Chapter 66: Delegating Authority
CRASH!
With Lin Fan adding his strength, the men gave a mighty heave, and the small car toppled onto the roadside.
Aside from Liu Bin, the men who had helped push the car exchanged stunned glances, nervously stealing looks at Lin Fan, who was rolling up his sleeves off to the side.
The moment he’d lent a hand, the car had become impossibly light—every one of them had felt it.
They had all watched from the building as Lin Fan slaughtered the zombies. But smashing a zombie’s head with a club? These young men figured that with the right weapon and a good wind-up, they could probably manage that too.
But a car that weighed over a ton...
That was pure, terrifying strength, something almost beyond human limits...
Liu Bin glanced around and saw that everyone was staring at Lin Fan. He quickly clapped his hands.
"Come on, don’t just stand there gawking! Let’s get the next one. Brother Lin, could you give us a hand? It’s... a little tough for just the few of us..."
Lin Fan had been planning to move the cars himself anyway and had only asked for a bit of help. He never expected Liu Bin to, for some reason, take on the whole burden himself and fail to even lift it.
To avoid wasting any more time, he had proactively taken the center position to bear most of the weight.
With Lin Fan joining in, the other two cars were dispatched in the same fashion. In no time, the three vehicles that had been blocking more than half the road were all toppled on the roadside. Liu Bin then organized a few men to drag all the corpses from the street into a corner on one side.
Soon, aside from a few bloodstains, the street was completely clear of obstructions.
Seeing the way was clear, Lin Fan had Chu Zhaotian bring over the RV, which had 10 kWh of power, intending to give them an electrical hookup to get the warehouse open first.
’I should help them solve their food problem first,’ he thought. ’Otherwise, I’ll never feel at ease with my two RVs parked downstairs.’
’Although many people witnessed today’s zombie extermination, anyone with half a brain knows to steer clear of the area under my apartment. But you never know what someone driven mad by hunger might do; they could do something no sane person would even imagine.’
"Let’s go. We’ll head inside and take a look first..."
While Chu Zhaotian went to get the RV, Lin Fan beckoned to Liu Bin, and they headed into the supermarket to check it out first.
The last time he’d been here, the supermarket had still held plenty of goods. But after being ransacked by dozens of survivors, all that was left were scattered shelves and a pile of sundries on one side of the room. Even the moldy fruits and vegetables had been swept away. Not so much as a lollipop remained.
"This way, take a look..."
Exiting through a door at the back of the supermarket, Lin Fan expected to find himself in the residential complex across the way, but was surprised to find a small courtyard instead.
To the left of the courtyard was a large shed, where hundreds of unopened jugs of water were piled. Two electric tricycles were parked beside them.
To the right was a single-story building and a large iron gate, secured with a heavy chain and lock.
A hacksaw and several broken blades lay discarded on the ground nearby.
’So the supermarket had a water station and a warehouse in the back,’ he realized. ’I never knew.’
"This is the gate?"
After receiving an affirmative answer from Liu Bin, Lin Fan cautiously approached the iron gate. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust him; Lin Fan just had a bit of PTSD regarding iron gates now, and he was worried a few monsters might burst out as he got close.
He carefully tapped the gate with the short spear in his hand, then leaned in close to the gap and sniffed hard.
No sound, no smell of blood. Only then did he relax a little.
"How do you plan to open this gate?"
"Once we have power, we can use an angle grinder. One of the guys works in construction and happens to have one at home. This lock and chain are too tough. Look here, that stuttering guy and his crew took turns sawing at it all morning and only managed to make this little mark."
Lin Fan leaned in for a closer look and, sure enough, there was a shallow groove on the iron chain.
"Brother Lin, the RV’s here."
With the rumble of an engine, Chu Zhaotian pulled the RV over. Liu Bin quickly organized people to connect the power strips they had prepared, stringing them one by one from the RV to the warehouse gate.
Liu Bin pulled the iron chain taut from the side.
Zhang Ziyi, who had been with Liu Bin earlier, took an angle grinder out of his bag and plugged the cord into the socket.
The instant the cutting disc made contact with the iron chain, a piercing shriek split the air as sparks flew in all directions.
SCREEEEEECH—
Fearing the cutting disc might shatter, the man operated it with extreme caution, making very slow progress.
Lin Fan pulled Chu Zhaotian back a few steps, putting some distance between them and the sparks.
Before long, the noise attracted most of the survivors who had been out searching for supplies. The number of people in the small courtyard grew and grew, until there were thirty or forty of them.
It wasn’t just the survivors. The courtyard’s main gate opened into the adjacent residential complex, and the zombies wandering inside were also drawn by the sound. They gathered outside, growling and pounding on the iron bars.
Lin Fan stood to the side of the warehouse gate. Most of the people who came in were fixated on the warehouse, so no one noticed him.
He, in turn, was carefully observing the crowd.
Most of them had health points between forty and sixty. Only a very few had high health, in the seventy to eighty range.
’No elderly, no children,’ he noted. ’I live in an old residential complex, so there should be plenty of seniors, but no one here appears to be over fifty.’
’This probably isn’t all the survivors from the entire complex,’ he mused. ’They’re likely just from the two rows of buildings facing the street, where the hallways were either clear of zombies or small groups managed to fight their way out.’
’There must be more people trapped in their homes deeper inside the complex.’
With a sharp CLANG, the severed chain whipped against the iron gate.
It was open.
Several people maintained order while Liu Bin and his group stepped forward to pull the iron gate open. A musty aroma mixed with the fragrant scent of rice, flour, grains, and oil washed over them.
The dim warehouse was divided into two sections. One part was filled with sacks of rice and flour, packed densely onto wooden racks.
The other section held several rows of shelves stuffed with cardboard boxes. At a glance, they were all filled with various kinds of instant noodles and pre-packaged meals.
Dozens of drums of cooking oil and other miscellaneous goods were also stacked beside the shelves.
After several seconds of dead silence, the crowd erupted!
"Whoa!"
"So much!"
"We’ve hit the jackpot!"
"Liu Bin... Brother Liu! How... how are we going to divide all this?"
The gazes of the survivors gathered in the courtyard turned feverish, all fixed on the supplies in the warehouse. Someone who knew Liu Bin even called out directly, asking him what the plan was.
Facing so many pairs of burning eyes, Liu Bin found the speech he had prepared stuck in his throat, and for a moment, he was rendered speechless.
"Everyone, quiet down! Quiet down!"
He tried to maintain order, his eyes scanning back and forth, until he suddenly spotted Lin Fan standing behind the crowd. As if grasping a life-saving straw, he shot him a questioning look.
Lin Fan calmly met his gaze, then turned his head away, pretending not to have seen him.
He wasn’t trying to evade responsibility; rather, he was delegating authority to Liu Bin.
He could easily suppress everyone with force, but that would be meaningless. He had no interest in these supplies, so why should he tie his fate to these survivors?
Only by evolving and establishing a new order from within could these survivors truly hope to survive in this world.