The central base, the heart of the S.C.T. and its growth went smoothly, and the special teams that continuously transported materials from different locations returned to the base.
At the same time, the expansion of several military bases was also progressing slowly under Shane and Rick's leadership. To be precise, the camps that were cleared by Sam and his people were not military bases. All those outposts were just temporary camps built to control the situation when the end of the world broke out. But that doesn't take away from the fact that they have good stuff.
However, these were all carefully taken over by the forward base run by Airon, so now the large military bases scattered around Atlanta were being prioritized.
But this process was slow, many needed to clear massive roadblocks slowly before going through and expanding special community passages, and being careful with the hordes of walkers that can appear at any moment, sometimes special teams spent days clearing roads with vehicles which was very irritating.
And as time went on and the number of outings increased, gradually the deaths began to appear, which made Rick in particular feel precise.
When Airon was in a base, every time he left, he carefully planned many things, his orders in battle or activity in the growth of the bases could avoid some dangerous factors in many cases, but since he left, especially Rick was not quite used to manage a massive base, there are too many issues both trivial and complex waiting for his attention, which makes Rick very tired.
Watching community members lowering anti-aircraft artillery from large military trucks into an open space, Rick walked over to Shane who had arrived this morning, and seeing the restrained words visible on his friend left Shane intrigued.
"What's up?"
Rick understood the hand and pointed to the anti-aircraft gunnery, he shook his head a little unsure and said, "Shane, now we really realize how hard it was for Airon in the beginning, about running a shelter all that is too exhausting, no wonder he relied on so many people to help him with that job."
Shane smiled and said casually, "Brother, you don't need to belittle your work, Airon made sure to look for people with his same mentality and potential to leave us such important positions, we are not as bad at leading as he is."
Hearing these words, Rick's tone was a little low, "No, no, since Airon left this place, at least on this base there have been many deaths over and over again. When Airon was in this place leading, there were no casualties except Jimmy, and the cause of his death was either due to Lori or not. Since then, I've killed a lot of bastards out there and kept it from Lori."
Noticing Rick's changes as a leader, Shane grabbed his friend by the shoulder and pointed to him. "Airon had a lot of trouble in Texas, lost a lot of people and nearly had his life taken by a fucking lunatic cult, but losses nowadays is kind of inevitable."
"Don't think of it that way, we've done a good job on the bases we liberated. Look how strong we are becoming. Few people can do what we together have accomplished. When Airon left, he suggested we lead on important people bases, which means he recognizes our abilities."
Rick listened to Shane and nodded, the dead rest and the living remembered them as a weight of motivation. No one blames his leadership, everyone in fact respects him and talks about how he is a good leader. There is still some time before Airon returns, so now everything possible to keep this place from becoming a disaster.
"We can only judge people and take care that everything continues to grow in an orderly fashion. We can't prevent accidents, but we can eliminate potential threats."
...
Just as Rick was having trouble coming to grips with whether his leadership was correct, Airon was also having some trouble.
It's been over a month since he entered into a covenant with the Hilltop community and the Kingdom. After arriving in Alexandria he realized that Hilltop did not accept military aid, so it was perfect for what he wanted to do later. With this in mind, he took Daryl and Merle to conduct a thorough investigation around Alexandria.
Before long, Airon confirmed the location of the Jadis community at the dump and Oceanside, but for now decided not to contact these two strange communities, Daryl and Merle had no say in their decisions.
As for the whereabouts of the saviors, Airon really isn't something that matters much to him, although he wondered if they were at the factory as they should have been originally, is he really that far ahead of events?
With this question in mind, Airon found an outpost of the saviors in the original story, the satellite station, but discovered that it was empty, except for a small amount of supplies, there was no one in sight.
Unwilling to believe that they were not present, he found the factory that was the saviors headquarters and found nothing at this location.
On the other hand, the rest of his people, who have been traveling frequently in the Hilltop shelter to make some small exchanges and look for information, are familiar with two people in particular, George and Bob.
Airon did not send soldiers to Hilltop, so he decided to send survivors and these two men are well liked in the shelters, who help with many things besides processing the exchange.
Once visiting the Kingdom to receive the report and what was needed, George solved a problem at the time, and this incident was seen by Jesus who had come to trade with the Kingdom.
As for Bob, he mainly helps people who have a medical checkup. Although there are also two doctors at Hilltop, is an obstetrician and gynecologist, while Bob is a real military doctor. He is quite good at treating some common diseases and traumas.
Especially in the Kingdom, people often get sick due to lack of medical care. Originally, Ezekiel's first choice was a nurse, and when he wanted to consult Airon about some things the S.C.T community leader's whereabouts were mysterious, so Bob was the most knowledgeable one he could talk to.
At first, the two sides traded mainly in materials, but after contacting each other several times, Airon was asking for the things he was interested in to improve Alexandria while delivering them what they wanted, especially Hilltop who had not joined his leadership.
But this did not limit the reaction, especially Jesus and Ezekiel.
They were all in awe of the fighting power of Airon's group. With only a dozen people it was enough to leave impressions, proving that each had their own unique abilities. But these were mostly survivors, and not soldiers like the ones protecting the Kingdom or Alexandria.
Among them, Jesus was the one who most regretted that they refused the protection of this group of people, but he was surprised that even if that happened these people were not hostile to him. And in a short time, he made many friends when he went out alone.
Now, following Airon's team, although a large portion of the supplies would be distributed, the efficiency was not much greater, which made him discover that some of these people seemed to be stiff.
After a recent sortie, Airon's group stayed in Alexandria as they were feeling very tired from the frequent sorties. Airon told everyone to take a break so that he could think about the next moves they would make. Since arriving in this community, many members of Alexandria had joined his group and obeyed his orders.
After a month of training, everyone seemed to have a more confident look on their faces, which was what I had hoped to see from the beginning.
In a quiet place, Airon looked at Madison's group who were sitting together with many acquaintances and greeted everyone before sitting down.
"How has everyone been doing this past week?"
Nick, who was sitting to the side, smiled sincerely and said, "This is a good place as you promised, all these people are growing from scratch as you mentioned which was easy for us to integrate."
"It's a good place, Airon..." Madison said as she looked around the quiet and beautiful place that was Alexandria.
Everyone from Texas nodded as they heard these words, and many of them said nothing.
Merle joked with a smile, "Well, I had to train one of the kids you brought from Texas, name was Nick right? Don't forget to learn from me if you want to be a good warrior."
They all laughed when they heard that.
And the Alexandria natives followed more familiar with Madison's group joining them in this small gathering. During this period of time, their learning could be described as rapid progress. Most of them can now solve a large number of walkers on their own. Although there are still some accidents, they have all become great learners and solved their mistakes.
The first dozen people in Alexandria who joined the training gradually grew to more than thirty and now with the people from Madison, Alexandria had become a large community with hundreds of people.
In the distance, Deanna looked at the group of people in the open space, eyes thoughtful. Over the past month, the changes brought about by the other party here are noticeable. It can be seen by the change of attitude towards them by their own people, although there are only a dozen people close to each other, but these ten or so people are members who used to go out frequently in Alexander. She agrees with many of the actions of the others, but her position restricts some of their behavior. If she is just an ordinary member of the community, she would join the Airon team without hesitation.
But he still had some concerns on his conscience, so he had to have a good conversation with Airon, and once and for all know that which he had not told him since he came to this place.
The crowd below was chatting happily at the moment, only Alicia saw their movements and immediately showed a thoughtful expression about what was really going on.