In order to structure ourselves and to be more efficient, we elect decision-makers for the various small actions. In one week, Naya's father is responsible for the horses. The vet is responsible for the rest of the animals. Professor Noguerra supervises the housekeeping with Mélia as her assistant. A farmer from Mathilde's group takes care of the field crops. The amateur gardener friend of Thibaut and Alex takes care of the greenhouse. Blaise's electrician friend becomes the head of the repair/construction part. A mechanic from Mathilde's group becomes chief mechanic. Mathilde manages the military. The biologist and the two doctors create a health and research unit.

We all train for combat. An old paintball/laser-game field serves as our training base. The most risky expeditions are carried out by small groups of soldiers. The less risky ones are done by trained civilians like Laëtitia, Blaise, Damien or Naya. I am considered a military person because of my training. In fact, I am just below Mathilde in the military hierarchy. This is accepted despite my young age, because of several things. I blow them all away at paintball, including Mathilde. I am thoughtful and efficient in a crisis situation. I am the one who knows the terrain best. I am the one, along with Mélia, whom Mathilde trusts blindly.

Clarissa pisses me off with her remarks. She was a psychology student. She's going to see why I killed Petunia. I give her a job under the guise of a request from the doctors. I give her all the notebooks and diaries of my survivalist group, the videos of their transformation. The observations of the doctor and the biologist, the feelings of each of them and I attach the video of the ten year old girl who tried to bite her mother.

I tell her that she needs to study everything and get the psychological information out of it so that we can refine the detection and testing of the infected. I know what she will see and read. The loss of cognitive ability. The loss of recognition from her loved ones. The insatiable hunger. The gut-wrenching, eye-gouging pain. The madness. The transformation into a bloodthirsty beast. Cannibalism. The self-consumption. The begging of the infected to kill them.

Horrific stuff that gives you nightmares. Me killing them all with a bullet to the head at their request. It's just cruel. At least she'll shut her filthy bitch mouth. I take responsibility for what I did. I put them out of their misery. I protected the healthy ones. It's time Clarissa got off my back.

One of the soldiers under Mathilde's command knows how to fly helicopters. So we took over the three helicopters from the fire brigade's emergency services. To advance towards the sea, we decide to concentrate and clear a passage. With the chopper, we throw away as many pieces of meat as possible that have been poisoned as night approaches. In the morning, we set the piles of corpses on fire with incendiary cocktails, in complete safety. We cover a very large area and progress very quickly. The surveillance of the other traps was accelerated thanks to this mode of transport.

We finally reach the sea approaches in less than two weeks. As we fly over the city to drop our bait, we see an aircraft carrier moored well away from the harbour. There are people on deck waving to us, calling for help. We try to contact them by radio and then we see their destroyed antennas. The pilot and I decide to land to make contact. He lands, but leaves the propeller running. I get off. The other two men stay in firing position.

The men of the ship are also in firing position. The commander comes to me. He seems to want to negotiate and help us. He is surprised by my young age, but speaks to me respectfully. He hands me a booklet. I recognise the primitive guide sent by Richard. So I tell him I am from the refuge that wrote the guide. I am one of those who had the first experiences. I quote Richard's name, his service number and all his military distinctions as proof.

I give him our much more comprehensive guide to study tonight. I ask him what he needs urgently. He answers medicine and fruit and vegetables. There are a few cases of scurvy on his ship. We cannot stay. It is getting dark. We have a portable CB radio. I give it to him so that he can keep in touch with us tonight. I promise him to come tomorrow with some food. We set off again.

Mathilde and our whole group are quite happy about this discovery. Via the CB, the commander talks to Mathilde. He explains that he has set traps. The seaside town is therefore not very infested and will be quickly cleared. One of our soldiers knows the commander by reputation. He is a peaceful person, deeply respectful of human life. Moreover, without hearing our soldier's words, the commander tells us that he tried to save civilians at the beginning of the war, he set up a bastion at sea when the headquarters fell.

Thanks to Richard's booklet, he and his men knew what to do from the start. They picked up one of the radio messages with more information and tried to keep the town as safe as possible. They soon realised that the creatures could not swim. So they moored the aircraft carrier and other vessels offshore and evacuated as many people as possible to safety. The civilians stayed on the ships. The military were on supply shipments. They had few casualties. Only, they exhausted the local resources little by little.

There were three hundred of them, including a hundred sailors. If they have weapons and ships, they are cruelly lacking in food. So we negotiate an agreement during the night. They place themselves under the command of Matilda. We will collect some of the civilians in a fortnight. We provide them with food. They are quarantined. We sanitise the town as best we can during this time.

One of our doctors is brought in with a large supply of food. He examines each person and then stays for the daily care and examination. Every morning we drop off a food package for them to stay on the ship with the help of the chopper. No physical contact, just the CB. They provide us with all the explosives and incendiary objects they have. The doctor reports to us every day.

In fifteen days we work hard, the discovery of so many survivors having boosted our morale. We create a relatively safe and low-risk corridor fifty kilometres wide between the sea and the farmhouse. We will widen it later. Thanks to the speed of the chopper, we manage to keep the two hundred kilometres around the farmhouse in a stable state of low to moderate danger. Our distant traps, more than two hundred kilometres to the north, south and east, are cleaned every two days and are less and less full.

Daytime overflights of a wider area show us no human activity, while nighttime overflights show us little more than zombie activity. As they seem to lack food, the creatures gradually disappear. With the ship and its powerful antennae repaired, we broadcast our guide's survival information on all possible radio frequencies and try to locate other survivors.

After ten days, another town fifty kilometres from the sea is visited. An SOS is broadcast over and over again. We go to look and discover fourteen starving civilians on a roof. The town being infested, we evacuate them to a safer place after accepting quarantine. They are taken to a second ship with dead steering controls, no weapons, no escape. They are counted and resupplied daily by air. Two days later, ten young women were rescued and taken to another ship.

One month after the discovery of the ship, we count three hundred and twenty-two new survivors. With us, that makes three hundred and eighty survivors, with a wide range of knowledge and skills. Our survival is becoming more and more possible. A chemist will be busy making us large quantities of rat poison. A large-scale sanitation and rescue operation is gradually taking shape. We will approach the ports and rivers and then expand the areas.

The priority is to widen the land/sea band. We are maintaining our northern, southern and eastern borders as best we can. It will take six months to have a semicircle with a healthy radius of two hundred and fifty kilometres around the base port, with an advance at the mas forming a second overlapping circle of two hundred and fifty kilometres. A further 100 kilometres on the periphery of the safe zone are of low to moderate danger and act as a buffer to the untested areas. In small groups, we find survivors. Almost all of them had Richard's booklet at the beginning of the war and used it to survive. I am so proud of him. There are almost six hundred of us alive because of him. He is a hero.