Chapter 200: Long Range
When the tide formed by the dark red and large rats surged over, Three led his men and tried to use their rifles to shoot them. But seeing the endless tide of rats rushing at them, they started to feel the pressure.
Seeing the endless streams of rats running towards them from the distance, Three started to panic. He led his members to retreat while firing at the rats. Before they could run a distance, the ride tide suddenly shot out over 10 large rats, that jumped onto the slowest member.
The rats bit on whatever they could sink their teeth into with a few of them stuck onto his face. The rats dug their claws deep into his flesh, their razor-sharp teeth bit off pieces of his face as he hugged his head and rolled on the ground. Upon seeing that he was in pain, one of the members went back to help, but in this short moment of hesitation, he was also engulfed by the sea of rats.
Upon reaching here, Three’s eyes turned red, he only had a total of 9 elites who had served the army before, regardless of what kind of soldiers they were, as long as they had gone through the basic military training, they would be seen as elites in the apocalypse. Just from the rats, three of them had died, how many people were there in the Combat team?
Ever since Zhang Xiao Qiang had built up the Combat Team with 11 men, they continued to expand and had a total of 60 men and women. After experiencing so many battles, aside from two deserters that were killed by Zhang Xiao Qiang, none of them had suffered any injuries before.
The newly introduced elite team that was directly under him, equipped with the best equipment, best guns, personal Type-92 pistols, bulletproof vests and polymer helmets, all of them armed to the teeth, lost to a few hundred zombies that surrounded them and even lost 3 men to the rat tide. He was ashamed and even felt that he was not fit to be a leader.
Zhang Xiao Qiang encouraged Three, to him, Three had already done sufficiently well. Although he and his team acted like dogs with their tails beneath their bodies and retreated multiple times, that was how they were able to survive.
Zhang Xiao Qiang was not lacking in supplies or food, he was lacking in men. He did not find a population of 10 thousand as a lot, one person as too little. Although Three did not know of any tactics and could not efficiently direct his troops, he was able to sense danger and could lead his men to retreat. Although they had losses, they were able to preserve themselves completely, if it were some other person who was a tad slower, their entire unit might have been killed.
Zhang Xiao Qiang was sure that the rats were all mutated variants, they lived beneath the floors of the prison and the food store was their dining quarters and their baby rooms. Three and his men had alarmed the larger rats, causing them to chase after them to no end until they surrounded Zhang Xiao Qiang and the rest.
They were not lacking in food temporarily, every person had their own fresh water, so water was also sufficient. One after another, green steel ammunition crates were placed side by side inside the watchtower. They were no longer lacking in ammunition, but no one knew of the exact number of rats outside, they were constantly converging and forming a mountain in attempts to get over the wall.
Zhang Xiao Qiang’s subordinates had wrestled with the rats for more than 2 hours, fear and fatigue were not in their dictionary, but Zhang Xiao Qiang’s subordinates were already at their limits. From the start, they had never gone through high-intensity training or war simulation, the only thing that was making them persist was the pure fear of the rats.
The firing rate on the watchtower started to slow down. Zhang Xiao Qiang looked at his watch, then raised his head and looked at the sky. They were not lacking in anything except the most important thing, time.
If the rat problem could not be resolved prior to night time, the rats could take advantage of the darkness to jump over the wall. Without running electricity, majority of the spotlights had turned to decorative items. They had no wood to burn for light as well. Zhang Xiao Qiang’s subordinates were not equipped with night vision devices, and they could very well perish in the night.
“Shua…..shua…..” Sounds of arrows piercing through the sky broke Zhang Xiao Qiang’s train of thoughts. He raised his head and looked towards the source of the sound and saw the shadows of some sharp objects flying across the sky, into the compound.
These sharp objects resemble ancient archers concentrating their fires in one spot. Some of these half-meter long, chopstick thick spikes stabbed into the zombie corpses, the floor, the black walls of the arsenal, leaving white dots all around, while many more flew and struck the survivors inside the watchtower.
“ARGHHH…” Someone screamed out loud, Zhang Xiao Qiang jumped up and rushed into the watchtower, taking 2 to 3 steps per time and rushed up the stairs. Four of the survivors were dragged to the side, their bodies had sharp spikes stuck into them. Wang Chong was helping one of them to remove the spike from his body which was stabbed almost an inch into their bodies. As the spike was taken out, blood quickly dyed his yellow military uniform red.
Two others laid by the side, dead or alive, no one knew. Their bodies were covered with the spikes looking like hedgehogs. The blood flowing from the numerous wounds on their bodies slowly formed a pool of blood which slowly extended towards Zhang Xiao Qiang’s feet. Zhang Xiao Qiang handed a bottle of blood clotting powder over to Wang Chong, then peered out of the window.
The platform at the top of the watchtower which was initially covered with badly damaged rat corpses had been cleaned by Three and his men. But when Zhang Xiao Qiang looked out, aside from the blood traces from the rat corpses, there were countless of spikes, bullet shells and little bean-sized holes.
The uninjured members were in a state of panic, a few of them continued to fire with their rifles while a few of them quickly shifted the empty ammunition crates to the top to act as cover. Three constantly shouted at the people around him while occasionally firing at the wall.
Seeing that the situation was not as terrible as he expected, Zhang Xiao Qiang raised his head and looked towards the wall. The rats were still climbing the mountain, their speed somewhat much faster than before, maybe because of the suppression of the rifles being slower. At the empty space beyond the mountain of rats behind the wall, Zhang Xiao Qiang noticed something and thought that he was seeing things. He quickly retrieved out his binoculars and took a look.
In the empty space a 100m away from the wall, Zhang Xiao Qiang saw 10 large animals wiggling towards the prison. These things were roughly the size of the large jars he saw in the village. As they were moving together, Zhang Xiao Qiang was unable to obtain a clear view of their true appearance, but Zhang Xiao Qiang saw the main culprits responsible for the spikes. It was them, their bodies had countless of spikes spread out like porcupines.
Zhang Xiao Qiang zoomed the binoculars 10x onto the spikes on their bodies. Looking at them, Zhang Xiao Qiang inhaled in cold air from his mouth…. Are the rats actually mutating to adapt to long range?