“So, this is where you last saw them, huh?” Danny asked while crouching on the road, looking for signs of the mysterious people Wallace and his team had encountered.

“That’s right.” The captain nodded. “After making a turn right there,” he said while pointing with his thumb to a point where the road made a sharp turn, “we suddenly bumped into them. They were standing just a little bit further ahead from where you are right now.”

Nodding his head, Danny stood up and walked around the area for a little while, looking for anything that might help them. Any clue or forgotten belonging that might shed some light as to where they should head next to find the non-English speaking strangers.

Danny and the rest of the convoy had been travelling together for a few days now. After their first night out together, things settled easily between the mercenary hire and the ten-man squad. Though he maintained his reserved act as usual, that did not prove to be an issue to maintain a polite and even amicable relationship with the rest of them.

Whether they wished to respect his privacy due to something that Hank said to them or because they had a growing respect for him due to his past actions in helping the settlement, it didn’t really matter. He was happy for it all the same. Always dodging questions and coming up with excuses for his secrets was exhausting, and this reprieve was a welcome one. It didn’t take long for his temporary companions to find out which topics to avoid and stick to the non-sensitive ones.

The trip itself did not pose too much trouble either, at least, it hadn’t so far. The route was one that Wallace’s men were familiar with after all, having travelled the very same path just some days prior. As such, they haven’t encountered any nasty surprises waiting for them until now.

Also, there were no densely packed urban centers or big towns on their way. Every single scout sent outside the settlement’s walls that was worth their salt knew to avoid such dangerous areas like they were the plague. The live ones did, at least. And so did Captain Wallace’s squad. Any place potentially crawling with undead was given a wide berth. That way - twisting, turning and skittering around hazardous locations - their convoy eventually reached their destination.

There was a small problem though. From now on, it was uncharted territory for them all. Leaving Hank’s camp, they all knew that the possibility of lucking out and finding the strangers immediately upon reaching the place where they were last seen was slim at best.

“So, did you find anything?” Wallace asked as Danny approached him having finished his preliminary investigation.

“No such luck. A few things dropped here and there, but nothing that could point us to any particular directon.” He shook his head.

“Well, it was a long-shot anyway.” Wallace shrugged and took one last puff of his cigarette before flickering the butt away. The man smoked like a chimney, taking advantage of every single break to indulge his vice. “We do it the hard way then?”

“The hard way it is.” Danny agreed.

Very soon, a map of the surrounding area was spread atop the hood of the leading car of the convoy. Around it, some of Wallace’s men, the captain himself, and Danny were gathered, trying to decide where to go next while the diplomatic team waited safely inside the reinforced bus, guarded by two squad members Wallace had assigned security duty to.

“What about southeast?” One of the women in the rounded group suggested. “There’s a river there. A large group needs a lot of water to drink, so it makes sense they could have set camp there.”

“Maybe. But there’s also a decent-sized town not far from there, or, well… there used to be.” Another squad member pointed at the map, showing the place he was referring to. “I don’t think they would choose to settle there given the very real danger of large zombie incursions.” He said, disagreeing with his companion’s earlier assessment.

“What about here?” Another pointed at another point on the map, marked by another small town. “This place might be a little harder to take and keep control off, but a large enough group like the one we are looking for might have pulled it off. Besides, there would be plenty of supplies in there if they cleared off the zombies.”

“That’s a possibility as well…” Wallace nodded his head and scratched his chin pensively.

After throwing ideas back and forth, the group managed to narrow down the possibilities to a dozen or so. The decision of where to go to first fell to Danny though, as per Hank’s orders.

Looking at the red spots they had noted on the map, he thought for a while before choosing to head East first before circling back, since that was the direction the group was coming from when they bumped into the scouting team according to Wallace’s recount.

Seeing that a decision had been made, Wallace clapped his hands to draw attention before saying, “That’s it then boys. We have our course set. I’m sure we are going to find our mysterious strangers in one of the places we marked, but since there are quite a few of them, let’s get this ball rolling already. The sooner we leave, the sooner we’ll finish this mission and can go back home for a nice break. Now, chop, chop.” He said, hurrying his men along back into the cars.

Following Wallace’s prompt, Danny rolled up the map and picked it up before following the man inside the leading car. Soon after, the convoy started moving again heading towards their first destination they might encounter their targets.

“So… Danny, fancy a wager?” The man sitting beside the driver, one of the more chatty of Wallace’s subordinates, suddenly spoke up a few moments later.

“What kind of wager?”

“Just a friendly bet, really. We’ll guess where we’ll find our targets. One can of food to join. Whoever guess it right, takes it all. Interested? I already have most of the squad on board.” The man turned behind and gazed at him.

“Sure, why not?” He smiled at the grinning men.

“Well, if he is in, then so am I.” Wallace added in a good mood.

