Chapter 126

Chapter 126: Zombie Siege

The sound of gunfire shattered the silence of the night, echoing through the empty sky, jolting the entire base awake from its slumber.

In the apocalypse, people’s nerves were as thin as a strand of hair. The slightest noise could make those fragile nerves tremble. Almost everyone was awakened by the gunfire.

Almost everyone knew that every night, at least twenty guards were stationed at the base’s main gate. If a small number of zombies wandered near the base at night, they were usually dealt with silently. Gunfire at night could travel far, attracting more zombies. Therefore, they would never fire their guns unless absolutely necessary…

If gunfire rang out in the dead of night, it meant that it wasn’t just a small wave of zombies—

And following that first gunshot was a continuous barrage of gunfire—

Gu Dad and Gu Mama were also startled awake. Their first instinct was to check if Gu Ning had returned. Seeing Gu Ning standing there, they breathed a sigh of relief. Gu Dad, while putting on his clothes and preparing to get up, asked, “When did you get back?”

Gu Ning, also changing her clothes, replied, “Just now. Stay inside the room and don’t go out. I’ll go call Third Brother and the others to see what’s going on. Don’t open the door for anyone except us.”

Gu Dad clearly understood the severity of the situation and said solemnly, “Don’t worry. Be careful yourself.”

Gu Ning took off her bulky down jacket, pulled out a knife from her spatial storage, and strapped it to her body. She pushed the door open and ran into Fang Fa, who was coming from the opposite room.

Fang Fa exclaimed in surprise, “Gu Ning, you’re back!”

Gu Ning nodded and said to the others who were pouring out of their rooms, “Yeah. Everyone else, stay here. Fang Fa, come with me to see what’s going on.”

You could see the worry on everyone’s faces, especially the children, who looked more frightened. After such a long period of peace, the sudden disruption left everyone feeling uneasy.

Third Brother anxiously reminded them, “Be careful out there!”

“Don’t worry. Take care of Mom and Dad for me,” Gu Ning said before she and Fang Fa pushed the door open and ran downstairs. Behind them, they could hear the footsteps of others who had also been awakened by the gunfire and were coming down. After narrowly escaping death earlier that day, no one was happy about being woken up at night. Many were cursing as they ran.

After asking around, no one knew what was happening, so they all headed toward the base’s main gate. Many people had come out of their tents, scared and confused, not knowing what to do. They could only follow the crowd to the base’s entrance to see what was going on.

The base’s walls were now over four meters high, and a layer of iron netting had been added outside the main gate.

At that moment, the iron netting was being shaken violently by zombies. Countless purplish fingers clawed at the gaps in the netting, desperately trying to tear it down. What was even more terrifying was that inside the base, not far from the gate, lay a zombie riddled with bullet holes. Next to it was the body of a guard whose throat had been torn out. A dozen guards holding guns stood nearby, their faces pale.

Director Zhong, who had rushed over, asked with a grave expression, “What’s going on?!”

One of the guards, trying to stay calm, replied, “We don’t know where all these zombies came from. This mutated zombie suddenly climbed over the iron gate. It was too fast. Zhou Qiang didn’t have time to shoot before he was bitten—”

Just then, the lookout tower above swung its searchlight toward the outside of the base. A collective gasp was heard as everyone present was stunned by the scene outside the iron netting. A dense, uncountable mass of zombies was gathered outside, stretching out their arms, trying to break through the netting and the gate to get inside. The presence of so many people seemed to agitate them even more, and they began to emit excited, guttural growls.

Fang Fa felt his scalp tingle and his body go cold. He instinctively wanted to say something to Gu Ning, but when he turned his head, his heart skipped a beat—Gu Ning was gone! He quickly looked around and finally spotted her standing on the four-meter-high wall outside the crowd. Fang Fa called out to her a couple of times, but Gu Ning didn’t seem to hear him. She didn’t turn around. He quickly squeezed through the crowd and ran toward her.

Someone had left a ladder there, and Fang Fa quickly climbed up. “Gu Ning, why did you climb up here… Holy crap!…” He swallowed the rest of his words as he looked over the wall and gasped.

Zombies. Lots of zombies. Lots and lots of zombies.

Fang Fa swore this was the largest horde of zombies he had ever seen.

The massive searchlight illuminated the area fifty meters outside the base. As far as the eye could see, there were endless rows of black zombie heads, stretching into the darkness beyond the light… Since the apocalypse began, he had seen groups of zombies before. The horde that filled the entire street yesterday had already terrified him, but this time, the number of zombies was far greater than anything he had ever encountered…

Fang Fa swallowed hard, his throat aching from the effort.

“Fang Fa.”

