Chapter 11: Caught Off Guard
“Yes, but we weren’t able to send out an SOS before the crash. Moreover, when we first headed out, we said that we wouldn’t be able to return until nighttime, so they probably won’t come to our rescue immediately.” The female crewmember thought a bit before replying to Liu Gan.
“Do you have any way of contacting them? After it gets dark, they won’t find us here.” Liu Gan told the female crewmember.
“The Helicopter is equipped with devices for communicating. If you get to it, you can call for them…” The female crewmember looked in the direction of the ruined helicopter. Right now the helicopter’s inside was crawling with zombies. Inside of it was thick smoke, which came from the ignited part of the helicopter which in turn engulfed the zombies bodies in flame. They kept piling on top of each other without being afraid of being burned.
“Forget it.” Liu Gan shook his head while looking at the helicopter.
“I’m internally bleeding… I can’t survive much longer.” The female crewmember’s face continuously paled, and her voice gradually weakened.
“I’m not a doctor. I can’t help you.” Liu Gan looked at the metal that pierced her body. He felt remorseful after saying that.
“There’s something else you can help me with…” The female crewmember told Liu Gan with a begging gaze.
“Tell me, and I’ll see if I can help. But if I’m not not able to, then I’m sorry.” Liu Gan replied to the female crewmember. To survive in this apocalyptic era, helping others could not involve any harm to himself.
“If you wait until the next search and rescue crew, please tell them that this virus could possibly be man-made. In the gene, it has a lot of human fragments. Conventional vaccines don’t work. We have to change our method of thinking, even though I haven’t obtained all the evidence to show it. But…”
The female crewmember didn’t finish her sentence. Ten meters away, the thick smoke coming from the helicopter suddenly produced a loud explosion’ The noise deafened their ears, and produced flames that reached the sky. The dozens of zombies on it were blown away. The explosion created a shockwave from the materials scattered around, with some reaching the billboard nearby. It even lifted Liu Gan and the female crewmember off of the support structure.
Liu Gan grabbed the bottom part of the structure just in time, so that he wouldn’t get blasted away. However, the female crewmember wasn’t as lucky. She was already severely injured, so the shockwave caught her off guard when it blew her off the support structure.
Liu Gan’s other hand reached and grabbed onto the clothing of the female crewmember, and right before the clothing slipped off, the female crewmember grabbed Liu Gan’s hand. Both people were suspended in midair.
Right below them, the zombies became even more excited, crowding on top of each other. They wanted to reach above them, to the food waiting to fall.
“Damn! Today is yet another bad day?” Liu Gan cursed in frustration. One person surrounded in the plaza on the billboard was enough bad luck. Yet now that rescue was here, the result was the helicopter crashing. Now it wasn’t even safe to sit on the billboard.
However, the unluckiest one was the person in his hand – the girl. The two of them were interlocked hand in hand, yet, because of their sweat and rain water, their hand-hold started slipping. Liu gan couldn’t hold her for much longer.
“This is for you, help me give it to them…” The female crewmember, with her other hand, reached into her clothes and pulled out a USB stick. Forcefully, she shoved it into Liu Gan’s hand. At the same time, her other hand slipped out, letting her plunge into the zombies that had gathered below in the plaza.
Liu Gan hadn’t grabbed onto the USB… the moment the girl slipped out of his grasp, he felt her give something to him. It was in between his fingers, with his pointer and the middle finger clinging onto the lanyard for the USB. The USB didn’t follow the girl when she fell down.
Liu Gan’s finger hooked onto the USB, as he looked below him – the female crewmember was within the crowd of zombies. Accompanied by screams of misery, her body was soon torn apart by the savage zombies below, nothing remained.
Using his strength, he climbed back onto the destroyed billboard structure, looking for a suitable seating position to catch his breath.
From the moment he first saw the bald-player’s painful scream when he was bitten, to the moment where people started screaming in agony from getting torn apart, his psychological state had numbed. Death was an inevitable event – it would eventually come for him too.
It was still good – after experiencing all this, the other people were the ones dying. He was very much still alive.
Looking within his hands, he saw a USB. Recalling his conversation with the female crewmember. Liu Gan became confused… Is this the game’s secret mission? How do I complete it? Upon completion will there be a reward?
Seated on the fragmented support structure, Liu Gan sat thinking., Suddenly, he heard strange movement surrounding him. Was it a person? Liu Gan turned to look behind him to find a
zombie crawling over – it was less than a meter away and closing in. It’s face was full of bloodlust, while it to continued crawling towards him.
Caught off guard, Liu Gan felt a chill in his heart, and his body unconsciously trembled… Originally, he had thought being above the ground was safe. No one would have thought that they were able to reach the top of the billboard.
How did it get up here? If it climbed it’s way up. Won’t that mean other zombies could also climb up here? Then it would definitely be trouble!
Seeing that the zombie had only the brain and top half of the body, Liu Gan quickly understood. This zombie was definitely from before, when the helicopter had exploded and sent a zombie flying up to the billboard. With only half a body landing on the fragmented billboard parts, that was probably the reason why Liu Gan didn’t notice. It must have smelled Liu Gan’s scent of fresh meat. So it crawled over with the desire to eat him.
It doesn’t even have a gut anymore, yet it still wants to eat. What is this strange monster?
“F^[email protected] off!” Liu Gan got angry. In real life, he rarely cursed, but this time he couldn’t contain the vulgar language. He stuck out his foot and rapidly stomped the zombie. He vented his anger and the depressed feeling from within him.
The zombie is crushed to bits and pieces, Then Liu Gan kicked it off of the fragmented billboard. Liu Gan still didn’t feel safe, so he carefully checked his surroundings. After confirming there were no hidden zombies, then was he able to release a long sigh and sit down.
The Trembling World was a place surrounded by danger. There was never a moment where he can drop his alertness!
Liu Gan looked around once more. When he saw the endless tide of corpses gathering in the plaza like a mass of maggots, as well as the zombies below him constantly piling up bodies in an attempt to climb up and eat him, he felt an indescribable sorrow in his heart.
After experiencing the failed attempt of a rescue, now, he is once again lonely. It had returned to the same starting point.