Chapter 195: Arsenal
Zhang Xiao Qiang watched Guo Fei slice the last zombie’s head in half. Guo Fei had wiped all the zombies by himself. Zhang Xiao Qiang led the group into the prison’s most mysterious corner, where the structures within the walls were simple, three small bungalows were positioned in a ‘品’ formation, where the left and right bungalows had no windows and had thick black brick walls with old-fashioned green doors. The middle house was built with red bricks, with a row of old wooden windows that had mud splattered on the surface of the wall. Behind the houses was a sentry post that was occupied by a zombie wielding a rifle. Upon catching the scent of humans below, it started to look for a pathway down.
“BANG….”
After the gunshot, the zombie fell from the sentry post down to the ground. A member walked to its corpse and retrieved the rifle…..
Zhang Xiao Qiang and his men could not locate the keys to the extremely sturdy steel doors. Aside from the 9 Type-81 ARs found hanging on the gun rack in the soldier rooms, there was only a safe holding 30 fully loaded magazines inside the security post. Zhang Xiao Qiang did not dare to use explosives on the doors afraid that it would kill all of them. The members watched Zhang Xiao Qiang fall in a daze looking at the steel doors and started to walk up to the steel doors one at a time. One of them used a bayonet to dig into a crack on the wall, while someone took a metal rod found from somewhere and pried at the door. Another person grabbed onto a rock and started hammering at the steel door.
Three watched a dozen men pit themselves against the steel door, then whispered to Zhang Xiao Qiang before leading his elite subordinates back to the prison to search other locations to look for more things….
Seeing that everyone had racked their brains but were unable to open the steel door, Zhang Xiao Qiang became impatient and drew the Beast Horn Spear and walked forward. He had thought through it, he could not hide or stand idle in front of his subordinates and had to take action.
Zhang Xiao Qiang felt that the designer of the steel door was a genius, he could sense that the steel door was multiple times harder than a D2’s skull. The steel door had a built-in lock or had three different locks. Zhang Xiao Qiang was unclear of which lock to dry into, bluntly, he went ahead with one of the locks. Fine components were spun out by the Beast Horn Spear and fell to the ground.
“Crack….”
The last lock was removed by Zhang Xiao Qiang. He tried to pull but nothing happened. He tried pushing, but nothing happened. He flew into a rage and kicked on the steel door.
“BOOOM….” The steel door opened.
The interior was pitch black and they could not see anything within. Zhang Xiao Qiang switched on his torchlight and with a cigarette in his mouth, he moved forward. Halfway in, he was pulled back. Shangguan Qiao Yun had stopped him from entering. Without saying a word, she pointed to a warning sign on the wall, [Smoking and Fires are strictly prohibited]. These large words caused Zhang Xiao Qiang to tremble in cold sweat, he had seen many similar warning signs but never took them seriously. But at his current location, it was completely different; They were in the prison’s arsenal. Zhang Xiao Qiang got all of his subordinates to throw away their cigarettes before taking their torches to enter the building.
Upon entering, they were greeted by a slope that declined and extended inwards flattened out by cement tiles. At the bottom, Zhang Xiao Qiang and his subordinates swept the place. From outside, it looked as though the arsenal was small and could not possibly hold too many firearms. But upon entering, everyone realized that they were wrong, excessively wrong. The house above was just a cover, the space beneath the ground was multiple times larger than the house. The area close to the door was extremely clean with two gun racks fully filled with Type-81 ARs. Aside from the gun racks, there was a black and old-fashioned glass display cabinet which held 10 9mm QSZ-92 pistols. There were not many ARs, numbering less than 200 of them, but they were maintained well. On one side was an iron workbench with a few AR components laying on top of it. The workbench also had multiple tools and gun oil. Zhang Xiao Qiang did a hand gesture, to which his subordinates started moving away from all the ARs out.
Zhang Xiao Qiang was disappointed, they were in an arsenal while the other location was an ammunition dump. Seeing that there were less than 200 weapons, Zhang Xiao Qiang knew that the ammunition dump would not have much ammunition, with the very most 100 thousand. At that moment, Zhang Xiao Qiang felt that their harvest was gloomy. He turned and walked out, but not before sweeping the place once more with his torch.
