CHAPTER 262: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

The horde remained frozen, empty eyes watching us from below, too far for us to attack but close enough to attack if we lowered our guards. I grabbed the stone wall with enough strength and poked holes inside.

With a hoarse voice from the sudden dryness, I called out:

"Tang Wei, Li ya... prepare for battle."

"Understood!"

"Yes, Sir!"

The pair didn’t joke. No teasing, no smug remarks. They just moved quickly, grabbing rifles, spare mags, and support gear before bolting up the inner stairwell to the elevated sniper platform.

Boots thundered behind me.

Hundreds of men and women lined the inner and outer walkways, clutching weapons too tightly, breathing too hard. Most were Stage Two. A few had the composure of warriors, but the rest were merely recruits, labourers, volunteers, and each held their positions only by force of will.

Beneath us, at the central defence tower, maybe a hundred soldiers total. Most of them younger than me.

"Roulan," I said, eyes never leaving the field. "Can you command the recruits? Deng Hua, Chen Xun, and Liang Qiu are ready."

Jiang Roulan stepped forward, calm as ever.

Her brown hair flickered in the fading rays of sunlight.

"Of course." She turned on her heel. "Tower Squad! Formation split! Deng, secure the western wall. Chen, reinforce rear ladder approach. Liang Qiu support snipers with ammo resupplies!"

Her voice cut cleanly through the air.

Men moved.

Weapons checked.

Boots hit stone.

And all the while... the enemy just stood there.

The red fog below twisted like heat off asphalt. But these weren’t illusions; they were zombies. Thousands of them, a sea of corpses all waiting for something, and once that time came, they would attack.

"It’s so damn eerie that they don’t even groan..."

"Eh?" I suddenly noticed after Roulan pointed it out... the zombies weren’t groaning but remained completely silent while observing us.

A quiet shiver ran down my spine.

"Still not moving?" Tang Wei called from above.

"No."

Li Ya’s voice followed, unusually serious. "They’re... watching."

A second passed.

Then another.

And then, all at once, the groaning began.

A deep, ear-hurting sound, like thousands of chests inhaling at once, from the distance it sounded like rolling thunder, but lower...heavier.... and more terrifying.

Fifteen thousand bodies began to sway in rhythm.

"Movement!"

Shen Yifei’s body squatted on the tower wall; her bodysuit squeaked as she held the rock while watching me.

"Yifei?"

She must have leapt from the main walls just to come closer.

"John, there’s more than 20,000 please be careful!"

Her feet tapped the floor before she pecked my cheek and then darted off the wall back to her position. She came and went like a typhoon. But her words snapped the soldiers to life, because the Stage One Zombies began moving.

The map flickered as thousands of red dots began their slow, shambling approach.

"Prepare for long range combat!"

"Arm the Gattling Cannons!"

Voices echoed in my head, Jiang Roulan, Jiang Siwan and many others... all working to survive. I could feel the beating of my heart. Throbbing faster and faster like a wild horse as the first wave approached.

They approached like sludge, thick, disjointed and in dense waves.

Stage One zombies stumbled forward, packed tight enough that even if one dropped, five more would fall over it. Their mouths opened unnaturally wide, necks twitching with countless broken limbs.

It was like watching a flood of rotten meat.

"Hold fire until your shot is confirmed," I said, raising a fist.

The zombies were outside the optimal range. If we started wasting bullets and shells now, it would never end.

These zombies were nothing.

Tang Wei watched them through her scope. "Still too far."

The red haze pressed forward... slow... steady...

Five hundred meters...

Four hundred...

Three-fifty...

"Hold..." I narrowed my eyes.

Three hundred.

"Fire."

The first shot cracked like thunder, tearing open the sky. Tang Wei’s sniper round pierced a Stage One’s head with a clean, dry pop. The body dropped instantly. Then the wall exploded in the wild whirring of the Gatling cannons, unleashing their rapid-fire onslaught.

Rifles lit up the sky with their barrel sparks.

The sound blocked everything else out, defeating with steel, lead and heat, the hammer of human resistance.

[Gained 5 ZKP]

[Gained 10 EXP]

Hundreds of System messages exploded in my mind as the soldiers racked up kills.

Quiet! Stop giving messages!

