Chapter 97: Settlement Camp Search and Rescue Team

"Ahem... please allow me to say two words."

The middle-aged man coughed twice, pushed his glasses, and looked at Zhang Su. "This gentleman, first of all, I am not a cook, this is my weapon, I used it to kill five zombies! In addition, human civilization is declining and moral laws are lost. It is the time for us to unite to fight against evil. As fellow survivors..."

"Stop, stop, what do you do exactly? A storyteller?"

Zhang Su thought of Tang Seng when he heard the middle-aged man talking, and directly interrupted him.

"I am a Chinese teacher at No. 7 Middle School. My surname is Yu. May I ask your surname, sir?"

The middle-aged man stood up and bowed respectfully to Zhang Su.

Zhang Su laughed dumbly. "Chinese teacher... good, good, good, a fish killer with a Chinese teacher. Hey, you said you are from No. 7 Middle School? Then do you know a teacher surnamed Duan?"

"Teacher Duan? Duan Wuhu, I know, the PE teacher for the third year." Yu nodded and said happily, "Does the gentleman know Teacher Duan?"

Zhang Su saw that the other party blurted out Duan Wuhu's name, so it seemed his identity wasn't fake. He waved his hand. "I met a survivor team before, and there was a person named Duan Wuhu in it."

"Oh, oh, it seems Teacher Duan is lucky to survive... that, please consider it, sir. Everyone has their own talents, Heaven will send great responsibilities to people, everyone has to die..."

"Are you giving me a lecture here!"

Zhang Su had a headache. His gaze swept back and forth between the student party and Master Zhao's three people. Impatiently, he said, "In short, I won't take useless people with me. Master Zhao, Kuang Miao, and Chen Hanzhou, you three can join my team. As for the teacher, you must take your daughter, right?"

As the words fell, the convenience store was silent.

Lu Yu and the others who came back from the outside naturally couldn't express too many opinions and were all waiting silently.

Master Zhao and Kuang Miao, Chen Hanzhou looked at each other. The three of them knew very well what Zhang Su meant. If they wanted to join the new team, they had to separate from their original companions!

On one side was a greater hope of survival, and on the other side were companions who had gone through life and death together, which made the three very conflicted.

The three of them were conflicted, while the four who weren't pointed out by Zhang Su were extremely nervous.

Originally, they couldn't join a powerful survival team, and if they were abandoned by the powerful team members, how could they live?

"Kuang Miao, Chen Hanzhou, you... what are you conflicted about? You wouldn't really want to leave Pei Lan and me and go with them!"

Song Yijun saw Kuang Miao and Chen Hanzhou silent, not directly refusing, which meant they had thoughts in their hearts, which made him anxious.

"I didn't say I was going..." Kuang Miao shook his head awkwardly.

Chen Hanzhou pulled his hair again and squatted down, unable to make up his mind at all.

Master Zhao didn't seem as conflicted as the student party. He made a decision and said, "Big brother, look, how about this? The three of us count as two people. What does it mean? That is to say, whether it's killing zombies or doing work, the three of us will contribute, but only take two portions of supplies. How about this?"

Zhang Su's eyes lit up, thinking that this compromise method was not bad. It expanded the team without losing anything, which was killing two birds with one stone. The fish-killing guy looked rough but had some ideas!

"We are the same!"

Not only did Zhang Su think this method was good, but Kuang Miao also thought so. He hurriedly raised his hand and said, "Brother Su, we are the same. Four people work, two people receive supplies, can we? Please..."

"Ahem!" Zhang Su cleared his throat and said, "This compromise method is feasible, but there are some things I want to tell you in advance. Life is your own. You have the right to decide whether to save others, and others have the right to decide whether to save you. Saving is a favor, not saving is a duty!"

"Know..."

"Understand."

"Understand!"

Kuang Miao's four and Master Zhao's three nodded one after another. Only the sickly Miss Yu was still in that listless state.

"Hehe, in this way, big brother, we are a group, right?"

Master Zhao laughed heartily, his gaze turning to the food on the side.

