Chapter 79
Chapter 79
An Xiaolin gripped the steering wheel with both hands, driving with intense concentration. Her eyes remained fixed on the road ahead while her peripheral vision swept both sides.
In the passenger seat, Qingshui held her rifle tightly, constantly scanning their surroundings.
The back seat was packed.
Ji Feifan sat directly behind the driver’s seat. Lin Hao sat in the middle with one arm around Zhou Yaping, while Chen Yuhui pressed herself against the door on the other side.
The heavy stench of blood permeated the car. No one spoke. There was only the rumble of the engine and the sound of everyone struggling to keep their breathing under control.
Three kilometers.
It was a drive that would normally take no more than ten minutes, but now it felt long enough to drive them to despair.
With no windshield, the wind battered everyone in the face. An Xiaolin’s bangs were plastered to her cold, sweat-soaked forehead.
A row of blurry shapes gradually emerged ahead.
Everyone immediately straightened as the enormous sign for “Renhe Toll Station” came into view.
Several tollbooths stood forlornly in the middle of the road. Beyond them were the pitch-black mouths of the highway entrances.
An Xiaolin instinctively slowed down.
The sight around the toll station made everyone’s heart sink.
A “carnival” had clearly taken place here. Several abandoned cars had been shoved together, blocking some of the lanes. Their bodies were covered in dents and dried stains.
Large patches of dark red had soaked into the asphalt, creating a suffocating sight beneath the headlights that made their scalps prickle.
A huge, twisted crimson smiley face had been painted across the glass window of one booth, its mouth stretching almost all the way to the edges of the frame.
Inside another booth, they could vaguely make out a figure sitting in the toll collector’s chair. It had no head.
“Don’t stop. Ram straight through,” Qingshui said into the silence, her voice cold and decisive. “Take the far-right lane.”
An Xiaolin drew a deep breath and stepped on the gas. The battered car roared as it accelerated toward the toll station.
Crash! Bang!
The car jolted violently as it smashed aside several plastic traffic cones scattered across the ground, then scraped past the wreckage of an overturned sedan. A broken toll barrier raked across the roof with a shrill screech.
They made it through the toll station.
The road stretched ahead before finally merging onto a gray-white highway.
Once the tires were firmly on the highway, An Xiaolin held their speed steady at around ninety kilometers per hour, neither too fast nor too slow.
It was fast enough to make progress while still allowing them to observe their surroundings and react to emergencies.
Qingshui shifted in her seat and looked out the window.
The highway was no better than they had imagined.
Although there wasn’t much traffic, abandoned vehicles appeared from time to time. Some stood on the shoulder with their doors wide open and no one inside. Others had crashed into tangled heaps, with crimson stains spreading through the wreckage.
The sky remained a dense, impenetrable black, smothering everything overhead. Not a glimmer of light could be seen. The road vanished into that darkness at the farthest reaches of their vision.
Time passed in tense silence.
An Xiaolin’s palms were slick with sweat against the steering wheel. The strain of maintaining such intense focus sent waves of pain throbbing through her temples.
In the back seat, the others’ eyes looked hollow in the dim light.
Chen Yuhui rested her face against the cold car door. The window reflected a face as pale as paper, her eyes filled with an unshakable, deathly stillness. Without blinking, she stared out at the gray-white sky.
They had been driving for a little over forty minutes when the fuel gauge, which had already dipped unsteadily below the red warning line, began to fall even farther. The car started losing power.
“We’re almost out of gas,” An Xiaolin said hoarsely.
“Find another car,” Qingshui said at once, sweeping her gaze along the roadside.
Fortunately, there was no shortage of abandoned vehicles on the highway. Before long, they spotted a relatively intact BMW parked on the shoulder ahead.
An Xiaolin slowly pulled over and stopped behind it.
“Ji Feifan, Lin Hao, come with me.” Qingshui pushed open her door and quickly got out. Ji Feifan and Lin Hao followed close behind, weapons in hand as they warily surveyed their surroundings.
The BMW was unlocked. Qingshui checked it over and found that there was plenty of gas, but no key.
“Let’s just siphon the fuel,” Ji Feifan said. “Have An Xiaolin bring the car over.”
