Chapter 174: Zombie Siege Practice
…
Even though they knew the student council was blatantly shirking, 606 actually had no way to refute them.
Being able to successfully evade the rules meant that this round of “trauma” was genuine beyond doubt. It even made people suspect that as long as they could refuse to answer Tang Xinjue’s calls, they could even scatter their teammates’ ashes without the slightest hesitation.
“I’m very sorry to hear this news.” Tang Xinjue quickly followed the situation, saying sincerely: “If Xiao Ming tongxue’s injuries are too serious, he can temporarily be sent to our dormitory for care.”
Lili froze: “Your dormitory even has medical... emergency facilities?”
Tang Xinjue looked at the toilet plunger: “Emergency treatment is not necessarily possible, but perhaps we can process the aftermath in one click.”
A monster at the student-council level had never been tried by the toilet plunger before.
Lili: “...No need, thank you!”
The radio hurriedly hung up, declaring that today’s fixed source of information had come to an end.
“It’s a little unfortunate, but it also shows that they really can’t reveal any more.” Tang Xinjue was not very regretful.
After all, plucking wool was one thing; completely plucking the sheep bald was another. It would not be good to directly pluck the sheep clean.
Perhaps in order to shut them up, today the student council broke all precedent and gave three pieces of information at once:
One, the second round of mutation has already ended, and the scope includes all virus-infected people. Those who have not completely mutated are no exception. The content of the mutation seems to have strengthened the infected people’s strength and speed.
Two, the completely infected have already reached 40% of the total number of people in the campus area, while those who have not been infected make up less than 15%.
Three, outside support will arrive at noon on the third day, and some supplies will be randomly distributed by airdrop.
“The support is finally here!” Yu Wei’s spirits lifted, and she looked forward to it: “I wonder if we can apply to be rescued?”
“You’re thinking too much.” Zhang You ruthlessly extinguished the girl’s fantasy: “Even whether we can get these supplies is unknown.”
There would only be one airdrop per day, first come, first served. The time it appeared would inevitably be the moment when all the students were watching it covetously, and the people going to retrieve it would naturally expose themselves to countless gazes.
With more monks than porridge*, a scramble was unavoidable.
*an folk saying, idiom meaning demands exceeding supply
“Fortunately, we’re not short on supplies.” Guo Guo let out a long sigh of relief and stuffed another piece of biscuit into her mouth.
It was currently mealtime for the group. After yesterday’s frantic activity with their feet barely touching the ground, everyone was so hungry today that they could eat an entire cow. Even Tang Xinjue, who had the least need for food, quickly finished three bags of bread and a bottle of water.
Without a doubt, the students who had been running around and fleeing for their lives all day yesterday would only be more tired and hungry, not to mention that they did not have 606’s food reserves. For these people, simply finding something filling to eat was already an urgent problem.
Thinking of this, Guo Guo understood: “No wonder there were so many people rushing to the student strongholds yesterday afternoon.”
If their dormitories were already completely out of supplies, the supermarkets outside had already been swept clean, and they had no way to risk wandering around the campus in search of food, then if they did not want to starve to death, they could only go to the strongholds and try their luck.
From what she and Yu Wei had recorded yesterday, there were at least three groups of student strongholds in the dormitory area, located in three different directions.
A stronghold capable of accommodating many people could not possibly be established in an ordinary dormitory or an isolated upper floor. It would inevitably be located somewhere that had few people at the beginning and was easy to defend but difficult to attack.
The group compared the locations with the map and discovered that they were very likely located respectively at the East Gate cafeteria, the infirmary, and the Student Affairs Management Center.
Zhang You had raised a question: “Normally speaking, the infirmary is very likely to be a major zombie disaster area. How could they make it into a stronghold?”
At the beginning of the virus leak, before the news had spread, infected students who discovered something abnormal with their bodies would definitely go to the infirmary first to consult or seek treatment.
Tang Xinjue: “The infirmary doesn’t open until 9 a.m., and before 9 a.m., the virus had already spread throughout the entire school.”
She pulled up another group chat record from several days ago. On it were several students complaining that the infirmary had short business hours. Their words also revealed that there seemed to have been several problems with the medicines, making it a frequent target of callouts on the campus wall. Apart from students working part-time as student assistants, few students would go there now.
“The East Gate cafeteria is the same.”
Tang Xinjue highlighted several common points among the possible locations: late opening hours, usually deserted, and some students possessing keys to open the doors.
“If it’s the cafeteria, there might be ingredients in the kitchen. The infirmary has medicines for bruises and injuries... what does the Student Affairs Management Center have?” Guo Guo was very confused about the prospects of these strongholds.
“No, no, no.” Yu Wei shook her head like a rattle: “I went into the kitchen of one of those cafeterias. There wasn’t a single bit of food inside. The food containers and refrigerators looked like someone had moved them away completely, cleaner than my face.”
“Eh?” Halfway through her rambling, Yu Wei suddenly realized something: “Could those foods have been moved away by the people who established the stronghold?”
Tang Xinjue’s thoughts stirred, and she looked up: “I remember that besides the cafeteria, you also went to supermarkets.”
Yu Wei nodded vigorously: “Not just one. Just the shops I slipped into, I found three. Two chain stores, one milk-tea shop, one breakfast...”
“Then do you still remember what those supermarkets looked like? Was there anything in common?”
The girl thought for a moment: “The food shelves were all empty?”
“More specifically?”
Yu Wei frowned and racked her brains, finally clapping her hands: “I remember! Some shops were empty in a particularly orderly way!”
