured a battle and transferring them to a safer, better-equipped base in the rear made complete sense.
Sure enough, Rick didn't object.
In fact, he felt relieved.
Sending those two troublesome survivors away meant the prison wouldn't have to spare manpower or resources dealing with them. They could focus on recovery and normal defenses instead.
As for escorting them safely...
"No problem, Calista. I'll arrange an escort," Rick replied readily.
"No, Rick," Calista interrupted. "I'll decide who escorts them. Zhou's squad just completed the reconnaissance mission, so they understand the situation better than anyone. And they're... professional enough to deal with any unexpected situations that might occur along the way. Let them handle it."
She deliberately stressed the words "unexpected situations" and "professional enough."
Rick vaguely felt that the arrangement was a little excessive.
They were only escorting two weak, half-starved survivors. Did they really need all four members of Zhou's squad?
For a moment, doubt crossed his mind.
Wasn't this going a little too far?
But the thought vanished almost immediately as Rick remembered something else.
Before the operation, Calista had issued an absolute order to leave no one alive.
At the time, Rick had thought it was too extreme.
And what had happened?
Calista's judgment had been completely correct.
Terminus had been ten times worse than even the worst scenario he had imagined.
Looking back, her "extreme" response might have been exactly what kept their people safe, preventing a moment of misplaced mercy from creating an even greater disaster.
Rock Fortress had managed to build something enormous in the middle of the apocalypse and keep it running steadily. There had to be a reason behind every decision Calista made.
That was simply how she operated.
For the sake of the greater whole and the safety of more people, she was willing to be ruthless and eliminate risks before they had a chance to grow.
Rick was different.
He relied more heavily on instinct and sometimes found himself torn between rules and compassion.
Calista, on the other hand, always seemed able to look at things from a broader perspective and choose whatever path benefited the group most.
Maybe there were considerations behind her ruthless orders that Rick simply couldn't see.
After all, Calista was responsible for the food, shelter, and safety of more than a thousand people. A single wrong decision could cost dozens of lives.
Perhaps that ruthless mindset of "better to kill the wrong person than let the guilty one slip through" was exactly how she had made it this far.
Rick quickly convinced himself.
The sympathy and hesitation he felt over assigning such a heavily armed escort to two ordinary survivors, he decided, simply meant he still wasn't tough enough.
He still wasn't enough of a leader.
"Understood, Calista." Rick nodded. "I'll let Zhou know and have them prepare. They went straight from reconnaissance into the operation without any rest."
"Then make it two days from now. Give them some time to recover. Let me know before they leave," Calista said without hesitation.
The transmission ended.
Calista removed her headset, leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes.
Once Zhou's squad entered Rock Fortress's radio range, she would have them execute Greg on the spot.
If Rick asked afterward, she could simply make up an explanation.
The madman lost control on the road, attacked Greg and killed him, then had to be shot.
Greg and the madman both escaped...
(The fixed radio equipment at bases such as Rock Fortress and the prison has powerful signals and a long communication range, but the equipment itself is bulky and difficult to transport. Mobile vehicle radios and walkie-talkies have much shorter ranges and only receive a signal once they come within a certain distance.)