"Master Zhao, don't rush to eat. We should re-introduce ourselves and get to know each other. My name is Yu Wen, this is my daughter Yu Qing..."

Chinese teacher Yu Wen introduced himself very formally and even pulled up his sick daughter.

"That, my name is Zhao, Zhao Dezhu. Big brother, you can call me Pillar, Little Zhao, Old Zhao, fish killer, all can, hehe."

Zhao Dezhu laughed carelessly, his chubby cheeks having lost two points in the past few days.

"My name is Zhang Su. Come, you guys introduce yourselves too." Zhang Su said to the people around him.

If it were before today, it would be very difficult for Zhang Su to accept so many people joining the team at once. But after realizing the importance of the team, some of his ideas changed.

It is bound to be difficult to build an impregnable survival team, but one cannot keep people out because of difficulties, which would only put oneself in a predicament, and the team would never be able to expand.

Soon, the eleven people introduced themselves to each other, and the atmosphere instantly became much more harmonious.

Only then did Zhang Su know that Zhao Dezhu, who looked very old, was only in his early thirties, only two or three years older than him. And the reason why he had been taking care of the Yu family father and daughter was also clear, because Yu promised that if he could protect Yu Qing to survive, he would let Yu Qing be his wife.

This news shocked the four student party members, but Zhang Su and the others didn't feel anything strange, just that the person who made this decision was an elderly Chinese teacher, which was slightly unexpected.

Zhang Su specifically used 【Insight Tag】 on Yu Wen once for this, three bubbles: 【Assess the Situation】, 【Have an Eye for People】, 【Pragmatic】.

Three prominent points made Zhang Su's eyes light up. Apart from that, he didn't use 【Insight Tag】 on anyone else. Precious skills were used once less, and must be used on key people. Apart from Yu Wen who made him a bit unable to see through, the rest of these people could be judged by daily observation.

"According to the agreement, half of the things in the convenience store belong to Kuang Miao and the others, and half belong to us. Although you have joined our team, the agreement was before joining, so these things don't need to be handed over. And there are too many things, we can't take them all away. Pillar, Teacher Yu, eat as you please."

Zhang Su and the others found a place to sit down again.

Hearing that they could finally eat, Zhao Dezhu and Yu Wen were overjoyed and immediately started rummaging through the food and drink, not forgetting to take care of Yu Qing sitting in the corner.

"Brother Su, we toast you, thank you for your acceptance and tolerance of us!"

Kuang Miao opened a white wine gift box, which happened to contain a set of wine utensils. The four lined up and held cups in a decent manner, making it look like the gathering of the heroes of Liangshan.

Zhang Su smiled strangely and then waved his hand. "I accept your kindness, but let's not drink this wine, it will seriously affect the reaction nerves, keep it for the future!"

Yesterday, celebrating Tan Hua and Lu Yu joining the team, everyone only drank one bottle cap. If they drank two taels each, the whole day would be wasted.

"Okay, we listen to you!"

Kuang Miao and the others put down their wine glasses very readily and sat down happily. The most relaxed moment since the disaster was now.

"Sister, is this little dog your pet? What's wrong with it?"

Pei Lan squatted beside Zheng Xin, looking curiously at the sleeping Corgi, and reached out to touch its furry neck.

Zheng Xin moved the backpack to her side and RUA-ed the little dog's snow-white neck, shaking her head. "It wasn't my pet before, but it will be in the future, hehe. I found it from the complex next door. It has been sleeping, oh no, has been in a coma, don't know what's going on."

"I love cats and dogs so much, can you let me hold it? I'll be careful!"

Pei Lan smiled rarely.

Lu Yu helped out on the side: "Sister Xinxin, let Lanlan hold it for a while, she will be careful."

Zheng Xin looked at Lu Yu speechlessly, then opened the backpack and held the Corgi out.

"Wow! Three-way big neck, what a cute Corgi..." Pei Lan took the Corgi very happily.

The three played very happily around a comatose little dog.

