TWD - Chapter 514: Help! There’s a Fire! (Patreon)

The day after the meeting, Alexandria looked no different from usual.

Sunlight filtered through the treetops and fell across the neat streets. Smoke from cooking fires drifted slowly upward, while children played inside the designated safe areas.

Deanna had gotten up very early. Standing at the second-floor master bedroom window, she watched the residents below begin their day’s work, her fingertips rubbing absently against a warm cup as her gaze drifted into the distance.

Calista’s gentle but painfully direct words, along with the aerial map covered in marks showing the community’s vulnerabilities, kept replaying in her mind.

“Mom, still thinking about yesterday?” Aiden asked as he pushed the door open. Dark circles hung beneath his eyes. He clearly had not slept well either.

He tried to sound casual. “Maybe they’re just... too cautious. Way too cautious.”

“So cautious they spotted a hole in our defenses at a glance that we failed to notice for more than half a year?” Deanna turned around and shook her head, her voice heavy with conflicting emotions.

“Aiden, they weren’t trying to scare us. They’re professionals.” She set down her cup. “Where’s your father?”

“He took a few people to the northwest corner first thing this morning. He said he wanted to inspect that gully himself.”

Deanna took a deep breath and made up her mind. “We can’t just sit here waiting. You’re Alexandria’s security coordinator. Starting today, increase the frequency of daytime patrols and pay special attention to the blind spots outside the wall.

“Also tell the gatekeeper to keep a close watch on the northwest corner, especially the area outside the wall near the woods. If he sees anything unusual, no matter how small, he reports it immediately.”

“The gatekeeper, Nicholas?” Aiden frowned. “All right. I’ll tell him.”

Meanwhile, the atmosphere in the two neighboring houses where the Rock Fortress team was staying was completely different.

“Alexandria will definitely make some adjustments today,” Calista said calmly. “Deanna isn’t stupid. Yesterday was enough to keep her awake all night. But how many people she can mobilize, and whether those people can actually carry out her orders, are two different questions.”

“They don’t have a proper contingency plan, and they’ve never received formal training,” Leah added. “Even if they identify the problem, fixing it will take time. Time may not be on their side. If that ‘W’ group really has its sights on this place, an attack is only a matter of time.”

“Everyone stay alert,” Calista said, looking around at the group. “But don’t alarm Alexandria’s people.”

“Understood.”

“Sasha, let your squad rest, but keep your gear close and rotate watches.” Calista turned toward her. “We need to keep our eyes open without making them feel like we’re taking over their community.”

“Yes, Commander.”

“Leah, Carver, Mike. Come with me.” Calista quickly finished breakfast and stood. “We’ll take a walk and see what adjustments they make to their defenses today.”

The morning weather was pleasant. Reg left through the gate with two residents who knew a little about civil engineering and carefully followed the wall around the perimeter.

When he pushed aside the dense brambles, his heart sank. A gully, almost completely hidden beneath fallen leaves and vines, lay in front of him. It was nothing dramatic, but it wound deep into the woods.

Reg’s face paled. He and his two helpers hurriedly set up a few makeshift barriers, then returned with the measurements they could estimate by eye. He immediately began sketching plans for improving the defenses in that area.

Nicholas, meanwhile, had been ordered to patrol the wall.

He made lap after lap around the northwest corner. The warm morning sun made him drowsy, and the woods were quiet except for birdsong. He saw nothing suspicious at all.

Well, almost nothing.

At the far end of the gully near the woods, there was a partial indentation in the soft mud. Probably an animal track. Rabbits and other wildlife were common around here.

The tension inside him gradually eased. He glanced at the signs of Reg and the others’ work, curled his lip, and decided they were making a big deal out of nothing.

At lunchtime, Nicholas returned to the community and was stopped by Deanna.

“How did it go, Nicholas? Find anything?” she asked. Reg stood beside her, watching him tensely.

Nicholas straightened his back and answered dismissively, “Ms. Deanna, I checked carefully. It’s quiet outside the wall, and there’s no movement in the woods. The barriers Mr. Reg put up are solid enough. As far as I can tell... it’s just an old drainage ditch covered in weeds.”

Deanna and Reg exchanged a glance and both relaxed slightly.

Maybe it really had been a false alarm.

Calista’s warning had been professional, but perhaps it had also been a little too alarmist.

Alexandria had always been lucky.

“Good work, Nicholas. Keep watching it this afternoon. Don’t let your guard down.”

“Don’t worry!” Nicholas replied, though he had already stopped taking the matter seriously.

His afternoon patrols became noticeably lazier. The gaps between rounds grew longer and longer. Most of the time he stayed near his post, basking in the sun, his unfocused eyes nearly drifting shut.

Calista and the others saw all of it during their “casual walk.”

Her expression did not change. She quietly gave Deanna some credit for being willing to act. At least she had listened to the warning.

As for the quality of the people actually carrying out those orders...

Calista glanced at Nicholas lounging in the distance.

Forget it. It had nothing to do with her.

The rest of the day passed quietly.

In the early hours before dawn, the darkness over Alexandria was thick and heavy. The community lay asleep, with only a few torches along the wall and scattered streetlights holding back the night.

Most of the residents, including Deanna’s family after spending the entire day on edge, were sound asleep.

Nicholas sat wrapped in his coat beside the main gate, sleeping peacefully in a chair.

The uneventful day and that “harmless” gully had convinced him that the night would be just as quiet.

At the northwest corner of the wall, several pairs of hands silently pulled aside the crude barriers Reg had set up.

More than a dozen dark figures crept through the gully Nicholas had dismissed, moving as quietly as real wolves.

They wore mismatched, ragged clothes. Their eyes gleamed with madness and excitement in the darkness.

Every one of them had a “W” painted on their forehead. They carried an assortment of weapons: clubs wrapped in torn cloth, sharpened iron pipes, handguns, and several glass bottles filled with suspicious liquid and stuffed with cloth wicks.

A few days earlier, this group of “W”s had been wandering nearby when they found four people inside a warehouse. After torturing them until they revealed the location of their community, the group had mercifully “liberated” them.

This world belonged to walkers now. In their minds, it was no longer a place fit for humans.

The “W”s saw themselves as saviors. They believed the world should be returned to the walkers, so they personally helped people who lacked the courage to do it themselves attain true “freedom” and “liberation.”

Their leader had stumbled across Alexandria and discovered that many more poor souls here were still waiting to be “liberated.” After a brief reconnaissance, they planned their hunt.

The dark figures reached the base of the wall at the deepest blind spot between two streetlights.

A lean leader pulled out a homemade Molotov cocktail while one of his companions lit the cloth wick with a flint.

“Whoosh! Crash!”

The Molotov arced through the night trailing fire and struck a loose, rotting section of wood near the top of the wall.

The glass shattered. Fuel splashed everywhere, and flames erupted instantly, racing through the cracks in the wood and across the dry moss.

Richards, the sentry stationed there that night, barely had time to understand what was happening before a fireball burst beside him. Scorching flames and burning fuel engulfed him in an instant.

“Aah! Help! Fire!”