Chapter 49: Changyang High School
For a full three hours, the search-and-rescue teams combed through seventeen entire streets and eleven residential neighborhoods, killing nearly a thousand zombies—yet they found only thirty-three survivors.
The number of survivors was far too small.
Where were the rest of them?
Was it possible that the survivors of A City had gathered together, hiding somewhere within the city?
With an hour and a half left until dawn, the commander of this operation chose a large stadium in the city center as a temporary daytime base for the rescue teams. The First and Second Squads were tasked with clearing zombies from inside the stadium, while the other squads continued dispersed searches using life detectors, all required to return to the stadium before daybreak.
Following the indications of the life detector, Squad Twelve arrived at an upscale villa compound. They parked the military truck at the entrance, left four or five people behind to guard it, and the rest entered the compound together.
Several of the houses they passed had their doors wide open, with signs that the locks and windows had been smashed. The interiors had clearly been ransacked. It was very likely that survivors from the compound had been searching for food. As they moved deeper inside, they discovered dozens of zombies crowding around the entrance of a villa, pounding and slamming against the front door with all their might.
Even without the life detector, they could guess that survivors had to be inside that villa. When the team drew closer, the zombies caught the scent of fresh flesh and turned toward the rescue team. The soldiers immediately opened fire, killing all of them.
“Open up. We’re a government rescue team. All the zombies have been eliminated. Please open the door,” Li Ming said as he stepped forward and pounded hard on the door.
The door creaked open, revealing the bloodless face of a woman. She wore a silk dress; likely due to hunger, her cheeks were deeply sunken, her cheekbones protruding. With her long black hair and a pair of large, frightened eyes, she looked like a heroine straight out of a horror movie.
“Y-you…” When she saw the soldiers in uniform outside, hope flared in her eyes. She grabbed Li Ming and yanked him inside. “Hurry! Come in! Save him! Please save him!”
Li Ming stumbled from the sudden pull, but hearing the desperation in her voice, he followed her inside. The others came in after him.
The interior of the house was extravagantly decorated. In the days before the apocalypse, people might have admired and marveled at it—but now, these so-called antiques and treasures weren’t worth as much as a single bag of bread.
A gaunt man lay on the sofa in the living room. His shoulder was wrapped in a white dress shirt, now completely soaked dark red with blood. Cold sweat covered his face, and his body trembled uncontrollably—he had clearly been bitten by a zombie.
“Please, save him! Save him!”
“I’m a doctor. Let me take a look,” Song Chengshu said immediately as he stepped forward. He removed the blood-soaked shirt, revealing a gruesome wound on the man’s shoulder. A large chunk of flesh had been torn away, the bone visible beneath. The edges of the wound were slightly blackened, making Song Chengshu frown. When he checked the man’s pupils, they were already starting to lose focus. Blood vessels spread around his dark irises, the red creeping inward—clear signs of infection. He was on the verge of mutating.
“How is it?” Li Ming asked.
Song Chengshu sighed and gently shook his head.
The woman seemed to understand at once. With a wail, she broke down crying and threw herself into the man’s arms.
Scattered on the floor were empty food wrappers—their contents long since eaten. Without asking, everyone could roughly guess what had happened: the man had gone out to search for food, been bitten by a zombie, and failed to withstand the virus’s invasion.
“Ma’am, your husband has been infected. Please come with us and leave this place,” Li Ming said solemnly.
“No… no… I’m not leaving!” The woman clutched the man’s neck, refusing to go with them.
“Captain, what do we do?” someone asked.
Li Ming hesitated. They couldn’t very well drag her away by force. And time was short—they couldn’t afford to delay here.
Just then, the man’s body began to convulse violently, and his skin color started to change noticeably.
“He’s mutating!” Song Chengshu, having already witnessed a mutation before, yanked the sobbing woman away and raised his gun.
Sure enough, in the next instant, the man opened his eyes. They were completely blood-red. A raspy “huff, huff” sound came from his throat as he opened his mouth and lunged toward them.
“No!”
Bang.
Two sounds rang out at the same time. The man collapsed to the ground, a bloody hole in his forehead…
“You killed him! You killed him!” The woman broke down, screaming hysterically.
Zhan Yun couldn’t bear to watch any longer. He stepped forward and knocked her out cold, then shoved her toward Zheng Jiahe. “Carry her.”
“Why is it always me…?” Zheng Jiahe pouted as he hoisted the unconscious woman onto his shoulder.