Survival in the apocalypse is very cruel and tense. Having a little dog to accompany is very stress-relieving. Unfortunately, this little dog is in a coma. It would be even better if it woke up.

"Pillar, where did you plan to go before?"

Zhang Su saw Zhao Dezhu eating instant noodles with mineral water and asked.

"Originally planned to go to Guangli Supermarket, but ran to that side and looked, my goodness, the zombies were having a meeting. There were so many, countless!"

Zhao Dezhu waved his arms exaggeratedly, his face full of lingering fear.

"What time does the supermarket open, why are there so many zombies?"

Zhang Su asked curiously.

"The normal opening time of the supermarket is seven o'clock. Many old men and old ladies who grab special-priced goods arrive at the supermarket entrance at six o'clock to line up... Originally there were many people, and it happened that the supermarket was doing activities, so there were even more people..."

Zhao Dezhu shook his head helplessly.

"Open at seven o'clock?" Zhang Su realized. He really didn't know that the supermarket opened so early, only knowing that the mall generally didn't open until ten o'clock. Then he said in surprise, "Open at seven o'clock, then what time do you go to work? Killed your way out of the supermarket?"

Zhao Dezhu touched his fat head and sighed. "The night before the incident, I went out for barbecue and drinks with a few brothers from the supermarket. I was drunk and asked the fresh food department section chief for half a day off. By the time I woke up at noon, damn, my grandma... the world is the apocalypse!"

At the end, a look of horror couldn't help but appear on his face.

However, Zhang Su had a doubt. He turned his head to look at Lu Yu who was chatting with Pei Lan: "Bozi, what were you doing on the morning of the virus outbreak?"

"Morning? That must be sleeping..."

Lu Yu answered very naturally. Most of his working hours were at night, and he generally slept in the morning.

Zhang Su nodded, and then waved at Kuang Miao: "You four, what were you doing on the morning of the virus outbreak?"

The three boys were all sleeping, only Pei Lan got up and was washing in the bathroom.

"Teacher Yu, you and your daughter?"

Zhang Su finally looked at Yu Wen.

"I got up after five o'clock, but I had to go to the Education Bureau to do something in the morning, so I didn't go to school. Qingqing... Qingqing is also a teacher at No. 7 Middle School. She teaches chemistry and has no class in the morning, so she was sleeping in, heh heh, let you laugh."

Zhang Su frowned, pointed at the group and said, "Four of you, three were sleeping. Three of them, two were sleeping. Five of us, apart from Old Tan, the other four were all sleeping. Don't you think it's a coincidence?"

"My God!" Kuang Miao exclaimed, "This virus... doesn't infect people who are sleeping?"

Zhong Xiao shook her head. "It's not that it doesn't infect people who are sleeping, but that the infection rate of people who are sleeping is low. On the contrary, according to the situation we know, the

The group continued to discuss, summarizing the phenomena they had observed, and in the end, they became increasingly convinced of this hypothesis.

"If the virus really is more likely to infect people who are awake, and it broke out at the same time globally... wouldn't the West have gotten the short end of the stick?" Kuang Miao had a strange look on his face.

Zheng Xin shook her head in rebuttal: "How could they have gotten the short end... It's 7:00 AM for us, but 6:00 PM over in the States. At 7:00 AM, plenty of people are sleeping in, but how many people are already in bed at 6:00 PM? Besides, look at Europe; the UK is eight hours behind us, which would be 11:00 PM. I reckon their situation is about the same as ours!"

"Damn, if you put it that way, the timing of this disaster's outbreak was calculated way too precisely, wasn't it? Did it specifically choose the time when the vast majority of people around the world were awake?"

"The ones who got the worst of it are the Indians... but the situation over there... Mmph! Shh..."

Just as Zhang Su was speaking, his ears suddenly twitched. He hurriedly made a shushing gesture to the group, then signaled for everyone to crouch down.

The others didn't understand why, but they followed Zhang Su's lead anyway.

About a second or two later, the group heard the sound of a car engine approaching from afar, then driving past the front of the gas station and heading off into the distance.

