Chapter 384 - 382: Blood and Tongues of Fire

Chapter 384: Chapter 382: Blood and Tongues of Fire

"BWOOO..."

Several communications buglers immediately began to sound their horns, relaying information to one another as the calls echoed throughout the barracks. In a situation where electronic devices were unreliable, the decision to reinstate the bugle system was proving its worth.

A few short and long blasts from the bugles clearly issued the military order: emergency assembly, prepare to deploy.

Nearby Officers quickly took a headcount of the Soldiers under their command and began preparations.

"Move, move, move! Grab your weapons! Every squad, carry one ammo crate and one set of personal radio equipment!"

Even though wireless communications were temporarily useless, bringing them was still necessary.

Squad after squad of Soldiers began to move. Some were covered in dust from the earthquake, others were still shaking their heads to clear them, but their bodies reacted before their minds, and they all broke into a run.

The regiment’s combat personnel gradually gathered in front of rows of trucks and armored vehicles.

"Check the vehicles! Check the fuel! All hands, mount up! All hands, mount up!"

The regimental commander, his guards trailing behind him, flexed his still-sore arm. He snatched a helmet from a guard while running and leaped into a jeep with a mounted Gatling gun.

"Go! Go! We can’t wait!"

"BWOO-DA-DA... BWOO..."

The bugle sounded again. The half-toppled gate to the camp was hauled away by several Soldiers. A dozen or so seconds later, the first military vehicle roared past.

"VROOOM!" "VROOOM!" "VROOOM!" "VROOOM!"...

As a mechanized infantry regiment, the camp had nearly a hundred deployable vehicles of all sizes. The resulting convoy surged forward like a torrent of steel.

Of course, some Soldiers couldn’t get on a vehicle right away. These men either ran to catch up or scrambled to find other available transport.

Fortunately, these were special times. Aside from vehicles needed for essential duties, the roads were mostly empty, so traffic conditions were decent.

The few cars they did see were parked on the roadside, their owners staring around in a daze, clearly still reeling from the shock of the tremor.

A few jeeps and two armored vehicles led the way, followed by troop transport trucks.

"Check your weapons! Check your ammunition! Everyone, two grenades each..."

The Officer in the truck repeated the checklist.

Every Soldier’s heart was pounding, including the commanders’.

"Platoon Leader... are we going to die?"

"What a stupid question! Did you think you were immortal?!"

The platoon leader was checking his own rifle. The Type 95’s reliability was widely criticized in the military, and even the upgraded Type 97 export version had its issues. More importantly, its stopping power was insufficient for dealing with Otherworldly Demons. As a result, a large portion of front-line troops were now being re-equipped with the new Type 19 rifle, chambered in 7.62mm.

This was the exact model in the platoon leader’s hands. It featured a large-capacity magazine, a standard top rail with iron sights, and was rugged, durable, and highly reliable.

Its downsides were that it was slightly larger and heavier than previous rifles, with a stronger kick.

However, the average Soldier’s physical conditioning had also improved, making them more than capable of handling the new weapon.

After checking his weapon, the platoon leader looked at the nervous eyes staring back at him in the truck. These young soldiers had never seen combat, but they had seen the corpses of Demons. While it was intended to build their courage and experience, it had also, inevitably, left them with psychological scars.

"Who isn’t afraid of dying? I’ve been in the service long enough, so I won’t give you some grand speech about going to war. I’ll just tell you one thing—this is advice from veterans who have fought Otherworldly Demons on the front lines!"

"If you want to live, you have to make damn sure the enemy is dead. The more scared you are, the faster you die! If you fire five rounds and think it’s dead, you’d better put another five into it just to be sure!"

"Got it?"

...

"AHHH!!" "SQUELCH..."

Right in front of Zhang Zhenyu’s family, a neighbor they knew—an older woman—was impaled on a disgusting tail.

"The car! Get to the car and drive!"

