Chapter 160: Attack on the River
Meanwhile, at the western edge of NYC's industrial zone, near the fishing area by the river, a refrigerated truck pulled up. Inside the vehicle was a group of young women, laughing and chatting. In the passenger seat sat a girl named Bianca, the youngest of the group.
She had once proudly claimed that Zack had single-handedly wiped out hundreds of millions of zombies. Bianca, full of dreams and youthful energy, often fantasized about getting closer to Zack. "Ah, I'm so happy!" Bianca exclaimed with a dreamy smile. "Last night at the dinner party, Sir Zack smiled at me! Did you see it? He smiled at me!"
The other girls giggled as they reminisced about the celebration and the few fleeting moments they'd caught glimpses of Zack. The road ahead was empty, and with no traffic to worry about, their chatter filled the air.
The once-congested streets of NYC previously cluttered with abandoned vehicles, were now completely cleared. Thanks to the recycling department, those rusting cars had been melted down and repurposed as raw materials for steel production. The city was almost unrecognizable from the desolate wasteland it had once been. "If I'd known Sir Zack was going to visit the farm during the harvest, I would've applied to work there," Bianca sighed wistfully, resting her chin on her hand as she gazed out the window.
Their job, however, was fishing—though not in the traditional sense. The traps and bait had already been set by a team of men. The girls' task was simply to check the traps daily, collect the catch, and transport it back to the canteen for processing. Any surplus fish were stored in the refrigerated truck. Fish and other aquatic creatures had become the primary source of meat for the NYC base, replacing the livestock that had either mutated or gone extinct in the apocalypse.
"Here we are!" called the eldest of the group, a woman old enough to be the mother of the others. She pulled the refrigerated truck to a stop by the riverside. "As always, each of you is responsible for a bridge," she instructed. "If you find fish, pull the rope."
The women exited the truck and walked toward the river. Several reinforced concrete bridges extended a few dozen meters into the water. These bridges weren't meant to connect to the opposite bank—they were specifically built for fishing, a feat of engineering created by Annie. Beneath the bridges were automated fishing traps. All the girls had to do was pull the ropes, and the mechanical devices would haul up the nets, depositing the catch onto conveyor belts that ran along the bridges. The girls then loaded the fish into trolleys and transported them back to the truck.
"These ten traps are mine!"
"I've got six here!"
"Empty bait on this one... Looks like the guys were slacking off again!"
The girls laughed and teased each other as they checked the pressure gauges attached to the traps. The gauges displayed whether or not the traps had caught anything.
"Wow! This one's loaded!" Bianca exclaimed as she reached her section of the bridge. She eagerly pulled the rope, and the sound of machinery hummed beneath the water.