Humans are really fragile creatures. They were just hoping that the plane would soon arrive to take them away from this hellish place. But this place of hope turned into hell in a split second.
"Squad 1 reload you magazines, squad 2 follow me. Block the rear access and emergency evacuation routes."
An order that felt too professional to the point of making someone shiver. For the Black Watch, it wasn't a massacre. They didn't even consider they were shooting civilians as the commander treated them as a real war. They were serious, with no slightest hesitation. On top of that, the command gave an icy and ruthless feeling, as if they were mindless killing machines that would pull the trigger and shoot all the enemies in their sight.
"Clear the hall. Check for survivors!" the commander made an instruction to the rear squad.
After another round of bullets rain, the screams in the room faded and gradually disappeared as blood splattered all over the walls. A foul smell was coming out from every direction of the room. The screams gradually changed to sobs, choked with fear. The civilians who had survived 2 rounds of the shooting were shocked and overwhelmed. They never thought the soldiers that were supposed to protect them and take them away from here would shoot at civilians.
The New Federation didn't need another burden. The last thing they lacked was population. Under the order, the soldiers of this unit wouldn't hesitate to kill anyone as they were all enemies who got in the way of their mission.
The sound of intensive firing became scarce. At the commander's gesture, the entire group was divided into small groups of three and began scouting for any survivors. Lucius was one of them. He followed the two Black Watch soldiers as they walked among the bodies, looking for civilians who had survived the sweeping fire.
Complete extermination.
Lucius understood that gunshot after gunshot represented another life was a loss.
"Please don't kill me... don't!"
Even begging for mercy would give them a bullet through the brain. Weeping wouldn't work in front of them, and the people who begged for mercy were a fool. Child, woman… they suffered the same fate.
"Let me go...please..."
Sorry, that's an order.
After shooting a middle-aged man who was holding his feet and begging for mercy, Lucius continued as he began to sweep the entire hall. It really was a mission that was being carried out in a manner so serious that one couldn't help but shivered. The mission called 'massacre of civilians' was like cleaning up a battlefield. One by one, the unit scouted for any survivors.
Humans were real, intelligent creatures.
Lucius sensed several dying people among the piled-up corpses. Perhaps they had been shot somewhere and had no strength to get up, but perhaps there were others that were playing dead.
It wasn't right to fish in troubled waters*. Sometimes they could encounter bad luck. When the Black Watch commander landed his feet on a civilian who was playing dead, he let out a scream of pain.
The price of that scream was death.
Bang!
The commander immediately took aim with his gun and pulled the trigger, realizing at the same time that there would surely be a lot of people playing dead and tried to escape. Sure enough, another civilian near the door who had managed to play dead to get past the first shooting round stood up and tried to get out. But as he pushed open the waiting room doors, he found the same group of demons in black military uniforms standing outside!
Rounds of bullets were fired through the civilian who tried to escape.
The commander also gave a new order.
"Squad 1, bring a thermal scanner to search for survivors hiding inside the building and find them all and shoot them one by one."
"Yes, sir!"
Lucius was a member of the first squad. The Black Watch's gas mask was modified, and the goggles changed into a thermal scanner function. He didn't need to turn it on as whether it's on or off was not visible from the outside anyway. As a vampire, he was a natural born-hunter. His sensitivity to living beings was much stronger than the thermal scanner.
There were still some survivors hiding in the waiting room. Perhaps those civilians were lucky enough to duck before the massacre began. Or maybe they escaped the first wave of slaughter. But there was always no escape from the second wave of pursuit.
" Sweep thoroughly, permission to use explosive weapons granted."
The commander received a new order, and the Marines couldn't calm down when the sound of gunfire sounded in the waiting room, trying to rush over to see what was going on, but if the door hadn't been sealed off by the Black Watch troops, it would have turned into a war between two armies. After all, those Marines still had this thing called humanity.
"Interesting." Lucius directly filled his assault rifle's self-contained grenade launcher with ammunition.
He followed the squad. Once they found a room where the civilians were hiding, they peeked inside and threw the explosives. The explosives were self-detonated, and it wasn't just Lucius alone who threw the explosives into the room.
A few explosives with the power slightly below grenades thrown into a small room were enough to blow anyone inside to pieces. They searched the rooms one by one. Before, they realized that the entire Black Watch squad scattered and left the waiting room as the rear runway area also needed to be searched.
They needed to search thoroughly as the airport building covered a large area. Lucius followed his team consisting of 3 soldiers towards a dark room behind the waiting room. It looked like a storage room. But the thermal scanner showed someone was hiding in it.
Lucius sensed danger. He tapped out his gun and found out he was out of explosives. He signaled at his teammate beside him and made a gesture of running out of ammo. His teammates replied the same.
Damn it… didn't they know any self-restraint? The other squads were too far. Lucius had the highest rank, so he wisely let the two of his teammates break in first. Although he feared no death, honestly, Lucius would avoid unnecessary pain. He wasn't a masochist who enjoyed being abused. Instead, torturing others was his pleasure.
The two soldiers obediently broke into the room, scanning around the dimly lit room. But… they saw a lot of hyperthermic reactions. What happened?
A soldier shut off the thermal scanner and turned on his flashlight, illuminating the room.
Blood…
A lot of blood splattered everywhere inside the room, not less than the blood river in the waiting room. They obviously didn't throw a grenade into this room, so why was there blood here??
Blood flowed on the walls and floor, the light from the flashlight illuminated upwards, following the trail of blood and found a figure…
A zombie?
No… it's not a zombie.
"Oh my, it's rude for gentlemen to interrupt a lady's meal."
It was a girl. An underage girl in a school uniform. She stood smiling amidst the pile of bloody human corpses. The so-called meal she was talking about was those humans behind.
At this point, the soldiers understood that the creature in front of them was the same monster as the ultimate target they were hunting. With no mercy of the young girl's appearance, the two soldiers ruthlessly opened fire on her.
"Ah… I see. So humans were always this annoying. The same goes for the humans in this world."
Tl's Note:
* An idiom. Fish in troubled water, meaning someone tried to take advantage of an unstable situation.
From this chapter on, I'll use 'Marines' to distinguish the regular soldiers from the Black Watch soldiers.