Following that, the whole group was taken over by speculations and wild guesses, trading ideas through the radio and coordinating the bets. Each one trying to come out on top, as 10 cans of food was not an insignificant amount of wealth to anyone among them but Danny himself. The chances of making such big buck in one go were far and in-between while working as scouts.

Despite the growing enthusiasm, however, Danny did not think anyone would be claiming the final prize in the end. In his mind, he harbored the sneaking suspicion that they wouldn’t find the strangers in any of the places they marked. On the contrary, he felt that the map would not be of much use for them for much longer…

“Shit! Who was the brilliant fuck who had the idea to check that place? We almost got screwed!” The man driving the car swore, gripping the steering wheel tightly while he wiped the sweat off his brow as the convoy sped away down the road.

The first three locations they checked were complete busts with no signs of the mysterious strangers in sight, nor any indications of their passage there. Although the group failed to find them, things proceeded smoothly initially and they had not encountered much danger.

However, at the fourth spot, they finally met trouble.

Due to the layout of the buildings and the surrounding landscape, upon reaching the next marked spot - a small and insignificant town by the looks of it - the group failed to spot a zombie horde of threatening proportions waiting for them within the confines of the small village until they came face to face with it. Dangerously so.

The escape had been frantic following that.

Because of the cramped street space, they had no other recourse to get out of there other than to reverse gears and step on the gas pedal, heading out backwards as fast as they could. At the worst of it, the front car where Danny and Wallace rode in had half a dozen zombies hanging on top of the windshield and swinging around wildly as the driver desperately tried to shake them off.

Fortunately, however, they made their way out without losing anyone or damaging their vehicles too badly. The scare had been real though. Especially to those of the diplomatic group huddling inside the fortified bus, as most of them barely had any prior experience having direct contact with hordes of zombies.

Even some of Wallace’s squad team members had been shaken by the experience, if the driver’s outburst and the whitish coloring of his knuckles from gripping the steering wheel too strongly was anything to go by. It was hard to keep composed when hundreds of undead turned your way with hunger in their eyes before dashing madly towards you. Only time and practice could temper a firm-enough will to remain stoic in the face of something like that.

“It was not anyone’s fault. Who could have predicted that such a tiny town would have so many undead lying in there?” Wallace said in a conciliatory manner, not wanting people to start pointing fingers.

“…Why were that many zombies there? How did they get there and from where?” The uneasy driver asked a few seconds later after having calmed down somewhat and realizing he had allowed his mood get the better out of him, acting a bit out of line.

“Who knows? They might have been a survivor’s group who fled there only to be overrun in the end. Or maybe, a migrating horde came here following the trail of live humans before sticking around. Who can say? It doesn’t really matter now. They are dead either way.” The man sitting to the side of the driver gave his opinion.

“That’s kind of bleak isn’t it?” The driver asked while frowning.

‘No. That’s just life.’ Danny thought, but chose to keep quiet. No one else offered an answer either. Each one keeping to themselves as the atmosphere took a somber turn.

*SCREACH*

Some time later, and after having scouted half the spots the group had marked on the map, the convoy suddenly came to a stop.

“Okay. I am not the only one seeing this, right? I am not going crazy am I?” The driver of the front car, where Danny and Wallace were riding in, asked while turning around and facing the other passengers with incredulity on his face.

Without answering the flustered man, both the captain and Danny opened the doors and disembarked from the vehicle at the same time. Each one of them displaying a different reaction on their faces upon witnessing the scene in front of them. While the younger man calmly walked forward with measured steps, the captain stayed behind, patting his jacket frantically in search of his cigarettes and lighter and gazing wide-eyed straight ahead.

“Well… I’ll be damned…” It was all the leader of the small ten-men squad could come up with in the end. The shaking of his hands and the struggle to make his lighter work once he finally found it were a testament to his inner turmoil.

Further ahead, Danny crouched down and narrowed his eyes. There were no two ways to describe it. At some point, the road simply… ended. As if by split by the sharpest of tools or by a God brandishing a gigantic blade, the land had been separated in two.

On one side, there was their group and the interrupted road. On the other, there was simply wild fields stretching across the horizon. It was as if the world ended at one point and another one began immediately after. Like looking through a portal to another dimension.

The ordinary outlook of the scenery on the other side of the divide didn’t bring them any comfort either. On the contrary, the situation only seemed all the more jarring. The trees, the grass, the bushes… everything was different from one side to the other. Not an alien kind of different… just different. Different in the sense that forests in North America and Europe are dissimilar to one another. The species of flora were not the same.

As he caressed the edge of the fractured ground, feeling the smoothness of the cut, Danny knew one thing for sure – he was finally witnessing proof of something Tutu had revealed to him quite some time ago.

The land had been shuffled. It seemed that their current maps had reached the end of their utility. They would have to start drawing new ones…