He pried open the fuel cap and fed one end of a hose into the tank. After sucking hard on the other end, he quickly shoved it into the fuel inlet of their battered car.
They waited tensely, their gazes constantly sweeping the darkness ahead, behind, and on both sides of the highway.
From somewhere in the distance came what sounded like shuffling footsteps-or perhaps it was only the wind.
After siphoning for several minutes, Ji Feifan judged that they had enough fuel and said quietly, “That’s enough. Let’s go.”
They quickly pulled out the hose and screwed the gas cap back on.
Ji Feifan took An Xiaolin’s place behind the wheel. The moment Qingshui returned to the passenger seat, he started the car.
The engine roared to life once more.
“Let’s go.”
They pulled back onto the road and continued onward.
The scenery outside began to change. The plains gradually gave way to rolling hills, and the highway wound between them like a gray ribbon.
The vegetation on both sides grew denser. Dark forests pressed close against the guardrails, as though countless eyes were hidden among the trees.
As they crossed an elevated stretch of highway, everyone instinctively looked over the guardrail into the empty valley below.
Several villages lay scattered across the valley. It should have been a peaceful landscape, but even from this distance, they could see specks of crimson staining the ground.
Still, no one spoke.
Ji Feifan suddenly wrenched the wheel aside, narrowly avoiding the wreckage of a truck lying across the middle of the road. The tires rolled over several unrecognizable chunks scattered across the pavement, jolting the entire car.
“Hee-hee-hee! Wait for me, you bastards! Wait for me!”
“Oh, hahahahaha! Bitches! There are bitches here! Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee!”
Several staggering figures suddenly lunged out ahead, laughing wildly as they threw themselves at the moving car.
Ji Feifan’s expression darkened. Without the slightest hesitation, he slammed his foot down on the accelerator.
The car shot forward. Before the staggering figures could reach it, the speeding vehicle smashed into them and sent them flying.
Dull thuds mingled with the sharp crack of splintering bone. The Madmen were dragged beneath the wheels, producing a teeth-grating crunch.
Only one of the Madmen, a figure as skinny as a stick, somehow used the impact to latch tightly onto the edge of the hood.
“So many… bastards… I’m gonna… fuck every last one of you… to death… heh-heh…”
Its face was smeared with blood, its eyes curved into gleeful crescents as it scrambled madly across the hood toward them.
“Hold on!” Ji Feifan jerked the wheel, trying to throw it off, but the remaining Madman clung to the hood like a lump of rotten sludge and only crawled faster.
“This feels so fucking goooood! Drive faster, pretty boy! It feels so goddamn good, so goddamn good! I’m gonna make you feel this good too! Ohhh!”
While the Madman was still laughing, Qingshui suddenly leaned forward from the passenger seat and raised her gun.
“Bang!”
The gunshot ripped through the wind. The bullet punched cleanly through the Madman’s forehead. It froze instantly, its grin still plastered across its face, then slid off the hood like a heap of rotting flesh and rapidly vanished behind them.
Qingshui lowered the gun.
They drove for another ten minutes or so.
Just as everyone was beginning to grow numb from the constant vigilance, Ji Feifan slammed on the brakes.
Tires shrieked against the pavement. The battered car rocked violently and skidded several meters before finally grinding to a halt.
Everyone was hurled forward by the momentum, only for their seat belts to snap them back into their seats.
“What happened?!” Lin Hao asked in alarm.
Ji Feifan and Qingshui did not answer. They simply stared ahead, their faces drained of color.
Their headlights illuminated the highway ahead. About fifty meters away, the road disappeared completely.
No. It had not disappeared. It was blocked from end to end by a sea of vehicles that stretched beyond sight.
Cars, buses, and even overturned trucks were crushed together at every imaginable angle, completely sealing off the entire roadway.
In the gaps between them, they could just make out congealed black oil and mangled human remains.
This had been more than an accident.
It looked as though, when the disaster struck, terrified crowds had tried to flee, only to become trapped here in a hopeless traffic jam, and then… turned into a feast for something.
Even the air seemed saturated with the stench of blood.
They had reached the end of the road.
Dead silence filled the car. Only the engine’s faint hum remained.
A few seconds later, Qingshui opened her door.
“Get out,” she said, her voice utterly calm. “Take everything with you. From here on… we walk.”