Chapter Eleven: The Bat

“Watch out!”

The bats circled above the squad without any sign of dispersing. Their abnormal behavior stirred an even more ominous thought in Zhao Qiang’s heart.

After circling twice, the swarm suddenly accelerated and plunged toward one of the soldiers. The others noticed and tried to stop the attack, but 5.6-millimeter bullets were clearly no match for hundreds of bats wheeling through the air at high speed. Only a few were shot down. Even Ergou’s shotgun managed no more than a small hole in the dark cloud formed by the bats.

“Awei!”

The soldier named Awei was instantly engulfed by countless zombie bats. His piercing screams grew fainter and fainter behind the wall of wings.

Unable to watch his longtime comrade suffer such unbearable agony, Zhao Qiang lunged forward, only for Ergou to seize him and pull him back. Ergou shook his head, his eyes bloodshot.

Every member of the squad had long since accepted the possibility of death. Before each mission, they always spoke of the same grim subject: if one of them was bitten by a zombie, he wanted his teammates to help him before he turned. No one wished to become one of those lifeless monsters. They would also solemnly place their wills inside the breast pockets of the comrades beside them.

As time passed, the squad gradually grew numb to the threat of death, but they had never forgotten the vow they had once made.

“Goodbye, my brother,” Zhao Qiang murmured inwardly.

The rifle in his hands seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. He had to summon nearly all his strength merely to raise the muzzle and aim at the comrade he had lived and fought beside day after day.

The screams faded. In their place came a wet, rattling sound from Awei’s throat. His struggles slowly weakened.

Then, for some unknown reason, Awei’s face emerged from beneath the swarm of bats. He seemed to be trying to smile, but his features were a bloody, mangled ruin, making the expression appear hideous. His lips, torn by the bats’ bites, twitched as though he wanted to say something to his comrades, yet in the end no sound came out.

But Zhao Qiang understood.

Awei was saying goodbye.

With a tremendous boom, Awei tore the safety pin from the grenade strapped to his body. He would not burden his comrades, nor allow himself to become a mindless zombie in the end.

“Fall back! Fall back!”

Cai Jiashu had witnessed everything. His eyes nearly split with rage.

Over all this time, the squad had endured countless battles, escaping each one by the narrowest of margins. Yet they had never lost a single brother. This time, however, they had not even been given the chance to recover Awei’s body.

“What do we do?”

Zhao Qiang was also stunned. The squad’s battles had always gone smoothly, but this time, in order to seize control of the Jianglu Machinery Plant, both of the base’s only two field teams had been deployed in full force.

The other soldiers might have been capable of dealing with ordinary zombies, but they had no suitable weapons for handling the countless bats. Seeking aid from the base was therefore impossible.

This Sage was clearly more intelligent than the one they had encountered before, and its strength was far beyond anything the squad could handle. From beginning to end, they had not caught even a glimpse of it. Yet now the zombie army had surrounded them so completely that not even water could pass through. Clearly, while the squad was exploring the air-raid shelter, the Sage had already made meticulous preparations.

“What do we do?”

Cai Jiashu gritted his teeth and thrust the rifle barrel through a firing slit, sending furious tongues of flame toward the steadily advancing zombie horde.

“At worst, we die here!”

His fury had reached its peak. The zombie bats swarming through the sky were impossible to target. If not for those damned creatures, they would never have been driven into such a desperate state today—and they would never have lost one of their brothers.

The two armored vehicles did not remain in one place. They charged back and forth through the zombie horde, desperately trying to carve a path through the encirclement. If they could find a way to counter the zombie bats, the squad would storm the air-raid shelter without hesitation. Even if they had to drag the sandworm out, they would kill that damned Sage.

“We’re out of ammunition!” Cai Jiashu roared.

Their bullets had been consumed at an astonishing rate, and the ammunition they had brought was almost gone.

“Take down the Crusher! Ignore the rest!”

Zhao Qiang handed Cai Jiashu the last two magazines he had. If not for Deng Sen’s arrogance, and if their vehicle had still been a converted bank armored car or bus, the squad would have been torn to pieces by the Crusher ten minutes ago. Thanks to the Tiger’s massive, cumbersome body, they had managed to hold on until now.

“Little Zhao, go on without us.”

Cai Jiashu pulled a riot helmet from beneath his seat and handed it to Zhao Qiang. Zhao was the most skilled and fastest member of the team. As long as he could break through, the squad would still have a chance of survival.

“Impossible!”

Zhao Qiang wrenched the steering wheel, narrowly dodging a colossal fist from the Crusher.

“We leave together, or we die together! I’ve already lost one brother. I won’t lose the rest of you!”

To live and die together—that was the squad’s shared oath. But now one of their brothers had already departed, without even leaving behind an intact corpse. How could Zhao Qiang abandon his comrades and flee alone?

“Don’t talk nonsense! If you don’t leave now, we may all end up dead here!”

Cai Jiashu shouted. Their ammunition was dwindling by the second, while the zombies surrounding them continued to multiply. Awei’s sacrifice had destroyed most of the zombie bats. With Zhao Qiang’s abilities, breaking through should not have been too difficult.

The two men continued arguing as the Tiger’s movements grew increasingly difficult amid the corpses covering the ground. Cai Jiashu insisted that Zhao Qiang fight his way out alone and quickly find a weapon capable of dealing with the bats. Zhao Qiang refused, determined to fight alongside the others until the very end. By the time he found a usable weapon, it would already be too late.

“All right. Even if you wanted to leave now, you couldn’t.”

Cai Jiashu abandoned his attempt to persuade him. Every bullet had been fired, and the Tiger’s fuel tank was empty. The vehicle had become nothing more than an iron coffin.

None of the squad wanted to die here. For a soldier, dying on the battlefield was the most glorious way to bring one’s life to an end.

“Give me a grenade.”

At Cai Jiashu’s command, one of the soldiers quickly handed him a grenade. Following the same old method, Cai Jiashu pulled the pin, silently counted to three, and then hurled it violently toward the swarm of bats in the sky.