“Huh?” Fang Fa snapped out of his daze and looked up at Gu Ning.

Gu Ning looked deeply at him. “Go back and call all the ability users except for Jia Daozhang, Huang Mengyao, and Xiang Xu. Tell Jia Daozhang to lock the doors. Don’t open them for anyone except us. Get the guns and ammo ready. Don’t bring anything else.”

Fang Fa felt his throat go dry. “Okay… Be careful up here.” He climbed down the ladder, his legs still a bit shaky. He rubbed his numb face and sprinted toward the dormitory building.

Gu Ning stood on the wall, ignoring the zombies below that had noticed her and were reaching up, trying to pull her down and tear her apart. Instead, she looked further into the distance. The darkness couldn’t obscure her vision, so even beyond the reach of the searchlight, she could see clearly. Zombies… an endless sea of zombies, filling every street and alley. And more were pouring in from even further away. It seemed as if all the zombies in the city had gathered here overnight…

“Director Zhong, is there another exit besides the main gate?” Gu Ning climbed down from the wall and found Director Zhong.

Director Zhong looked at her in shock and said, “To prevent zombies from breaking in, the back gate has been sealed.”

“I just took a look from up there. All three main roads are blocked by zombies. There are at least several thousand of them, and this might just be the first wave. It seems like all the zombies in the district have gathered here. Unless they disperse on their own, there’s no way the few dozen ability users in the base can handle so many zombies.” There might even be mutated zombies hiding among the horde.

Meanwhile, the gunfire continued unabated. Agile, evolved zombies kept trying to climb over the gate.

Director Zhong forced himself to stay calm. “There are over a hundred thousand people here. The zombies are only a few thousand…”

Gu Ning stared intently into Director Zhong’s eyes. “If the zombies break through the gate, within an hour, at least half of these hundred thousand people will turn into zombies.”

Director Zhong looked around at the pale, frightened faces of the people nearby and began to turn pale himself.

“Little girl, if you keep spreading panic with your doomsday talk, I’ll have you arrested,” the base leader, who had just arrived, said sternly after hearing Gu Ning’s words.

The gunfire outside grew more intense. Over twenty people were shooting at the evolved zombies trying to climb the iron netting. Whether due to nervousness or something else, despite the continuous gunfire, few zombies were actually hit. A speed-type mutated zombie suddenly leaped over the netting. Several guns were aimed at it, but they only hit its body. As it climbed onto the gate and prepared to jump into the base, the onlookers gasped and backed away in fear.

Gu Ning grabbed a gun from a guard who had been aiming but hadn’t fired. She aimed at the head of the evolved zombie that had just climbed onto the gate and pulled the trigger—Bang! The zombie’s head jerked back, and it lost its footing, falling into the gap between the netting and the gate. Gu Ning kept firing at the zombies climbing the netting—Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

The gunfire was almost continuous, and with each shot, a zombie fell from the netting.

Gu Ning handed the empty gun back to the stunned guard and turned to the crowd that had been watching her. Although they had rushed out in a hurry, most had remembered to bring their weapons—axes, kitchen knives, iron rods, even wooden sticks taken from mops. Gu Ning scanned the crowd, ignoring the base leader’s strange expression, and said to Director Zhong, “Director Zhong, if the zombies break in, these people will just become more zombies.”

Director Zhong, as if waking from a dream, quickly ordered a squad of the newly arrived security team to start evacuating people.

The base’s security team consisted of three thousand people, ranging in age from 18 to 40. Besides patrolling the base, they were also responsible for dealing with any zombies that wandered too close.

Among them, only a thousand were actual soldiers. The rest were ordinary civilians, each armed with a gun, though ammunition was limited. They had some training in shooting, but it was mostly procedural, and many had never even fired a gun before.

Hearing the hungry growls of the zombies outside, many of them looked ashen-faced.

“Miss Zhuang!” The base leader, seeing Zhuang Chen and Yi Shaoqing approaching, quickly went to greet them.

Zhuang Chen threw a document at him and said, “On behalf of the government, I am officially relieving you of your position as base leader. From now on, I will be taking command here. Director Zhong, please assist me.”

The base leader stared at her in shock. “What?! No! That’s impossible! I was officially appointed! What authority do you have to remove me?!”

Zhuang Chen, annoyed by his shouting, said, “From now on, you are under my command. You there, take him away and lock him up. I’ll deal with him after handling this situation.”

The security team captain hesitated, looking at Director Zhong, who nodded. The captain then ordered his men to drag away the former base leader, who was still in disbelief.

Director Zhong asked, “What do we do now?”

Zhuang Chen looked toward the Three-Linked Team members who were rushing over, then turned her gaze to Gu Ning. Gu Ning gave her a slow, firm nod.