Chapter Eighty-Nine: A Perilous Escape

Civilization Rebuilt

“Ahu, stop firing at once and save your bullets...” Gao Tianhao said to his men outside in a voice already rough with strain. Not long ago, during the hunt, half their ammunition had been used up. Now, under this kind of zombie assault, if the remaining bullets were left to fly freely, then at the rate the machine guns devoured ammunition, they would be gone in no more than ten minutes.

Gao Tianhao had never done anything without leaving himself a way out. Just like now, the bullets they conserved might yet prove useful should some unexpected danger arise.

The brute strength of the T989 mining truck had exceeded even Gao Tianhao’s expectations, yet the more formidable it was, the more advantageous it became for him to break out of this sea of zombies. He had long since calculated that the sea of zombies stretched only thirteen to fifteen kilometers. Once they broke through that range, the land would open wide and flat before them, and they could leave the zombies far behind and return safely to base.

Knowing this, Gao Tianhao changed tactics immediately after killing Luo Yunfei. First, he activated the cars in front of the T989 mining truck and sent them crashing madly into the surging zombies, clearing a small gap for the mining truck and easing the resistance against its advance. Then he dispatched dozens of cars from behind to encircle the T989 mining truck, preventing the zombies from getting close enough to climb aboard.

The heavy bulldozer followed closely behind the T989 mining truck. Gao Tianhao did not use the other cars to protect the heavy bulldozer he was in, because he did not want anyone to realize that all of this was his doing. In any case, everyone's attention was focused entirely on the T989 mining truck. Who would notice the heavy bulldozer trailing behind it?

If the hunting convoy had not already burned through so much ammunition, then over a distance of fifteen or sixteen kilometers they might have been able to rely on enough bullets to tear open the zombies’ encirclement after paying a certain price. Unfortunately, the earlier hunt had already consumed half their rounds. Now, facing endless hordes of the undead, the frantic suppression fire made ammunition disappear at more than twice the rate of the hunt. In just a few minutes, the convoy’s firepower dwindled further and further. More and more machine guns became nothing but cold lumps of metal.

The moment the bullets ran dry, the convoy’s fate was already sealed. Deprived of suppressive fire, the zombies surged up like a tide and, upon the terrified people, tore and bit with savage hunger.

“Damn it, get the hell away from me!” shouted a thin man. The machine gun he had been operating had long since been tossed aside. In his hands now was a half-meter steel pipe, which he brought crashing down on the head of a ferocious zombie before him. Everyone knew that the zombies’ weakness was their heads; to strike anywhere else was only a waste of effort.

The entire zombie head split like a watermelon smashed by a stick and slowly collapsed. Some of the splattered brains even hit the thin man’s face, but he had no time to wipe away the filthy, nauseating mess. Instead, he yanked the pipe back and swung it desperately, trying to drive off the ever-growing swarm of zombies before him.

His comrades had already been dragged from the vehicles by the zombies and become their meal. Of the six who had come out together to hunt and fight, he alone remained. Without bullets, the thin man’s resistance was pitifully insignificant. After he managed to smash the head of a second zombie, he was dragged bodily from the car, and more than a dozen zombies threw themselves upon him.

Several razor-sharp claws easily pierced the thin man’s stomach. In a surge of agony, his eyes, blank with pain and terror, could even see the zombies pulling his innards from his belly and shoving them frantically into their mouths.

Before he could react, the pain all over his body grew worse and worse, as though countless teeth were tearing him apart. Soon that pain surpassed the limit he could bear. His eyes seemed to bulge outward; rolling white, though still open, they could no longer see anything at all.

For the thin man, dying with his eyes open, none of it mattered to the zombies. They simply continued their frenzied tearing and biting. Soon, only a blood-soaked skeleton remained on the ground.

Scenes like this unfolded endlessly throughout the convoy. The zombies’ howls mingled with the human screams, forming a tableau of hell on earth. In merely a few minutes, the hunting convoy of eight thousand people had lost more than half its number.

Watching the numbers on the screen vanish at terrifying speed, Gao Tianhao knew exactly what each disappearing digit meant. As if he had lost all composure, he once again began hammering at the keyboard, activating every car he could control. Now Gao Tianhao no longer had the luxury of hiding himself. The zombies’ offensive power had completely exceeded his expectations. He had to leave this place at maximum speed. Otherwise, even with the heavy bulldozer and the T989 mining truck, he would still not escape the fate of being devoured.

Under Gao Tianhao’s frantic control, the remaining cars surged forward like suicide troops, rushing uncontrollably into the zombies and crashing madly into the dense mass of the horde. In an instant, they drew the attention of the nearby zombies, which then swarmed over them and swallowed the entire vehicles.

Under this extreme and ferocious assault, a small road finally opened up for the T989 mining truck to accelerate. Freed from the obstruction of the cars ahead, the mining truck’s power was fully revealed. Under its monstrous force, once it reached sufficient speed, it became like a bulldozer, shredding the dense zombies before it into fragments with its tooth blades, then crushing them beneath the wheels like mud.

The heavy bulldozer following behind also activated its fearsome drill. The high-speed drill spun the flesh pulp flung up from beneath the T989 mining truck and scattered it in all directions. In just two or three minutes, the heavy bulldozer was already covered in splashed rotting meat and rendered hideous beyond recognition.

How could Gao Tianhao spare a thought for any of that now? He was furiously calculating how much farther they had to go before they could break through the zombie mass.

To be precise, the T989 mining truck was indeed terrifyingly powerful. Given enough speed, its enormous tires could easily shake off zombies trying to climb aboard, even grind them into the tires and crush them into layers thinner than a pancake. With such ferocity, and with its speed gradually rising to fifty kilometers per hour, it became invincible. The thirteen or fifteen kilometers of the zombie sea were torn open by brute force in little more than ten minutes.

With no bullets left, the vehicles trailing behind the T989 mining truck and the heavy bulldozer that managed to shake off the zombies and truly escape this sea of corpses numbered less than thirty in total. For a hunting convoy of more than eight hundred vehicles, this was nothing less than annihilation. Everyone knew what would become of the vehicles that failed to escape.

Seeing that they had already broken out of the sea of corpses, and though the zombies behind still gave chase, the convoy had only one or two minutes before the sheer speed of the vehicles left the horde far behind, until it vanished without a trace.

Only when he could no longer see the zombie tide did Gao Tianhao finally relax, gasping for breath. If he had not acted decisively in the killing just now, then a little later, it would have been hard to say whether they could have broken out of the sea of corpses at all. He continued driving the T989 mining truck at high speed along the highway.

At that moment, Gao Tianhao’s mind was in turmoil. He did not know whether he should force his way back to the base and drag out the things he had worked so hard to seize, or simply go around the base and seek another patron instead. One thing was already certain: these zombies were heading for the base. Gao Tianhao did not believe the base had the power to withstand such an enormous horde.

He did not want to die. On the contrary, after paying such a price to escape, he wanted to live more than anyone. It was precisely for that reason that, without much hesitation at all, he made his choice...