Chapter 1.2 - Completely New Era
Turner’s face became ashen. He stared at the pile of hay with the corners of his eyes repeatedly jumping. He suddenly used the muzzle of the gun to scatter the pile of hay, and what he saw below was only rocks covered in filth. There were still no traces of young wolves.
“Lucas, you…”
Before that individual finished his sentence, he was harshly cut off by Turner. “Shut the fuck up! Lucas wouldn’t make a mistake!”
Turner crouched down and fished out a sharp knife to dig up a piece of wolf feces that still seemed relatively fresh. After carefully inspecting it, he suddenly stood up and pulled the trigger on his M3A with a loud noise. He shouted, “This is a trap! We are leaving!”
An old veteran followed behind and said, “Hey, leader, who could have set up a trap for us? Don’t tell me that you think it is the rotting wolves? Haha…”
He laughed a few times, but after noticing that not a single individual responded to his question, he could only resentfully stop and shrug his shoulders. He also had a bad feeling, but this kind of joke was supposed to alleviate some of the nervousness.
Turner quickened his footsteps and said in a downcast voice, “It’s most likely rotting wolves! God I hope I’m wrong!”
They left this place quickly, and in just a few moments, they made the final turn before the cave entrance. However, the two individuals’ backs were bent and shaking as they retreated into the cave step after step! Turner directly rushed to the head of the cave without a word and pulled back those two individuals to look outside the cave.
Turner’s eyes suddenly widened. Reflected within his dark brown pupils were rotting wolves that crammed everywhere.
“Heavens! There are at least three hundred rotting wolves!” Turner’s heart suddenly constricted, making him feel as if he couldn’t breathe!
Turner suddenly smelled a faint fishy stench. The instincts that had been acquired from years of experience made him quickly fall in reverse. At the same time, he fired at the cave entrance.
A black figure streaked across the air, its sharp teeth tearing at where Turner’s nape was. Soon afterwards, five bullets completely ripped apart its stomach!
This was a male wolf that was at least thirty kilograms in weight, and at this moment, it was blasted several meters outwards from the barrage of bullets. After dropping onto the ground, even though almost all of its internal organs seemed to have fallen out, it still struggled to its feet. It staggered towards the cave entrance while releasing an intimidating roar and only stopped when another male wolf snapped its neck with a bite.
Putong! Turner fell heavily onto the ground, knocking down the two soldiers behind him. Only when he was helped back up did he noticed that sweat had completely soaked through all of his clothes!
One of the veterans looked out of the cave and immediately felt his face go pale. “Leader, it seems like we are trapped.”
Another individual looked at the walkie-talkie in his hand and shook his head. “There is no signal from base.”
“We can last ten days with the amount of food and water here.”
“Our ammunition is in the single digits as well. It’s not enough to kill them all.”
The veterans took the initiative to give a report on the circumstances of their supplies. The more Turner listened, the uglier his face became. He carefully looked out of the cave a meter from the entrance, feeling the chilliness at the bottom of his heart grow stronger the longer he watched.
The strong and sturdy rotting wolves wandered back and forth. As their saliva dripped down onto the scorching valley rocks, strands of white mist would rise. Despite how hungry they all were, they all stayed a fix distance of five hundred meters outside the cave entrance. It was as if they knew that outside this distance, the power and accuracy of the automatic rifles would be greatly decreased. The three hundred rotting wolves surrounding this valley left Turner’s small troop in a hopeless situation. If they left the cave's protection, the quick and nimble rotting wolves would surround them from all sides. A single assault would easily tear their small troop into pieces.
Turner retreated into the cave and sat down while leaning on the cave walls. “It seems like these rotting wolves want to trap us to death. Two people will guard the cave entrance, and we will rotate every two hours. Lucas, Burke, you two are up first. The rest of you, rest for now. I am hoping that our luck will be good enough for the military to find us.”
The soldiers sat down, closed their eyes, and leaned against the cave walls one after another. They had to conserve their energy now, because no one knew how long they had to stay here.
However, no one could get any real sleep. A question lingered within their minds: how were these rotting wolves able to suddenly become so smart? They knew how to set up a trap and even understood the effective range of their automatic rifles. Moreover, despite their hunger, not a single one of them crossed that intangible line.
An army!!
“Leader, come look!” Lucas suddenly cried out in an urgent tone. He deliberately lowered his voice, as if he was scared of alarming something.
Turner carefully moved towards the cave entrance. His gaze followed Lucas’ finger and finally saw the wolves’ leader.
This wolf was completely different from the other wolves. Its body was enormous, and its sleek black fur was rare within rotting wolves. However, the most frightening thing was that this wolf was standing!
This wolf would occasionally fall onto its four claws, but it spent most of its time standing like a human. It was using high and low pitched growls as well as its front claws to command the groups of rotting wolves.
One of the veterans with ample experience listened for a long time before sighing and saying, “There are at least thirty different syllables! If these syllables were assembled together, it will basically be a language. Is that really a rotting wolf?”
Turner had already sat down with his back against the cavern wall. He closed his eyes and said in a low voice, “Of course it’s a rotting wolf. It’s not that strange for a rotting wolf to speak. Nowadays, anything can happen… We need to find a way to kill it!”
Burke was the sniper within their group. He set up his SVD sniper rifle and slowly lined up the crosshairs on the scope with that wolf. There was at least a thousand meters between the wolf leader and the cave entrance. The wolf leader was clearly much more vigilant and shrewd than ordinary rotting wolves.
“... need to find a way to kill it!” Burke continuously repeated this within his mind. The crosshairs continuously followed the wolf leader.
Finally!
The wolf leader straightened its body and extended its neck into the air as if it was sniffing something. Burke naturally wouldn’t let such a great opportunity go; he immediately pressed the trigger!
Bang! The tremendous recoil slammed into Burke’s shoulder, sending him roughly ten centimeters backwards. However, the split second the gun fired, the wolf leader suddenly moved downwards for some unfathomable reason and hid within the group of wolves! A split-second later, blood blossomed from a rotting wolf, and its strong and flexible body was almost completely obliterated. Now that he missed this opportunity, there would not be a second chance.
Burke powerlessly buried his head into his shoulders.
A large, rough, and strong yet warm hand patted his shoulder. Then, Turner’s calm voice sounded next to Burke’s ear. “In the past twenty years, I’ve experienced many situations worse than this. Lad, don’t think too much. If you couldn’t do it, then no one among the rest of us would be able to do any better. Sometimes, we just need to do what we can and leave the rest to luck.”
Three days passed.
The wolf leader continued to command the wolves and kept them in order. The rotting wolves that did not obey were personally killed by itself one after another. When needed, it would stand on two legs, but it never stayed in one location for too long. Most of the time, it was completely hidden within the group of wolves. Other than its outer wolf-like appearance, its face reminded one of a cool-headed, merciless, and cunning human commander.
“We need to find a way to kill it…”
On top of the mountain ridge, a green eye with gray patterns was staring at the wolf leader. No one knew when he arrived at this position where he could overlook the entire valley. A thick, tan colored blanket surrounded his entire body, perfectly camouflaging him within the surrounding rocks. After observing for who knows how long, the front of a gun wrapped in brown cloth slowly emerged from underneath the blanket. The old-fashioned front sight on top of the gun slowly overlapped with the wolf leader’s head.