Zombie Apocalypse: Creation

Seven minutes ago...

"Kate, you found anywhere we can enter through?"

As Xiaoyun whispered into the mic, he was standing near the south entrance, which was still filled with zombies to the brim.

"The northern part look a little empty. Just give me a second to check after I finish check the eastern side."

With Kate's answer, Xiaoyun began wrapping around the block, heading toward the northern part of the city hall.

"Why are there so many zombies? This is way more than any zombie hordes in a single area like this..."

Xiaoyun thought to himself as he slowly walked through the streets, hoping over a few fences before finally arriving to the northern entrance's staircase.

To his surprise, there was barely any zombies left. A few of them scattered in the nearby building idling despite the gunshots inside.

"Kate, I'm at the northern entrance. Where are you at?"

"Just give me a second... Okay, I'm at the northern entrance as well. Should we turn off our cloak?"

"No need... I'm just going to walk over to the door"

Xiaoyun quickly walking all the way to the door, creating a thermal camera in hand before putting it up to his face.

"Keep walking, I can see you now," Xiaoyun murmured, locating Kate on the eastern side of the grass field.

"Okay..."

After a few second, Kate finally arrived by the door, standing only a few steps away from him.

"Where are you at——"

"Right here."

As Xiaoyun threw the camera aside and grabbed onto her hand, Kate's face blushed for a second before turning her attention to the entrance itself.

The door was wide open, clearly bashed open by a tank mutant as a giant corpse lay next to door hinges.

"Jesus... So much bodies."

Kate's eye was completely stunned as the sheer mountain of zombies inside almost blocked the entire staircase to the second floor.

Xiaoyun didn't say anything back, continuing forward as he walked around the corpse of zombie before arriving at the staircase.

"I'll go up first."

Slowly, Xiaoyun began inching up the staircase step by step, walking along the remaining guard rail as several zombie corpses growled.

Many of the corpses was still alive, incapacitated by their bullet wounds, forcing the two of them to make extra sure not to step onto their faces.

The foul smell alone was enough to knock anyone out, but they had no other choice but to continue upward.

After what felt like forever, the two of them finally made it to the second floor.

Just as they expected, the hallway of the second floor was still filled with zombie corpses, but most of them are actually dead this time.

"What do we do now?" Kate quietly asked as two path remaining before them, with more turns ahead of them.

Xiaoyun thought for a second, then grabbed her hands again before taking the route to the right.

However, a single gunshot traveling from the left hallway cause him to turned around before they began following where the gunshot came from.

The two of them remain silent as they continue trying their best to avoid stepping on the zombie corpses, but the rooms eventually ran out.

Within seconds, both of their shoes was stained with blood.

"Ugh, this stain is going to reveal us..."

"It's fine Kate. The hallway is filled with blood anyway... As long as no footsteps show, it's all fine."

As the two continued heading forward, they finally noticed a group of soldier standing at the stairway to the third floor.

The soldiers' faces looked extremely tired, but not a single one of them had their guards down as they held up their rifles down the hall.

"Northern Hallway 5 cleared."

"Northern Hallway 7 cleared."

As one of the soldier's walkie-talkie transmitted, he quickly picked it up before clicking a button.

"Northern Hallway 6 cleared, " the soldier murmured before clicking the button again.

"We're finally done. "

A young soldier barely looking old enough to drink murmured as he lowered his rifle before streching out his elbow.

"Not so fast. We're probably going to the southern flank after this——"

"Hallway 6, can you send someone to Commander Wen Pi's office? I'm not sure if they had gotten our signal."

"Affirmative."

All of the soldiers immediately turned their attention at the young soldier in unison, staring at him in silence.

"Okay okay. I'll go."

Seeing the young soldier's face full of grievance, the older soldiers couldn't help but let out a small chuckle.

"You better hurry."

---

Back to the present...

As Kate and Xiaoyun turned their attention to the table, they saw two different maps. On the left was a detailed map of Changsha.

As Lingang previously described, most of the city was zoned out in blue, seemingly to indicate safe areas.

The only parts of the city painted in red were the very northern part and the roads connecting to the southern and western parts of Hunan.

Meanwhile, on the right was a map of Hunan itself, with various matching colors that had no labels at all.

But from the context clue, the blue dots scattered throughout the rural area of Hunan clearly implied as Zhongxiong's base of operation.

In the very middle, there was also a green square thirty miles south of Changsha, or a estimated thirty-minute drive.

"That's probably their base, right?" Kate murmured.

"Yeah..."

Xiaoyun quickly took out his phone, took a picture of the two maps, and put it back into his pocket.

"Let's get going."

Kate nodded as they both turned on their invisible cloak at the same time, slowly walking over to the door before putting their ear to it.

After hearing only gunshots in the distance, the two of them finally headed out of the room before arriving back to the staircase.

Walking down the hall, they could both hear gunshots right outside the windows getting louder and louders.

With the constant explosions and tank mutant's growling sounds, the battle outside was only getting more intense.

"What should we do now?" Kate quietly asked as the two of them arrived at the staircase.

Xiaoyun didn't say anything back as he took out his phone again, only to see the time was already past six.

Outside, the sunlight was starting to be replaced by the moon as the sun finally vanished from the horizon.

"Let's get back to the army first... I have a bad feeling."

---

When the two of them exited the building through the northern entrances, they quickly noticed how many soldiers were surrounding it.

All of them were Xiaoyun's troops, breaking down into smaller groups to lure zombies away from the other three entrances.

After walking past several groups of them, the two of them quickly headed towards a nearby hotel to have a better view.

Running through the staircases, the two of them barely broke a sweat as they arrive at the roof entrances.

With a simple kick, the lock holding the door in place was snapped into two as they ran over to the edge of the building.

As they looked down to the city hall, both of them were a little shocked by what they saw down below.

"Oh my god..."

The two of them were shocked by how jammed packed the zombies were, as the entire road was painted black, overriding the sidewalks and street lines.

At the same time, they could see more and more smoke coming out of the southern part of the city hall, seemingly to have caught on fire at some point.

"Xiaoyun, are you sure we have enough ammo against this?" Kate worryingly asked.

"Lingang knows what he is doing."

The two stood in silence as they watched groups of soldiers begin entering through the western and northern entrance.

After a while, Xiaoyun started to notice how number of soldiers on the battlefield seemed much lower than what he had originally brought.

There were only roughly ten thousand people around the city hall, and another thousand were entering the building.

Looking around the various streets, there was no sighs of soldiers anywhere to be seen. Kate even started to notice that the number seemed a little off.

"Where is everyone?"

Kate worriedly asked as the zombies started to force the outside soldiers to enter the building.

After a short thought, Xiaoyun finally came up with an answer that connected various dots inside his theory.

"They are probably waiting somewhere... The building itself can't handle that much soldiers anyway."

"Couldn't they at least fight outside to help the soldiers inside?" Kate questioned.

"Just be patient... Lingang is trying to catch the big fish behind all this."

The answer didn't really address her concern, but seeing how confident Xiaoyun looked, she didn't question it again.

"Hey Kate, do you think there's any survivors inside the city?" Xiaoyun suddenly asked.

"Of course there are survivors. There are always survivors in every city..."

Kate paused for a second, then continued.

"Isn't there a saying in your language that compares cockroaches' tenaciousness to human's ability to survive?"

"Yeah... I guess you're right——"

Just before Xiaoyun could finish talking, a certain indivdual's stomach started growling.

"That's not me!" Kate shyly whispered, her face blushing red as she tried to deny that it was her stomach going on hungry strikes.

"Then it must have been me... Let's go get some food before we do anything else."