Chapter 282

For the last few hours, Emily Ward had been driving with a Super Fire Crystal around Lightwater Residences in circles. She picked out the sleeping chickens, ducks, and geese, woke them up one by one, then drove them toward the outer edge of the Lightwater Residences power grid.

More than four hours later, over a hundred large domestic beasts had been herded to the outside of the compound. Each one looked like a little moving house.

Then the power grid broke.

The patrol cars stationed inside Lightwater Residences blasted their horns all at once. Alarms screamed through the night. More than twenty thousand soldiers under Cliff Baxter jolted awake from their sleep.

Nearly a thousand rat demon beasts rushed into Lightwater Residences and scattered everywhere. Chickens, ducks, and geese smashed into buildings, and the rat demon beasts surged in behind them like floodwater.

Anybody with half a brain knew hiding inside the buildings was no answer.

Stay inside, and you were just waiting to die.

They had lived through the apocalypse for over a year. The soldiers who were still alive all understood that much. They came pouring out into the corridors and stairwells, scrambling into emergency formation. Some of the armed men blasted open gaps at the unit entrances, then fought their way out from inside.

As long as they could get onto vehicles splashed with animal blood, they had a chance to live.

A wave of over two hundred armed soldiers formed up back to back into a tight human knot. From the middle of that knot, more than a hundred fire-snakes spat out at once. The rat demon beasts around them were forced back over ten meters in an instant, leaving dozens of corpses on the ground.

“Charge for me! Break through to the troop transport lot! Get there and we fucking live! Don’t, and I die with you bastards!”

A regimental commander roared himself hoarse as he pointed ahead.

“First Company, watch the air! Second and Third, hold the ground! Front line, move your asses! Charge!”

“Commander! We’re out of bullets!”

“Commander! We only had one magazine, it’s empty!”

The soldiers in front emptied a single magazine and immediately wanted to fall back, hoping the brothers behind them who still had ammo would take the front.

No bullets meant no one wanted to rush forward with just a bayonet and trade lives with rat demon beasts.

But when the men in front tried to pull back, the men in back had no intention of pushing forward either. No matter how the commander yelled, the whole human knot froze in place.

“Fuck!!”

The commander cursed and pulled his pistol, shooting dead a few of the soldiers trying to run back. In his heart he cursed Oliver Bright a thousand times over.

All the Crystals were on that bastard Oliver Bright. He was a regimental commander, and all he had for himself were five Metal Crystals. Not a single Super Fire Crystal.

Now, in a moment like this, when the real killing danger was right in his face, where the hell was he supposed to go find Oliver Bright and ask him for Crystals?

He had only five Metal Crystals on him, and he couldn’t bear to hand them out to the soldiers.

So all he could do was grit his teeth and hold the line.

The human knot stalled. The number of fire-snakes they could spit out kept dropping. Not far ahead, the pack of rat demon beasts had already turned back around. They were twitching, testing, eager to rush again.

Then, all of a sudden, a giant white goose flapped its wings and flew straight at them.

The soldiers assigned to anti-air panicked and fired into the giant black shadow in the sky like madmen.

The big white goose was hit and dropped fast. It smashed right onto the outer edge of their formation, crushing seven or eight soldiers to death in a blink. At the same time, a huge black swarm of bats swept past in the distance. More than a dozen bats dove together, their giant claws seizing soldiers and ripping them open, guts spilling and bellies torn through.

The human knot lost all power to resist.

The rat demon beasts around them turned as one and charged back in like they had gone mad.

The big white goose, together with two chickens that had just rushed over, ate men the way fish ate fry. One peck, and a man was caught. Half his body hung from its beak. Then with one lift of the head, down he went into its gut. Then the second one.

The rat demon beasts were even worse. They did not care where they bit. Anywhere they could catch hold of a human body, they bit. Some dragged away men with their guts hanging out. Some just stayed where they were and started gnawing on the spot.

...

An hour earlier, on the main road beside Lightwater Residences, Emily Ward had run into a giant mottled snake.

That snake seemed to be asleep.

She met it head-on, straight in front of its face. The sight scared the color out of her. She turned and ran on instinct.

But after running only a few dozen meters, she noticed the rat demon beasts ahead were all giving way.

That made her slow down.

Right.

She was still using the Super Fire Crystal.

Fred Wesley had said before that this giant snake was afraid of a Super Fire Crystal too.

She bit down hard, then turned to look back. The mottled giant snake had not chased her.

That made the thought in her heart grow firmer.

She had to drive this big snake over there too.

...

In the parking lot inside Lightwater Residences, hundreds of troop transports were parked in rows. More and more soldiers organized by Cliff Baxter had fought their way there. Several hundred had already reached the lot and were climbing onto the vehicles.

Cliff Baxter himself, carrying a Super Fire Crystal, was directing soldiers who also carried Super Fire Crystals to splash animal blood over the vehicles, preparing to flee.

These three hundred men were all from Cliff Baxter’s personal guard.

On the surface, the army had announced that all the Crystals in the force were with logistics officer Oliver Bright.

In truth, that man was just there to take the blame like a shield for Cliff Baxter. Oliver Bright only had a little over two hundred Crystals. Most of the army’s Crystals were in Cliff Baxter’s own hands.

All three hundred members of the guard had been issued Metal Crystals and Super Fire Crystals by Cliff Baxter. After pulling in other soldiers along the way, the force had grown to nearly five hundred men.

And the personal guard not only all had guns, each of them also carried five magazines.

Five times what an ordinary armed soldier got.

That was why they had been able to carve their way here.

But just as half the soldiers had climbed aboard, a massive snake tail whipped across with brutal force.

The first three troop transports were flipped over on the spot.

This was the first time Cliff Baxter had ever seen such a giant snake with his own eyes. Some time ago, patrol cars had reported finding this kind of snake inside Springvale City, but he had never seen one himself.

Now that he had, a cold shiver ran straight down his spine.

“Shoot that snake! Shoot that fucking snake!”

With that giant snake blocking the way, nobody was getting out alive. Cliff Baxter jumped down from the command vehicle and bellowed at the soldiers until his throat went raw.

“Get down here and kill the snake! Grenades! Whoever’s got grenades, throw them now!”

At once, four grenades were hurled over.

The soldiers still on the ground, not yet aboard the vehicles, had their attention sucked over by the giant snake in an instant. Their legs went numb from fear. They could not help it. Every gun muzzle swung toward the snake, and they opened fire in a frenzy.

Without suppressing fire, the rat demon beasts around them seized the gap and charged straight into the human formation. The bats in the sky dove again as a group.

The formation broke apart.

More than a hundred soldiers screamed and ran for the vehicles. The thirty-meter-long giant snake bit down on a long-distance coach packed with soldiers, arched its body, then lifted its head and swallowed downward, just like a chicken or goose gulping food.

Even its habits seemed to have changed.

Before the apocalypse, when snakes caught prey, they usually bit first, injected venom, waited for the prey to die, then slowly ate it.

Maybe this giant snake felt that injecting venom into a bus was pointless.

So it skipped that part and started swallowing whole.