They had found a safe haven in an abandoned military outpost a handful of kilometres outside of Central City. There were several working generators that only took Fuery an evening to get working, as well as a cluster of buildings close together. There was an unsealed well, and several months of dry rations, untouched.
It was temporary, though. The outpost was hardly in the middle of nowhere - from the highest point in the cluster of buildings you could see the railroad tracks. The dead were everywhere, kept mostly at bay by the fences. They seemed to sense the survivor's presence, and slowly had been gathering at the weakest point in their blockade.
No, this was no fortress to protect. It would be a waystation to load up on supplies before they moved onward. It was only safe to stay a few days ... if that.
Edward sat on the edge of the roof, one leg dangling over the side, seemingly immune to the nearly three-story drop. He had his back to the solid wall that encased one of the generators, and idly kicked his boot off the brick. A sniper rifle sat, propped against his automail shoulder.
It was a deceptively bright, sunny day. The sky was blue, the clouds scuttling lightly across the sky. Edward's focus was not on the clarity of the day, however - it was instead watching the shifting group of about a half-dozen walkers lurching about near the closed gate.
All of the dead were wearing some variant of the military uniform; no longer pristine, crisp blue but faded and torn, stained with blood and viscera. He could not hear them, from his vantage point, but he did not need to. The dead all made the same sounds.
The footsteps were what made Edward look up. He was expecting his relief to come any minute now, but it was not the person he was expecting.
Riza Hawkeye stepped out of the stairwell, shading her eyes as she looked out along the perimeter. She too had a rifle slung over her shoulder - unlike Edward's it was the one she had carried from Central.
Edward frowned as she walked to the edge of the roof. "Where's Joey?"
"Working on the engine," Riza said. "Alphonse came back with most of the parts needed to get it back into working order."
Edward nodded, and looked back out across the grounds. The military truck that they had loaded in to and escaped the city in had been on the verge of giving out by the time they found this temporary haven. While there was a good chance that Edward or Alphonse or even Claude could puzzle out the inner workings of the engine, Joey Dawson apparently knew cars and trucks inside and out and had been hard at work getting their only vehicle road-worthy again.
Alphonse was the best to send out on those gathering missions. The dead were not interested in him - being an empty suit of armor seemed to definitely have its perks in this strange new world they found themselves in. He did not seem to go dark nearly as often, so maybe that too was passing.
However, a strange new issue had risen. If they used alchemy - of any sort, no matter how small the transmutation - it was like a smoke signal to every walking, shuffling corpse in a ten kilometre radius. It was worse than a gunshot, and it drew the dead like a moth to a flame.
"When is Roy wanting to move out, has he said anything to you yet?" Edward asked, as Riza sat down on the edge of the roof beside him. The heavy bandages that covered her shoulder peeked through the tear in her top.
She shook her head. "I would imagine tomorrow at the latest, but it all comes down to how quickly Joey can get the truck running again. We can't stay here much longer."
Even if the walkers weren't everywhere, the buildings did not function well as a stronghold. If a larger group of people came along, they would be vulnerable to attack. They had to keep moving.
Edward sighed and looked up at the sky. "What are we meant to do?" he asked, mostly rhetorically.
Riza looked over at him, her brown eyes tired. "Survive," she said simply.
Roy Mustang sat on a wood creeper, one hand braced on the side of the truck. There were oil stains on the dirty shirt he wore, and he had almost a permanant five o'clock shadow. He looked a far cry different from the clean and immaculate colonel he had been only a month ago. He was watching as Alphonse Elric reached deep into the engine, directed by a dark-skinned woman with close-cropped black hair.
It was by sheer willpower that the covered military truck had gotten them this far. If they did not have its protection in the future, there was no telling what would happen.
"Colonel!"
Roy glanced up. He had not expressly discouraged the others from referring to him by his rank, but he did not bother with it. These days, everyone was equal - the dead did not care if you were a four-star general or a private first class. Kain Fuery was one of the few who Roy suspected could not wrap his head around calling him anything else.
He got up from the creeper, feeling the pain shooting down his left side and keeping the wince off of his face. "What is it, Fuery?"
Fuery had several papers clutched his his hands, and in his haste to exit the building had not even bothered to removed his headphones, the cord trailing loosely around his neck. "There are other survivors!"
Joey and Alphonse both looked up from the engine at Fuery's pronouncement. Although there had been no contact with any other group, Roy had figured that would be the case. This was the first contact that they had had with any other survivor group, though. "Really, where are they at?"
Fuery shook his head. "It was not a two-way communication," he said. "It's a repeating message set on a low-end frequency, but it's garbled. I was able to make out Northy, safety, and Briggs. I think that most of the survivors are headed toward Fort Briggs!"
Fort Briggs was a colossal military installation on the Northern border, at the very fringes of Amestrian territory. Roy had only been there once as an attache on a General's inspection tour, but what he could recall of the installation, it did seem as good a place as any to try to reach. Besides, if they were lucky, the cold would slow the dead down significantly.
"Okay," Roy said. "We'll discuss it tonight and put it up to a vote. See if you can get any more out of the message, there's probably more important bits in there."
"Aye aye," Fuery said, saluting Roy reflexively. Roy waved him off, and Fuery ran back in the direction of the radio control room.
Roy put his hands on his hips and looked at the blue sky above them. Fuery may not have talked to actual survivors - but the message was a strong indicator that they were not alone. The thought of survivors, other bands of survivors making their way through this harsh, apocalyptic landscape buoyed his spirits and Roy grinned, glancing back at the truck.
They weren't alone.