Chapter 138
Chapter 138
“Wake up!”
Qingshui’s consciousness was still struggling through a fog, but her heart was beating so fast she could barely breathe.
Her eyes flew open.
The Director’s grim face filled her vision.
Qingshui gasped for air, her back already drenched in cold sweat. Before she could respond, she noticed a third person in the room: Qi Zhi.
The silent man stood beside the door, covered in blood. His face was utterly expressionless. When he saw Qingshui looking at him, he tossed her a handgun.
“The Madmen are here.”
That was all Qi Zhi said.
Qingshui’s mind cleared instantly.
Outside, everything had descended into chaos. The three of them cautiously pushed open the door and headed for the lobby. The instant they rushed out of the corridor, a dark figure lunged straight at them!
It was frighteningly fast, practically springing up from the floor. Qingshui instinctively twisted aside, catching a glimpse of a deathly pale face and the object raised in its hands.
A pot, filled to the brim with boiling food. Amid the bubbling mush floated something round.
A human head. Its eyes were still open, staring blankly ahead.
“Wow! Surprise!”
Laughing, the Madman swung the pot and hurled its contents at the three of them. The scalding liquid arced through the air.
Their pupils contracted, and all three dove to either side.
Splash!
The boiling soup slammed into the floor. A few drops landed on Qingshui’s arm, searing her flesh, but she had no time for the pain. A cold flash was already slicing toward her face.
A blade!
It was a machete, its edge still smeared with something dark brown, and it was coming straight down at her face.
Qingshui’s body reacted faster than her mind. She rolled violently to the side. The machete struck where she had just been lying, biting into the floor and leaving a deep gash!
One inch.
One inch closer, and the blade would have split her skull in two.
Qingshui didn’t stop. Even as she rolled, she raised her gun.
Bang!
The bullet tore through that deathly pale face. The Madman’s smile remained frozen in place, but its body went limp and collapsed to the floor.
Qi Zhi’s expression darkened. “How did those two Madmen get inside?!”
None of them knew.
In the lobby, the dozen or so remaining survivors clutched their guns, desperately fighting off more than twenty Madmen outside the iron gate. Covered in blood, the Madmen laughed and jostled against the gaps in the gate.
Meng Rui’s face was white as a sheet. Her finger held down the trigger as she sprayed bullets wildly, but despair was spreading through her heart.
She was almost out of ammunition.
Outside the gate, the companions who had fought beside her moments before were now calling her name over and over in hoarse voices.
“Boss Meng, open the gate… Hurry, open it…”
“Aren’t we friends…? Why won’t you let us in…?”
Qingshui raised her gun and joined the fight, but she was still one step too late.
With a bang, one of the infected shot the lock apart. The next second, they came surging in like a flood.
“Good, good, good!!!”
“I’m going to punish you!!”
“Head upstairs!!” Qingshui roared.
The survivors still alive began retreating toward the stairs. Footsteps pounded chaotically as screams and gunfire merged into a deafening din.
Qingshui ran while firing behind her. With every gunshot, another Madman fell.
Everyone fought desperately to reach the stairwell.
It was almost impossible.
The Madmen had guns, and combined with their suicidal fighting style, they were devastatingly lethal.
Bang!
Another survivor went down, a bloody hole exploding in his chest. Before he even hit the floor, a nearby Madman pounced on him and began tearing into his flesh with its teeth.
Qingshui’s gun spat fire. The Madman’s head burst open, and it collapsed onto the bodies beneath it.
But even more Madmen surged forward. Most horrifying of all, they began tearing the limbs off their own kind.
They crouched down and seized the Madmen who had just been shot dead, their bodies still twitching. With a vicious wrench, they ripped their arms clean from their shoulders.
Blood sprayed everywhere. Laughing, they hurled the dripping, severed arms at Qingshui and the others.
Other Madmen began throwing legs, heads, and still-warm chunks of flesh torn from the corpses.
Blood and gore rained down upon them. The air reeked of blood, so thick it made them want to vomit.
Just then, something round rolled out from among the Madmen.
It spun across the floor before finally coming to a stop directly in front of the group.
It was smeared with blood.
A grenade.
Qingshui’s pupils contracted to pinpricks.
At that moment, time seemed to slow to a crawl.
She watched the grenade complete its final turn on the floor. She saw the smiling faces of the Madmen nearby. Around her, some people had yet to notice and were still firing ahead. Others had seen it, their eyes bulging and their mouths open, but no sound came out.
Then a figure threw himself forward.
It was a man in his forties. His face was so covered in blood that his original features were impossible to make out. He dove onto the grenade, shielding it with his entire body.
“Get down!”
Those were his final words.
BOOM!
A violent explosion erupted!
Flames burst outward, and the shock wave hurled everything nearby through the air!
The man’s body was instantly torn apart, scattering blood and flesh everywhere. But the blast also took out more than a dozen Madmen surrounding him.
Their deathly pale bodies were flung into the air, slammed back onto the ground, and tumbled down the stairs.
The shock wave knocked Qingshui off her feet and sent her crashing hard into the wall. Stars swam before her eyes, and a deafening ringing swallowed every other sound. She lay on the floor, gasping for breath as the entire world spun around her.
Everyone struggled back to their feet. Qingshui shook her head hard, and then she heard a voice.
It trembled with tears, despair, and utter collapse.
“I’m out of ammo…”
It was one of the survivors. She knelt on the floor, frantically pulling the trigger of the gun in her hands again and again, but it only answered with hollow clicks.
No ammunition.
More and more people around her began saying the same thing.
The Director said, “Keep moving up.”
Qingshui drew a deep breath and looked up, about to continue climbing, when several smiling faces suddenly appeared in her field of vision.
At some point, several Madmen had emerged on the steps behind them.
They stood there wearing those familiar smiles, their heads tilted as they watched the trapped prey before them, as though admiring some amusing spectacle.
“You worked so hard… You worked so hard…”
One Madman spoke in a high, shrill voice, almost as if it were singing.
“You’re all amazing…”
Another Madman chimed in with a giggle, blood still trickling from the corner of its mouth.
They waved at Qingshui and the others.
No way…
Qingshui’s entire body went rigid. She whipped her head around and looked ahead, toward the direction they had just fought so desperately to escape from.
Below them on the staircase, amid the scattered heaps of Madmen mangled by the blast, a deathly pale hand suddenly thrust upward. Then came another, followed by figure after figure slowly rising to its feet.
Several crimson figures rose from among the fallen bodies.
They were drenched in blood. Some were missing arms, others had lost legs, but they kept smiling as they advanced.
Madmen ahead.
Madmen behind them, too.