Chapter 454: The Fire
Translator: _Min_ Editor: Rundi
Outside of the east gate of the Sixth Street, broken limbs were scattered on the ground. The thickened blood and zombie fat mixture formed a hard shell and covered any visible surface.
A soldier on the wall gulped and slightly moved his finger on the trigger. The tragedy and disgust under the wall made his skull feel numb.
The sentry guns on the wall moved at a uniform speed with the red sight scanning outside of the wall, searching for any suspicious target. The higher towers were installed with Type-50 electromagnetic pulse cannon or Type-99 anti-tank cannon. The soldiers responsible for firing were taking a nap beside the cannon as a lot of them haven’t closed their eyes for over 24 hours.“They are almost here.”
Inside the command tower, Zhao Gang gazed at the red dot on the hologram screen with his eyebrows twisted together. The drones captured the mutants’ distribution outside of Wanghai. The red box labeled “Bug Vehicle” gave him an ominous feeling.
As an ex-Qingpu survivor who survived for over ten years on the wasteland, he knew exactly what the “Bug Vehicle” was. He hid into the Sixth Street along with his father that year to survive through the first mutants flood.
“The First Corps is still not here.” Chu Nan also looked tense beside him.
“They already left from Shenxiang, but with their current speed, they may not arrive until tomorrow.”
“This is an absolute disaster,” Chu Nan looked at the halted blue dots on the map as he exclaimed.
When he was a pilot at Liuding, he never met something like the mutants flood. The mutants flood seemed to be only limited to land as the mutants in the ocean didn’t exhibit any oddity. Therefore, the Bohai that was stationed beside the harbor would only need to retract the foldable suspension bridge for the zombies and mutants to be stuck on land.The occasional mutants that could fly onto the dock were killed off by soldiers or power armors holding flamethrowers without the need for him as a pilot to head to the front line.
“This was a disaster to start with.” Zhao Gang stared outside the wall.
Another round of mutants attack began!
“It’s the Bug Vehicle!”
Followed by a shout, all the soldiers napping woke up and stared down the wall.
On the soft but powerful bug body was a shell as durable as a rock. The shell as smooth as the mirror surface protected its weak head and fragile body. It crawled at an even speed, leaving a disgusting white trial on the concrete surface. It was just like a giant snail with its head covered, but it was not afraid of salt…
It could easily climb over high walls and swallow any of live creatures along its path.
“Machine guns fire! Cannons prepare to shoot, fast!”
Tatatata-!
The soldier kneeling behind cover fired the machinegun and unleashed its fire along with his comrades. The sparks reflected on his face vividly displayed his look of despair.
Bullets splattered and only left thin dents on the surface of the Bug Vehicle. The dense calcium shell was formed from the interlayer of graphene and hexagonal silicon mesh, which was close to the strength of B Grade steel, and the thickness of the shell close to 500mm was like a wall.
The Type-99 anti-tank cannon fired. A bright orange shell soared through the sky. But when it hit the “snail shell”, it was deflected at a 90 degrees angle.
“Fu*k, it bounced off!”
With a loud roar, the soldiers reloaded.
At the same time, the Type-50 electromagnetic pulse cannon unleashed its blue electric arc and the 5 kg bomb instantly vaporized the shell. In front of the Bug Vehicle that rendered all anti-armor bullets useless, only the electromagnetic cannon posed a threat.
The problem was the limited number of electromagnetic cannons deployed in the Sixth Street. Only four cannons were distributed to each wall with each cannon responsible for defending a defense line of over a thousand meters. But there were at least hundreds of Bug Vehicles attacking the north wall.
The Bug Vehicle that lost its shell didn’t die yet. It crawled on the ground like a snail before quickly dying under the machine guns fire.
A soldier with a rocket launcher kneeled down by the wall and aimed at the Bug Vehicle closest to him.
Target Locked.
He pressed the trigger.
The exhaust burst out as the rocket launched five meters out before readjusting course and blasting into the sky. Five seconds later, the rocket smashed down like a meteor and penetrated the shell of the locked on Bug Vehicle. The “snail shell” suddenly stopped in its track before it was blown three meters into the air and the bug hidden inside was instantly shredded to pieces.
“Nice shot!”
The soldier beside him gave him a thumbs up. He grinned, removed the one-time use launcher, and took out another launcher from the box beside him to install it onto the guidance device.
Red Arrow-42, one of the few weapons that could damage the Bug Vehicle other than the electromagnetic cannon.
With the assistance of anti-tank weapons, the battle began to turn as the Bug Vehicles close to reaching the wall were being wiped out. But Zhao Gang in the command tower still had his eyebrows knitted in a frown.
A total of 251 red dots were on the screen, but there were only 100 Red Arrow-42 rockets in storage. The weapon costing 4000 crystals was too expensive for the Sixth Street to have in high reserve.
At that time, the communication device connected through.
“Hello?” Seeing it was Jiang Chen, he immediately picked up.
“Get ready to look at the fireworks.” Jiang Chen laughed.
Zhao Gang was still processing as to what was going on. But half a minute later, the communication device dropped from his hand onto the ground. Staring out the window, his pupils began to widen. His mouth moved up and down in disbelief as he could not search for a single word that could describe his state.
Beside him, Chu Nan’s expression was nonetheless similar…
On the wall, a soldier heard the roaring sound from a distance and raised his head.
“Look! What is that?” A person shouted out and pointed to the southwestern sky.
Dense black dots with long smoke trails.
The anti-air machine guns pointed in that direction in caution, but when they saw that those were not mutants, everyone widened their eyes in disbelief.
The rockets smashed down like raindrops and covered the area behind the Sixth Street.
Suddenly, the scorching flame columns shot into the sky and instantly engulfed the battlefield. It swallowed the two hundred something Bug Vehicles as well as the zombies and mutants flooding toward the Sixth Street.
The shell of the Bug Vehicle could easily deflect the rocket and withstand the blast of the explosion, but it could not withstand the thousand degrees high temperature. Their outside remained intact, but the soft body inside was cooked before turning into carbon dust.
The swarming fire and the thick smoke that covered the sun. Under the rain of destruction, no mutants survived.
Feeling the high heat and burnt smell drifted to their nose. The soldiers on the high wall stared at the scene blankly as their rifles rolled out of their hand without knowing.
Moments later, someone spoke the first sentence.
“This is insane.”
“…Indeed.”
“What is that…” The soldier’s voice was trembling.
“…Hell?”
“Perhaps…It is our people.”
“Without a doubt.”
Feeling the scorching heat whiff to the tip of his nose, his comrade beside him closed the safety and lowered the rifle in his hand.
If this existed, rifles no longer served a purpose.
A Death Claw dashed out from the fire. It rolled on the ground in pain, but the mixed fuel that stuck to its body could not be extinguished. Rolling and turning around didn’t help but made it burned faster. Slowly, it no longer twitched, it only scratched the concrete with its claws in agony.
No one bothered with the Death Claw, because everyone knew it could no longer survive.
In the distance, rockets continued to soar through the sky.
In the command tower, Zhao Gang and Chu Nan gazed at the fire in the distance.
The sky in the distance turned red.
But they didn’t know if it was the dusk or the fire that illuminated the sky.
