Merle picked one up and weighed it in his hand. It was heavy.
With his left hand, he tore away the yellowed, brittle oil paper, revealing a dusty but perfectly sealed packet of biscuits.
"Can this thing even be eaten?" Merle tore open the packet. The biscuits inside looked completely unappetizing.
Suspiciously, Merle took a small bite of a biscuit older than he was. His face twisted at once, and his teeth worked through it with difficulty, like he was chewing sawdust.
"Pfft! Dry as hell! Scrapes your damn throat. Tastes more like wood than the worst field rations!"
Leah stepped forward and picked up a biscuit.
It was extremely hard.
She looked at the faded print on the side of the box. "Multi-Purpose Civilian Emergency Biscuits." Production date: "February 1962."
"Almost fifty years." Leah also broke off a small piece and put it in her mouth.
The texture was awful, powdery, tasteless, and unbearably dry, but it meant basic calories and carbohydrates.
For an ordinary survivor camp, this was a lifeline.
For Rock Fortress, it was still food.
"The seal is intact. No moisture damage or spoilage." Leah turned to Hank. "Hank, take some people and do a rough count of how many boxes like this there are."
"Understood!" Hank immediately called his men over and got to work.
On the other side, Carver found an area marked "MEDICAL."
He pulled out a knife and forced open a large metal cabinet. Inside were neatly arranged olive-green medical kits.
Some of the injections and pills had long since expired and gone bad.
But the tourniquets, bandages, gauze, triangular bandages, suture kits, and basic supplies like well-sealed disinfectant and iodine tablets had mostly been preserved intact.
"This gauze is good! Sealed up tight!" Carver said excitedly, picking up a roll and waving it at the others.
Merle picked up a small sealed bottle of morphine, held it up to the light, then carefully slipped it into his pocket.
"This stuff saves lives. Use it sparingly. As for the expired crap... sometimes taking a gamble beats lying down and waiting to die."
The daily necessities section was even more astonishing.
Dark green military blankets were piled up like small hills. They gave off a heavy smell of camphor, but they were thick and weighty.
There were also large numbers of metal buckets stamped with "U.S.", their labels bluntly reading "Water Bucket (Chamber Pot)."
That extreme practicality left everyone with a strange sense of absurdity, like they were staring across an entire era.
Beyond that, there were crates of matches, solid fuel, simple water filters, soap, and even several large boxes of condoms from the last century. Whether they still worked was anyone's guess.
The team spread out, carefully prying open boxes one by one.
Faced with this gift from history, everyone was almost numb with joy.
Carver rummaged through a toolbox and pulled out a heavy fire axe.
He weighed it in his hand. It had real heft. Then he tightened his muscles and swung it twice, sending a sharp whoosh through the air.
Carver patted the axe handle, looking satisfied. "This one's mine."
Jonathan was inspecting the warehouse's vents and support columns. "Wow. People back then built things solid. Reinforce the entrance a little, and this place could work as a safe house all by itself."
Bossie calmly took out a small notebook and began recording the layout and details of the supplies.
Leah bent down to check the quality of a box of blankets. A strand of golden hair slipped out from beneath the brim of her hat and caught a bit of dust.
Daryl, who had been sneaking glances her way now and then, noticed it.
His throat moved as if he wanted to say something, but in the end, he only pressed his lips together without a word and went back to prying open his own box.
Just then, Leah straightened, brushed the dust from her hands, and looked across the entire warehouse.
Her eyes briefly met Daryl's before he had time to look away.
Daryl instinctively turned his gaze aside, pretending to look at a distant pile of supplies while his fingers unconsciously rubbed the top of the crate.
Leah raised an eyebrow. That did not quite seem like Daryl's usual behavior.
She finally realized that Daryl seemed to be paying a little too much attention to her.
But Leah did not dwell on it. She quickly looked away, her focus entirely on the supplies.
"Inventory all usable supplies and mark them by category and usability. Prioritize food, medical supplies, and cold-weather items," Leah told the team.
"Jonathan, check whether the main gate can still be used. Ideally, come up with a repair and permanent reinforcement plan to keep this place secure later.
Hank, plan the transport route and logistics. We need to move these supplies safely back to Rock Fortress in batches."
Standing before the mountain of supplies, her voice carried a steadiness that put everyone at ease.
"With all this, winter's going to be a lot easier."
The shock and initial joy inside the warehouse were soon replaced by the heavy, urgent work of transportation.
Time waited for no one, and neither did the freezing cold or the dangers that might appear at any moment.
Under Leah's command, the team began dividing the work efficiently.
Jonathan took two team members and began studying the damaged gate, trying to use the tools they had found and some metal materials from the warehouse to reinforce it temporarily.
At the very least, they had to make sure this place would not become a free hotel for walkers or other unwanted guests while they were hauling supplies back and forth.
Inside the warehouse, Hank and Bossie handled inventory and labeling, sorting the clearly usable supplies, mainly sealed biscuits, blankets, basic medical supplies, buckets, and tools, then moving them by category to the area near the passage entrance.
Carver, Merle, Daryl, and the others acted as porters, hauling the heavy boxes and bundles one by one through the long concrete passage to the open ground at the tunnel entrance.
The work was dull and exhausting.
The edges of the cold metal boxes bit into their hands. Even with gloves on, the constant hauling soon left their fingers stiff and numb.
The heavy biscuit crates and blanket bundles required two or even several people to move, and they could only be awkwardly dragged and carried through the narrow passage.
Their breath formed thick white mist in the frigid air, while sweat soaked the inner layers of their clothes. The mix of freezing cold and overheated strain was miserable.
"Damn, this is killing me!"
Merle gasped as he and Daryl dropped a crate of biscuits heavily onto the snow at the tunnel entrance.
He could only brace it with his right arm, not grip it with his hand.
That made the work even harder for Merle, and the veins on his forehead stood out.
"Quit whining and work, Merle. Think about it. You want to go back and sleep under a warm blanket, or keep shivering under that old quilt?"
Carver walked past him, easily carrying a crate on one shoulder that normally took two men to lift. His breath had fogged his goggles completely.
Annoyed, he pushed the goggles up onto his forehead with his left hand and tugged his face covering down a little, exposing his nose and mouth. "Damn it, working in this weather screws with your vision!"
Merle spat. "You think everyone's a damn powerhouse like you?"
Just as the third batch of supplies was being carried out and a small mound had begun to pile up on the open ground at the tunnel entrance, Daryl had just set down a crate and was about to straighten.
His movement suddenly stopped. His head snapped up as he looked toward the woods ahead and to the side.
"Guys, there's someone over there!" Daryl gave a short warning, loud enough for everyone to hear.
...
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