"I'll take point. Roxy, watch my six. You, stay put and keep an eye out of here."
Michael relayed the following orders and armed himself with a handgun. Roxy nodded to his words and pulled out her two hatchets while Lucky only responded to his words with a nod.
Taking the lead, Michael pulled the other door open and walked inside.
Stepping inside, Michael's face immediately scrunched up as the rotten smell inside was even worse than he had thought.
'There is not a single body lying around, just where is this stench coming from?' Michael thought while suspiciously looking around as they moved.
"Something's up." Roxy remarked with a grave expression while following behind him. She had also noticed the lack of bodies inside even with all the numerous blood stains all over the place.
"Yeah, make sure to keep an eye out." Michael reminded her while carefully moving ahead.
He wasn't worried about any walkers suddenly popping up, but he's wary of any potential human threats that might crop up.
A couple of minutes had passed by, Michael and Roxy had checked almost every room in the police station, but the awful feeling became even more apparent since they didn't discover anything out of the ordinary.
Roxy was worried that there might be more danger lying around and immediately advised Michael. "I think we should just leave."
While Roxy was starting to feel unsettled, Michael on the other hand felt that this place is hiding something far worse than walkers and he is determined to look to the bottom of it. "No, there's clearly something wrong in this building. We've already checked every room of this place and we still haven't found where this foul stench is coming from. The only place we haven't checked yet is this one right here."
Since the smell had already permeated throughout the building, Michael had a hard time pinpointing where the smell of rotting stench was coming from even with his enhanced physical abilities.
In front of them, was a door leading towards some kind of storage room, which is clearly obvious since there's also a sign hanging above it. Michael was about to move towards the door when Roxy suddenly grabbed his shoulder and stopped him. "That's why we need to leave this place right now. This place is too clean, devoid of any corpses. There should have at least been some remains lying around, but there haven't been any, not a single one at all."
"I think we might be dealing with a cannibal group here." Roxy remarked.
Michael just shook his head to her words. "Cannibalism? That's impossible, it's barely been three months since the virus outbreak. There's still a lot of supplies lying around, and it might not even come to that since nature would have already taken over much of the land and we'd be feeding off it."
"Yeah, but what if they were already cannibals even before the virus outbreak started?" Roxy responded, and with a short pause, she continued. "There were a lot of rumors flying around about this place having cannibals before. I want you to be aware of that."
Michael shook her off and had just grabbed the door handle when he heard her words. He slightly turned his body around to look at her. "Really? This small town has cannibals? But how would you know that when you're not even from around here?"
"I grew up here until we moved during middle school." Roxy responded, but only saw Michael ignoring her words and opened the door.
"Achk!"
The moment those doors were opened, the heavy stench of rotten meat immediately assaulted their senses as Roxy had started gagging in disgust while Michael just bore with it and stared directly at the stairs leading down to the unknown with a grave expression.
Michael took a small torch light from his pocket and illuminated the path down. The stairs leading down weren't deep and Michael immediately saw more bloodstains and the signs of bodies being dragged down here through it.
"This..you're not planning on going down to that hellhole right?" Roxy had collected herself, and with a weakened expression on her face. She approached him and also saw the scenes down below and even saw a pair of small feet sticking out from the corner.
Michael looked grave and he responded. "No. Go and gather the remaining weapons and ammo. I'll stay here and keep watch just in case."
Roxy couldn't wait to leave this place and immediately agreed. "Alright, I'll get it done quick."
After a short while, Michael heard Roxy shouting his name from the entrance.
"Michael! I'm done here, let's go!"
Michael gave one last look at the darkness below and closed the door behind him. Soon, he left the building with a heavy heart.
Crackle! Crackle! Crackle!
Michael and the others stood from a distance as they watched the police station being engulfed in a fire.
"Someone killed those people, didn't they?" Roxy remarked after a long silence.