Li Ming clearly hadn’t expected Zhan Yun’s handling of the situation to be so simple and brutal. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but in the end swallowed his words.
After that, they searched two more residential compounds and found three additional survivors. Just before the morning sun rose, they returned to the stadium.
The other teams also came back one after another, but the number of survivors they brought with them was still very small.
The commander opened a map of A City and analyzed the situation carefully. As mentioned before, A City was a tourist city, with relatively few permanent residents. Most of the population consisted of visitors. The city’s main scenic attractions were located in the western part, where there were mountains and water and pleasant scenery. Since they had entered the city from the east and spent the day searching mainly in the urban districts, it was possible that tourists were hiding in hotels, or had fled westward. He therefore decided that the focus of that night’s search would be the western part of the city.
The total number of survivors rescued that day was sixty-nine. Most of them had been hiding in their homes since the very beginning of the apocalypse, surviving on whatever food they had stored. Over these days, they had lived in constant fear, their nerves stretched tight and their bodies weakened by hunger.
The rescue team distributed some dry rations and compressed biscuits to them. Although it was enough to fill their stomachs, they ate with visible difficulty.
Seeing this, Su Ruizhe got back into the truck and opened the large bundle. He took out a pot and used an alcohol stove to cook four packs of instant noodles. The aroma quickly filled the entire stadium. He poured the noodles into disposable cups and handed one to each survivor. At a time like this, no one cared about preservatives in instant noodles or how shabby it was to use disposable cups as tableware. Everyone cradled that cup of noodles as if they were holding some rare delicacy, deeply moved.
After the steaming noodle soup went down, the survivors finally relaxed. They picked up the dry rations and compressed biscuits and slowly began to chew.
They also distributed sausages, chocolate, and other high-energy foods, as well as tasty fruit juice and functional drinks for the soldiers, who had worked hard all night as well.
“Thank you…” Li Ming said somewhat awkwardly. After all, the supplies had been painstakingly collected by them, yet in the end they had given most of it away.
“No need,” Su Ruizhe replied. It wouldn’t make sense for them to collect such a large bundle of supplies, eat and drink well themselves, and share nothing with others.
If it weren’t for the fact that they had only managed to find one alcohol stove, Su Ruizhe would have liked to cook another pot of instant noodles for himself. Still, bread and biscuits worked just as well—so long as they filled the stomach. Once they reached the survivor base and closed the doors behind them, they could eat whatever they wanted.
The sun soon rose, the temperature climbed again, and everyone began to rest.
When the sun set, the rescue team quickly regrouped and prepared to set out for the second search-and-rescue operation. The First and Second Squads stayed behind to protect the survivors, while all the other squads were dispatched.
The commander had already marked each team’s assigned area on the map. Squad Twelve drove their military truck toward their designated location.
Their assigned search area covered nearly ten kilometers, yet the life detector showed no response at all—until they were almost at the edge of the search zone.
The vehicle immediately turned toward the direction indicated by the life detector, and they soon spotted a middle school.
Childlike graffiti was painted on the white walls. At the school gate were written the words “Changyang Middle School.” However, the iron gate had already been destroyed, and low zombie growls echoed across the empty school playground.
There were definitely living people inside the school—and possibly children. This realization made everyone’s hearts sink. They immediately drove the military truck onto the campus and soon saw several hundred zombies densely packed around a teaching building, continuously slamming into its main entrance.
The entrance had been blocked with cabinets, but under the relentless pounding of the zombies, it didn’t look like it would hold for much longer.
The students inside the building could be in grave danger!
“Everyone out! Prepare for combat!” Li Ming ordered at once.
The soldiers jumped out of the vehicle, and the rapid tat-tat-tat of machine-gun fire rang out. Zombies fell in droves, but more immediately filled the gaps.
There were simply too many zombies. The soldiers attacked while slowly retreating.
“Roar!” Suddenly, one zombie burst out from the crowd. Braving the hail of bullets, it charged toward the soldiers at astonishing speed. Countless bullets tore through its body, yet it kept advancing.
“Grenade—watch out!” Li Ming shouted as he threw one.
The grenade struck the zombie squarely and exploded with a thunderous blast, blowing its body apart. Nearly the entire left half of its body was gone—yet incredibly, it still dragged itself forward, using what remained of its left leg, nothing but a single leg bone.
The soldiers immediately concentrated their fire on its head. Only after an intense barrage did they finally bring the zombie down.
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