Chapter 39: Fire Truck
Soon, someone spotted the train slowly passing overhead.
But seeing the zombies wandering in the gaps between vehicles and the dozens of meters height of the overpass, the vast majority gave up hope of rescue.
More than ten days of torment had left these survivors emaciated and gaunt, and even more so, numbed their spirits.
Those truly with courage wouldn’t have waited this long; they would have long become one of the wanderers.
But a youth trapped in an SUV seemed to see hope.
He took advantage of the surrounding zombies being drawn to the train overhead to quietly unlock the door lock and slip out of the vehicle.
Following the route observed over the past two days, he climbed onto a sedan, then went around a pile of jammed trucks, carefully walking on the asphalt road surface.
A pair of eyes stared tightly at the nearby wandering zombies.
Holding his breath in concentration, he made his footsteps as light as possible.
But when passing a van, he overlooked the zombie driver inside the vehicle.
“Pa!”
A muffled thud came from the car window.
A rotten face pressed dead against the glass, scarlet eyes greedily staring at the youth.
The youth’s scalp tingled, and he immediately lost his composure, running off in quick steps.
Fortunately, the driver zombie in the van made no sound.
The youth dodged left and right, unexpectedly not encountering a single living zombie.
There were a few occasionally, but they had died miserably, their heads impaled on the metal spikes protruding from the sides of vehicles.
This scene fell into the eyes of everyone above.
Su Huan looked ahead of the youth, where two intact zombies suddenly had their heads pierced by metal spikes from the nearby vehicle, and he glanced at Qi Xiao Ba sitting beside him in the wheelchair.
With keen interest, he asked, “Has the distance already become this far?”
Xiao Ba pursed his thin lips, his gaze under the broken hair moving with the youth under the bridge, “Distance has no limit; it’s just that the farther it is, the greater the energy consumption.”
“Worthy of a high-level ability.” Su Huan remarked with admiration.
His gaze also followed the youth below, wanting to see how long he could persist.
Of course, it was to see how long Qi Xiao Ba could persist.
Besides those on the train, some survivors also witnessed this miraculous scene.
They didn’t know the reason, but unwilling to miss the opportunity, they all opened their car doors one by one and fled outward.
Such a big commotion immediately alerted the zombies below.
The boiling corpse roars sent chills down spines.
A woman who had just come out was pounced on by a zombie and knocked to the ground; as its bloodied maw was about to bite down, a steel bar fell from the overpass.
With a squelch, it pierced through the skull.
But there were fully more than a dozen escapees below.
Because of pausing to help that woman, the initial youth panicked, crashed into a horde of zombies, and was devoured alive.
“Save me—”
“Save me, I have gold, please let me on the vehicle!”
“Mom! Run fast…”
Feeling escape was hopeless, some began pleading with the train passing overhead.
But their loud shouts only stimulated the zombies.
“Let the child on the train, please, let him live, even if I become an ox or horse, just let him live—”
A woman knelt on a car, holding up a child of about ten years old in her hands, shouting upward.
Zombies surged forward, overwhelming the woman.
That tender child also fell into the zombie horde.
The shrill cries made everyone feel deep sorrow.
Su Huan’s face remained smiling, but the frost in his eyes nearly spilled out of his eye sockets.
“I… harmed them.” Qi Xiao Ba gripped the wheelchair armrests tightly with both hands, his complexion pale.
“No one likes watching their own kind being slaughtered, especially this kind of valueless death, but if you want to change it, you must bear the consequences that come with it.” Su Huan’s voice was very calm, even carrying a trace of coldness.
This time, he didn’t comfort Xiao Ba, nor try to instill his own ideals into him.
He merely told him what ability was, and what cost was.
No one can convince anyone; you can’t convince those stronger than you, nor those about equal to you.
In the end, you’ll find you can’t even convince those weaker than you.
Soon, the more than a dozen survivors under the bridge were also overwhelmed.
Su Huan lost interest in watching, walked down the carriage, and came to the cockpit at the front of the train, where Liang Kuan was fully focused on staring at the railway track ahead.
Because of the train derailment, a large amount of railway track had shattered and twisted; although that section was passed, caution was still wise.
If dozens of train cars really derailed, with the team’s current ability, they couldn’t be saved.
A map of Mo Jiang City’s railways hung behind the cockpit.
Mo Jiang City had a total of three platforms: Mo Jiang South Station, Mo Jiang Station, and Mo Jiang North Station.
Su Huan observed for a moment, his line of sight stopping on a street segment outside Mo Jiang South Station; if he remembered correctly, several fire trucks were blocked there.
All fully loaded with water source; when the apocalypse broke out, these fire trucks tried to go put out fires but got stuck.
Later, the vehicles were driven out by people and became core vehicles of the Mojian Mutual Aid Convoy.
Relying on the fire trucks’ sturdy bodies of premium carbon steel, plus a large amount of purified water, they maintained the convoy’s cohesion in the early days.
Now with the train and water purifier, Su Huan naturally looked down on the fire trucks and those few tons of purified water resources.
What he had his eye on was another batch of things on the fire trucks.
Firearms and ammunition.
In his previous life, he had heard people say that the fire trucks had also carried people from the enforcement bureau at the time, with a lot of weapons left on them.
Later, they were all packed up by Hu An and his gang of bastards.
The handgun in his hand had long become a decoration; the last few bullets were wasted on Gao Zhe.
Last time at the water plant, because there were many leftover mutated beasts inside the building, after finding the water purifier, there was no large-scale search.
The tracks ahead would pass through more cities; before the evolver team took shape, firearms were the best substitute.
Some powerful heavy hitters would still be useful even in the late apocalypse.
So the next task was to seize that batch of firearms on the last day before leaving Mo Jiang City, and try to advance the progress of the armored train plan as much as possible.
Having sorted his thoughts, Su Huan raised his head.
Just in time to see several staggering zombies appear ahead on the railway track; hearing the train’s sound like spotting delicious canned food, they excitedly pounced over.
“Don’t enter the platform later; just stop outside. There are too many zombies inside the platform, inconvenient for getting off and moving.” Su Huan instructed.
Liang Kuan pulled down the operating lever, “Understood!”
The several zombies were directly shoveled off their legs and crushed under the wheels.
The armored train steadily moved forward, without any fluctuation.
The terrain on both sides gradually leveled with the train, with tall buildings standing densely, but the tracks on both sides were fenced off, with no situation of being surrounded by zombie tides.
“There’s a situation ahead.”
Liang Kuan said in a low voice.
Only to see the railway sleepers littered with quite a bit of bloodstains, along with some fragmented corpses and miscellaneous items.
Su Huan narrowed his eyes and looked; a eerie figure was squatting on the fence by the railway track, its body hunched together, making it look only about one meter tall.
Its bare upper body was iron-green, with its back covered in tumors, like fruits hanging on it.
Most were dark red, with a small portion black.
Scarlet eyes stared dead at the train, cackling strangely as it tore off a black tumor from its back.
[To avoid real-world factors, the map is entirely fictional, with changes to systems, population, firearm models, etc.]
