Chapter 50: A Difficult Dilemma
After the zombie collapsed, Li Ming stepped forward with a dagger and forcefully pried open its skull, retrieving a pale red crystal core. It was indeed an evolved zombie.
With the threat of the evolved zombie eliminated, the remaining ordinary zombies were much easier to deal with. The soldiers ran swiftly while spraying gunfire, and the zombies fell in waves. Zhan Yun also wielded a submachine gun, targeting their heads—almost one shot per kill—which drew a few extra glances from Li Ming.
“I’m a police officer,” Zhan Yun said simply.
Li Ming nodded in understanding, feeling a greater sense of recognition toward Zhan Yun as a fellow public servant.
Compared to Zhan Yun, the rest of his team performed far worse. Most of them had never even touched a gun before the apocalypse, let alone fired accurately while moving. Their hit rate was practically painful to watch. Even Su Ruizhe wasn’t much better. However, when using pea bullets, even shots that failed to hit a zombie’s head could still inflict damage.
After seven or eight minutes, all the zombies were finally eliminated. Li Ming ordered several soldiers to collect the crystal cores, while he led the others to knock on the door.
“People inside, please open the door. We are a national rescue team. All zombies have been eliminated. Please open the door immediately and leave with us.”
As soon as he finished speaking, a row of heads poked out from the upstairs windows—teenagers, their eyes filled with fear and hope.
“It’s the army! The soldiers are here to save us!”
Cheers followed, then the sound of running inside, and people began moving the objects blocking the door.
However, there were so many things piled against the entrance that even after several minutes they hadn’t cleared them all. Helplessly, Li Ming ordered a few soldiers to climb in through the windows to help.
When they entered the teaching building, the soldiers were stunned. There were over a hundred students inside, all wearing identical school uniforms. Their hair was messy, they were generally thin, but their spirits seemed relatively intact. There were also about a dozen adults—some who looked like teachers and others dressed in chef uniforms, likely cafeteria staff—helping move the barricades.
The entrance had been blocked with stacked desks, piled layer upon layer like a human tower, making them extremely difficult to move.
Fortunately, working together, they finally cleared the doorway.
After a brief inquiry, they learned that on the day the apocalypse broke out, most students at Changyang Middle School were attending evening self-study classes. Several chefs and kitchen assistants were still on duty and hadn’t gone home yet. When things went wrong, they rushed out wielding kitchen knives, proving surprisingly formidable. Several teachers on duty sacrificed themselves to protect the students, but thankfully ensured the safety of most of them. The cafeteria stocked food on a weekly basis, and relying on those supplies, they had barely managed to survive until now—though they were essentially out of food. Fortunately, rescue had finally arrived.
However, there were simply too many survivors. Even with a heavy military truck, they couldn’t fit everyone. Li Ming had no choice but to use the radio to request support from nearby teams.
Unfortunately, another squad had already sent out a distress call. They had discovered a small stronghold inside a police station, but zombies—drawn by human blood and flesh—had surrounded it. Estimates put the number at no fewer than four or five hundred zombies. A siege of that scale meant there must be many survivors inside.
The rescue team attempted to draw the zombies away, but hadn’t anticipated that among them were not only evolved zombies, but also two zombie dogs. Now the rescue team itself was trapped.
Li Ming checked the map and found that the police station wasn’t far—only about ten minutes’ drive from Changyang Middle School.
The problem was, they couldn’t abandon the students and go rescue their comrades. But they also couldn’t bring themselves to leave their teammates fighting for their lives.
Li Ming found himself trapped in a terrible dilemma.
“We can split our forces and find more vehicles to go to the police station,” Zhan Yun suddenly suggested. “The roads we came through have already been cleared, so the return trip shouldn’t be too dangerous. If things get out of hand, we can always request backup from the stadium.”
There were plenty of abandoned vehicles on the roads. Find an old one, like in the movies—hotwire it with a couple of exposed wires, and it would start.
