This was the lowest point of the linear canyon, a medium-sized waterfall crashing down into a deep pool, splitting into two rivers flowing through the winding valley. Si Nan continuously adjusted the binocular focus along the riverside forest, then suddenly froze – hundreds of meters away on the riverbank, the rocky shore was uneven, scattered with objects resembling military packages.
Without hesitation, he slid down from the treetop.
He sprinted the challenging mountain path in just two minutes. The darkest pre-dawn moment had passed, gradually lightening, the valley and river slowly outlining deep gray shadows. Si Nan, breathing heavily, stopped on the rocky shore, staring at the few corpses eaten away, still wearing tattered camouflage uniforms, his throat moving dramatically.
He approached, hands trembling, turning over each corpse to check their decomposed, unrecognizable faces and chest tags.
With each body turned, his heart was ruthlessly gripped by an invisible claw, then slightly released, only to be squeezed ten, hundred times tighter before the next. After checking all bodies, Si Nan sat down, taking a long time before feeling his heart slowly start beating again.
No 118, no one he knew.
He caught his breath, neatly dragging the bodies together, removing all tags to put in his backpack – these steel plates branded with military numbers were proof of sacrifice. Then he stood, surveying the surroundings, following the obvious footprints into the forest clearing, where the devastated campsite finally revealed itself.
Collapsed tents, extinguished campfires, scattered limbs, heads with eyes wide open in death… like a series of silent, tragic pantomimes, brutally displayed under the dawn’s gray-blue sky.
Every inch of blood-soaked ground silently testified to the cruel reality it had witnessed.
Si Nan’s mind was almost blank. He spent nearly half an hour piecing together all limbs and heads, collecting tags from around the campsite, comparing them in his hand. After checking twice from start to finish, he finally collapsed, forehead pressed against the salty, muddy ground, exhaling deeply.
He didn’t believe in gods or religions, often showing contempt for the cross, yet at that moment, he involuntarily muttered in English:
“Thank God.”
Then he couldn’t help but smile self-mockingly: “…Indeed, a last-minute prayer.”
Si Nan got up and walked out of the campsite, wanting to wash his hands in the river. However, after just a few steps, he suddenly and sensitively sniffed, detecting a faint but extremely strong scent ahead – a doubt flashed in his mind, and he followed the smell into the forest, crossing the dense undergrowth, then suddenly stopped.
His pupils involuntarily contracted, finally understanding why the zombie tide had attacked the campsite at night. Beneath the tree, four strange-faced corpses were piled up, disemboweled, with their internal organs spilled out. In this weather, they had already begun to rot, emitting an extremely strong, mixed odor of Alpha pheromones. But there were no bite or scratch marks on the bodies, and their limbs were relatively intact – they had been killed by human hands.
Someone had cruelly gutted these four soldiers and placed them near the camp under the cover of night, using strong Alpha pheromones to attract a zombie horde! This was truly cold-blooded.
Si Nan took a few steps back, taking a deep breath to calm down. He wanted to approach to carefully examine the bodies. Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of something reflecting in the dim light from the soil near the bodies, a weak glimmer that flashed and disappeared. It was a steel dog tag, still attached to a thin chain. Si Nan picked it up.
For some reason, when his fingertips touched the cold steel, his heart suddenly raced, as if it was about to burst from his throat, until he flipped over the front of the tag.
It was a familiar string of numbers.
Si Nan’s hand began to tremble, his gaze scanning these numbers one by one, as if he suddenly couldn’t recognize the simplest Arabic numerals.
1180610
- Yan Hao.
Si Nan slowly knelt to the ground, his mind blank as if thinking of nothing, yet in an instant, remembering everything.
The B Military District base, two small groups about to part, Yan Hao stepping forward to hug him tightly, turning back with a smile in the railway tunnel.
The riverside during their escape, Yan Hao sitting in the shimmering twilight, mustering the courage to tentatively grasp his hand.
Yan Hao, with a touch of melancholy yet always gentle, always thinking of others, Yan Hao laughing heartily with teammates under the sunlight… ultimately transforming into that figure sobbing and curling up in pain on the rooftop on a windy night.
“I can’t give you the antibodies, can I give you my life instead?”
Si Nan trembled, gripping the tag tightly, its sharp edge cutting into his palm’s flesh, but he felt no pain. He desperately suppressed his hot, choked breathing, arching his body, his fingers digging deep into the blood-soaked soil.
The confrontation was like a bowstring being stretched to its limit, the forest unnaturally quiet.
One kilometer away, in a forest clearing.
The moment the gunshot rang out, Zhou Rong lowered his binoculars, leaping down from a tree, standing up and waving a hand without looking back, ordering: “Gunfire at eleven o’clock, nine hundred meters ahead, pursue.”
Twenty special forces soldiers stood at attention: “Yes!”
——Luo Mou’er!” Sinan shouted sternly: “Come out!”
A sound of movement.
Sinan turned towards the sound, instantly locking his gun’s aim. In a stone crevice not far from the cliff, a round ball suddenly emerged.
“…” The round ball paused for a moment, then transmitted a voice from afar: “Sinan?!”
Sinan narrowed his eyes: “Tang… Chief?”
·
“It’s Tang Hao, thank you.” Five minutes later, Tang Hao pulled Sinan up and guided him into the hidden cave behind the stone crevice. This isn’t my fault.”
The cave was winding and twisted. After walking about twenty steps and turning a corner, a space of seven or eight square meters appeared, with three special forces soldiers, covered in dust and looking haggard, standing up: “Colonel!”
Tang Hao signaled them to sit down. Sinan suddenly glimpsed a motionless figure in the corner and quickly stepped forward, taking a light breath: “… Guo Weixiang?
” Guo Weixiang’s eyes were tightly closed, his face pale and ashen, with bandages messily wrapped around his abdomen, seeping purple-black blood, looking barely human. Sinan immediately checked his temperature and pulse; he was burning with a fatal fever, obviously infected, and the situation would become very dangerous if delayed.
“He was like this when we found him, almost 72 hours ago,” Tang Hao said in a low voice. “Fortunately you’re here, otherwise Young Master Guo would probably have died.”
Sinan pulled out antibiotics from his backpack, forcing them down Guo Weixiang’s throat, then quickly prepared and injected a special forces life-saving serum into his neck’s blood vessel, asking: “What happened?”
“That night of the attack, I broke out of the zombie horde with the remaining team members. In the chaos, I couldn’t see clearly and got separated from the others…”
Tang Hao pointed at Guo Weixiang. “He was hiding in a tree pit, already infected with the zombie virus. He probably injected himself with a second-level antibody before losing consciousness, narrowly avoiding zombification.” “
When I dragged him out, I saw his abdomen was full of blood traces – probably hit by friendly fire during the zombie night attack in the darkness. Fortunately, the second-level antibody’s powerful healing effect protected him. After I dug out the bullet, he became like this.”
