Everyone was on time as the clock hit eight.
Some of the people's faces looked a little tired, as if they were too nervous to sleep last night. But all of their eyes were wide open as they waited for the roll call to finish.
"Gantian, you were staying up late last night for night duty. How close are the zombies?" Yiming asked.
"They are still on the road, and the estimated walking distance is one hour," Gantian replied.
"Mayor Xiaoyun, do you want to say any last word before we start moving?" Yiming asked.
Xiaoyun nodded in agreement as the two switched places, letting Xiaoyun be in the middle.
"Before anyone thinks about running, let me remind you that there is nowhere else to run to.
This is do or die. Remember all the progress we had made in the town. We aren't going to let it be all destroyed.
I'm not going down without a fight. I will fight alongside everyone else on the front line. Nobody is exempt from dying, but I promise you all one thing.
I will be the last one leaving that wall. Godspeed everyone."
As Xiaoyun saluted towards everyone, they saluted right back before he stepped back down to be with the crowd.
"Okay, groups A and B, please get in the assigned car. Group C follows Jixi to the wall. And group D follows Yezi to the back entrance."
Everyone immediately split into the group Yiming assigned yesterday, with Group A in the back of Yezi's pickup truck and Group B in Xiaoyun's car.
With Group C heading toward the wall and Group D heading toward the back, only Xiaoyun and Yiming remained on the field along with the two cars.
"Yezi found more weapon stockpiles," Xiaoyun explained as he handed his backpack over to Yiming.
Yiming handed the bag to the two cars, giving them each a pistol and a magazine along with it.
"Remember you are training and only shoot when you are sure to hit the head. Gantian, can you drive group A?"
With a nod from Gantian, Yiming turned his attention to group B.
"Anyone here drives a car? Shit..."
Yiming immediately noticed all four of the people in group B were in passenger seats or the back, which clearly indicated none of them knew how to drive.
"I can drive group B. Don't worry about it." Xiaoyun volunteered as he got inside his car's driver seat.
"Thank you... Okay, you two can go now. Remember the plan!"
As the two cars drove off into the distance, Yiming slowly headed towards the wall to be with Jixi.
---
Xiaoyun and Gantian's car quickly drove past the entrance after the draw bridge was lowered.
After driving for a few minutes, they could finally see the massive zombie horde heading in their direction.
"Mayor, we need to turn the car now." One of the militia stated.
As Xiaoyun started reversing the car, Gantian's car had already finished reversing. With no time to waste, the militia in Gantian's car started firing at the zombies.
"God damn, this car sucks at turning," Xiaoyun complained as his car finally finished reversing, allowing the soldiers to fire back at the zombies.
But despite the gunshots, it barely made a dent in the zombie's number, forcing the two cars to start driving back towards the base.
Noticing Gantian driving at a slower speed on purpose, Xiaoyun quickly copied it after realizing it allowed the militias to shoot back at a steady pace.
Still, the zombies ran faster and faster as the gunshot drew the entire zombie crowd to chase the two cars.
Within seconds, the zombies were almost tailgating the two cars when Xiaoyun took a short peek at the rear window.
Some of the zombies were even stomping on top of each other, running over the slower ones as they chased after the two cars.
Xiaoyun started increasing the speed of the car, but Gantian also started increasing the speed of their pickup truck.
"Fuck this is nerve-racking." Just as Xiaoyun commented, the two could see the town entrance.
"Get ready!" Gantian yelled through the window as he started speeding up even faster.
Xiaoyun maintained the same speed, letting Gantian drive ahead of them. But it meant only Xiaoyun's militia could shoot back at the zombies.
With the zombies closer and closer, Xiaoyun was stuck, unable to go any faster as Gantian's car was still a few seconds away from driving past the draw bridge.
What's worse was the lane entrance towards Luoping was much smaller than when exiting, making it even scarier with no other direction to go.
But with Gantian finally making it past the draw bridge, Xiaoyun floored the gas padel to make it pass before the zombies could reach the back window.
"Bridge up!" Yiming yelled so loudly that even Xiaoyun could hear his voice in the car.
As the bridge was lifted back to the wall, the zombies were just five away from catching it.
"Everyone, get ready! When I say drop, you drop the log on top of them. The people under the wall, get ready to lift the log to the people on top of the wall!"
Yiming ordered, changing his plan after seeing the number of zombies trying to climb the wall.
"Yes, sir!"
"Everyone else that is not assigned to the log, start firing at the zombies that aren't killed by the log! I repeat only the zombies that aren't killed by the log!"
"Yes, sir!"
By the time both Group A and Group B left their car and reached the staircase, the logs were being thrown down, crushing all the zombies along the way.
"You guys, throw the gun up here. Help them carry the log up here."
The two groups immediately followed Yiming's order and started carrying the log up the stairs.
---
As Xiaoyun arrived on top of the wall, he was stunned by the number of zombies.
The narrow pathway was filled with long lines of zombies, all trying to climb the wall by stacking on top of each other.
