Chapter 49: Deadlock

Guo Zijiang opened the hatch with complete confidence. In his eyes, a small flock of zombie bats was nothing to worry about. To ordinary people, they were a nightmare; for him, all it would take was a little of his special ability. The rest he’d gotten just now had restored enough of it to deal with them.

But things rarely went according to plan. The instant the hatch opened, Guo Zijiang’s first move was to lay down a thin defensive barrier, keeping the zombie bats from swarming into the cabin. His second was to hurl out a grenade...

With a bang, the hatch slammed shut. Guo Zijiang pulled back far faster than the Tiger Squad had retreated earlier. After a long moment, he shouted, “Can somebody tell me if you went and poked a bat nest while you were out there?”

The zombie bats circling near the deck were nothing like the small flock Guo Zijiang had imagined. If a few dozen or a hundred bats counted as a small flock, then what he’d just seen was enormous—an immense swarm, blanketing the sky, numbering well over ten thousand. Even if they gathered in one place and lined up to be blown apart by grenades, the handful the group carried would only take out a tiny fraction of them.

“I’m out! There are too many!” Guo Zijiang cried. His special ability had recovered to less than twenty percent, but even at full strength, he couldn’t handle so many zombie bats.

Zhao Qiang wasn’t particularly surprised. Humanity had always been on the defensive in its fight against the zombies. Though they’d won a few minor victories, none had been enough to diminish the zombies’ overwhelming numbers. Now the zombie bats had joined the fray, giving the zombies an absolute advantage in numbers and rendering every one of the Tiger Squad’s tactics useless.

As they hesitated, a tremendous crash rang out on deck, followed by the heavy thud of footsteps drawing nearer.

“Guo Zijiang, hold the door!” Zhao Qiang roared. They had blown up the gangway, and the gap between the cargo ship and the dock could keep ordinary zombies at bay—but it couldn’t stop the Shredders from using their extraordinary jumping power.

The moment the words left his mouth, a thunderous crash sounded outside. The entire cabin seemed to jump.

Cold sweat slid down Guo Zijiang’s forehead, and his face turned deathly pale. The Shredder’s blow had nearly shattered the defensive barrier he’d barely managed to raise. The backlash had almost shaken him senseless, and blood dripped from his nose onto the floor.

“How are you? You all right?” Zhao Qiang asked anxiously.

Guo Zijiang looked up and gave everyone a thumbs-up. His body slid down the door until he was sitting on the floor, gasping for breath. “Don’t worry. I can still take it.”

“What are you doing?” Zhao Qiang grabbed Chen Ergou as he charged for the exit, eyes bloodshot, rifle in hand.

“Let go of me!” Ergou roared. “I’m going to take it out!”

“Have you lost your mind?” Zhao Qiang didn’t doubt Chen Ergou’s ability, but there were the countless zombie bats as well as the Shredder. Even if Ergou managed to kill the Shredder before the bats surrounded him, he’d never have time to get out alive.

“If we don’t kill it, we’re all going to die!” Ergou struggled with all his might, nearly wrenching himself free.

“If you kill it, you’ll die too!” Zhao Qiang bellowed. “Besides, how many Shredders are out there? Even if we trade one life for one, what does that solve?”

“I don’t care!” Chen Ergou shouted at Zhao Qiang. “I caused this mess, and I’ll deal with it myself!” He believed that if he hadn’t fired that shot, perhaps they wouldn’t have ended up in this deadlock.

Zhao Qiang snapped. He slammed a straight punch into Ergou’s face. Caught off guard, Ergou toppled to the floor.

“Go to hell with your ‘I’ll deal with it’! We’re a team, a single unit. Don’t you dare play the hero in front of me! If we’re going to die, we die together. You don’t get to cut in line.”

“You guys, hurry up! I can’t hold on much longer!” Guo Zijiang’s weak voice came from behind Zhao Qiang. In the few moments they’d been talking, several more Shredders had leapt onto the deck.

“Disarm him!” Zhao Qiang kicked the sniper rifle Chen Ergou had dropped out of reach and ordered, “Sabre, call the base and tell them to have Wolf Fang come collect our bodies! Everyone else, load your rounds and fix bayonets. Prepare to fight!”

The situation had become desperate. The hatch could be breached at any moment. Under the Shredders’ relentless assault, even with Guo Zijiang’s protective barrier, the door was already buckling, and Guo himself was in grave danger. Once the Shredders broke through, it would likely mean the end for all of them. The only plan Zhao Qiang could come up with was to have Guo Zijiang, before his ability was completely drained, find a way to escape with the survivors aboard the ship.

“Wait!” The weak voice of the middle-aged man sounded from behind them just as Zhao Qiang was about to tell Guo Zijiang to drop the barrier.

“Just in time!” Zhao Qiang said when he saw the middle-aged man, supported by Qianxun. “Guo Zijiang, on my order, lower the shield and cover their escape.”

“Tiger Squad!” Zhao Qiang roared, glaring at the buckling hatch.

“Together in life and death!” the squad members shouted, their voices ringing through the cabin.

“I have an idea!” the middle-aged man called again. “This ship can still move!”

Zhao Qiang stopped in his tracks and asked, “What did you say?”

“This ship can move!” the middle-aged man said. “It can move—we just don’t know how to operate it!” He was an ordinary crewman aboard the vessel. Though he knew every detail of the ship, he didn’t know how to pilot the massive craft.

“It’s too late.” Sabre stepped forward. As a member of the Chinese Army’s most elite unit, driving was a mandatory skill. He could operate any kind of vehicle—one that flew through the sky, traveled over land, or moved through water. Wei Tao could do it too, but due to the limitations at the time, he’d only had a chance to teach Zhao Qiang how to drive a car. “The bridge can only be reached from the deck. And now...”

“There are two dry suits and a pair of old-fashioned metal diving helmets in the lower hold.” The middle-aged man’s information rekindled Sabre’s hope. Dry suits were made of foamed synthetic rubber, generally between three and ten millimeters thick. Their primary purpose was to prevent divers from losing body heat too quickly; they also protected the body from being cut by hard rocks on the seabed. Such equipment should be more than enough to fend off the zombie bats.

Soon, Zhao Qiang and Sabre had put on all their gear, and everyone had left the forward cabin.

“Zijiang, lower the shield.” Zhao Qiang and Sabre exchanged a glance, then made one last check of their weapons. In their full diving suits and sealed helmets, they looked like astronauts about to venture outside their spacecraft.

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It’s the weekend. Will there be a big release?