Just as Lori's group found the sign, Shane and a small group of people were looking for Rick.
They set out more than half a day earlier, but their direction was different from Lori's group, although the general direction was similar, they were not in the same area.
Because of the horde of walkers, they had to detour a long way before they reached a farm.
"Zz... Rick, can you read me?"
"Zz..."
"Damn it! Where did he go?"
"Are we still looking for him?"
After pondering for a moment, though unwilling, he knew there was no point in continuing to search, and that they could only trust themselves next.
"Let's return to base first, we did everything in our power."
...
Rick and his group slowly entered a small town, it was already dark and many people were tired and hungry.
"Find a house to set up first, it will be dark soon."
Although the condition was not very good, everyone cheered up and started to clear the surrounding walkers.
A whistle blew not far away, and Abraham found an open dwelling.
Rick looked around, waved at him, and gestured to walk further into town. They just stopped to look for resources in many closed houses.
While collecting supplies, they searched for a suitable place to stay. After about an hour, it was getting dark and gradually there were more and more walkers wandering the street that were hard to spot.
Finally they found a suitable dwelling in the middle of town.
"Quick, get in quick."
Rick stood in the doorway, looking intently at the surrounding streets. There were more than a dozen walkers coming out of the intersection not far away. If they stayed outside all this time, they wouldn't be able to finish taking out all these walkers without getting out unscathed.
After everyone entered the house and closed the door, they relaxed a bit and the next step was to inspect the entire house.
After a careful inspection, the other half of Rick's uneasiness was also relieved.
Abraham looked at them a little strangely and asked in an exaggerated tone.
"Is this necessary?"
Rick looked at him and said nothing, but Guillermo, who was off to the side, recounted his experience last night and the room was silent for a while.
After a while, Abraham said quietly.
"I am the luckiest person in the world!"
The few people who were taking food out of their backpacks suddenly looked at him, and Elen asked a little strangely.
"Why do you say that?"
There was an inexplicable light in the eyes of the red-haired man, who looked a bit sad and hopeful, as if he was remembering something, after a while, he smiled and said something ambiguous.
"Hehe, I just think I'm lucky, at least I haven't met those guys who want to kill me, isn't that enough?"
Rick, who was sitting on the couch, suddenly spoke up. "Maybe, but as long as you carry on with this life, you will eventually find people looking to kill you."
Abraham smiled casually and pointed to Eugene beside him.
"As long as they send you to Washington, what if I die? An unknown guy like me will be remembered even if he dies."
Hearing Washington mentioned again, Rick shook his head without accepting those words, he really didn't believe this guy named Eugene.
On the other hand, Elen continued to ask curiously.
"You said that things about the virus are confidential, so you should be able to tell us where to go in Washington? Didn't Rick say in the afternoon that his friend is in Washington now, and that we can contact him and ask him to check it out first?"
As soon as Elen's question came up, Eugene's expression became a little unnatural, and these little details did not escape Rick's eyes.
He was now becoming more and more certain that something was wrong with this guy. He hasn't mentioned the vaccine to these people until now because of this guy named Eugene.
In fact, Elen's question was not asked casually, but he explained it, the purpose was to take the person by surprise and he could take the opportunity to observe the other party's reaction.
After being silent for a while, Eugene realized that he had to have a reasonable explanation, otherwise, these people might have doubts about him.
"Let's not talk about whether your friend can find the place I'm going to. Even if he finds it, an ordinary person can't enter at all. In other words, the only way is to send me safely to Washington."
As soon as he finished speaking, Rick, who had been silent for a long time, finally spoke.
"So what's your so-called solution vaccine? Biological weapons? There must be a general direction, right? How can we believe your words if you don't reveal anything?"
Eugene still had that stupid expression, but he was quickly weaving rhetoric in his mind.
After a while, as if he had made up his mind, his eyes became sharper and he exhaled slightly.
"I am part of the Deft-10 Human Genome Project, and we are tasked with weaponizing known diseases against some of the biological weapons that already exist, lethal microbes against lethal microbes, as they say. For some time now, I've been working in an organization and have deep contacts with several departments of the same nature, so I'm very familiar with how this works."
"If all goes as it did a few days ago I believe that with some tweaking in our lab in Washington, we can turn the tables and kill all the undead on the planet."
"If all goes well, it still sounds pretty good."
Abraham smiled and nodded endlessly, in his opinion, this thing is very reliable and he firmly believes that this plan will succeed.
But the trio in the prison did not think so, Rick stared at the guy with strange hair, constantly weighing the credibility of these words in his heart, and asked after a while.
"The adjustments you requested are the most important part of this matter, right? In other words, you must have other means to kill the virus, right?"
Eugene's expression returned to that bored look again, while Abraham aside interrupted Rick's questioning.
"Don't bother him, even if I tell you how to do it, will you do it?"
Rick, who had a straight face, laughed at this point. The base labs have been researching for so long on the virus. So far, they constantly go out to find resources for their experiments, test subjects, subjects with variant infections, but the research progress is still slow.
It seems that after the development of the second level vaccine, a period of slow research has been entered. Candace once said that the development of this vaccine will be a long process and it would be an unexpected joy to be able to produce a type of vaccine that gives them immunity. At this time, a person sneered, he thought it was a bit funny to say that the problem of the undead could be solved quickly.
"Hehe, sorry, this reason is really exaggerated. If you say that our base has developed a vaccine, what would you say?"
At this moment, except for Guillermo and Morgan, everyone else looked at Rick, who spoke in disbelief.
"What did you say?"
"Vaccine!"
Rick paid no attention to the reactions of the others, he saw Eugene's expression turn extremely cold, as if he had changed.
"You're just lying, Washington doesn't have the answer, you just want to..."
Before he finished speaking, Abraham, who had been bowing his head in silence, suddenly jumped out of his chair and his huge fist shot out at Rick.
"Shut up!