Li Ming agreed completely and immediately ordered his men to find vehicles.
Whether due to training or luck, the soldiers quickly found two pickup trucks, one small cargo truck, and three vans. That would allow them to send nearly thirty people to support the police station.
“We’ll go too. Give us a van,” Zhan Yun said. With so many lives at stake, pretending not to see when they clearly had the ability to help was impossible.
“Alright. Thank you!” Li Ming replied without hesitation.
He had already heard about Zhan Yun’s team. They had three ability users, and most importantly, one of them possessed an extremely rare power—using plants to create weapons with special lethality against zombies.
Knowing there were evolved zombies and zombie animals, yet still willing to help—Li Ming remembered that kindness.
Li Ming split the team in two: one group escorted the students and teachers from Changyang Middle School back to the stadium, while the other drove toward the police station.
As they traveled, Su Ruizhe distributed pea bullets to everyone on Zhan Yun’s team. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to give them to Li Ming’s men—he simply couldn’t explain where so many peas came from. In any case, with them providing cover, Li Ming’s team wouldn’t be in danger.
They soon reached the vicinity of the police station, and intense gunfire echoed in the distance.
The shots came from the rooftop of a roadside shop. Across from the police station was a row of single-story stores. Fighting as they retreated, the soldiers had climbed onto one of the rooftops.
The roof was about three meters high. The zombies hadn’t yet learned how to climb, so they could only gather below, reaching upward and roaring.
This alone wouldn’t have been too dangerous. Although numerous, the soldiers held the high ground and could eventually wipe them out.
However, mixed among the zombies were two zombie dogs, leaping desperately toward the rooftop. Canines had excellent jumping ability—several times, their front paws nearly reached the edge of the roof. The situation was extremely perilous.
One of them was a large black zombie dog. Its abdomen was ripped open, intestines and organs spilling out as it jumped, emitting a foul, rotting stench.
The other was a Bordeaux Mastiff. Though slightly smaller, it was even more muscular. Its claws gouged deep marks into the walls—clear evidence of what would happen if it caught a person.
The soldiers on the rooftop continuously fired at the two zombie dogs. Bullets thudded into their heads, but their skulls were incredibly hard—ordinary ammunition couldn’t do much damage.
Evolved zombie dogs?!
Animals were naturally stronger than humans and evolved faster. Early in the apocalypse, Su Ruizhe had already extracted a crystal core from a zombie dog’s brain.
Just as the Mastiff leapt again, its front paws gripping the edge of the roof, clearly about to vault up—
Zhan Yun slammed on the brakes, leaned half his body out of the window, aimed at the zombie dog’s head, and pulled the trigger.
A bright green pea bullet struck true.
The zombie dog let out a mournful howl. A large hole appeared in its head, and its body fell straight down from midair.
Li Ming was deeply shaken. That skull—previously impervious to concentrated fire—had been pierced effortlessly by a single shot from Zhan Yun. The regiment commander hadn’t been exaggerating. These people were truly formidable.
As its companion fell, the remaining zombie dog twitched its nose, tilted its head toward the corpse, then lunged forward and bit into the other zombie dog’s skull.
Everyone froze.
They hadn’t expected a zombie dog to devour its own kind. A sharp crack rang out as it chewed through the skull, sending chills down their spines.
Su Ruizhe knew immediately that this was bad. In the later stages of the apocalypse, zombies would devour one another, absorbing the energy from crystal cores to evolve again. These two zombie dogs were already at an early evolutionary stage. If this one absorbed the other’s crystal core, he wasn’t sure whether his pea bullets would still be effective.
Without hesitation, Su Ruizhe raised his gun and fired three shots in quick succession. His aim wasn’t as precise as Zhan Yun’s, so he targeted the body, relying on the pea bullets’ lethality.
The zombie dog staggered, its body twisting. Then gunfire from the rooftop struck its head, and at last it collapsed, lifeless.
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