Chapter 112: Sun-Dried Bricks

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The water-floating incendiary bomb was, strictly speaking, another type of incendiary weapon. Its function, however, was fundamentally different from that of ordinary incendiary bombs. It had been specially developed for attacks across the surface of the water. By design, its instantaneous temperature could reach approximately 1,800 degrees Celsius. The hydrogen released when the metal came into contact with water would ignite as well, allowing the bomb to float on the surface and burn for an extended period—sometimes for more than ten minutes.

Incendiary weapons designed to attack targets in water had already been developed during the latter stages of the Second World War. Even so, new varieties continued to be created. The greatest differences between water-floating incendiary bombs and other incendiaries were their higher temperatures, longer burning time, and far greater range of effect—something traditional incendiary bombs could not match.

During the United Nations era, incendiary weapons had been included in the Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons. Although the protocol could not completely prevent their use, it had nevertheless played a significant role. But after the United Nations era passed and the Federation era began, every regional nation with the necessary capabilities resumed research into newer incendiary weapons. The advantages of such weapons were simply too great to ignore.

The water-floating incendiary bomb was precisely the new-generation incendiary weapon secretly developed by the Chinese region. Its design sought to combine environmental considerations with humanitarian principles. Unfortunately, the results were far from ideal. It had solved the problem of environmental damage, but not the humanitarian one. The appalling injuries caused by incendiary weapons remained unavoidable.

There were only three water-floating incendiary bombs at the test base, and they had been reserved for the collection of preliminary data. Generally speaking, any weapon sent to a test base for trial was already highly complete in design, so the chances of an accident were extremely small.

The site was not far from the base. Before long, a transport vehicle delivered the three water-floating incendiary bombs, together with their launching apparatus.

The bombs were equipped with dedicated launchers. They could lock onto targets and launch automatically, be dropped from aircraft, or be fired from large-caliber artillery. They could even be mounted on submarines for attacks across the water. In terms of application, they were remarkably versatile.

Most of the aquatic zombies in the enormous pit had been eliminated, but the survivors continued to struggle and launch leaping attacks. The little black fish that had formed the first wave of attackers had stubbornly thrashed about on the ground for more than ten minutes. In the end, however, they could not escape the laws of nature and died one after another.

“Release them!” Xie Han ordered.

He had seen the power of incendiary bombs only once before, on television, but the sight had left a deep impression on him. Now that he was personally giving the order to use them, his emotions were naturally complicated.

Like rockets, the three water-floating incendiary bombs shot away from a distance of more than a thousand meters from the pit, each trailing a tongue of flame. In the blink of an eye, they fell into three separate locations.

The instant they struck the water, the entire pit seemed to become a colossal furnace. Violent explosions erupted, and the tremendous heat generated in an instant even vaporized a thick layer of water. The metallic materials mixed within the bombs ignited again upon contact with the water and began to burn furiously.

It was as though the entire pit were filled with gasoline.

Clouds of fire surged into the air, consuming the surrounding oxygen. As they rolled and billowed, they formed several enormous mushroom clouds.

Because incendiary weapons were prohibited, few people had ever witnessed their full might. The power of those three water-floating incendiary bombs left everyone staring open-mouthed.

The flames burned without pause, as though determined to reduce the entire world to ashes. Even from several dozen meters away, people could still feel waves of scorching heat rushing toward them.

Could the zombies possibly escape such terrifying incendiary bombs?

The answer was obvious.

A slight intake of breath was enough to draw in the overwhelming stench that filled the air. It was the smell of rotten flesh being cooked instantly by extreme heat, then charred until nothing remained but ash.

An incendiary weapon designed specifically for use against water was extraordinarily effective. Anything hiding beneath the surface fell within the range of its flames. Under the influence of the metallic mixture in the water-floating bombs, the water filling the entire pit seemed to have turned into burning gasoline.

The flames raged on for fifteen minutes before gradually subsiding. Even then, patches of fire that had not burned out completely still floated across the surface, scattered like stars. It was as though the entire area had endured a baptism by fire. Thick black smoke continued to roll upward, refusing to disperse.

