TWD - Chapter 559: Friction Between Old and New Residents (Patreon)

It was a beautiful, cloudless day. The sun shone brightly over the industrial park, where a few plumes of white smoke drifted from the factory chimneys.

Recruits were running drills on the training ground, their shouted chants carrying faintly across the park.

Everything seemed perfectly normal.

Then a furious shout broke the peace.

“Goddamn it! Who did this?!” The voice came from the warehouse area, high and shrill as a cat whose tail had just been stepped on.

People eating breakfast in the cafeteria looked up in unison.

Benson, holding a bowl of stew, swallowed a mouthful and asked Theodore across from him, “What’s going on?”

Theodore shook his head.

At a nearby table, Elijah and Josephine pricked up their ears as well.

The voice rang out again. “My stuff! Everything I had in storage! They fucking dragged it all outside!”

Then came a woman’s tearful voice. “I don’t know!”

Benson slurped down the last of his stew, set his bowl aside, and sprang to his feet. He clapped Theodore on the shoulder, eager for a look. “Hurry up and finish! Let’s go see!”

The storage area stood in Section A of the industrial park, a row of single-story red-brick buildings that had once housed a company’s raw materials.

Housing in the industrial park was limited. Families could be assigned their own unit, but many people living alone still shared the old workers’ dormitories, in rooms for two or four. There was little space for extra belongings.

Rock Fortress had converted the old warehouse into a communal storage area. Each household could use a shelf for things that would not fit in its living quarters, such as canned food, clothes, and tools.

In practice, no one had stored food there yet. Most of the shelves held bedding, tools, and similar belongings.

Some elderly residents liked to hoard supplies, and when their own shelves were full, they’d simply cram things into nearby empty shelves.

A crowd had gathered outside the warehouse. In the middle stood a gray-haired old man, his face red with fury. He pointed at a heap of pots, bowls, old clothes, and a rolled-up blanket by the door and cursed. “I spent months storing all this shit, and you just throw it outside?!”

Beside him stood a woman in her thirties, holding a two- or three-year-old child. Her old jacket had faded from countless washings, and her face kept turning red, then pale.

“I didn’t throw it out!” she protested. “I-it was the people over there. They said they had to clear out the warehouse because there weren’t enough shelves...”

The old man glared at her. “Not enough shelves, so you throw out my things? I’ve lived here for months! How many days have you lot been here?!”

More and more onlookers were gathering nearby, including both long-time residents and newcomers from Alexandria.

The two groups glared at each other across the pile of belongings, neither willing to give an inch. The tension was getting ugly.

As Benson squeezed into the crowd, he heard a man from Alexandria adding his voice to the argument. “Your lousy warehouse was a mess to begin with. Stuff everywhere! What’s wrong with cleaning it up? We’re not saying we won’t give your things back!”

The old man snapped back. “Give them back? With what? You’ve been here, what, a few days? How many points have you earned? And you keep talking about paying us back!”

The Alexandrian man flushed. “Who says I don’t have any points?!”

The argument grew louder. The old man kept swearing, and the frightened child began to wail in the woman’s arms. Between the shouting and crying, nobody could hear a thing.

Benson looked around for someone from Rock Fortress administration, but saw no one. Then Deanna pushed through the crowd like a sheepdog entering a flock of sheep. “That’s enough! Stop arguing!”

The child was still crying. Deanna approached, pulled a piece of candy from her pocket, and offered it to the child. After a moment of surprise, the little one stopped crying, took the candy, and popped it into their mouth.

The woman gave Deanna a grateful look, but Deanna did not acknowledge it. She turned to the old man. “You’ve been living here for several months?”

“That’s right!”

“In all that time, how many rations have you traded for the things you’ve kept in storage?”

The old man blinked. “What?”

Deanna patiently repeated herself. “These clothes and tools you’ve stored here. How many have you actually taken out and used over the past few months? How many have you exchanged for rations?”

The old man opened his mouth but struggled to answer.

“The warehouse shelves belong to the community,” Deanna continued. “When you put something on one, you’re borrowing the space. The belongings are yours, but the shelf isn’t.”

His face reddened again. “W-what are you getting at? It’s my stuff! I can store it if I want!”

“You can store it, but there’s only so much shelf space. We have more people now, so we need to redistribute it.” Deanna pointed to the pile.

“Take your belongings back, count everything, and make a list. Come see me tomorrow and I’ll register them. From now on, everyone will have an assigned amount of storage space, calculated per person!”

The man glared at her. An older Black woman stepped forward. “Hey! What do you mean, per person? We older folks have more things to store. Young people have less! That isn’t fair!”

Deanna met her gaze calmly. “You have more things because you’ve been at the base longer and have had time to save up rations. The newcomers have only just arrived. What do you expect them to have?”

The woman was taken aback.

“You earned your belongings through your work. Nobody is going to take them,” Deanna continued. “But the newcomers need somewhere to put their things, too.”

She paused. “We’re already working on expanding the warehouse, so there will be more shelves eventually. For now, we have to make do. Everyone needs to show a little understanding.”

The Black woman fell silent.

The old man remained where he was. He still looked angry, but some of his fire had gone out. “Then what about my things...?”

Deanna went over and picked up the items from the ground, handing them to him one at a time. “Take them back. Next time, keep anything that doesn’t fit on your shelf in your own room.”

Deanna settled the dispute quickly. With nothing left to watch, the crowd gradually dispersed.

Benson watched her walk away and murmured to Theodore, “That woman knows what she’s doing.”

Theodore nodded and shared something he had heard. “Apparently, she used to be a state legislator.”

“No wonder.”

The crowd had mostly dispersed, but Benson noticed that a few people hadn’t left yet.

One longtime resident was standing with the Alexandrian woman who had been holding the child earlier. They were talking quietly.

Benson edged closer and listened. The man was saying, “...Ever since you people arrived, everything’s a mess. We used to have it good. Now we spend ages standing in line, and we even have to fill out forms just to collect our rations...”

“We don’t want things to be this way either,” the woman replied. “But with more people, we need rules.”

“Rules? Who came up with these stupid rules?”

“Deanna did. She’s a good person.”

The man snorted. “Good? Then why doesn’t she do something about your people? I queued for half an hour at the cafeteria yesterday. When I finally got to the front, there was nothing left. Your people had taken it all.”

The woman looked startled. “That can’t be right. The cafeteria gets a fixed amount every day...”

“Fixed? Then how come our people aren’t getting enough to eat?”

Benson walked over. “Hey, guys. What’s all this about?”

Both looked up. One glance at Benson’s face and burned arm, then at the burn scars Theodore carried beside him, was enough to make them each take a step back. Neither man looked like someone to provoke.

Benson smiled. “Relax. We’re not here to beat anyone up. I just heard you say the cafeteria ran out of food?”

The man hesitated, then nodded. “I queued for half an hour at dinner yesterday. By the time I reached the counter, all that was left in the pot was broth.”

Benson frowned. “Which serving window?”

“Number three.”

Benson made a note of it and patted the man on the shoulder. “I’ll check. If something’s wrong, you’ll get an explanation.”

The man looked at him with a hint of skepticism in his eyes, but said nothing more.

Benson turned to leave, and Theodore followed. “Benson, are you really going to investigate? You don’t even have an official position. Why get involved?”

Benson nodded. “Of course. It’s not like I have much else to do. If we don’t sort out little problems like this now, they’ll become big ones later!”