You were supposed to hoard supplies, why the heck did you hoard zombies!

"Half an hour?"

The lieutenant furrowed his brows subconsciously.

He looked at the seemingly endless horde of corpses in front of him, feeling an added sense of bleakness in his heart. Didn't this mean that his subordinates, who had just managed to come down from the elevated road, were all going to die here in half an hour?

In a moment, two more had been dragged into the horde due to running out of ammunition.

Their screams lasted for less than ten seconds.

Then abruptly ceased.

Perhaps they couldn't hold out for even half an hour.

Every minute brought new casualties.

If this continued, all of them would die in this damned city, just like those citizens in front of them with faces as horrifying as vengeful ghosts.

Just then, a man suddenly ran over and shouted, "Company commander, there's a courtyard ahead!"

"It looks like a residence!"

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A courtyard?

The hope the lieutenant had almost given up on suddenly reignited.

He immediately followed the direction the man was pointing and saw a courtyard with a red door right in front of them. The wall over two meters high was exactly the shelter this unit needed at the moment.

"Pass the word down!"

"Everyone head to the residential courtyard at ten o'clock! Move fast!"@@novelbin@@

The soldiers being attacked by the horde heard the command and instantly perked up, their tired bodies seemingly gaining strength.

At the brink of life and death, no one cared about the orders to conserve ammunition.

They fired as much as they had.

After all, if they were eaten by those zombies, what use would the bullets be?

For a moment, bullets flew like raindrops, continuing to land on the advancing zombies, who fell and were trampled amid sprays of blood, like wheat reaped in autumn by a scythe.

And this fleeing army took the rare opportunity to quickly retreat into the residential courtyard in the direction of ten o'clock.

The rust-covered gate was violently smashed open.

The tense soldiers rushed in one after another, knocking down a few zombies that were wandering in the courtyard. Then, they immediately started looking for something heavy to block the gate with.

"Make way! Quick, make way!"

A few soldiers found a huge wooden stake in a corner of the courtyard and, amid shouts, quickly propped the banging gate shut.

Their comrades hurriedly used various objects to fill the gaps between the stake and the gate.

Some even brought wardrobes and sofas from inside the house.

Only when the gate was completely sealed did the soldiers finally breathe a sigh of relief. Then they all fell to the ground, panting heavily.

Although his face was filled with fatigue, the lieutenant was still on alert and immediately ordered a check on each soldier's injuries.

Anyone with bite or scratch wounds had to be executed on the spot.

This was the lesson they had learned during their flight.

Originally, they thought it was just a typical urban riot. Such incidents were rare but not unheard of.

When the lieutenant left the base, he even felt like he was on vacation.

His subordinates also seemed relaxed.

None of them took the mission seriously.

This was Shen Zhou, after all. Any person or force that dared to confront the government would be swiftly destroyed by the military, powerful as a state institution here.

But no one expected that the troop had just started on their way when the unexpected happened.

It began with a routine traffic accident.

The driver died on the spot.

But from the thick smoke and flames, inexplicably, several figures stood up. The people around had no time to react before they were attacked by these crazed individuals with cracked skin and charred faces.

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They tore open the throats of these poor souls like bloodthirsty beasts.

Gulping down great mouthfuls of their compatriots' blood and flesh.

Everyone who witnessed this scene fell into terror.

Then, those bodies that should have died rose up like revenants returned from hell, and with growls like wild beasts, they swiftly pounced on the surrounding crowd, just as those figures who had emerged from the car accident had done before.

By the time the military realized that something was terribly wrong outside, it was already too late.

There were car accidents and flames everywhere.

The chaotic crowd ran in all directions.

Wherever one looked, there were these frenzied lunatics with grotesque expressions, biting everything living in sight like zombies from a movie, deeply engraving fear in everyone's heart amidst wails of terror.

The lieutenant made a decision to control the situation at once.

But there was one thing he didn't anticipate.

Those injured civilians hiding behind the military, their expressions one of agony, would turn into a ticking time bomb that blew the entire troop apart.

When he realized this, the situation was completely out of control.

The defensive line collapsed from within.

Those pitiful civilians turned into bloodthirsty beasts in a matter of seconds, bringing down the intensely vigilant soldiers guarding against outside dangers, and quickly resulted in at least a dozen casualties within the military.

The soldiers were human, too.

Their strict discipline made them strong.

And it was because of this discipline that the injured soldiers were quickly rescued from the jaws of the zombies by their comrades, only to turn around and pounce upon them, ripping their throats open, spilling their entrails.

Fear and chaos dominated everyone alive on the highway in just a few short hours.

Even the once disciplined military was no exception.

The panicked soldiers saw enemies in every shadow.

Their guns were now aimed at their fellow soldiers.

Bullets that should have struck the enemy now caused blossoms of blood to spray from bodies clad in the same uniform.

The lieutenant's immediate surroundings were also in chaos.

But he, ultimately, was the only one who remained clear-headed in his unit.

After observing that these attacks on live humans could be caused by some sort of contagious pathogen, he immediately ordered his soldiers to avoid any physical contact with the injured and enemies.

Leveraging his equipment and agility from years of training, he quickly regrouped with a dozen soldiers amidst the chaos.

Dependent on this hastily formed squad, they rapidly tightened their defense.

And saved more soldiers.

But by that time, the situation before their eyes was completely out of control. Even with a newfound squad of forty men, it was impossible to fully eliminate the horde of undead which now numbered more than a thousand.

After much painful indecision, the lieutenant finally made a choice.

He would lead the remnants of his troops to retreat.

They had to leave this place.

...

"Leave?"

The lieutenant looked at the still violently shaking gate, feeling increasingly heavy-hearted.

He never imagined he would end up trapped.

How to leave?

He had thought they could find the local police department for reinforcements once they descended from the expressway, but who could have anticipated that the city was in even greater chaos than the highway.

When they finally made it down, what laid before them was a living hell.

On the streets, in the shops, even on the nearby high-rises.

There were distorted figures everywhere.

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