Michael turned around and slowly walked back to his bike. "Yeah, and whoever they are, they will soon come here when they see the smoke from wherever they are."
The three clueless people just looked at each other before Joel turned to Roxy. "Just what did you two see in there?"
"I'm also not sure since we only took a glimpse at it and didn't go down to check it out, but I'm sure there must be a lot of dead bodies down there just from how heavy the stench was." Roxy responded and had the urge to gag just from remembering the earlier events inside the station.
"So what now?" one of the soldiers couldn't help but ask aloud. He was feeling worried that they might have stumbled onto something they shouldn't have.
Roxy had started walking towards the truck with the others in tow. "We hide. It seems Michael wants to get rid of whoever was behind it."
Joel had been analyzing their conversation and had already painted a picture of what they saw down there. "But what if those people placed those bodies inside there to prevent them from turning?'
"Burning or burying them would have been an easier solution. Besides, except for those bloodstains we saw on the walls and furniture, they even cleaned up after them but deliberately made it look like the station was overrun. There's a high chance that those people are still around here somewhere."
."Probably to lure unsuspecting survivors who'd fail to see those tiny details." Joel also offered some insights to what their purpose might be.
"Whatever it will be, we'll get rid of them today. Lest more would fall victim to their hands." Michael remarked from the side while giving a final check on his handguns.
"Then should we start planning on how to ambush them?" One soldier asked.
"No need. Lucky will operate that rocket launcher and hide from behind the truck. Obliterate whoever comes in my signal, got it?" Michael turned to look at the man and gave him his following orders.
"Roger that. Doing a good deed today by getting rid of a group of menaces doesn't sound so bad." Lucky responded with a chuckle before hopping on onto the back of the truck and started preparing the rocket launcher.
On the other hand, Michael's hunch seems to be spot on since there was a group of several survivors camped out in the woods just two miles from the small town.
"Hey, isn't that the direction where Iota is?" one of them noticed the trail of smoke in the distance and pointed.
"Dammit, some survivors must have discovered those meats down at the station and decided to burn it down! Now of all times when we're away! Let's go!"
"What? I still haven't tasted that meat from that delicate young woman from the other day! Let's hurry back, quick!"
A rugged looking man with long hair and tied to a ponytail was angered when he realized that their "meat" might have gotten compromised!
So, he immediately led his people out of the woods and returned to the road where they had left their cars and hastily drove back towards the direction of Iota.
Meanwhile, in front of the truck.
Michael stood waiting alongside the other soldier called Hans while Joel had gone and accompanied Roxy on a nearby hill to provide them cover if trouble really came.
Vroooom~!
"What the..are you a fortune teller or something? There are really people coming."
Listening to the sound of multiple vehicles coming from down the road and finally laying their eyes on a convoy of vehicles turning up in the distance, Hans felt surprised that Michael's hunch turned out to be right.
Michael lightly shrugged his shoulders. "Hunch. Besides, the station still had a number of weapons which you saw Roxy had gathered earlier. So I took the chance that someone must have left them there and decided to see if I was right. Turns out I was right."
"So, if you had been wrong, then would we have waited here for hours in vain?" Hans suddenly had an urge to hit someone.
"Yeah, if it meant getting rid of potential trouble. Then why the hell not?" Michael responded like it wasn't a big deal.
"Anyway, get ready. They're almost here."
****
"Heads up! There are people up ahead!"
The driver of the car leading the convoy immediately radioed the others following behind them.
[Copy that!]
[It seems we'll have some new meat coming in tonight!]
"F*ck! Those people really burned down the station! I'm going to skin them alive when I get my hands on them!" A crazy looking dude cursed when he saw the burning police station in the distance and what's left of it.
"A soldier, this looks like trouble. There must be others nearby. Don't do anything reckless once we get there, especially you, Joe." Hans in his combat uniform immediately attracted the leader of this group and immediately grew apprehensive and gave a stern warning to one of them.