Fortunately, Jingming's prediction was absolutely right.
The zombies simply crowded up and rushed towards the part of the wall where humans were on top of it, forcing the zombies to push aside rather than go towards the section of the wall that was empty.
"Drop!" Yiming yelled.
As the log dropped right on top of the zombie's head, the sound of bone cracking sound could be heard before crushing it as it rolled down past the moat.
Unlike what both Yiming and Xiaoyun thought initially, since the moat was so full of zombie corpses, the log simply continued to roll down until it reached a small hill.
But with some zombies still making it past the log, the people on the wall immediately fired their handgun at them.
"Drop!" Yiming yelled again.
Another log crushed the zombie's head, crushing rows of zombies down and even tripping the ones on the back as they made their way up.
After repeating the same thing over ten times, both groups, along with the people below the wall, were getting tired.
But there were still at least a hundred zombies right outside the wall, not to mention the bodies that had already built up almost up to the wall.
"Everyone gets off the wall. Open the bridge!" Yiming suddenly ordered, confusing everyone.
"It's an order!" Yiming yelled out loud, pulling his gun out as he pointed at the two people responsible for the gate.
The two immediately opened the bridge, causing the zombies to floor right inside as people got down the stairs.
"Fire!"
Gantian and Jixi immediately fired their rifle, penetrating multiple zombies as they rushed toward the narrow entrance at the same time.
Within seconds, the entrance was completely blocked off as the dead zombie corpses blocked the zombies from going in.
Still, the zombies quickly got around it by going over the wall before jumping down, lunging at the nearest human they could see.
But those zombies were easily pushed back, with everyone free-firing at the zombies to create a bullet-wall.
However, it exacerbated the ammo problem.
"Shit, out of ammo!"
"Me too!"
Seeing everyone starting to panic, with around forty zombies still left, Yiming immediately pulled out his shovel.
"Everyone melee weapon! Remember the training!"
Everyone on the ground immediately split up into threes, taking their melee weapon with their back against each other to prevent zombies from sneaking behind.
With the bloodbath of what melee combat is about to start, a pickup truck suddenly rammed right into the crowds of zombies.
As the truck stopped, less than ten zombies remained, which the Gantian and the militia easily cleaned up.
"Holy shit. Thank god you came in with that car." Yiming complimented as Xiaoyun stepped out of his car.
"I just thought of it last second. But Yezi is going to be real mad how fucked up this car is now..." Xiaoyun murmured as he pulled out his ax to make sure every zombie was dead.
With all the zombies no longer moving, everyone let out a sigh of relief before some of them collapsed onto the floor from exhaustion.
"Holy shit, we did it!"
"We survived the zombie hordes!"
As the families and friends hugged each other in pure excitement, Xiaoyun couldn't help but cheer alongside everyone else.
Even Yiming and his two assistants smiled, letting them celebrate rather than stricting it up.
However, as the celebration began to die down, a clear, transparent figure was slowly walking past the mountain of zombie bodies.
Just as it got through the entrance and was about to sneak toward one of the people nearby, Xiaoyun suddenly felt something was off.
But he couldn't put his finger on it until he noticed the air behind Yiming's back looked a little weird.
Without any hesitation, Xiaoyun immediately created a pistol into his right hand and pulled the trigger.
Everyone was confused, with the soldiers and Xiaoyun's family even more confused by the gunshot.
But as blood started dripping out of thin air, the transparent figure was finally visible.
It was just one step away from biting down on Yiming's neck as the body dropped onto the floor, with a headshot wound on its forehead.
"The fuck is this? Everyone stay alerted."
Yiming kicked the zombie corpse onto the floor as he carefully examined the corpse on the body.
As the blood dripped all over its skin, people could finally see it was a zombie that was almost invisible.
"Group A and Group B, to finish off any leftovers and make sure every zombie is dead. The Rest of you can get a mop and bucket of water.
And you two, lift the bridge back up and close it," Yiming ordered.
With the cleanup in place, Xiaoyun headed over to the invisible corpse and examined it himself.
Although it was 'invisible' to most people, only the skin made it extremely transparent, blending into the background if it weren't for Xiaoyun's sharp eyes.
"What the hell was this zombie?" Gantian murmured.
"Probably some sort of mutated zombies from the city. Everyone be extra careful! We'll clean up the zombie corpses outside later.
Make sure to bash the zombie's head for precaution. Even if they look dead." Yiming warned.
As the corpses of zombies began to stack up in a small pit, Yiming ordered several of the men to dig the hole deeper.
After almost an entire hour passed, the corpses inside the wall were finally all gathered in a massive hole.
"What should we do with them?" Yiming asked as he turned over to Xiaoyun.
"Hm... Burn them. We can't risk it contaminating the ground." Xiaoyun replied.
"Okay. Everyone, let's get working. You heard the mayor." Yiming yelled out.
Several people started pouring gasoline at the corpses, with some gathering nearby chunks of wood onto the massive pile.
