Zhou and the other three followed the trail Maggie had left all the way into Atlanta.
"Shit, this place is a nightmare to drive through!" Leon muttered as he steadied the wheel and swerved around a fire hydrant half-buried in the road.
He glanced toward the passenger seat, where Zhou was scanning a side alley through his binoculars.
"Keep it down. There were a lot of people here when the city fell, and now they're all walkers. Don't make too much noise and draw them out."
Zhou lowered the binoculars and tapped a finger against the edge of the dashboard. "Left at the next intersection. There's something by the road."
Leon turned the wheel, and the SUV smoothly entered a narrower street.
On one side of the road, three walkers lay piled together at odd angles. The head of the one on top had been almost completely sliced off. The cut was clean, and dark blood and rotten brain matter had splattered across the wall like curdled mush.
Murphy looked impressed. "Damn. Nice blade work. Whoever did that had plenty of strength too."
Leon stopped the vehicle. Zhou opened the door and stepped onto the sticky pavement.
He didn't approach the pile of dead walkers. Instead, he studied them from a few steps away, then crouched and used the sheath of his dagger to lift the lid of an overturned trash can nearby.
There was a faint but recognizable shoeprint on the inside of the lid. It matched the tracks they had been following, and a little blackish-red grime still clung to the edges.
"Maggie stopped here. Maybe she was checking the area, or she heard something."
Leslie stayed in the vehicle, marking the new coordinates and their observations on the map. "That's the ninth marker. She's still heading straight for downtown.
"Is Maggie an arrow or something? She hasn't made a single turn."
"She's chasing a vehicle. It has to stick to the main roads." Zhou climbed back in and shut the door. "Let's pick up the pace, but stay sharp. There are more walkers the deeper we go."
The SUV started moving again, its engine echoing through the ruined city and drawing a few answering growls from walkers in the distance.
After several more blocks, the "markers" Maggie had left behind became less frequent, but each one was harder to ignore.
At the entrance to a small parking lot, five walkers lay dead, every one of them shot in the head.
"Looks like someone had a party here." Leon whistled, though his eyes remained alert as they swept over the windows of the surrounding buildings.
Murphy suddenly heard something and snapped his gaze toward the front right. "Guys! Inside the parking lot, two o'clock. Something's moving behind that white van!"
Everyone immediately went on alert.
Leon hit the brakes and drew his pistol.
Zhou shifted toward the passenger door, quickly raised his rifle, and rested it against the edge of the window.
Several seconds passed in complete silence.
Then a filthy, scrawny cat with patchy fur crept out. It gave their vehicle a curious glance before darting beneath another wreck and disappearing.
"There it is... just a cat," Murphy said, sounding a little exasperated.
"Holy shit!" Leon let out a breath and sat upright again. "Scared the hell out of me. We keep going?"
"Go," Zhou said curtly, though his brow remained furrowed.
He pressed the radio button and switched to the prison's frequency. "Prison, prison, this is Zhou.
"We're deep inside old Atlanta, following the last known route taken by Glenn's group.
"We've found several signs of walkers being killed recently. Maggie was still in pursuit, and her route leads straight toward downtown.
"We haven't found Maggie or the target vehicle yet, but the walker population is getting noticeably denser, and the area is difficult to navigate."
After a brief burst of static, Rick's tired, tense voice came over the radio. "Copy that, Zhou. Stay alert and keep reporting in. The moment you get any definite information on Maggie and the others, let us know immediately. Over."
"Understood!"
The transmission ended, and they continued forward.
After driving a little farther, Leon slowed down.
He stared at the road ahead.
At the entrance to an alley filled with garbage, a black SUV sat crookedly across the intersection. Its front end was badly crushed, the windshield was shattered into a spiderweb of cracks, and the driver's door hung half-open.
"That's Maggie and Glenn's vehicle!"
Leon eased closer and stopped about twenty meters away.
The four of them didn't get out immediately. Their weapons slowly swept over every window and rooftop in the surrounding buildings.
Only after watching the area for a full three minutes and confirming there was no immediate threat did Zhou give a hand signal.
"Leon, with me. Murphy, cover us from the roof. Leslie, take the driver's seat and stay in the vehicle. Keep the engine running."
Zhou and Leon approached the wreck in turns, covering each other as they moved.
The closer they got, the worse the damage looked.
The entire right side of the SUV had caved in. The A-pillar was bent, and there was a huge dent in the roof where something had struck it hard. The vehicle had probably rolled after the collision.
There were clear signs of fuel leakage around the tank. A large patch of pavement beneath it had been soaked, though it was mostly dry now.
"Damn. She's lucky she managed to drive this thing into the city," Leon muttered as he gently pushed the half-open door aside with the barrel of his gun.
The interior was a wreck.
The dashboard was shattered, the deployed airbags hung limp and deflated, and a patch of dried blood had turned black on the passenger seat.
Several empty water bottles were scattered across the back seat. Everything else was gone.
Zhou glanced through the interior. "She took everything with her."
He walked around to the rear.
The tailgate was bent and jammed shut, but through a narrow gap he could see spare parts and tools inside. None of them appeared to have been disturbed.
Leon crouched beside the vehicle and ran a finger along a mark on the ground.
"Look here."
A trail of footprints stained with walker blood crossed the dry dust and led deeper into the alley.
The two followed the prints for more than ten meters. They became denser near the rear entrance of an abandoned apartment building, where the door handle had been smashed off.
"She went inside," Leon said.
Zhou nodded but didn't enter immediately.
He stepped back and studied the entire building.
It was three stories tall, most of the windows were intact, and there was a water tank on the roof.
It would make a decent place to hide for a short while, but there were only two entrances, one at the front and one at the rear. The front entrance was more than half blocked from the outside by a pile of rubble.
"Maggie wouldn't stay long," Zhou said. "The target's still moving. She'd have to keep following on foot."
Sure enough, once they entered through the back door, they found fresh footprints in the dusty floor of the dim first-floor hallway. The door at the far end, leading into the front lobby, had also been pushed open.
The two passed through the lobby and emerged onto another street.
There were far more signs of walkers here. Dried black stains covered the ground, fragments of bone lay scattered everywhere, and some corpses had been gnawed down to bare skeletons.
"Shit. We've lost the trail," Leon said, spitting to the side.
The footprints were much harder to follow here. The road was too filthy and covered with too much debris.
But Zhou crouched and studied the ground for a long moment before pointing toward a faint footprint and several crushed soda cans.
"She went this way. She was moving fast and wasn't paying much attention to hiding her trail. We'll follow by vehicle. But we're getting deeper into downtown. There'll probably be plenty of walkers ahead, so driving may get difficult."
The two returned to the SUV, and Leslie continued down the road.
Just as Zhou had predicted, they hadn't gone far before the road ahead became almost completely blocked.
A broad main avenue stretched before them, packed with abandoned vehicles.
Worse still, the street was filled with staggering walkers. They crowded together like a slow-moving gray river, their low, collective moans making the skin crawl.
"Holy shit!" Leslie cursed as he hit the brakes. "Are these damn walkers throwing a party?"
"We're not getting through that."
Murphy opened the sunroof and leaned halfway out, studying several intersections ahead. A moment later, he dropped back into the vehicle with a disappointed expression.
"Way too many walkers. Even with the ram, it'd be tough. If we get surrounded, we're screwed."
Zhou said nothing.
He raised his binoculars and carefully scanned the area ahead.
The buildings on the far side of the avenue were taller and packed more densely together.
At last, his gaze settled on the roof of a four-story apartment building to the left.
There... seemed to be something.