In the deepest part of the arsenal, many wooden crates and a few other objects attracted Zhang Xiao Qiang’s attention. He shone his torch and walked in. The deeper he was, the more dust there was. Slowly, he even able to form footprints on the ground. Many long crates were piled up neatly against the corner with black pieces of oil felts folded unevenly covering them. Zhang Xiao Qiang pulled off an oil felt and after avoiding the cloud of dust, a heavy machine gun equipped with two wheels and deck laid right before him. Upon laying his eyes on it, Zhang Xiao Qiang felt that the heavy machine gun that was beginning to rust was extremely familiar, as though he had seen it before in an old movie, [Battle on Shangganling Mountain].
A Type-53 Heavy Machine gun, a variant of the SG-43 Goryunov mass produced and used by the Soviet Union in WWII. They were equipped on the infantry and were used for suppressive fire, to which China did a large scale procurement of the weapon and then imitated its blueprints and created the Type-53 Heavy Machine Gun (HMG). Firing 7.62mm bullets with barrel speed of 865m/s, these 7.62mm heavy machine gun bullets shared the same bullets as the Type-85 Sniper Rifle (SR) that Zhang Xiao Qiang found.
The HMGs caused Zhang Xiao Qiang to be stunned, he never thought that he would encounter such antiques in a prison. Furthermore, these antiques were preserved rather well, equivalent to the HMGs that he found hidden by the Chinese Army. Opening another oil felt, Zhang Xiao Qiang was completely dumbstruck, looking at the bad boy in front of him, Zhang Xiao Qiang did not know whether to laugh or cry.
This gun also had two large steel wheels attached to it, it had the same defensive armor deck, just that the wheels were multiple times larger than the wheels on the Type-53 HMG. The armor deck was many times thicker as well, seeing the short and thick barrel, Zhang Xiao Qiang turned slightly giddy. He had just witnessed the legendary cannon.
Type-92 Battalion Gun, an outstanding weapon used in WWII by the Japanese Army, with its nickname of “An inch short, an inch danger”. It was also considered perfect infantry support weapon in the 20th century, especially for countries that had slow progress in mechanization. Furthermore, it was extremely suitable for the complicated terrain. For example, with regards to mountain battle, it was extremely skilled at doing its job for infantry support. Furthermore, it could be limit was all-encompassing, it could almost support every location required for a military camp. Adding that its makeup was simple, not only was it convenient to employ in battle, it was also easy to be used for protection.
Type-92 Battalion Gun, Barrel caliber: 70mm, Weight: 0.212 ton, Ball size: 70mm explosive/shrapnel/smoke, greatest distance: 2788m, shortest distance: 100m. Most importantly, it was extremely mobile and lightweight, a few men were enough to pull it around. These cannons were used often in the war and were the main supportive artillery fire in the army.
Seeing the Battalion gun covered in dust, Zhang Xiao Qiang looked at the other oil felts. Type-54 12.7mm anti-aircraft machine gun (DShK 1938), originated in 1938 by the Soviet Union, improved by firearm architect George Shpagin and designed by Vasily Degtyaryov, it showed and employed its greatest use in supporting the Korean War. The Type-54 12.7mm anti-aircraft machine gun was not only equipped to the infantry, it was also attached to the Type-59, Type-69 tanks, just that Zhang Xiao Qiang never thought that this prison’s arsenal would have weapons used in the previous wars. Although these weapons were older than his father, they were preserved well. Zhang Xiao Qiang felt that as long as the other ammunition dump had artillery shells and bullets, he had the confidence of igniting their glory once more and fire them as before.
After lifting all the oil felts, Zhang Xiao Qiang stood in the middle of a pile of infantry supporting firepower in a daydream. He saw the recoil-operated Maxim Gun, the Type-92 heavy machine gun used by the Japanese, more U.S recoil operated heavy machine guns and more that he had never seen before.
Dusting off the thick layer of dust on a wooden crate, a yellow seal appeared. [xx County Citizen’s Army Department, Sealed, Year xx Month xx Date xx]. Moving his torch down, Zhang Xiao Qiang saw words written in white chalk, [to be destroyed].