Xie Han felt a pang of regret. If he had known such a weapon existed—or, more accurately, if he had known it possessed such tremendous power—why had he gone to all that trouble? After wasting half his ammunition, he had achieved less than three water-floating incendiary bombs had accomplished with ease.

It seemed that conventional weapons truly could not compare with advanced weaponry, even though the water-floating incendiary bomb was still only in the experimental stage.

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The use of the water-floating incendiary bombs also marked the end of the operation to clear the lake. It was difficult to say that the results were perfect, but at the very least, more than half of the aquatic zombies should have been eliminated.

The convoy began its return to the military test base, leaving behind the devastated lakeshore. Specialized personnel would come later to dispose of the corpses and prevent the X-ray virus within them from worsening.

“Qiangzi, leave some people here. Have them build a simple elevated platform at least a hundred meters from the lake, then station some soldiers on it. Every half hour, fire two shells into the lake to continuously lure the aquatic zombies here.”

After thinking for a moment, Xie Han continued, “Every afternoon, send a few experienced soldiers over to clear out the aquatic zombies that have been attracted here.”

Xu Qiang nodded. There was indeed no reason for their people to exhaust themselves on this task. As long as they followed the method used today, it might be clumsy, but it would still be highly effective for safely eliminating the aquatic zombies.

“Should we begin diverting water into the moat immediately?” Xie Han asked. “Leave that matter to Qi Feiwu. In any case, while the water is being diverted, we must watch the surrounding waterways carefully for zombies. If zombies are drawn into the moat, exterminating them will become extremely difficult.”

Xu Qiang understood the seriousness of the matter without needing further explanation.

“I think you saw how powerful those incendiary bombs were,” Xie Han said, licking his lips. “They seem exceptionally effective against zombies. The manufacturing requirements for incendiary bombs are quite low. We do not need to reproduce the power of the water-floating incendiary bombs. Even half their power would be enough. Therefore, I think it is essential that we develop incendiary bombs of our own.”

Xu Qiang knew that incendiary bombs were relatively simple to manufacture. They generally consisted of a casing, an incendiary agent, an explosive or propellant charge, an ignition tube, and a fuse. The incendiary agent could be thermite, white phosphorus, napalm, thickened triethylaluminum, or thickened gasoline, all of which were used to generate high temperatures. The propellant or explosive charge shattered the casing, ignited the incendiary agent, and scattered it over the target.

The process and requirements were not particularly demanding, but the base was now desperately short of almost every material. Manufacturing incendiary bombs would not be easy.

After thinking briefly, he said, “We may not yet have the conditions to manufacture specialized incendiary bombs. But we can probably make some crude homemade ones. I believe they should be sufficient for dealing with zombies.”

When he had been young, Xie Han had played with homemade incendiary devices himself. One method involved filling a liquor bottle with gasoline and tightly plugging the mouth with a strip of cloth. During an attack, one simply ignited the cloth hanging from the bottle’s mouth and threw the bottle with force. When it struck the ground and shattered, the gasoline would spill out and catch fire from the burning cloth. In an instant, the gasoline would erupt into a sea of flames.

Such a homemade incendiary device—or, more accurately, a Molotov cocktail—was powerful enough to deal with human beings. Against zombies, however, it was somewhat inadequate. Pure gasoline was unlikely to inflict serious damage on them. At the very least, thickened gasoline would be needed as the incendiary material before the weapon could display anything resembling the power of a true incendiary bomb.

The technical requirements for producing napalm were likewise not particularly high. It could be made by using aluminum soaps of fatty acids, aluminum naphthenate, and similar substances to gel gasoline.

What troubled Xu Qiang was that the chemical materials mentioned above were almost entirely absent from the base. Producing napalm and then using it to make crude incendiary weapons would still present considerable difficulties.