"Damn it, if anyone dares to come and snatch our stuff, I'll kill them!"

Zhao Dezhu's face turned fierce.

"It's fine, they've already left."

No sooner had Zhang Su finished speaking than they heard the screech of tires braking. He instinctively grabbed his weapon, his expression tightening: "Something's wrong! They're coming back!"

Before the group could even react, they heard the sound of the vehicle approaching again. In just ten seconds or so, a Prado came charging into the gas station in a flurry.

"Holy crap, this place is... who's so fierce? Not only did they lure the zombies away and block them off, but they also took out so many here?"

A man in a uniform jumped out of the car, clicking his tongue in amazement as he looked at the twenty or thirty zombie corpses strewn about near the glass curtain wall of the gas station.

"Looks like there shouldn't be anything left in here!"

Another uniformed man spoke.

A third man in uniform jumped out from the driver's seat. He was tall, over 1.8 meters, with a build somewhere between Zhang Su and Zhao Dezhu. A sinister look crossed his face as he said: "We'll know if there's anything left once we go inside and take a look!"

With that, the three of them each grabbed a fire axe and headed toward the main entrance.

"Gentlemen, this place is already occupied. Please head back!"

Just as the uniformed man was about to pull open the dilapidated door, Lu Yubo, acting on Zhang Su's instruction, stood up and spoke, while simultaneously making a gesture for them to leave.

"Huh?"

The three men were clearly taken aback; they obviously hadn't expected anyone to be here. However, when they saw one person after another appearing from behind the ruins, their pupils couldn't help but shrink slightly.

"Fellow survivors!"

After a brief moment of loss of composure, the man in the lead—the tall, sturdy man from the driver's seat—said solemnly: "I am Liang Dacheng, captain of the search and rescue team for the Baihe Street Community Settlement Camp. Congratulations, you have been saved!"

"Ah?"

"This..."

"Settlement camp?"

In an instant, whispering broke out. Some of the students looked happy, Zhao Dezhu and Yu Wen were half-skeptical, while Zhang Su's group showed no reaction at all.

This reaction was far beyond Liang Dacheng's expectations. Shouldn't survivors be overjoyed to hear this news? Why were they all acting like idiots...

He put on a kindly smile and said: "It's been hard for you all, struggling to survive in this apocalypse. The Baihe Street Community has now been converted into a settlement camp, and it's only a little over a kilometer away. Didn't you know?"

There were twenty or thirty streets and communities of various sizes in Qincheng, and the Baihe Street Community was just one of the inconspicuous ones.

"Are you... an official settlement camp?"

Song Yijun asked, full of anticipation.

"Of course!" Liang Dacheng nodded heavily, patting his chest as he said: "Our settlement camp now has over four hundred people, gathering survivors from four nearby street communities. We have the SWAT team stationed here, so it's perfectly safe!"

"As long as you all go there, you will be properly settled and won't have to worry about being afraid or sleeping in the open anymore. However, the supplies here need to be handed over for unified distribution by the community! I won't hide it from you, we are responsible not only for searching for survivors but also for collecting supplies! But..."

At this point, Liang Dacheng pointed at Zheng Xin and said: "We don't accept pets for the time being."

Zheng Xin curled her lip and shifted the bag containing the Corgi behind her.

The positioning of the eleven people was quite interesting. This time, Zhang Su didn't stand in the front; instead, he pushed Lu Yubo to the front while he stood further back, half-crouched. This way, he wouldn't be too conspicuous and would have more opportunities to observe the other party.

However, after the other party mentioned the words "SWAT team stationed here," Zhang Su knew there was no need for further observation. The four people beside him also had their expressions change.

Zhang Su had already spoken to Lu Yubo and Tan Huajun about the SWAT team earlier, which was a matter of great regret.

The surviving SWAT officers of the entire Qincheng SWAT team had basically died heroically that night. According to Qin Ya, he was the only one who had escaped with his life with the help of his companions. So where would a SWAT team come from now to organize a settlement camp?