Stage One zombies dropped like flies under coordinated volleys, but for every one that fell, three stepped over it.

"They don’t stop," Chen Xun muttered behind me.

"No shit!" I shouted, unleashing the magazine of my assault rifle.

Their blood already painted the walls with their filthy, corrupted mess, and acidic fluids stained the stone. The front ranks slammed face-first into barbed wire, tangled in defensive pikes before being picked apart by gunfire.

But zombies never screamed or hesitated.

The undead just kept moving.

"Reinforce the southeast archway!" Roulan barked. "Squad Three, rotate now!"

I glanced toward the west.

Holding better than I thought... but still something feels wrong.

Li Ya stood above the outer stairwell, halberd resting against the wall as she spotted Stage Two zombies for Tang Wei.

Stage One bodies were piling now, high enough to create ramps—the dead making bridges of their own.

"We’ve got ten minutes, max, before they can climb," Tang Wei warned.

I nodded once.

And beyond them... beyond the fodder...

I saw them.

The Stage Twos were lining up behind the swarm.

Muscles twitching.

Arms dragging jagged bones.

Eyes locked on our walls.

They were waiting for the fodder to fall.

And the moment we managed to clear half the massive wave of Stage One zombies, with thousands of corpses stacked to make bridges to the towers and walls.

The air shifted before I noticed.

I could feel it in my chest first, like a cold fist, pulling against me.

Then I saw them...

The Stag Two’s began to move.

These bastards didn’t shamble like stage ones... their speed was immense, with the speed type zoomed towards us.

The moment their turn came, they surged through the fallen wall of corpses like starving wolves. Slender, warped bodies with overgrown limbs and too many teeth, some still wearing scraps of military or civilian clothing from before they turned.

"Contact! Stage Two!" I shouted into the comm.

"North wall, fire your grenades! Destroy the corpses now! Focus Fire!" Roulan’s voice rang over the radio, while the Stage Ones hadn’t breached yet. But it didn’t matter because the second wave would soon leap over their corpses.

The Stage Twos ran over them, trampling their own like stampeding beasts, using the mountains of dead as launch ramps.

"Yifei!" I screamed. "Liang Mei—move now!"

"On it!" Yifei’s reply was sharp, breathless.

South side first.

A pack of hunters, their filthy green skin and skeletal figures gathered like locusts and stormed towards us on all fours, crawling up the walls like geckos.

They moved too fast for the recruits.

Two were already inside the Tower’s walls before I could issue the second warning.

"Draw your blades!" Roulan ordered.

Liang Mei vaulted across the upper walkway like a blur, spear already spinning. She leapt, kicked off the archway, and crashed down atop a Hunter mid-air. Her weapon pierced straight through its back and drove it into the wall below.

"One down!"

But more followed.

My gauntlet blasted the incoming zombies, cutting through the stray hunters... as the ground began to shake. "What the hell is that!?" But the moment I took my eyes off the gate, a group of a hundred or more brutes appeared out of nowhere.

"Fucking Brutes..."

The giant monsters pounded their fists like battering rams. Each one the size of two men, skin grey-black and hardened. One charged, slamming headfirst into the gate barrier, sending a metal groan through the entire tower structure.

"Tang Wei! Bring it down!"

"Affirmative, boss."

She leapt from the floor above, over my head, slipping onto the wall just above the beast’s head, her sawed-off shotgun glowing with an amber light. "Here it goes!"

CRACK!CRACK!

Two explosive earth-infused sniper rounds hit the brute’s collarbone, then its eye. Her gun smoked as she snapped it open and replaced the two Seismic shells with a click. The brute collapsed to the ground, missing half its head with a thud.

Then I saw something that made my blood run cold.

Just behind the front line...

A blue-skinned zombie with a partially exposed brain walked calmly on all fours between the running swarm.

Oh fuck...!

Instantly, the Stage Two zombies all changed.

The speed types rushed towards the walls, towards Tang Wei.

I couldn’t shout; it wouldn’t save her, so I gripped my fists and rushed to the wall, wrapping my arm around her waist and tossing her back onto the tower walls. "Recover yourself!" before shooting into the four hunters with my gauntlets, shells blowing their heads off.

"Shit... I should have kept a Gatling Cannon for myself!"