Early the next morning, Marcus fixed the generator in Dale’s RV.
The whole process took less than two hours.
He replaced a burnt-out belt, cleaned the fuel line, and reconnected two wires.
When the generator roared to life, Dale was so excited he nearly fell off the roof.
“Good Lord, it’s been three days!” The old man grabbed Marcus’s hand and shook it hard.
“This damn thing finally made a sound again.
You’re an angel.”
Marcus looked embarrassed by the praise and kept scratching his bald head, which looked like a boiled egg.
Shane’s attitude softened a little.
When food was distributed at noon, Luke Li’s group clearly received a larger share.
Luke Li did not waste the opening.
That afternoon, he went straight to Shane.
“The camp’s defenses have a problem.”
Shane was cleaning his gun.
Hearing that, he looked up at him.
“What do you mean?”
“No fence, no warning system.
Everything depends on Dale’s eyes.
That works during the day, but what about at night?
What happens when the moon is covered by clouds?”
Shane said nothing, but his hand stopped moving.
Luke Li continued.
“I’m a firefighter.
I’ve had disaster response training.
Structural reinforcement, evacuation route planning, temporary defensive works, all of it.”
“Let me take some people and set up a ring of tripwire alarms around the camp.
Then we’ll place obstacles at a few key points.
It doesn’t need to be complicated.
If it buys us thirty seconds to react, that’s enough.”
Shane’s buffs changed.
[Alert] faded until it was very faint, and [Thinking] lit up.
He was weighing it.
Letting an outsider who had only been here for one day take charge of the camp’s defenses meant giving up part of his control.
But he also understood the situation.
The camp really did not have a proper defensive line.
“What do you need?”
“People.
Two or three.
The camp should have enough materials.
We only need wire, empty cans, and wooden stakes.”
“I’ll give you T-Dog and Glenn,” Shane said.
“Starting tomorrow.”
“Today,” Luke Li said.
“Those things won’t wait until we’re ready.”
Shane stared at him for two seconds.
Then he nodded.
An hour later, Luke Li left the camp with T-Dog and Glenn.
T-Dog carried a bundle of wire, Glenn carried two bags of empty cans, and Luke Li had the spike trap blueprint he had taken from the system backpack.
Of course, he would not make things appear out of thin air in front of other people.
He had already memorized the contents of the blueprint.
“We’re doing three things,” Luke Li said as they walked.
“First, tripwire alarms.
We’ll run a loop of thin wire fifty meters outside the camp perimeter, at knee height.
Every two meters, we hang an empty can with a few pebbles inside.
If anything touches the wire, the cans will rattle.”
“Second, slowing barriers.
On the two paths leading into the camp, we dig shallow trenches, place sharpened wooden stakes inside, and cover them with branches.
Walkers won’t go around them.
If they step in, they’ll at least trip.”
“Third, a lookout platform.
We build a simple watch platform beside Dale’s RV, three feet higher than the RV roof for a wider view.
Add a rain cover too, so people can stand watch even when it rains.”
Glenn listened and nodded, his eyes lighting up.
“Were you really a firefighter before?
You sound like a trained soldier.”
“Kid, firefighter training is tougher than you think.”
T-Dog did not say much, but he worked hard.
He pulled the wire fast and tight, and tied the cans securely.
The three of them worked all afternoon.
Before sunset, three-quarters of the tripwire alarm was done, half the slowing barriers were dug, and the lookout platform had its basic frame.
Carpentry Lv.3 played a huge role here.
Mortise and tenon joints, load-bearing calculations, nail angles, all that knowledge made Luke Li’s construction efficiency far beyond an ordinary person’s.
T-Dog and Glenn both noticed.
“You hammer way too fast,” Glenn said, crouching beside him as Luke Li fixed a crossbeam.
“My dad used to run a dry cleaner’s.
I could do laundry, sure, but hammering nails…”
“Practice more.
Skill comes with repetition.”
A new buff appeared above Glenn’s head: [Admiration], pale gold.
T-Dog’s change was more practical.
When he took the initiative to help Luke Li hold up a plank, the distance between them shortened quite a bit, which meant his guard was starting to come down.
After dark, Luke Li returned to his pickup.
Just as he was about to climb into the truck bed to rest, a voice came from nearby.
“Hey.”
Glenn stood two meters away, holding a can of peaches.
“This is for you.
Kind of…
a thank you for teaching me all that today.”
He sounded a little nervous and did not quite dare meet Luke Li’s eyes, but his expression was sincere.
Luke Li took the can.
“Come with me tomorrow and help finish the rest.”
Glenn smiled.
“No problem.”
He turned and took two steps, then suddenly looked back.
“Luke?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think…
things will get better?”
Luke Li looked at him.
Glenn’s buffs: [Fear – Deep], [Hope – Wavering], [Loneliness].
A young man in his early twenties, alone in the apocalypse, with no family and no friends, thrown into a camp full of strangers and living in fear every day.
What he was really asking was whether he could survive.
“This world won’t get better,” Luke Li said.
Glenn’s smile froze.
“But we’ll adapt,” Luke Li said, looking at him.
“Humanity’s strongest ability isn’t fighting.
It’s adapting.
Today, you learned how to string wire, set tripwires, and hammer wooden stakes.
Could you do that yesterday?”
Glenn shook his head.
“Tomorrow, you’ll learn more.
The day after, even more.
Every extra thing you learn gives you a better chance of staying alive.”
Glenn was silent for a few seconds.
Then he nodded and walked back to his tent.
The [Hope – Wavering] above his head steadied a little.
Luke Li climbed into the truck bed and lay down.
The defensive works were still a quarter unfinished.
The spike traps needed more wood.
The lookout platform could be finished tomorrow.
Then there was the supply problem.
With more than thirty people in the camp, the rations he had brought would not last a week.
They needed to organize a scavenging team and go into town.
Glenn, the pizza delivery guy who knew Atlanta’s streets, was the best candidate.
But Luke Li was not in a hurry to bring it up.
He had only been here for a day and did not have enough influence yet.
If he pushed too much, people would only resent him.
First, finish the defenses.
When Shane came to him on his own, he could mention it naturally.
A long howl came from the distant pine forest.
It sounded like a wolf.
There was still plenty of wildlife in these mountains.
Luke Li turned over and placed the fire axe within reach.
But before he could fall asleep, the newly strung tripwire let out a crisp clink.
Luke Li rolled upright in an instant.
I just lay down.
Is this what Luck 3 gets me?