The cars in the complex’s parking lot were all askew from the earthquake, which reminded his wife about their own car. She fumbled in her pocket and found the keys.

They clearly weren’t the only ones with that idea; many others were also running for the cars.

"Ah... Help me..." "Mommy..." "SOB..." "Die! I’ll smash you..."...

A cacophony of chaos erupted. There was blood everywhere, monsters everywhere, and people fleeing for their lives.

Even more horrifying, some of the screams and cries weren’t from people at all, but from the monsters mimicking human voices—a sound far more terrifying than any simple roar.

In the few dozen meters they could see, only a handful of people had made it to the parking lot. Blood and viscera were everywhere. The rest were either dead or had scattered in other directions.

The parking lot, being a choke point, was actually more dangerous. It was a miracle that the Zhang Family had made it this far.

"VROOM..."

A minivan’s engine roared to life. The owners were an elderly couple from their building.

"Quick, quick! Zhenyu! Xiaohui! Get in!"

This was no time to be picky about finding their own car. A few others nearby, along with Zhenyu’s family, scrambled into the vehicle.

Master Gu, a seasoned driver, slammed on the gas, and the vehicle shot forward with a screech of tires.

"THUMP!"

The van jolted violently as it ran over the upper half of a body. The little girl inside burst into tears, thinking a monster had caught up to them.

"Watch out, Old Gu! One of them is up ahead!"

"Damn it!"

Master Gu gritted his teeth and floored it. The engine roared as he accelerated over several dozen meters.

With a loud "BOOM," they smashed into the monster. Everyone inside was thrown about, and the creature was sent flying. It had clearly underestimated the vehicle’s momentum.

"Hahahaha! You bastard! I welded two steel plates to the front of this van, just in case!"

Old Gu was half-crazed with post-disaster euphoria, but his driving skills didn’t falter. He executed a sharp turn, drifting onto the main road.

"Head east! There’s a military base over there!"

Theirs was the only car to make it out of the entire complex. It was impossible to know how many others had survived. The air was filled with noise, and they kept seeing fleeing people and emerging monsters.

It was clear these monsters hadn’t just appeared in their neighborhood.

Old Gu didn’t dare stop. Even when he saw people on the roadside crying for help, the moment he considered it, a monster would lunge at them faster than he could react. After seeing it a few times, he grew numb and just floored it, heading east. The few other cars they encountered were also fleeing in a blind panic.

Two sedans shot past them at high speed, their drivers obviously panicked and flooring the accelerator.

This was exactly the time you couldn’t afford to make a mistake. Seeing how erratically the cars were driving, both Old Gu’s and Zhang Zhenyu’s hearts sank.

And sure enough, while swerving to avoid a body on the road, one of the cars flipped onto its side.

BOOM!

The second car was caught in the crash, and the two vehicles collided, spinning several times across the road.

The cars behind them slammed on their brakes, skidding to a halt with a piercing screech of tires.

"Back up! Back up!! Find another road!"

Zhang Zhenyu yelled, leaning out of the passenger-side window to shout at the cars behind them.

"Help... help us..."

The people in the wrecked cars ahead screamed in despair. More than the risk of fire or explosion, they feared being trapped inside when the monsters arrived.

Everyone who saw this was overcome with indecision, but the sight of several approaching monsters quickly extinguished any thought of helping.

These monsters weren’t exceptionally fast, but they were faster than a running person. No one dared get out of their car.

"Mommy..."

The Zhang Family’s two-and-a-half-year-old daughter had seen too much death today. Her little body wouldn’t stop shaking.

"Sweetie, don’t look... Don’t look..."

Aside from Old Gu, who was nervously reversing to create distance, everyone else couldn’t help but stare. The seven or eight people in the two wrecked cars had clearly realized their fate. Those still conscious were crying out.

"BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT-"

A sound like a chainsaw tearing through hardwood suddenly erupted.

"THWIP!" "THWIP!" "THWIP!" "THWIP!"...

