Chapter 48: The Rescue Begins
This time, Zhan Yun’s entire team was going to take part in the operation. However, since they would be acting alongside the military, it wasn’t appropriate to bring along Yu Dongdong, who had no abilities, or a pet cat.
Because a large portion of Zhao Bing’s team were wounded, Jiang Xuzhou arranged for them to remain at the service area on garrison duty rather than heading into City A.
So before setting out, Zhan Yun specifically went to find Zhao Bing and entrusted Yu Dongdong and the Xiao Hei cat to them for two days of care. He also left them two backpacks full of food.
Perhaps sensing that the older brothers were about to leave, Yu Dongdong pouted, reached out to tug at Su Ruizhe’s sleeve, and looked up at him with a pair of pitch-black eyes, as if he were about to cry.
“Be good and listen, okay? Big brother will be back very soon, all right?” Su Ruizhe’s heart softened. He reached out to ruffle the boy’s hair, squatted down, and spoke gently to Yu Dongdong.
Yu Dongdong obediently nodded and, with obvious reluctance, let go.
The convoy soon set off. This rescue mission to City A involved a full twenty heavy military trucks and eight hundred fully armed soldiers. After the conversation that morning between Zhan Yun, Su Ruizhe, and Commander Jiang, this operation had gained an additional objective: collecting vegetables, fruits, and plant seeds.
Zhan Yun and Su Ruizhe’s small team also rode in one of the military trucks, each holding a machine gun issued by the army, with magazines tucked onto their bodies. Except for Zhan Yun, almost everyone in the team was handling a real gun for the first time, and they all found the experience very novel.
Only Zheng Jiahe complained nonstop. “I don’t even know how to shoot. This thing’s so heavy—might as well give me an iron rod instead…”
Zhang Shuoliang didn’t say anything, but judging by his expression, he actually agreed with Zheng Jiahe.
Wu Jing irritably pinched her man’s arm, then shot Zheng Jiahe a sharp look. “Anyone else can complain that it’s heavy—except you.”
The homebody who was helpless in the face of women shut his mouth resentfully.
The convoy slowly drove into the city. Countless zombies were drawn by the noise, only to be mercilessly crushed beneath the wheels. Deafening gunfire and explosions rang out without pause, announcing the army’s arrival to any survivors still in the city.
The government had repeatedly broadcast rescue information over the radio. Anyone in City A who had the chance to listen to a radio should have received the message.
However, once the vehicles entered the city, what met their eyes was utter devastation. Abandoned cars were everywhere, along with shriveled, broken corpses left to bake in the sun. The only things moving were the walking dead, groaning softly as they shuffled toward the convoy.
“What’s going on?” This situation was far too abnormal, and the soldiers were all taken aback.
When they had previously entered City S for rescue operations, countless residential windows had been hung with red cloth—curtain fabric, scarves, even underwear. As long as it was red, anything that could be hung was hung. If someone truly had nothing red, they would hang a piece of brightly colored cloth instead, and the troops would still go to check.
But here, there was nothing at all. The entire city felt like a dead city, devoid of any sign of life.
Where had everyone gone? Could it be that in such a huge city, not a single living person remained? Or had they somehow not heard the radio broadcasts?
“Teams One through Ten provide cover. All other teams dismount and conduct search-and-rescue in the surrounding areas! All squads, activate life detectors!” orders came through the radio.
The military was equipped with DKL life detectors, currently the most advanced search-and-rescue devices in the world. They locate living people by sensing the electric field generated by ultra-low-frequency waves produced by the human heartbeat. The ultra-low-frequency electric field emitted by the human body can penetrate reinforced concrete walls, steel plates, wooden boards, water, and other media. As long as a person is alive—whether conscious or not—the life detector can locate them in the shortest possible time.
The device was compact, weighing only about one kilogram, making it easy to carry. Each squad had one. However, its effective range was only five hundred meters, making large-scale searches impractical. The only option was to split up and search in smaller units.
The first ten squads set up defensive positions along the main road using the military trucks, clearing out zombies drawn by the noise. The remaining ten squads split up and entered nearby buildings to conduct searches.
Zhan Yun’s group was in the twelfth vehicle, making them Squad Twelve. The squad leader, Li Ming, seemed to have received instructions from his superiors. He looked toward Zhan Yun’s group, silently asking whether they would dismount. Zhan Yun nodded, giving an affirmative answer.
However, for safety reasons, Li Ming had Zhan Yun’s group bring up the rear while he led his own team charging ahead.
The life detector registered a signal in a fifteen-story residential building. Li Ming immediately gave the order to begin the search. As soon as they entered, a stench of decay hit them. The stairwell was littered with dried, dark red bloodstains and severed limbs.
The elevator was no longer usable, so everyone could only take the stairs.
Li Ming suddenly turned back and said to Zhan Yun, “I know you’re very capable, so we’ll split up. We’ll search from the top down, and you search from the bottom up. The commander said that any supplies you find are yours.”
“Alright, no problem.” Zhan Yun nodded. Jiang Xuzhou had clearly kept their situation in mind, and they did indeed need some officially acquired supplies as bargaining chips for later entry into the survivor base.
“Be careful,” Li Ming reminded them before leading his team upstairs.
This building had two apartments per floor, so Zhan Yun’s group began their search from the first floor. With Zheng Jiahe around, door locks were basically useless. There wasn’t a door he couldn’t kick open—if one kick didn’t do it, then he’d kick it again.
In the first apartment, there were no people and no zombies. Items were strewn messily across the floor. However, beside the bed in the bedroom, they found a fully charged power bank and a domestic touchscreen smartphone, also fully charged.
