Four seconds of silence, then an earth-shattering explosion! Yan Hao was blown far away, protecting his head and face. The zombie was thrown against the wall and fell to the ground.
“Fuck your ancestors—!” Zhang Yingjie’s eyes turned red. He fired an armor-piercing round at the zombie, and in the firelight, the zombie violently bounced up. Before it could land, Zhang Yingjie loaded a new round, blowing open the zombie’s chest!
Sinan’s voice trembled: “Yan Hao!” Yan Hao’s gaze was unfocused, convulsing in a pool of blood, with countless broken bones and a terrifyingly collapsed chest. The alpha pheromones quickly decayed. Sinan knelt beside him, shaking as he removed his coat, forcefully pressing it against the bleeding wound on Yan Hao’s neck.
“…” Yan Hao mumbled something, but no sound came out. His ears, nose, and throat were blocked with blood.
His consciousness drifted like floating in a warm deep sea. Someone was pressing hard on his neck—he knew it was Sinan. “Don’t speak,” Sinan gasped, “It’s okay, don’t move… don’t speak.”
After four armor-piercing rounds, Zhang Yingjie knelt on the ground and opened a new magazine. His hand trembled while loading, and the bullet actually fell to the ground. As he hurried to pick it up, the zombie suddenly let out a piercing roar and shakily stood up! Half its chest was blown away, with only a few muscle fibers hanging from its left arm, yet it somehow wasn’t dead—it charged straight towards Sinan’s back!
The magazine clicked into place. Zhang Yingjie raised his gun to aim but couldn’t focus. His vision was blurry, the target splitting into double images at this distance. A slight deviation could hit Yan Hao and Sinan.
As if the last drop of blood in his dying body rushed to his head, Zhang Yingjie gasped and stood up. I’m about to die anyway, what am I afraid of? Holding his breath like an angry lion, he jumped down from the pit with a heavy machine gun! The zombie crossing the experimental field was pounced on by Zhang Yingjie falling from the sky, erupting in a series of strange cries.
Then Zhang Yingjie straddled it, jamming the assault rifle directly into its mouth! Bang! The zombie’s bandages scattered. Bang!! Blood erupted from its seven orifices. The zombie shrieked sharply, flinging Zhang Yingjie away with one arm! Zhang Yingjie crashed into the scattered debris, motionless. The zombie was like a haphazardly assembled skeleton. Its skull was almost completely crushed. Standing there, it looked around blankly, seemingly unable to find a target.
Sinan stood up, his vision going dark, his face covered in blood. In an instant, he looked like a strange beast: “You go and die—!” Si Nan threw out his military dagger, deeply plunging it into the zombie’s brain!
The zombie finally twitched twice before falling to the ground. The experimental site was deathly quiet. Si Nan knelt down and then fell back.
For a moment, he felt he had died too. His eyelids had never been so heavy. If he just closed his eyes, he could instantly escape the pain that pierced his heart, the heaviness of life and death.
Those blood-stained eyelashes slowly closed. Five seconds later, he suddenly choked and coughed, opening his eyes again.
Si Nan turned over, enduring intense pain, and his blood-covered hands slapped onto the metal glass fragments, feeling a sticky liquid flow between his fingers. At first, he thought it was blood, but then realized it wasn’t.
It was the crimson liquid from the test tubes he had mostly smashed earlier.
In that instant, the air froze. Si Nan stared blankly at the remaining few three-segment metal test tubes, and fragmented images suddenly flashed through his muddled mind.
The cabin violently shook, with screams erupting everywhere, seats splattered with blood.
The cockpit door slammed shut, and a blood-red syringe fell from the freezer…
Si Nan shuddered, his brain suddenly going blank, then splitting with pain!
“…Ah…”
He curled up, clutching his head. Memories seemed to emerge from the deep sea, but then vanished without a trace!
“Serum,” he mumbled, “Serum, serum, serum…”
Si Nan picked up the test tube, groped for an injection needle from the messy instrument table, and crawled to Zhang Yingjie’s side. Without even checking if he was breathing, he tremblingly injected the entire tube of solution into his neck vein.
Then he did the same, stumbling to Yan Hao’s side and injected the other full tube into his arm vein!
Those few minutes seemed incredibly long, but for Si Nan, they passed in an instant.
He knelt there, with a cracked temple, half of his cold face congealed with blood. His arms, legs, and abdomen were covered in large patches of red – dried to a brownish-red, wet areas still bright red, half-dried and sticky on his body.
He tightly covered Yan Hao’s bleeding neck with his coat, using more strength than ever before – as if racing against an invisible fate.
“…Ah…Ah ah…Ah…!”
Si Nan suddenly turned back, looking at Zhang Yingjie.
The drug was reacting violently in Zhang Yingjie’s body, but in the worst way possible – his blood vessels protruding and turning blue, as if strangled, his eyes staring blankly upward.
Then, under Si Nan’s desperate gaze, his body arched upward, expelling the last bloody foam from his throat, and crashed down motionless.
- He was dead.
He stared into endless darkness, his gaze hollow and vacant, yet his face slightly turned towards Si Nan and Yan Hao, as if wanting to look at his comrades one last time.
Until the very last moment of life, he remained human, conscious and in pain, showing no signs of zombification.
Si Nan couldn’t make a sound, tightly gripping the empty syringe he had just used on Yan Hao, slowly turning his neck –
Behind him, Yan Hao’s dying struggle suddenly intensified.
Si Nan pressed his ear close to his lips, straining to hear a single word: “Jie…” Zhang Yingjie was dead. Si Nan’s heart sank, his boiling emotions instantly doused with cold water. “…It’s okay,” Si Nan rasped, averting his gaze: “You’re all fine… don’t worry.” Yan Hao smiled almost imperceptibly, though his cracked lips couldn’t even manage a curl, then passed out. Si Nan was exhausted, but Yan Hao was still in extreme danger. He dared not let himself pass out, biting his tongue to stay awake. The underground experimental site was extremely cold. Si Nan rubbed his arms, his teeth chattering, looking around nervously and trying to find a way out, but after circling the entire circular space, he found no solution. Was he really going to wait for his teammates to rescue him? “Zhou Rong…” Si Nan called tentatively, “Zhou Rong!” He looked up towards the pit: “Zhou Rong!” “Captain Zhou!” Si Nan was almost angry and desperate: “Rong Ge!!” “Roar—” A roar came from far above the pit, followed immediately by gunfire! Si Nan was stunned that calling him actually worked, hearing the heavy machine gun sound like a storm, then a loud thud of something falling! Zhou Rong shouted: “Si Nan!
Zhou Rong rushed and leaned out from the pit’s edge, almost collapsing when he saw the situation below: “Huff, huff, a gorilla came out of the corridor, we were trying to go around it, but when you called…”
“Yingjie is gone,” Si Nan said hoarsely.
Zhou Rong froze, and Chun Cao, Ding Shi, and Guo Weixiang all poked their heads out, stunned. Si Nan, who had been calmly thinking about an escape route moments ago, suddenly couldn’t control himself when he saw Zhou Rong’s head pop out and heard his ragged voice. Tears burst from his eyes.
