Translator: Jostena
Editor: playerprophet (awesome new editor! Yay!) & Callis
For three hours, search and rescue teams searched 17 streets and 11 residential areas. They killed nearly 1,000 zombies, but only 33 survivors were found.
There had to be more survivors than this. Where were they?
Was it possible that the survivors of A City had gathered to hide somewhere?
An hour and a half before dawn, the commander of the search and rescue operation chose a large stadium in the city centre as a base for the search and rescue team to rest during the day. The first and second teams were assigned to cleaning up the dead bodies in the stadium. Other teams continued to use life detectors to conduct scattered searches and were to return to the stadium before dawn.
Following the life detector, the twelfth team arrived at a high-level villa district. The general stopped to leave four or five guards at the door. The rest entered the villa district together.
Several of the houses they passed had open doors. The doors, locks, and windows had been smashed open, and houses were turned over as if thoroughly searched. Survivors in the villa district were probably searching for food. The twelfth team continued to walk and found dozens of zombies around the gate of a villa, beating and crashing desperately against the door.
Even without the life detector, they could guess that survivors must be in the villa. As they approached, the zombies smelled fresh flesh. They turned and approached the search and rescue team. They immediately started shooting and killed the zombies.
“Open the door, we are the government's search and rescue team. We have killed the zombies, please open up.” Li Ming came forward and knocked hard on the door.
The door opened with trembling hands, revealing a woman’s pallid face. She was wearing a silk dress. Perhaps because of hunger, her cheeks were hollow and her cheekbones protruded. Coupled with a head of black hair and a pair of big, horrible eyes, she looked like the heroine coming out of a horror film.
“Y-you…” The woman saw people outside wearing military uniforms, and hope burst in her eyes. She grabbed Li Ming and dragged him inside. “Come in! Save him! Save him!”
Li Ming was dragged by the woman and staggered, but when he heard the urgency in her voice, he followed her into the house. The others trailed behind them.
The decorations inside could be said to be extremely luxurious. Before the end of the world, people might still be in the mood to appreciate and admire that kind of thing. But now, these so-called antiques and treasures weren't as valuable as a bag of bread.
On the sofa in the living room lay a thin man with a white shirt. There was blood on his shoulders, staining the cloth a dark red. From the man’s cold sweat and trembling body, it was obvious that he had been bitten by a zombie.
“Please, save him, save him!”
“I’m a doctor, let me see.” Song Chengshu stepped forward and opened the bloody shirt to reveal the fierce wound on his shoulder. The wound was missing a large chunk of flesh, so deep that bone was visible, and it was black around the edges, which made Song Chengshu frown. Looking at the man’s eyes, his gaze was unfocused. The black of his pupils were covered with blood vessels, and the red was spreading to the center. These were symptoms of infection, and he would soon undergo mutation.
“How is it?” Li Ming asked.
Song Chengshu sighed and shook his head gently.
The woman seemed to be aware of something. "Wa!" she burst into tears and fell into the man's arms.
Some food wrappers were strewn on the ground around them, the contents eaten. Needless to say, they could guess what happened. The man had been bitten by a zombie when he left to find food, and failed to resist the virus.
“Madam, your husband is infected. Please leave with us.” Li Ming said quietly.
“No, no, no… I won’t go!” The woman hugged the man’s neck and refused to follow Li Ming.
“Captain, what should we do?”
Li Ming had a difficult decision to make. He couldn’t force her, could he? They didn’t have much time. They couldn’t stay for long.
Just then, the man’s body began to spasm, and the color of his skin started to change.
“He’s mutating!” Song Chengshu had seen a zombie mutate before, so he yanked away the crying woman and he raised the gun in his hand.
In the next moment, the man opened his bloody red eyes. He roared from his throat, cried out with a “hoo, hoo” sound, opened his mouth, and rushed towards them.
“No!”
Bang!
Two sounds rang out at the same time, and the man fell with a bloody hole in his forehead…
“You killed him! You killed him!” The woman broke down and wailed.
Zhan Yun couldn’t watch any longer. He went straight to her and knocked the woman unconscious. He pushed her to Zheng Jiahe and helped her onto his shoulder.
“Why is it me again…” Zheng Jiahe flattened his mouth and carried the fainted woman on his shoulder.
Li Ming didn’t understand that this was Zhan Yun's way of handling things: simple and rough. He opened his mouth to say something, and swallowed it back.
Then, they searched two more neighborhoods and found three survivors before returning to the stadium before the sun rose.
Other teams had returned, but they hadn't found many survivors either.