In response to Xu Qiang’s concerns, Xie Han merely gave a strange laugh. In the apocalypse, when every kind of material was scarce, acquiring these substances might require taking food from a tiger’s mouth and risking enormous danger. But what worried Xu Qiang would not be a problem for Xie Han. In the modern world, as long as one had money, many things were easy to purchase. The raw materials needed to make napalm could be bought on the open market, and there was no need to fear arousing suspicion.

“Leave the raw materials to me. I’ll see if I can find a way to bring some back from Wangtian City.”

If he wanted to bring those materials into public view openly and naturally, the only solution was to make a trip to Wangtian City. Only then could he dispel any suspicions. Xie Han was beginning to develop a fondness for the place. Whenever there was something he could not explain, he could simply shift the blame—or rather, the answer—onto Wangtian City.

With the successful diversion of water into the moat, the new city finally possessed its first defensive line. The work that followed, however, would be even more immense. More than three thousand people were divided into two groups. One group dug the moat beside the test base, while the other worked along the moat surrounding the civilian base, using the excavated earth to form mud bricks.

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Building a solid perimeter wall would require astronomical quantities of cement, sand, and gravel. After lengthy consideration, Xie Han and the others ultimately decided to use mud bricks. Once simply fired, they would be assembled into a tall wall seven meters high and three meters thick.

It was not that they had failed to consider cement bricks, which would have been faster and more convenient. The test base possessed only a dozen or so bags of cement—an amount so small compared with what they needed that it could not even be described as a drop in the ocean. In the end, they had no choice but to abandon the idea and adopt this crude earthen method instead.

The test base had no facilities suitable for firing mud bricks. Therefore, in order to produce fired bricks, Xie Han first consulted a large amount of information in the modern world, then began directing the seventeen hundred people at the civilian base in the construction of brick kilns.

Xie Han chose a primitive method. First, they selected a small hill—not one that needed to be particularly large. After choosing it, they hollowed out the entire interior, leaving an opening at the top for smoke to escape and another entrance through which people could enter and leave the chamber. It was much like the earthen kilns used in rural areas to fire bricks.

This firing method was extremely simple and involved virtually no technical expertise. What Xie Han valued most was that it required neither coal nor any other specialized fuel, only firewood that could be gathered almost anywhere.

It had weaknesses as well. The fired bricks produced by this method were not especially hard, suffered a high breakage rate, and could not be produced in particularly large quantities at one time. Often, out of ten thousand bricks, only six or seven thousand would be successfully fired.

To speed up production, Xie Han had no choice but to order the simultaneous excavation of five brick kilns. Once they were in operation, each firing would produce forty to fifty thousand bricks.

While the kilns were being excavated, the surplus laborers were not allowed to remain idle. Vehicles transported them more than a dozen kilometers from the new city base, where they cut down trees to use as firewood. Xie Han had calculated that a single kiln of mud bricks required at least five to seven thousand pounds of wood.

Even with bricks, they were still far from being able to construct the planned high wall. Large quantities of cement or another viscous binding material were also required.

In the apocalypse, there was a type of construction adhesive that was gradually replacing cement in masonry work. Cement remained irreplaceable in road and bridge construction, however. Unfortunately, finding such adhesive at the test base was extremely difficult. Only a small amount had been stored there, far too little to make any meaningful contribution to the walls of the new city.

Homemade cement was essentially a primitive lime-based binding material. Its production method was somewhat similar to that used for crude fired bricks. After limestone was collected, it was layered with wood and fired for a week, producing lime.

Such an elementary process was naturally beneath Xie Han’s consideration. Instead, he chose to construct a primitive rotary kiln.

The technology behind a rotary kiln was highly complex, and many of the necessary components were unavailable at the test base. Fortunately, numerous items could be substituted. After searching through the entire base, Xie Han finally managed to complete a makeshift rotary kiln.

Unlike modern rotary kilns, the one Xie Han built was several sizes smaller in every respect. He also modified its fuel system, replacing conventional fuel with firewood.

This change would likely increase the firing time from four or five hours to ten hours, or perhaps even longer.

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