She tried her best to describe it: “You know what I mean, right? Some shops had particularly messy shelves, with lots of things that weren’t useful taken away, and the shelves had fallen over too. But in some shops, all the shelves were completely neat and blank, as if everything had been taken away in one go...”
The others quickly found the key point in Yu Wei’s description:
If many groups of people had entered the supermarket one after another to snatch things, each person could only carry a limited amount, and with the hurried and nervous emotions, the shop would be a complete mess, with goods scattered all over the floor.
But if, from the very beginning, one group of people had emptied all the goods in the supermarket, then the people who came afterward would have nothing to take and would not waste time. Only then could the shop simultaneously display the two characteristics of neatness and emptiness.
“These people are numerous, act in an orderly and disciplined manner, and were able to get there before everyone else.”
Once the details were listed, the answer became obvious:
Tang Xinjue: “They are very likely the same group of people who established the student strongholds.”
In other words, the student strongholds had not been hastily established yesterday at noon. Some students who had learned the news in advance had not evacuated, but instead stayed in the school and stockpiled supplies beforehand, which was how the current strongholds came to exist.
“Could they have something to do with the laboratory?”
Guo Guo boldly guessed.
“But if that’s the case, why didn’t they merge into one stronghold and instead split into three? Do these strongholds know each other?”
Zhang You found another logical doubt.
It was Zheng Wanning’s turn. She opened her mouth, but could not think of anything she could ask for a moment, so she simply said: “If all these people turn into zombies, can we beat them?”
“...”
Tang Xinjue calmly said: “Obviously, we don’t know the answers to any of these questions.”
The way to understand everything was also very simple: either they went out, or the student strongholds came over.
After a while, Tang Xinjue made the final decision:
“Wait.”
There were tens of thousands of students in the dormitory area. Even if the survival rate was less than 15%, there were still more than a thousand people. As time passed, these people would continuously flood toward the student strongholds.
How much food could there possibly be to feed more than a thousand people for five days?
“By tomorrow at the latest, or today at the earliest, there should be some movement in the dormitory area.”
Tang Xinjue looked at the “stronghold” closest to Building 33 on the map: the infirmary. It was less than 50 meters from here, a three-story small building hidden between two dormitory buildings. From the position of the 606 balcony, they could only see a small path leading toward the side door, blocked by greenery.
A sparrow suddenly darted out from the grass nearby. Before it could flap its wings and take off, a blood-covered hand grabbed it even faster and dragged it into the dense grass.
The sunlight was glaring, and the campus was completely quiet.
The facts proved that the zombies really were inactive during the day.
Ever since the mighty army that had attacked the door last night, the corridor had been peaceful all day today.
The zombie corpses that had originally crowded the doorway also seemed to have evaporated, leaving behind only bloodstains covering the ground and several heads stuck on the spikes.
The five people cleaned up outside the door. Taking advantage of the fact that there was no one outside, they brazenly threw the garbage down from a height. After throwing away the garbage, Yu Wei conveniently lay on the balcony and vomited once again.
In a mere 24 hours, going from making egg tarts to making human-head meat skewers was simply a little too stimulating for her heart to handle.
The four people of 606 replaced the spikes on the door with another batch. This time they innovated, stretching two iron chains across the walls at head height and directly enclosing an area of several square meters in front of the 606 doorway.
A row of iron spikes was still fastened to the chains. For a human, they could pass through simply by bending down, but for zombies, they could probably only step over them using their companions’ sacrificed heads.
If they had not been short on materials and time, Tang Xinjue had even wanted to “decorate” the entire corridor.
Because they discovered that what could attract zombies was not only “human scent”; the zombies could also follow traces left by each other. So after night fell, as long as one zombie climbed to the sixth floor, more zombies would follow one after another.
“Sigh, if only we could directly stop them from coming up.” Guo Guo let out a long sigh: “But we can’t possibly surround the entire sixth floor...”
She sighed for a while, but when she turned around, she suddenly discovered that there was no sound anywhere around her.
“What’s wrong with you guys? Why aren’t you saying anything?”
After several seconds of silence, Tang Xinjue’s eyes burned brightly as she spoke:
“Who says we can’t surround the sixth floor?”
Guo Guo: ??
Yu Wei, who had just finished vomiting, returned: ???
Two hours later. Looking at the corridor’s completely new appearance, Yu Wei drank half a bottle of water in one go to calm herself down.
Using the limited materials at hand, Tang Xinjue had forcibly created a corridor layout with a pit every five steps and a trap every ten steps. Extending all the way to the lounge beside the stairwell, the balcony with glass on all four sides had been turned into a large-scale “zombie trap” — the floor had been covered with toilet cleaner and water.
Inside were the zombies that had crashed into them during the renovation. Then they watched as it repeatedly climbed up — fell flat on all fours — climbed up again — fell flat again...
If it had been five minutes earlier, Yu Wei would have died before believing that she could actually feel sympathy for a zombie.
She returned to the dormitory with her arms and legs moving stiffly, only to see Guo Guo worriedly asking Tang Xinjue:
“By the way, we’ve already gone out for the nth times. Won’t there be a problem?”
After all, the dungeon had warned them several times not to leave, yet they had already evolved from spreading their wings at the edge of danger to flying wildly all the way down the road of letting themselves go, and were even trying to kick danger two li* away.
*2 li is around 1km
Tang Xinjue said rigorously: “Then we have to see how the position of [the door] is judged.”
“If the entire sixth floor belongs to 606, then at most we count as taking a walk at home. How can that be called going outside?”
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