The commander opened the map of A City and carefully studied it. Before that, he'd said that A City was a tourist city. There were more tourists than the residential local population. Most of the scenic spots in A City were located on the western side. There were mountains and rivers, and the scenery was pleasant. The tourists came from the east into the city, but the day's main search was in the urban areas. Perhaps the tourists were hiding in hotels, or had fled to the west. So, he decided that that night, their next search would focus on the west of the city.
They found 69 survivors that day, most of whom had been hiding in their homes since the apocalypse started, and depending on their stored food for survival. They had reached a state of panic, nervous and hungry.
The search and rescue teams gave them some dry goods, compressed biscuits, and other food. Although they could fill their stomachs, they had a hard time eating.
Su Ruizhe saw the situation, climbed onto their car and opened the big package. He took out a pot, boiled four packets of instant noodles with an alcohol lamp, and the fragrance filled the entire stadium. He served each of the survivors instant noodles in a disposable cup. At this time, no one was concerned about whether or not the instant noodles had preservatives anymore, when they were already using disposable cups as tableware. People held their cups of instant noodles as if they were touched by the delicacy they had eaten.
The survivors relaxed with their steaming soup noodles, picked up the dry food and compressed biscuits, and slowly chewed on them.
He also gave the soldiers things like ham sausages and chocolate to replenish their strength, as well as good juice and energy drinks. They worked hard all night.
“Thank you…” Li Ming said with some embarrassment. He knew Su Ruizhe and his group had worked hard to collect those things, but eventually distributed it to others.
“You’re welcome.” There was no reason they would collect so many things and then not share with anyone else when they ate and drank.
If there was more than one alcohol lamp, Su Ruizhe would have liked to cook another pot of instant noodles. But it was all just for filling your stomach. When they got to the survivors' base and closed the door, they could eat whatever they wanted.
The sun rose, the temperature rose, and people began to fall asleep.
When the sun went down, the search and rescue team quickly gathered to prepare for a second search and rescue operation. The first and second teams stayed to protect the survivors, and all the other teams were sent out.
The commander had marked the area assigned to each team on the map, and the twelfth squad’s military cars moved towards the mark.
They were assigned a search range of about 10 kilometers, but the life detector did not respond until the search area was about to be expanded.
The vehicle rushed off in the direction indicated by the life detector and saw a middle school.
The white walls were painted with children’s graffiti, and the words “Changyang Middle School” were written over the entrance. However, the iron gates of the school had been destroyed, and the empty playground echoed with the deep roar of the dead.
There must be a living person in the school, and maybe a child! This recognition made people’s hearts sink. They drove the military cars towards the school in a hurry, and soon, they saw hundreds of zombies at the foot of the building, crashing into its doors.
The doors were blocked with cabinets, but it didn't look like they would last long under the violent impact of the zombies.
The students in the building might be in danger!
"Fall in Ready for battle!" Li Ming ordered.
Everyone jumped out of the car and then raised their machine guns, shooting down zombies. The guns rattled and the zombies fell quickly, but new ones rose.
There were so many zombies that the attacking soldiers were forced to fall back.
“Awool!” Suddenly, a zombie burst through the crowd and rushed at the soldiers through a rain of bullets. Countless bullets riddled its body, but could not stop its momentum.
“Watch out for grenades!” Li Ming shouted and tossed a grenade.
The grenade hit the body of the zombie with remarkable accuracy before it exploded. The left side of its body was gone, but it still stubbornly moved toward them on the remaining bone of its left leg.
The soldiers opened fire at its head, but that zombie proved difficult to kill.
I’m finally back!! I can’t believe I was gone for so long and after I got back from vacation I got sick… Callis got busy with her two new works as you all know and Dragon is busy too so now we have more new editors because vv also started getting busy. Life is so hard T^T
This chapter was ready for a while but had no one to edit it but at least now it’s good! Welcome the new editor guys who saved this chapter from being kept unedited for even longer XD
Dragon will be back soon and I might be able to do a chapter every other day if we can get them done fast!
When the woman who opened the door looked like a heroine out of a horror film:
Callis: Sadako, is that you?
Jostena: That is definitely her based on that description XD
The sound of a zombie sound effects ‘hoo, hoo’:
playerprophet: These sound effects are funny to me. Is this what zombies sound like in Chinese?
Callis: The literal translation is “Hē, hē”, but eh, who knows?
Jostena: I know it sounds like that ‘he, he’ but that sounds like they’re laughing so I tried to change it XD
When Zhan Yun knocked the woman unconscious:
Callis: Lmao Zhan Yun, knocking people unconscious
Jostena: He can only be patient with Xiao Zhe but other people are just annoying to him