Standing on top of the patrol tower, the pack of zombies swarmed together to form a sea of zombies. This scene could only be seen in the city center before, but now they were here in the quiet rural areas. No one knew why the mutant flood erupted; maybe it was because of a lack of living space in the city center or possibly because of the desire to hunt in groups. Regardless, they were here.
This despairing scene made any bystanders uncomfortable.
The twenty-meter-high wall couldn’t bring a sense of security to the people, because…
Amidst the howling noises, a thrower, with tumbling steps, ran to the Fishbone base wall and tossed the infant zombie in its hands at the soldiers on the wall. The infant-sized zombie screamed with its dry lips and leaped at the soldiers firing on the wall.
Then it suddenly exploded.
“Ahh! My eyes!” A soldier with acid splattered in his eyes covered his face while he howled and rolled on the ground. He was better off than the others because the two soldiers at the center of explosion instantly lost their ability to breathe.
“Fu*k! It’s the thrower – get it!” Wang Zhaowu roared at the top of his lungs into his earpiece.
Just as his voice faded, a sniper rifle exploded the head of the thrower.
Sun Jiao, with one foot on the wall, reloaded the Ghost sniper rifle with a crisp “Clang” before she continued to target the zombies. She pressed the trigger another time and executed another thrower with its hand just starting to come into view.
Watching this scene, Wang Zhaowu couldn’t feel more tense. It wasn’t because of Sun Jiao’s shooting skills but rather her identity as the missus of the general.
If anything happened to her, Jiang Chen would shred him to pieces. But even though he used up all the excuses he could think of to convince her, Sun Jiao disregarded all his comments and still stood fearlessly on the wall.
Objectively speaking, Sun Jiao was the person with the strongest combat abilities in the entire base. The soldiers standing there had barely gotten training for more than a year while Sun Jiao started roaming the wasteland from a very young age – more than ten years in total.
Seeing that he couldn’t persuade her, Wang Zhaowu gave up.
There were only five T-3 power armors stationed at the Fishbone base – the rest had been transported to the Sixth Street to provide it with an extended line of defense. The situation was even more critical there as the swarms of mutant mosquitos had almost broken their line of defense. Fortunately, there were a lot of experienced soldiers at the Sixth Street who were all masters who had wandered the wasteland from the beginning. They took out their flaming robots and Molotov cocktails since director Chu Nan announced that the military government would compensate any damaged equipment. To save their own lives, no one dared to hide their treasure horde of weapons any longer.
On the Fishbone side, aside from the five T-3s, only two newly developed T-4s had been produced. And now they were stationed on the wall, unleashing their firepower upon the zombies.
The drone attack force roamed outside the base and sniped the zombies’ heads with their small caliber machine guns.
Then there were the soldiers in heavy bulletproof vests kneeled behind the cover of the wall, their backs carrying a cylinder full of organic fuel. With their flamethrowers ready, they were cautious of any flying mutants that could appear.
Whether it was the light infantry with Reaper Assault Rifles or gunners firing machine guns, all the combat units on the wall had the same mission:
It was to keep the zombies as far away from the base as possible.
Just as Wang Zhaowu looked at the swarm of zombies with a perplexed look, Jiang Chen stepped into the patrol tower.
“General.” Wang Zhaowu saluted.
“How’s the situation?”
He had only been gone for a few hours as the situation deteriorated to this point. As he stared at the endless sea of zombies, he suddenly felt like the base was a small boat in a massive ocean.
“Terrible. There are too many zombies,” Wang Zhaowu said with a bitter smile.
The zombies wouldn’t die unless they were hit in the head. After fighting for so long, even though the wall was packed with fully equipped soldiers and sentry guns firing, the zombies still managed to reach the bottom of the wall.
Below the wall, the zombies raised their heads and screamed ferociously. They extended their arms, attempting to reach the 20-meter-high wall, pass over it, and rip apart the humans on the other side. The zombies in the back swarmed in and used the zombies in front to boost themselves up, creating a slope made of corpses.
This was what Wang Zhaowu was most afraid of.
Twenty meters was only six stories high. It would only take thousands of zombies to create a slope. And how many zombies were radiating out from the city center? It would be an underestimation to say a million.
To prevent the corpse ladder strategy, the soldiers on the wall tossed grenades at the tightly-packed zombies. But this was only a band-aid solution as even though grenades could do significant damage to the zombies, their corpses would still remain behind the wall.
Through the bulletproof glass, Jiang Chen gazed at the countless broken faces. Occasionally, a few infant zombies would smash into the glass of the patrol tower, creating dark green stains.
“General.” Wang Zhaowu took a deep breath and carefully opened his mouth.
“Hmm?” Jiang Chen asked.
“Your missus is there.” Wang Zhaowu pointed at the wall.
Jiang Chen watched Sun Jiao firing her sniper rifle as he spoke helplessly.
“Just let her be.”
He could understand her intentions of wanting to help. Right now, they were only in the initial stage of the mutant flood, so it wasn’t too dangerous for her to be on the frontlines; he might as well just let her be. Especially considering her combat abilities, she would be okay even if everyone else on the wall died.
“What’s the status of the Roar mortars at the base?” Jiang Chen picked up the binoculars and observed the distribution of zombies in the distance. Inside the sea of zombies, Jiang Chen spotted a few vomiters with their bellies raised.
“Prepared and ready to launch,” Wang Zhaowu answered.
Since mortar shells weren’t unlimited, Fishbone base only had a reserve of 2000 rounds. Only when the zombies were in large enough numbers would bombardment by the mortars be most effective. So up til now, Wang Zhaowu hadn’t used the mortars yet.
“Then use it now – I see vomiters appearing 6.6 kilometers away,” Jiang Chen lowered his binoculars in front of his chest as he spoke gravely.
Wang Zhaowu was shocked as he immediately picked up the binoculars and looked into the distance.
He was too busy having a headache about what was happening that he forgot to check the horizon.
Wang Zhaowu put out the order:
“Attention mortars, angle 72 degrees, distance 6.5 kilometers, fire!”
“Roger.”
The sound of shells being unloaded transmitted from the square at the center of the base. The ten mortars formed a formulation with ten soldiers operating them. The shells were launched into the sky with an electromagnetic propulsion with a maximum range of 12 kilometers.
The mortars could launch 20 shells per minute on average. In just a minute, 200 shells were fired.
In their field of vision, the twenty-something vomiters were instantly covered by the shells raining down from the sky.
Thick smoke engulfed the sky. A minute later, new zombies made their way through the thick smoke. And the vomiters were blown to pieces.
“How many shells can the military plant produce?” Jiang Chen asked Wang Zhaowu as he gazed at the black smoke in the distance.
“If there are enough supplies, the maximum production is 200 shells.”
[200 shells? A day’s production isn’t enough for one minute.]
Jiang Chen was thinking hard.
He was contemplating if he should bring something over from the modern world.