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.
