Chapter 182: Zombie Siege Practice
The process of the four coming down from the rooftop entrance went very smoothly.
The ladder had been placed inside a narrow, dark storeroom, and the people at the stronghold probably had not discovered that there was such a place at all. After breaking open the narrow door covered in dust, a large storage room appeared before their eyes.
“Ts—” Guo Guo inhaled softly.
The amount of supplies stored here was at least more than that of two supermarkets!
After searching high and low without finding it, they had obtained it without any effort. The supermarkets that Yu Wei had seen emptied out had all ended up here.
The four exchanged a simple glance, then used a U-shaped lock to lock the storage room door from the inside.
Only after the food had been carried up to the rooftop box by box through the small door did they reopen the door. The moment the door opened, they happened to come face-to-face with a member of the stronghold passing outside.
Tang Xinjue nodded in greeting: “Hello.”
The person froze: “You are…”
Before he could even finish the word “are,” Tang Xinjue chopped him unconscious with one hand.
Tang Xinjue conveniently stripped off the red-and-white “sports jacket” he was wearing, and also felt around inside it and took out a lighter.
With a soft click, a flame sprang out.
When they discovered that the top floor was on fire, the fastest to move were the stronghold organizers, almost gathering at the stairwell at the speed of a hundred-meter sprint.
If the first-floor hall caught fire, they might not even bother to care. After all, the students would put out the fire themselves. At worst, a few would burn to death.
But the third floor was different. That was where all their supplies were stored!
“Where are they? Where are the people guarding this place today?”
A boy shoved through the crowd, his face turning livid as he shouted, almost choking on the smoke drifting out.
At a glance, thick smoke was billowing from two rooms at the far end of the third floor. His eyes went dark: “Where’s the water? The water connected to the school’s water supply?”
Even if the stored food burned, then it burned, but the other room was…
His shouting finally had an effect. Another girl wearing the same clothing walked over: “Some of the stuff has been rescued.”
She pointed toward the side of the stairwell. Two boxes of injection agents were piled there, with black liquid faintly visible inside the syringes.
Only then did the person in charge breathe a sigh of relief: “Then hurry up and put out the fire! This little fire is nothing. It doesn’t matter if the food burns. There’ll be an airdrop in half an hour. We can just grab a few more portions.”
The other person replied: “There’s no water.”
The person in charge: “???”
His eyes bulged, veins standing out on his face: “What the hell are you talking about? How could there be no water? The school water supply system is directly connected to us here…”
His furious roar abruptly stopped. The boy’s eyes slowly shifted twice as he realized.
Right. Just two hours ago, they seemed to have sent people to transfer all the water from those water pipes to another student stronghold.
So now, their stronghold really…
“Has no water.”
Another female organizer in the crowd repeated this, sneering: “I said long ago, don’t complicate matters unnecessarily. Those ant-like places are even worth us making such a big effort to deal with? Instead, we damaged our own fortune.”
“It’ll take at least 20 minutes for the water pipes to be connected again. It wouldn’t be good if our resting area gets burned. Aren’t there drinking-water supplies downstairs? Bring those up to use first.” Another organizer spoke.
“Those few boxes of water are for the current [qualified candidates] to drink. The screening agent has made their bodies increasingly weak, and they urgently need to replenish water. If they still don’t eat or drink today, another batch may die.”
“If they die, then they die. At worst, we just promote it a little more. There will always be new people coming in.”
A short organizer spoke in a muffled voice:
“Don’t forget, we have already completed countless simulations. There is absolutely no way we can fail.”
The group silently exchanged glances and nodded in agreement.
“Since that’s the case, the three of us will go downstairs to move the water. You, you, and you three, go outside and change the water pipes.”
The previously irritable man pointed at a few people in the crowd, assigned the tasks, then hurried downstairs and emptied out the water while the students watched in terror.
“You’re taking it away, then what, what are we supposed to drink?”
Someone crawled over and grabbed his trouser leg. Her body was still twitching from the injection agent that morning, her skin visibly withering.
The boy looked at her with disgust, then lifted his foot and kicked her hard, leaving a black mark from his shoe on her face.
“Giving you a place to stay is already good enough. Scram!”
He turned and went upstairs, brushing past several other organizers. He failed to notice that one of the short-haired girls suddenly stiffened, abruptly grabbing the clothes of the person beside her.
The bespectacled girl wearing a hat immediately caught her and gently squeezed her shoulder, asking: “You saw it?”
The short-haired “organizer” covered her temple and nodded, her gaze unable to help falling on the weak girl who had been kicked over in the distance.
At the instant she brushed past the irritable man, she had once again “seen” the exact same sacrificial scene.
And this time, the scene had randomly zoomed in from the overlooking perspective, allowing her to see the faces of some of the “corpses.”
Among them was a skinny girl, emaciated to the bone, with an identical black shoe print clearly stamped across her face.
Her temple still ached faintly. She could only lean against the girl beside her, recalling the scene she had just hallucinated as they walked outside.
Just then, a rough voice suddenly sounded from behind:
“Wait, stop!”
