"What's going on?"
The exclamation of a soldier from AA squad surprised Rick, he ran to the door and, at the same time as he asked that question, he saw five people standing at the other end of the hallway.
All of these people were wearing military uniforms, holding rifles in their hands, and the muzzles of the weapons were pointed towards a group of people who were likewise aiming without hesitation.
The light in the hallway was too dim but the light from the gun lamps illuminated the faces of those people, and when he saw that these were military people he frowned and the gun in his hand was raised directly towards those people, his tone was slow and clear for them to understand.
"Listen, if I were on your side, I would put the guns down immediately before things get really bad for you!"
Of these five unknown people, a slightly short figure stepped out in front. Rick probably guessed that this man should be the leader of these people, but their weapons had already been lowered even without him asking again.
"What unit do you belong to?"
Rick didn't speak, but he signaled to the people behind him and walked in front of the door. The soldiers looked at each other and instantly understood what he meant, and they slowly retreated backwards but their guns never took their aim off those people.
Only then did Rick speak to the man.
"Put your weapons down on the ground and then we'll talk!"
Unexpectedly, the man in front waved his hands, and the people behind him lowered their weapons and after placing them on the ground raised their hands to indicate they were not hostile.
Rick slowly stepped back, waved the barrel of his gun and signaled, "Go ahead, let's have a good talk."
Soon, five people entered the cafeteria under the surveillance of Rick's group of people, and at this moment finally as soon as everyone saw the faces of these people, the leader of these strangers was a very skinny man, apparently about thirty years old, and half of his body was covered by a thick beard, but his big eyes impressed Rick, and the others. In all, there were two black men and three other white men who seemed to be nervous about the situation.
"That's good, they don't need to make any strange moves, next I'll ask them some questions and you, the one in front, will answer them all. I don't want you to get the wrong ideas, understand?"
"Of course we understand!" replied the abnormally happy short man in front.
Rick gestured to the people around him, and immediately two members of the group stepped out and stood behind the five people. The five opened their hands cooperatively. After a while of inspection, one team member shook his head.
"Captain, they have no weapons."
Rick nodded reassuringly, looked at the man in front and asked, "Tell me your name."
The man in front was the first to speak, "I'm Derek, squad leader of the people in this place."
He then pointed to the men to his right behind him and said, "This one who looks like a dog is Lauter, and next to him is Liam."
Then Derek pointed to the two black men on the other side behind him and said, "This is Colton and the one next to him is named Peter."
After he introduced himself and introduced the four people next to him, Derek went on to explain.
"We are from the national guard that was stationed at this location. When the large-scale virus outbreak broke out, we had just arrived at this military base and due to the bitter journey we were resting in our dormitory. At night, we heard a lot of gunfire from the security post outside the base..."
Saying this, Derek seemed to look around still nervously and said, "We had originally taken our weapons and intended to support, but when we came out of the dorms those running infected had been attacking all of our comrades. We couldn't do anything but hide due to all the places being locked down."
"But those walkers were fast, much faster than the reports, the infection of the infected was spreading through the body at great speed and it only took a few seconds for our companions to become one of those things. Their red eyes were terrifying, I thought all this time that we could die at any moment."
"So with the little time we had I decided to put the food in the small storage room in the cafeteria. It was safer after all. But those infected made it all the way to this place, leaving us without much food."
Rick looked at the military rations that had fallen to the floor in the back kitchen and understood how these things got there, but Derek had not yet finished his explanation.
"It was too fast, as we were moving things around, the infected group rushed at high speed into the cafeteria. Originally there were a dozen of us, but in the end it was just the five of us. Relying on what little we gathered, we survived this year, but the food we had moved also ran out, if you had come a week later, we would probably die, so we would like to thank you for saving our lives."
After listening to Derek's words, Rick looked at the five people carefully, although what the other party said was well founded, he still doubted them. For some reason, this whole moment he felt that the other party was only telling a part of the truth.
"Now my people are clearing this base, so we have time for you to take us to your bedroom."
Rick decided to check out the other party's bedroom thoroughly.
"Okay, follow us..."
As they passed through the hallway, Rick picked up the weapons Derek and the other four that they had thrown on the floor earlier, only to find that they were all empty, and these guys dared to confront them with weapons without ammunition.
Seeing Rick's movements, Derek smiled wryly and explained to Rick, "We couldn't rush to the armory, and our weapons ammunition ran out long ago, otherwise we wouldn't be stuck here, these damn monsters have been surrounding the bedroom door, we couldn't get out, and the windows were full of monsters, we sealed all the windows, otherwise it would be a disaster if the monsters attacked us."
As he spoke, they all reached the dormitory area, but the stench was so strong that when the group behind Rick that accompanied him entered, they felt that the air in this place was much stronger than in the cafeteria.
Rick and his team checked room by room and sure enough, it was similar to what Derek and the others said: there were no weapons in the dorm where they lived.
Rick had no intention of leaving any clues, he took some people to check the rooms one by one, but they couldn't find anything, but at the end of the hallway, Rick found a locked room.
Putting his ear back against the door, Rick heard the distinctive sound of walking corpses coming from inside, and he could also smell a musty odor through the door.
Rick turned his head to look at Derek beside him and asked grimly. "Are those walkers?"
Derek's expression turned a little sad, he held out his hands and said in a choked voice.
"These are our brothers. Didn't I just tell you that we were originally more than a dozen people? In that place we have the comrades who were bitten and some others ended up taking their own lives. We wanted to remove them, but we couldn't, so before they became one of those things, we dumped them there."
This group of five looked very sad and their expressions showed the most sorrowful face. Among them, there were some who even held their faces and began to cry. Lauter aside, he comforted his companion and before long the atmosphere in the corridor became a little sad.
Derek sighed, sympathized with these people, but then comforted them with encouraging words.
"In today's world, being alive is already the greatest happiness. They should not be sad, they can join us if necessary."
Derek exhaled and seemed to have cried out a little, he shook his head and said, "No need, right now that we are free we need to go find our families. Do you think you can give us some weapons?"
Looking at the sad looking people in front of him, Rick and the others looked at each other and stepped aside. Rick continued to look carefully at some of the people, he really couldn't find any problems so far, and he felt a little relieved at the same time, maybe these people really were trapped here like they said.
He took a few steps back and discussed with the people behind him in a low voice.
"What do you think?"
Daniel was a little unsure, but said anyway. "I think your explanation is also tenable, after all, what we just saw is the case."
Derek was originally a guy with no opinions, and now he has a little faith in the other side's explanation.
"I think that's fine," Jim said a little strangely, but then added, "But I don't know if I'm the only one who thinks something we're not observing right about these people."
Rick was silent for a moment and looked up at the sky outside. It was early yet, the people outside were clearing the base and you could tell everyone would be fine after Airon communed with him, so he voiced his thoughts.
"No matter what happens to them, I have no intention of bringing them back to the base, we need to wait and set up an outpost at this location where refugees and resources will arrive."
Rick was still a little worried about these people, but he didn't want to murder them in cold blood without having any evidence that these people are bad guys. So, in the end, after some thought, he had finally made up his mind.