"Mind if I sit here? Let's talk" Fablo nodded with a small smile on his face as he sat down beside Edward without waiting for him to respond.

Edward only looked at him, he brought his guards up but his face still had that innocent smile on it.

"So, care to tell me why you were moving alone? Or should I ask…how you survived three years of this hell alone?" Fablo asked calmly, his tone was serious as he stared at the others who were being given food.

Edward stared at him for a few seconds, his face no longer had the naive smile it had before. He could tell that, unlike the others, Fablo had been paying extra attention to him since they left the store even though he was the one who had invited Edward to follow them.

After a moment of hesitation, Edward finally sighed and decided to speak, there was nothing to hide about the truth anyway.

"I was abandoned by my previous group. We went to look for supplies just like you guys did earlier and unfortunately for us, we ran into a mob of zombies that obviously chased after us. I got separated during the chaos, they probably thought I was dead and left without looking for me. I found you guys a few days later" Edward narrated with a sad expression on his face, excluding the details of him actually being eaten and fighting the green-eyed zombie.

Fablo stared at him for a while as he thought of what Edward had told him, he could spot a lot of questionable points in the kid's story like why he did not go back to his group since he had survived, how he did not look like someone who had actually encountered such a situation when he found them, why he had willingly followed them instead of asking for help to reach his group. But of course, Edward could have a valid reason for every one of those questions or simply did not want to say, so he did not ask.

Edward also did not pursue the matter and was more than happy when the man sitting beside him did not ask any other questions related to the matter. They later engaged in small talks like how their experience had been during the years and how they had managed to survive different harrowing crises. Fablo also spoke about his family.

"Have you tried to find them? You kids, did you try looking for them?" Edward asked when he heard that Fablo had a son and a daughter who used to live with him before the virus broke out but he was at work when the thing happened so the poor man had no idea what had happened to his kids.

Thinking of this, even Edward had to admit that the things that happened that night had happened too fast. It was all like the sudden rush of a fierce wave that no one had expected and no one was given the time to prepare, they just found themselves surrounded by zombies the next moment and no one knew how it even started.

Edward even sometimes suspected that it was not possible for humans to cause such destruction, then who should he blame then? Aliens?

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Edward laughed at his thoughts, not knowing that he actually was not far from the truth of the apocalypse. Still, the government would be the one to shoulder all the blame for now as they were the face of this virus before everything backfired and they disappeared.

'What shamelessness, they did not even try to clean up their mess before fleeing'

"Find them you say? I barely survived back then, how could I have gotten the chance to look for them? Besides, my workplace was on the other side of the city compared to where my place was. It usually took me an entire day to return during my weekly shifts, there was no way I would have made it faster when zombies started to spawn all over the place" Fablo laughed while shaking his head before adding "Besides, those kids…I trust them. I believed that they made it out with the government emergency evacuation since one of the emergency airships was located around our residence area so I'm not too worried about them"

Edward could clearly feel his confidence and trust in his kids from the grin on his unkept face, just what made his guy so arrogant? Or was he just too good at hiding his worry?

Edward could not help but laugh too, finding it kind of funny for someone to have such blind trust even in their own kids. Did his parents also think the same about him? Nah, the chances were low. After all, they should understand his cowardly nature more than anyone else. They probably had cried their hearts out by now thinking he had turned into something else on the first day. They would be shocked if they knew that their son had survived for three years.

'What irony, he did become something else in the end'

"What about you? Did you have anyone here in the city?" Fablo asked after having a good laugh while thinking of his kids.

Edward shook his head and told Fablo about his parents and little sister who lived in the other city, he was here for school so there was not much hope for him to find them too early.

"Sigh! I understand you, you must miss them. Just like how I'm sure my kids miss me too, hahaha" Fablo patted Edward's shoulder as he laughed. Edward winced silently in pain from the slap on his shoulder but he managed to hide it well and smiled along with Fablo.

"Here, take a look" Fablo suddenly said as he brought something from the chest pocket of his shirt and showed it to Edward.

It was a picture and in the picture was Fablo and two other kids whom Edward believed should be his children, a boy and a girl.

Both of them were around the same age as Edward himself with the girl being so beautiful that one would question if Fablo was really her father. After all, Fablo was an average-faced person with a large build. Added to the three years of unkept beards and hair, he was no different from a humanoid gorilla…well, not quite but close.

As for the boy, Edward's face turned strange for a brief second as he studied the boy properly to make sure he was not seeing things.

The boy in the picture actually had so much resemblance to him that Edward thought that he was the one in the picture.

'Was this why he had been acting sort of nice towards me all these while?' Edward could not help but wonder but Fablo's next words made him frown deeply.

"In case I don't make it before meeting them and you come across them, please try to get along. Especially her, she has quite the attitude but you shouldn't mind that. She's actually a good and caring person and can look after kids" Fablo said jokingly, making Edward's face twitch from his words. Why did it sound like he was trying to entice Edward to date his daughter?

But that did not stop Edward from getting the main message of Fablo's words.