With a flick of a lighter, Xiaoyun lit up a piece of paper before throwing it into the pit.
The zombie corpses were immediately engulfed in a massive flame, burning rapidly as everyone took a step back.
"Everyone stay back further. The smoke might be extremely dangerous." Xiaoyun warned, as nobody expected it to catch fire that fast.
After almost walking back all the way to the security room, everyone could still smell a faint corpse smell coming from the burn pit.
"Maybe we should have buried it... We still have tons of corpses outside," Yiming suggested after seeing the massive smoke going up into the air.
"We can't. It will take forever to bury them even if we find a spot that doesn't care about contamination." Xiaoyun argued.
"But this smoke might attract some unwanted attention." Yiming raises his concern.
"Too late now..."
---
When Yezi arrived with his men at the front entrance, he was stunned.
"Your side really didn't have any zombies?" Xiaoyun asked first as he noticed his rifle didn't look to be used at all.
"Yeah... What the fuck happened to my car?" Yezi asked as he ran over to his car, which was full of zombie's blood.
"Um, well, I had to use it to run some zombies over." Xiaoyun awkwardly scratched his head as he looked in the other direction.
"That's fine... Holy shit, you guys had a lot of zombies." Yezi murmured as he watched the mountain full of zombies burning in the pit.
"Yeah... There were a lot of zombies," Yiming replied as the three watched the burn pit in the distance.
---
After almost waiting for an hour and a half, the corpses in the fire pit were finally finished burning.
To both Xiaoyun and Yiming's surprise, they were burnt into ashes rather than dry corpses.
Only after a closer examination of the corpses outside did the two realize most of the zombies were dried rather than corpses full of moisture.
After the fire pit inside was finished, Xiaoyun ordered the zombie corpses outside the wall to be burned.
But this time, the corpses outside took much longer as they continued blazing from Noon all the way to six in the evening.
Besides the corpses, the cleanup to wash the blood and zombie parts was relatively easy as the cleanup crew just sprayed water at the wall and the ground.
When everything was done and dusted, it was seven o'clock.
---
"Welcome back!" Lily excitedly welcomed the five of them as she opened the door for them.
But the five of them only replied with a hey, barely any energy in their voice as they sat on the sofa.
"How is it? Is everything okay?" Lily curiously asked, handing a bottle of water to each of them.
"I'm fine. Everything is fine. But I'm just a little disturbed by the number of corpses we had to burn," Yueyue replied, her face still showing a little bit of disgust.
"Same... That smell was so strong. It's like a mix of durian and gasoline combined with rotten fish." Leyan added as she started describing it with her hand.
"Shut up, Mom. I don't want to hear about it again. I already threw up once." Nami complained before drinking half of the water bottle.
"So much ammo burned... I'm going to be so tired for the next few days to make up for it." Xiaoyun murmured to himself.
As everyone relaxed on the sofa, Leyan was the first one to get up after noticing the time was almost seven-thirty.
"I'll go cook dinner——"
"It's okay. I don't want to eat today after seeing all those." Nami interrupted, with Yueyue and Yuqi both nodding in agreement.
Even Xiaoyun nodded in agreement, causing Leyan to sit back down after Lily said she had already eaten.
"I think we might want to take a shower first..." Xiaoyun suggested after noticing all the blood stains on their clothes.
"Oh, right. Um, Lily, you probably should just go to sleep early today."
"Okay."
After Lily entered Nami's room, the five of them went upstairs to the hallway before stopping at the outside bathroom.
"Let's just shower at my bathroom. We can wash each other's hair that way." Leyan suggested.
The four girls thought for a second, then nodded in agreement, following Leyan and Xiaoyun into Leyan's room.
As Xiaoyun and Leyan entered the bathroom and took off their clothes, Yuqi, Yueyue, and Nami all hesitated, their face blushing red as they remained clothed.
"What's wrong?" Leyan curiously asked after noticing the three of them still standing there by the doorway.
"Nothing."
The two of them quickly took off their clothes and put them into the basket before catching up to the two.
But Nami took a little longer, only making up her mind after noticing the other two had already gone inside.
In the shower area, Xiaoyun pressed the button on the wall. Immediately, multiple shower heads started shooting out water.
"I never used this. Normally, one shower head is enough." Xiaoyun explained as he started having flashbacks of Songming using the shower area.
"Yeah... We usually just use the bathtub showerhead." Leyan murmured as she thought back to the time being with him.
As the five of them began rinsing themselves, the blood and foul smell remained on their hair.
"Qiqi, let me scrub your hair. You scrub my hair later."
Seeing Leyan start washing Yuqi's hair, Yueyue did the same with Nami, which left Xiaoyun to wash his hair alone.
Fortunately, Xiaoyun's hair wasn't very long, which meant he was already finished when they just finished applying shampoo to each other's hair.
"I'll wait for you guys in the bathtub."
"Okay."
After closing the shower door, Xiaoyun went to the bathtub, relaxed in the hot water, and waited.