In a matter of seconds, the seven or eight monsters that had gathered ahead were riddled with holes.

"VROOOM!" "VROOOM!" "VROOOM!"...

Suddenly, the roar of powerful engines echoed from the surrounding roads. Several military vehicles, muzzles flashing, sped through the intersection they had been about to detour around.

"DAKKA-DAKKA-DAKKA..." "BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!"

"BOOM!" "BOOM!" "BANG!" "BANG!"...

In an instant, gunfire erupted from all sides.

Old Gu and Zhang Zhenyu were stunned. The women in the van covered their mouths, unable to hold back the tears they had been too terrified to shed just moments before.

The army. They were finally here.

Figures in camouflage uniforms appeared near the two wrecked cars. They pulled the trapped survivors out before a troop transport truck simply rammed the wreckage out of the way.

"VROOOM!" "VROOOM!"

Military vehicles streamed past, each one packed with Soldiers armed to the teeth.

"BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!..."

"BZZZZZZZZZZZZT-"

The mounted Gatling guns and heavy machine guns on several of the military vehicles spat continuous streams of fire, strafing targets in the surrounding area.

Old Gu and the few other civilian cars remained parked at the roadside, their occupants staring in stunned silence.

They were jolted back to reality only when a Soldier ran over and yelled at them to keep moving east, to evacuate.

"Are we... are we saved?"

Old Gu looked at Zhang Zhenyu, his face pale and his voice still trembling.

...

As the survivors sighed with lingering fear, the military convoy advanced along multiple roads in a flying V-formation.

The sound of gunfire ebbed and flowed, sometimes loud and dense, sometimes weak and sparse.

Aboard a troop transport, a squad’s radio crackled with an order from regimental command. The signal was fuzzy, but at least the short-range, high-power equipment was still functional.

The Officer in the truck immediately relayed the orders to his Soldiers.

"Dismount and advance! Squads, provide cover for each other!"

Besides establishing a defensive line, they also had to fan out into the nearby residential areas and public spaces to search for survivors.

"Help~~ He... help... me~~"

A woman’s voice called out intermittently from behind a building. Several soldiers cautiously moved to investigate but found no one there.

"Watch out!"

"CRACK!" "CRACK!"

Two concrete barriers were swatted down from above, crashing down on three Soldiers. Two were knocked unconscious instantly. Two others were fine, having been shoved out of the way by their comrades.

"BANG! BANG! BANG!"

A hail of gunfire shredded the ugly, dodging monsters above, blowing them apart in a spray of blood and gore.

"GWWAAAH! AHHH!"

More screeching monsters poured out of a nearby stairwell, but other Soldiers, hearing the commotion, rushed in to provide support.

Some survivors, hearing the gunfire from inside their homes, knew the army had arrived and seized the chance to flee their hiding spots.

A temporary regimental command post was established on the roof of a small building near the intersection where the battle began. A high-power radio was set up, but it was barely functional. Only line-of-sight, ultra-shortwave communication worked at all, and even that was unstable. Contacting division headquarters or any other higher command was out of the question.

At the intersections below, barricades and firebases were already in place. The rooftops of several nearby buildings now hosted machine gun nests, snipers, and rocket launcher teams.

Rescued civilians were evacuated through the intersection. Most were in a sorry state, all of them still in shock. Many were spattered with blood, a testament to their close brush with death.

The regimental commander stood on the roof, a cigarette dangling from his lips, watching his men through binoculars. As long as he had a line of sight, the command post’s radio could maintain intermittent contact with the forward units.

Gunfire and explosions echoed from the two sectors to the front, left and right. Even as casualties began to mount, the line of fire continued to push forward.

From his vantage point, he could see mirrored reflections—signals for help—flashing from some of the buildings in the West City District.

"ROOOOAAAARRRR!"

A tremendous roar erupted from deep within the West City District, its echoes reaching all the way to the command post.