Chapter 160: Two Choices
“200 thousand???” Zhang Xiao Qiang suddenly recalled himself letting go of the hundred dollar bills above the bridge, it must be fate, who would have thought that he would actually encounter someone who would have lost 200 thousand?
After resting, Zhang Xiao Qiang and the rest moved out once more, this time, every single person held onto a torch. Wang Chong held onto one and followed behind Zhang Xiao Qiang anxiously, afraid that he would fall into the hole again. He pinned himself onto the rock wall and walked on the small path. After everyone crossed over and entered the opposite side, Zhang Xiao Qiang carefully loaded the M1911A1 and gestured to them. The rest of them lowered their bodies and started searching ahead of them. At such a time, everyone knew that they were about to reach their target, Zhang Xiao Qiang could sense that there were people hiding in the darkness peeping at them and immediately stopped to look around.
The cave within the hole was bigger than the cave from before, with various obelisks and strange rocks littering the space. Aside from the sound of fire on the torches flickering, there was a source of water flowing from somewhere. Everyone huddled into a circle while the men from the Logistic Team behind held onto their shields, trembling with fear while standing outside. The Combat Team raised their rifles and aimed at the figures and shadows at the sides.
“Who’s there? Come out….” Zhang Xiao Qiang shouted loudly, the echoes of his voice bounced back continuously, “Come out, come out…..” His voice continued to ring in everybody’s ears.
From the corner of his eyes, Zhang Xiao Qiang suddenly noticed something moving behind a pile of strange rocks. Without saying a thing, he raised his handgun and shot in the direction. The bullet shot onto the rock and ignited some sparks, causing everyone else to shoot in the same direction with their rifles. The cave became filled with gunpowder smoke. Zhang Xiao Qiang fired another shot before signaling the rest to stop. After the gun fires stopped, a group of people walked over to the pile of rocks.
A man dressed in ragged clothes was huddled at the back of the rock, cowering while hugging his head, trembling in the corner. Zhang Xiao Qiang and the rest had stopped beside him but he remained oblivious to them, even when two of the Combat Team members pulled him up from the ground to tie him up, he still had not regained his senses. Zhang Xiao Qiang looked at him and realized that his face was clean and a paleness from not being in the sunlight for a long time, aside from the rugged beard and hair that he had not cut, there were practically no filth on him, although his clothes looked ragged, there was no stench from him. One of the members retrieved a black pistol from his waist to which Zhang Xiao Qiang took. He used this Type-77 Pistol to probe the man, Type-77s were J City’s Police standardized pistol, where the majority of the main cities get the priority in choosing the better guns, while the less new guns were given to the smaller cities. This manner of pushing out new guns continued to the counties, and this man’s ragged clothes were obviously a policeman uniform. When one of the subordinates found his Police Identity, Zhang Xiao Qiang then knew that he was a real cop.
The expression of the others changed upon seeing the Police Identity in Zhang Xiao Qiang’s hands. The strength in the Country’s administration over the citizens was strong, ordinary people would never go against authorities like the Police. Upon knowing that they had tied a Policeman, a few of them started to feel weak, the Logistic Team people began to feel hope, they hoped that the Policeman would be able to free them from their terrible situation.
Three made a signal, he had no interests in policemen, especially since his past encounters with all of them never gave him any positive signals. When he saw that the subordinates had strange looks in their eyes, he immediately broke out into a scolding: “All of you trash, you are all following Brother Cockroach now! All the things you have done entitles all of you to be executed, are you guys so anxious to eat shelled peanuts for the rest of your lives?”
Three’s words caused the men to awake from their hopes, they had done countless of illegal things after the apocalypse, even the Logistic Team woke up, their hands were not clean as well, all of them looked at the policeman with ferocious glares as though they wanted to silence him.
When the police regained his senses, he saw all of them wielding rifles and dressed in military uniforms. The man with the helmet had an extremely monstrous like glare, causing him to tremble once again. Zhang Xiao Qiang glared at everyone, and they immediately lowered their heads.
“How many of you are there, and where are you guys taking refuge at? Bring us there….”
Before Zhang Xiao Qiang could continue, the policeman started to wriggle, he screamed out loud at them, saying even if they killed him, he will not speak a word, the fire in his eyes had a fanatic look, Zhang Xiao Qiang immediately raised his handgun and fired towards his head.
“BANG….”
After the shot, the man was stupefied, he could no longer stand and knelt on the ground, the bullet had grazed his temple and the flames from the handgun caused his eyes to go blind temporarily. He could even feel the heat coming out from the muzzle as it was brought close to his forehead and he saw as the finger started to press onto the trigger.
“Ah….” The police wailed, he closed his eyes and shouted out loud: “I’ll speak, I’ll speak….don’t shoot anymore….”
Killing him would lead him to keep mum, but not killing him will make him speak, he had just escaped from death and became extremely informative, he easily betrayed his comrades as he spilled everything he knew…
He was a city cop and on the eve of the virus outbreak, they had received a task in the middle of the night to move to the spa. They had received information that the spa was a large scale gambling and prostitution den suspected of human trafficking, over a 100 of them were mobilized for the large-scale ambush. Who would have known that upon entering the spa, they were immediately surrounded by the infected spa personnel, he and his comrades saved over a dozen of young ladies and the members of the spa and escaped deeper into the cave.
They were prepared to snipe the zombies from the cave, but who knew that the zombies were too powerful, leaving them to only be able to barricade and reinforce the place. After the rain, the zombies charged at the barricades, and the 30 of them could only run further inwards.
Who would have expected that one of the 17-year-old waitress loved to explore and knew of a large hole at the back, and even knew that there was a hidden cave by the river that could hold them? They attracted all the zombies into the hole and stabilized themselves, at that time they did not have much ammunition left, seeing that there were no zombies at the entrance, some of them decided to rush to the car park to look for more ammunition, who would have known that 3 of them never returned, and the only ones left were 3 policemen as guards and 2 policewomen as protection with the 20 ladies hidden in the deepest part of the cave while relying on food from the warehouse and fishes living inside the river to survive.
When the police spoke to this point, the eyes of the Combat Team Members all lit up, to be able to take in 20 odd young ladies at a go, all of them felt that it was an opportunity. Although Zhang Xiao Qiang prohibited them from using force, he did not state that they could not court ladies. Furthermore, men would definitely want to find women while women would definitely need some men, Zhang Xiao Qiang got someone to loosen the ropes of the Policeman, then handed his empty pistol back to him. The policeman looked at the pistol in confusion.
“I’ll give you two choices, one is to join my Combat Team to fight for our lives, the other is to join the Logistic Team to work…”