The irritable man was still carrying water in his hands, but his head twisted strangely around, his eyes fixed on the three girls walking openly outside.
Ever since the fire had started, he had constantly felt that something was wrong. Now he finally knew where this strange feeling came from:
Were there really this many girls among them?
He clearly remembered that the people responsible for guarding the sixth floor in the morning were different people… so why had they just disappeared?
Facing these “colleagues,” he frowned and asked: “Who are you again? And why are you taking boxes with you when you go out? Turn around!”
The three girls wearing red-striped white-bottomed sportswear paused, then continued walking forward, as if they had not heard anyone speaking at all.
The boy: “? I told you to stop!!”
He was about to chase after them when his arm was suddenly grabbed by a force. He turned his head, and an extremely low hat brim filled his vision.
The ponytailed girl wearing the hat spoke in an extremely low voice: “Aren’t you here to move water? The fire has already reached upstairs, so where’s the water?”
The boy instinctively handed the water to her: “Right here!”
The other party said nothing, took the water, and hurried upstairs. The boy instinctively wanted to follow and check the situation, but only after stepping forward did he remember that there was still something unresolved behind him.
However, when he jumped back down the stairs again, the first floor was already wide open. Sunshine and air poured in freely, while those three “organizers” had disappeared without a trace.
…There was definitely something wrong with them!
“What are you doing here?”
Other organizers came running down and grabbed him, demanding sternly: “Where’s the water?”
The irritable man was bombarded from all sides until he was completely flustered, roaring helplessly: “Someone already took it upstairs to put out the fire!”
But the organizers looked at one another: “Who?”
They had not seen anyone at all!
“……”
The crowd strangely fell silent for several seconds, then rushed upstairs in unspoken agreement!
When they reached the third floor, they saw that the hall was completely empty. And the boxes of injection agents that had originally been stacked beside the stairwell had somehow been replaced with boxes of drinking water.
“Help… someone broke into the storage room. What the hell, why did it catch fire too… come put out the fire…”
A figure supported another person as they staggered out of the burning storage room. They were only wearing short sleeves on their upper bodies, and the uniform jackets representing their identities had disappeared.
—Four girls had emptied the storage room, knocked four guards unconscious, and even stolen their clothes.
When the truth was revealed, everyone felt a rush of anger shoot straight to their scalps, as though what was burning was not the third floor, but the tops of their heads.
The irritable boy’s teeth rattled: “I’m going to catch them and peel off their skulls to use as sacrificial bowls…”
Clatter-clatter—
A series of frequent sounds of heavy objects falling outside the building interrupted his curse.
At the same time, a voice amplified through a loudspeaker came from the rooftop:
“East Gate Cafeteria student stronghold is clearing out and giving away supplies. Please come outside the cafeteria to the ground and collect them yourselves. Leave immediately after taking them, to avoid having them reclaimed. Repeating, East Gate Cafeteria is clearing out…”
The irritable man’s mouth fell wide open, like a fish violently thrown onto shore. It took several seconds before he reacted:
“The first-floor door isn’t closed!”
They had been certain that the students who came to seek refuge would not escape, because these students were currently physically weak, and without food outside, escaping was also a dead end.
But if they had food, the situation would be completely different.
However, by the time they rushed downstairs again, it was already too late. The previously overcrowded cafeteria hall was completely empty, and only a dozen or so figures who had not yet finished grabbing food remained in the open space outside the cafeteria.
…Usually they were so listless they looked as if they would stop breathing the next second, but when it came to running for their lives and eating, every one of them was faster than the next!
The first irritable man to run out was so furious that he lost his reason. He grabbed an electric baton and was about to recklessly charge forward. The moment one foot stepped into the sunlight, however, a sudden buzz exploded at the back of his head, and he lost his balance.
When he turned his head in disbelief, the last scene he saw was a small, thin girl with a black shoe print on her face, crouching beside the entrance and holding the iron rod in her hand as she watched him fall.
“You’re not putting out the fire anymore?”
A light figure leapt down, conveniently helping the girl pick up the food from the ground. Only after patting her shoulder did the girl gather her remaining strength and hurry away.
When the remaining organizers rushed out, all they saw was Tang Xinjue taking off her hat and asking with a smile.
Getting the remaining food back first, or taking revenge on the culprit first, that was a question.
But very soon, the remaining people at the stronghold discovered that they seemed unable to accomplish either one.
With a sharp, piercing siren, dozens of black shadows appeared in the sky, descending evenly under parachutes.
The airdrop had arrived!
Almost in an instant, the strongholds moving in groups, the students fighting alone, and even the zombies drawn over by the smell—all of the dormitory area was completely activated!
Two airdrop boxes closest to the cafeteria happened to land several dozen meters away. Before the organizers of the East Gate stronghold could decide whether to go grab them, a group of extraordinarily fast young students came charging over, waving brooms and mops.
The leader held onto his glasses and shouted himself hoarse:
“Pay attention to the environment, don’t trample each other! Charge! You must outrun the zombies! As long as we can outrun them, the stronghold gets to eat!!!”
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