"As for the cult, it is located in a shopping mall called The Galleria..."
Hearing the name of this place, Airon muttered it under his breath, and he couldn't help but be entranced, such a big place should house the people this man mentioned, and once thinking what these people are trying to do he shouldn't take it easy.
Everything, since coming to Texas had escalated more and more into much darker and harder to solve problems, now that he found out about the nuclear warheads he thinks it was a good fate within all the bad to run into these people who want to completely destroy his world.
If he hadn't come to Texas and run into these people, what would have happened to this place and the rest of the country? He, his people, friends and community would be destroyed without realizing it.
At this point, when Airon heard all this information, he really wanted to go now with helicopters and destroy this whole place. But he had to be smart, getting that second key and knowing the location of the submarine was paramount to get his hands on nuclear weapons. With that power, there would be nothing to fear from the CRM, or defend against them if they also had such weapons in their possession.
Unexpectedly, this which was a big problem, could be a good opportunity to eliminate some troublesome enemies and in turn obtain a weapon of mass destruction.
When he thought about this, Airon said, "So, since your task is to find that stupid key, where is it and why were they torturing those people in the basement of their shelter?"
"We haven't found it yet..."
Dario nodded, smiled wryly at random and said, "However, even though we have been searching this small town for almost half a month and so far we have found one important clue, those people in the basement were related to a government official who had the second key. Even now I suspect the key is in one of those people's asses, a place we don't look."
"Those people? Seems like even then you could never have found it, why are you following Teddy's orders?"
"Because he has some of our family members, when he recruits a community he doesn't kill anyone, he just takes some important members who can't defend themselves and threatens to kill them if we don't obey him."
Dario did not hide anything and answered truthfully, "There are very few supplies in this small town. We all know that we can't find food like we did before, so we had to split up in the city. Some groups are in charge of food, some more of the weapons and the remaining ones to eliminate walkers."
Speaking of this, Dario looked at Airon and said, "I didn't expect him to be your first target when attacking us. We had heard that the Vultures were killed and we couldn't find out anything about their background.... But that very day you were coming for our shelter..."
"Even without us finding out that you were the ones who destroyed the Vultures, after we approached the damn church we ran into you. I'm telling you seriously, in Teddy's shelter not everyone is part of the cult, in that place is my daughter and I hope you don't attack without first getting them out of that place."
"How do you want me to get them out without my men dying in the attempt?"
Hearing this, Dario didn't know what to say, these things weren't planned for these people, and he didn't know how to logically force these people to be reasonable with Teddy's cult.
"Hehe..."
Seeing that the other party stopped talking, Airon chuckled and didn't continue with the topic, and asked, "I heard that Teddy was a rational man, he may try but that I should think about it. Now tell me, where is the submarine located?"
"I don't know much, when I told you we found a submarine I meant it in a general way! But what I do know is that it is stranded off a beach, Teddy's people look after it but there aren't many of them."
As he said that, Dario slowly said what little he knew, "Teddy is a very rational leader, although we don't know exactly where that sub is, no one really cares. As long as we have food and he doesn't treat us badly, no one is excited about betraying him. But even if you kill me, you have to be careful when you go north of Texas."
"North?"
Hearing what Dario said, Airon twisted the corners of his mouth and thought, "What the hell is this about being careful? I'm waiting for your words since I can't figure it out."
However, even though Airon was talking normally to Dario, he still had no expression on his face, and was looking at him intently while being judged by Daniel's sharp eyes.
"Long before we met Teddy we were a bit ignorant about what was really going on in the world. Just getting guns from abandoned houses, we thought life was easy."
"That's really a stupid way of thinking..."
Airon scoffed and went on to ask, "I mean, does anything really scary happen in North Texas?"
"That's right."
Dario said, "We've looked everywhere, for food, weapons and medicine. But rumors from the survivors we ran into say that something bad is happening in North Texas. They say that other kinds of infected undead are hiding in that place. A lot of my people went to that place, but they never came back."
"Oh, no wonder this is a damn hellhole too, I guess someone hid the walkers in the buildings and did a pretty good job of it."
After hearing this, Airon understood why the walkers appeared so quickly when the helicopter crashed and also learned of why there weren't many more walkers elsewhere.
Speaking here, he can be considered to understand the overall situation of Teddy's cult. From what he has learned so far, with the exception of the cult and the submarine, there is not enough of a threat to jeopardize the success of their objective.
Slightly relieved, Airon no longer asked too much about the survivors here, but instead became interested in the two groups of survivors who were fighting when he escaped from the tunnel with Alicia.
"Are there survivors who are not linked to the cult outside the mall? I heard that two groups of survivors were fighting a few days ago, do you know anything about that?"
Dario didn't expect the other party to still be interested in this and was a little surprised, but the other party wanted to listen, so he also said, "I don't know why they fought. And no, they're not tied to the cult."
"But I heard that that shelter was attacked because they helped a man and a girl escape, who are being sought by that group of survivors."
"A man and a girl..."
Hearing these words, Airon felt a little familiar, but said nothing specifically.
Dario continued, "As for other places, there is a relatively large survivor organization in Coleman, just outside of downtown. It's a powerful refuge and they call themselves 'Fireflies.' There are said to be many other bases with the same name, but it's not known for sure."
"Fireflies?"
Hearing about another survivor organization, Airon was very surprised.
He really hadn't expected there to be so many survivor organizations in Texas.
"Tell me about them."
"They... they are a very... crazy... organization..."
As soon as the "Fireflies" were mentioned, the expression on Dario's face suddenly became more lively, with fear, dread and even... a bit of admiration.
Seeing such an obvious change in the other party's eyes, Airon couldn't help but raise his eyebrows, showing some interest in this survivor organization.
"The Fireflies are a revolutionary militia group. They rebelled against alleged military oppression in numerous Quarantine Zones around the United States, in order to re-establish government control. However, they failed in their war against the military. Meanwhile, the Fireflies were searching for their own vaccine for the virus. They are said to have spread to many parts of the country, but right now nothing more is known about them."
"Then why don't you join them?
"Be a part of them?" Hearing this, Dario shook his head dejectedly and said in a reluctant tone, "There are numerous survivors who want to join them. But since we have attacked a group of Firefly survivors, I feel at ease with being alive so far..."
Having said that, Dario seemed to have thought of something, and suddenly a gloating expression appeared on his face, and he said, "However, before I left, I heard from the other survivors that something happened to them."
"Oh, what do you mean?"
Airon didn't mind the other party's tone as if he was telling a story and asked curiously.
"There were internal conflicts in the Fireflies, and some of the bases were overrun by numerous undead. I think their current situation is not very good."
Dario reminisced for a moment and said, "It is said that it was caused by a group of people who had just entered. One of them is the younger brother of the same man who escaped with the girl and caused them a lot of trouble. I don't really know what happened to them, I heard all this from numerous survivors I took in my group."
""Eh..."
Seeing this situation, Airon raised his hand to look at the time, and before he knew it, almost half an hour had passed.
He shrugged, got up from his chair, smiled at Dario in the seat and said, "It's a pleasure chatting with you, but this is the end of our conversation and I'm going to talk to the next man."
As he spoke, Airon walked behind Dario.
Seeing the other party's movement, Dario immediately realized what was going on and quickly shouted, "No, I still have information..."
"Sleep!"
But before he finished speaking, he heard a gust of wind coming from his ear, the words in his mouth stopped abruptly and he lost consciousness again.