"We have no intention of going to the settlement camp. You guys should leave!"

Lu Yubo saw Zhang Su shake his head slightly and knew what to say, so he rejected the invitation very decisively.

"Huh?"

Liang Dacheng and the three men with him all narrowed their eyes, but they quickly relaxed and revealed a smile, saying: "Young man, even if you are the leader of this group, you should listen to everyone's opinions, right? We believe in democracy, don't we?"

"Democracy, go to your..."

"Yes, democracy is correct!" Zhang Su grabbed Lu Yubo's arm just as he was about to raise it, turned to glare at him, and said word by word: "Let everyone choose for themselves, how about that?"

Lu Yubo saw Zhang Su's strange expression and nodded vigorously: "Right, I also think democracy is great. Let everyone choose for themselves!"

"Um, Captain Liang, I'd like to ask about the situation regarding the distribution of supplies in the settlement camp. Also, with over four hundred people, how is everyone's living space arranged? Do we need to be assigned work after entering the settlement camp?"

Song Yijun looked at Liang Dacheng.

Liang Dacheng swung the fire axe in his hand and explained: "The settlement camp is currently in the initial stage, and everyone is throwing themselves into construction. The distribution of supplies is handled by a dedicated supply manager, so I'm not very clear on that. Living space is arranged according to each person's situation."

After talking for a long time, he had basically said nothing at all.

"I see..." Song Yijun's heart sank. He looked at Kuang Miao, and seeing that the other party didn't seem very interested, he stopped talking.

Apart from Song Yijun, no one else asked any questions, and the scene fell quiet for a moment.

Liang Dacheng and his men frowned. He spoke again: "I think you all must be worried about life after entering the settlement camp, right? There's no need to worry about that at all. The settlement camp will make reasonable plans based on contribution points!"

"To welcome you all to join, we brothers won't take the supply points from this convenience store. We'll count them all toward your total, ensuring you can have a comfortable environment!"

Liang Dacheng had thought that by saying this, at least three or five out of the eleven people would stand on their side, but the result was still dead silence.

It was just their bad luck that they appeared at this time. If they had met the students before they met Zhang Su, they wouldn't have needed to waste so much breath; the four of them would have already been happily heading toward the so-called settlement camp.

Zhang Su had been observing everyone's reactions. He had originally thought the ones most eager to go to the settlement camp would be the Yu family, but he hadn't expected Zhao Dezhu and the others to be so unusually quiet, and they even exchanged obscure glances with him from time to time...

The 【Assess the Situation】 ability had allowed Yu Wen to discover something.

"Captain Liang, is it? See that? None of us are willing to go to the settlement camp. Please leave."

Lu Yubo put on his cocky demeanor again and pointed at the Prado. He was actually quite keen on getting his hands on that car; it was much more impressive than the H6.

"Everyone, to be honest with you, the regulations from above are that all survivors must go to the settlement camp to contribute to rebuilding our home, and supplies must be handed over for unified distribution. Special times call for special management. Do you want to break the law and cause trouble?"

Seeing that soft talk wasn't working, Liang Dacheng's face darkened and became unusually serious. Combined with his sinister temperament, it gave him a strange kind of authority.

"That's right, refusing to accept management will get you registered, and then there will be special forces to deal with it! When the SWAT brothers from the settlement camp move out, they won't be as easy to talk to as we are!"

A man in a duck-billed cap beside Liang Dacheng said, the threat heavy in his tone.

"Cough, cough..." Yu Wen coughed and said: "This Mr. Liang, stop talking about SWAT teams. The Qincheng SWAT force was wiped out in the initial stages of the disaster while fighting zombies. It happened right under my nose. You tell me, where are there any SWAT officers left?"

Zhang Su's eyebrows twitched. He finally understood why the Yu family and Zhao Dezhu were so calm...

"I meant the armed police!" Liang Dacheng retorted impatiently: "In short, the instructions from above are very clear. Rebuilding our home requires the strength of all the people. You had better not act willfully and make a grave mistake!"

(End of this chapter)