"Feed," Robert began, reclaiming his own seat behind the spartan desk. His posture wasn't precisely military; he'd never enlisted. However, there was a stiffness to him, something altogether formal that implied he could sit perfectly straight in a lounge chair. That he was capable of relaxing at all was largely just rumor, as far as subordinates were concerned. Everything in his life was approached with a certain amount of intensity that occasionally bordered on off-putting. One of the things that had required him early in his career to start dating in order to soften his image.
That period of his life had been something of a fiasco, until he'd met Adelaide. There was a place for intensity in romantic pursuits, but it wasn't over an introductory cup of coffee.
"Cattle require a staggering amount of food, and there's no natural growth outdoors that hasn't been tainted by poisonous gas. Grazing them at this time isn't possible." Perhaps if they cleared several city streets to build an enormous greenhouse, airtight from the gas and secured from undead, then they could take the cattle out to graze within that structure. But that would require time to make and execute the plans, not to mention a potential loss of human life just laying the groundwork.
"We need to outsource feed for the cattle until such a time as we can grow it safely ourselves, which is highly problematic given any plant life needs to be grown in a ventilated, airtight, gas-proof enclosure," he ticked off these necessities matter-of-factly, neither voice nor facial expression giving away just how maddening it was that these restrictions were now a fact of life, since they'd been gassed by their own damn government. He isn't able to help the sigh that escapes before continuing: "As it happens, we do have several locations where there might still be untapped dried feed reserves in storage... provided, of course, that raiders haven't compromised it... but they require establishing a new supply line to retrieve them."