“Hey, this is nice,” Zheng Jiahe said as he picked them up. During their frantic escape earlier, his own phone had long since been lost.
“What use is that to you? You can’t make calls or go online,” Song Chengshu curled his lips.
“I can play games,” Zheng Jiahe replied, turning the phone on. He easily reached the menu screen—there was no password set. “Let me see if there are any games on here.”
“Hahaha, look at this—there’s that game where plants fight zombies!” Zheng Jiahe held up the phone gleefully. “This was definitely prepared just for me!”
Song Chengshu couldn’t be bothered with him and turned to head into the kitchen. Zhan Yun was just dragging a small sack of rice and two jugs of corn oil out of the kitchen. He tossed them onto a bedsheet spread on the floor, then looked up and asked, “Where’s Zheng Jiahe?”
“In the bedroom.”
“Huh? Boss calling me?” Zheng Jiahe stowed away his phone and power bank and ran out of the bedroom.
“Pick this stuff up. Anything else we find later, you carry it all.”
“Ah…” Zheng Jiahe shot a look of deep disgust at the bedsheet on the floor, which was embroidered with a big red peony.
Zhan Yun frowned slightly, and Zheng Jiahe immediately behaved, wrapping everything up in the bedsheet and slinging it onto his back.
“We don’t have much time. Everyone move faster!”
In the second apartment, there was an elderly zombie locked in the bedroom. After the group dealt with it, they found only two packs of instant noodles.
With Li Ming’s team clearing the way ahead, Zhan Yun’s group encountered no zombies as they went upstairs and smoothly searched seven floors in a row.
The bundle on Zheng Jiahe’s back grew from a small package into an enormous one. If not for his great strength, he probably would have been crushed by the weight. On the fourth floor, they found an apartment that likely belonged to an official—there were large quantities of unopened, finely packaged cigarettes and liquor gift boxes. Most of them were taken into Su Ruizhe’s space, while a small portion was added to the bundle on Zheng Jiahe’s back.
When they reached the eighth floor, they immediately spotted several zombie corpses lying on the ground, all with their heads smashed open. There were obvious bloodstains on the floor, completely dried, trailing along the corridor all the way to the door of Apartment 02.
The door lock of Apartment 02 had already been broken, but it wouldn’t budge when pushed—it had likely been blocked by heavy objects inside.
Zhan Yun gave Zheng Jiahe a look. Zheng Jiahe stepped forward and kicked the door open. Behind it, a writing desk and a sofa were stacked together—clearly what had been blocking the door.
Once inside, they saw a person lying unconscious on the floor. His body was covered in blood. He wore only a vest of indiscernible color on top, black trousers on the bottom, and a pair of sneakers stained with blood. By his hand lay a bloodstained military knife and a deflated backpack containing only half a pack of biscuits and a couple of mouthfuls of water.
“Old Song, take a look.”
Song Chengshu immediately went over to examine him. The man was still alive. He had multiple claw wounds, but none were fatal. Most of the wounds had already stopped bleeding—he must have been lying here for quite some time.
Judging by his build, he looked like a soldier, perhaps a veteran. Due to blood loss and fever, his breathing was extremely weak, and his body trembled uncontrollably. Song Chengshu also checked his pupils—there was no dilation or dispersion for now, but they were trembling severely. He was likely engaged in an intense struggle against the virus in his body.
“Little Zhe, do you have any fruit juice?” Song Chengshu was worried the man’s injuries were too severe for him to hold on.
Su Ruizhe took out a bowl, a lemon, and a cucumber, and had Zheng Jiahe squeeze the juice by hand in the simplest, roughest way possible.
While waiting for the juice, Song Chengshu took the medical kit Su Ruizhe had taken out of his space. He first used his ability to draw water to rinse the man’s wounds and wipe the blood off his body, then used iodine and gauze to dress the injuries.
“What do we do next?” Time was tight—they couldn’t wait here for him to wake up naturally, and carrying him upstairs wasn’t realistic either.
“A-Liang, carry him down. Wu Jing, stay with him and watch for danger.”
“Got it, boss.”
Zhang Shuoliang lifted the man onto his back, while Wu Jing followed closely behind, gun in hand, remaining alert.
After Zhan Yun’s group finished clearing the eighth floor, they ran into Li Ming, who was heading downstairs. Li Ming’s team had also found two survivors—a couple. Both looked terrible. Hunger and dehydration had left their lips cracked and their eye sockets deeply sunken; they looked utterly miserable. The two were also being carried downstairs by soldiers.
The couple had been trapped on the thirteenth floor, with zombies constantly wandering outside their door. They lived in a subdivided rental apartment—an entire unit full of zombies. They had been hiding in the kitchen and were nearly at the end of their endurance.
According to them, they were office workers and hadn’t bought a radio. If they needed to listen to broadcasts, they usually used their phones—but after the power outage at the start of the apocalypse, their phones couldn’t be turned on, so they had no way to receive the broadcasts. Because they were short on money, they didn’t have a car either, so they had no idea that a rescue team was coming.
“Not a bad haul,” Li Ming said, his mouth twitching when he saw the massive bundle on Zheng Jiahe’s back.
“Not bad. We found a survivor too and already had someone take him downstairs,” Zhan Yun replied calmly.
“Alright, then we can withdraw immediately.” After confirming there were no other survivors in the building, Li Ming gave the order to retreat.
Five minutes later, Squad Twelve returned to the military truck. No casualties, three survivors rescued.
After settling the survivors and storing the collected supplies, Squad Twelve dismounted again to continue search-and-rescue operations.
Thank you for reading 🙂 I hope you all liked my translations. If you enjoyed my work, please consider buying me a Ko-Fi 😉
