The following day.
Michael woke up from the sound of noise coming from the main room.
Turning his sight to his side, there laid Andrea under the blankets. Still sleeping peacefully through all that noise.
Lifting the blanket up, Michael saw Andrea's naked body. He chuckled and gave her buttock a good knead before getting up from bed and putting on his clothes.
Opening the door, the first one he noticed was Rosita over to the kitchen, who's busy making some breakfast. While directly facing him are Lee and Clementine sitting by the small dinette table just outside the bedroom.
"Good morning. Did you sleep well? Go freshen up while I'm finishing up here. And I hope you don't mind Lee and Clementine being here, I invited them to eat with us." Rosita heard the door opening and immediately turned her head around and smiled.
"Good morning. I hope we're not intruding on breakfast." Lee smiled at Michael. He looks appreciative and a little excited. Like Clementine over there who keeps sniffing the air, the two are eager to have some good food as it has been a long time since they've had something good for breakfast.
Michael smiled and didn't mind their presence here. "Morning and it's no problem."
He went towards the bathroom to rinse his mouth and washed his face with some soap.
"What were you making?" Michael asked while wiping his face with a towel.
"Just a couple of sunny side ups, bacon, sausages and pancakes." Rosita responded as she served the following food on their plates onto the table.
Michael flashed his eyebrows up as an unconscious response. He walked over towards the table and grabbed a couple of bacon and pancakes before making his way out.
"Are you not gonna join us?" Clementine shyly said to him when she saw him leaving. She thought she actually did not like them being here.
Michael slowed down on the steps, turned his body around and smiled at her. "Yeah, I'm heading out. Eat a lot for me, yeah? Just make sure to leave some for Andrea when she wakes up, alright?"
Clementine smiled in response. "Okay, take care out there mister."
Lee, on the other hand, feels thankful for allowing them to eat the feast in front of them. It has been so long since they had bacon, or any freshly cooked food at all. He smiled and gave Michael a nod as Rosita followed him down the vehicle.
"You just got up and you're already heading out?" Rosita asked with some confusion and curiosity.
Biting on the bacon, Michael glanced around them. "Yeah, I'm gonna go check the places that look dangerous. I need to make sure that there's nothing out there that would catch us by surprise."
"But we already swept this place yesterday, that mutant walker was the only one here. Come on, be honest with me here. Just what's going on with you? You've been acting weird since yesterday." Rosita was obviously not gonna believe any of his words and immediately called his bullsh*t out.'
Michael walked towards the back of the vehicle and took out a wired remote control and a small sledgehammer inside the large compartment. Using the remote, Michael lowered the bike rack on the back of the vehicle.
On the bike rack is a BMW R1150 GS Adventure tethered on it. It was already there when the trio took possession of the vehicle and this is the first time he's actually using it.
"I'm just gonna drive around and also drop by that warehouse on the townskirts we drove by before." Michael replied while taking off the bike from the rack.
Rosita remembered that and was also reminded by what Lee told them about it. "Lee told us yesterday that the place is dangerous though. I don't think it's going to be a problem for you, but the darkness inside would elevate the danger of that place. You might get ambushed by walkers hiding in the dark."
Michael got on the bike and smiled at her. "What's the most important rule before going inside a building?"
""Knock first.""
They said at the same time. Michael grinned and pointed at her. "Exactly. Its effect will be limited because of the large space of the warehouse, but it would at least lure out those walkers hidden in the dark."
Seeing that she couldn't convince him otherwise, Rosita sighed helplessly and just accepted it. "Fine, but you gotta be careful, alright? There might not be a lot of walkers right now, but you still need to be mindful of your surroundings since we're not sure if there are still survivors around the area."
"Come on, I'm always careful. Do I look like someone who's impervious to walker bites?" Michael sounded a little hurt saying those words.
'I won't even doubt your words at this point when you have such an absurd strength that no normal person should possess, you're more like those super soldiers you see in movies.' Rosita had those thoughts in her mind and wanted to say those words out loud, but thought it wasn't a good idea and just stared at him in silence in the end.
"Anyway, I'm heading out now. You guys take care here." Michael said as he kick started the bike three times before the engine sputtered to life. He let it idle for several seconds before driving off.
Michael drove through the town and all the way towards the outskirts where he eventually arrived several minutes later at a warehouse near the main road and with a hill behind it.
He got down from the bike and pushed it over to the roadside and parked it there.
There is a lot of abandoned machinery in the parking lot of the warehouse, like ordinary trucks, cargo trucks, bulldozers and a couple of forklifts.
Like Rosita mentioned earlier, this place is dangerous since it's crawling with walkers.
"Thrity-three, thirty-four and thirty-five." Michael counted the walkers who were tumbling towards, attracted by the sound of the motorcycle.
"It seems their number has increased." Michael grabbed the small sledgehammer fastened on the side of the seat and slowly walked over to the nearest walker.
Splat!
With no hesitation at all, Michael smashed the hammer on top of the walker's head and all the way down to its neck.
x1 [You terminated a Zombie! Gained +1 EXP and +1 Coin.]
'Man, I miss this feeling of easily killing these walkers.' Michael thought with a grin while smashing another walker's head into pieces.
x34 [You terminated a Zombie! Gained +34 EXP and +34 Coin.]
He had an easy time dispatching all of the walkers occupying the parking lot and it did not even take him five minutes to do so.
Aside from the main warehouse that's roughly the size of three basketball courts combined, there were also two smaller warehouses behind it.
Michael did not immediately go inside in any of the three and instead went over towards the nearest cargo truck from him and easily opened it since it wasn't even locked.
But there was nothing inside except for dust, the following three other trucks were also like the first, empty..
At the last truck, Michael had to smash the lock with his hammer and forcibly open it.
"Whoa, I was not expecting this."
The inside was packed with boxes upon boxes, but the label on the boxes confused Michael that he had to walk to the side to look at the company name painted on the side of the truck.
Bloom Retail.
'Might be sister companies.' For a truck of a retail company parked here, that's the only plausible explanation he could think of.
Michael jumped inside and forcibly opened one of the boxes. It was filled with bath soaps. The second box also had soaps but of a different brand, the third box contained bottles of shampoo while on the fourth box, it was full of menstrual napkins.
'This truck was probably headed somewhere, but had to make a short stop here for an unknown reason just before the country fell into chaos.' Though he didn't come here for this, it's still a happy occasion to get a truckload of essential supplies.
Closing the truck behind him, Michael finally set his sights towards the main warehouse.
Blam! Blam!
Michael tried to forcibly open the shutters up, but they remained stubborn and wouldn't budge at all. Though the bottom of the shutters became crooked from the use of excessive force.
'How come they're not budging at all?.' Michael tilted his head to the side for a moment, slightly confused.
Michael looked around him and finally tried the door at the side.
He grabbed the handle and twisted it all the way, it wasn't even locked.
'Tsk, I should have tried this first.'
What Michael didn't realize though was that there was a small hole behind the big warehouse. It seems like someone had crashed through the wall using a forklift before crashing onto a tree. Behind the two smaller warehouses on the other hand, were a numerous number of walkers clustered there together, more than the ones in the parking lot earlier. He failed to discover them since he never bothered going to the back.
It's obvious he wasn't being careful at all.
Atlanta, Georgia.
Near the train tracks from where Rick and Daryl first discovered the prison in the original timeline.
There lies Shane, hiding under the thick brushes with a pair of binoculars in his hands. The place he was on was among the few that weren't cleaned up yet by the loggers and remained thick of vegetation.
"Found you."
Shane grinned sinisterly while watching Glenn and Maggie flirting on top of the watchtower.