Chapter 1339 Fluorescent Tide
Two more gunshots!
It was clearer than what they had heard at the assembly point, and it seemed to be closer! It was near an intersection less than a hundred meters ahead and to their right!
The carriage fell silent instantly, and everyone turned their heads sharply to look.
Beside the roadblock made of sandbags and a horizontally mounted truck, several soldiers were dragging a convulsing human figure away from the edge of the roadblock.
The man was dressed in the clothes of an ordinary survivor, and seemed to be holding something in his hand. In the fleeting glimpse of the car headlights, Lao Zhou seemed to see a bulging backpack, and... a section of metal resembling a tin can sticking out of the backpack.
An officer wrapped in a digital camouflage hazmat suit stood on a roadblock, the muzzle of his pistol still emitting wisps of smoke.
He picked up the megaphone, and his cold voice pierced through the noise, carrying clearly and even drowning out the engines of nearby vehicles:
"Look carefully! This person attempted to steal supplies from the vehicle during the chaos! In accordance with wartime emergency regulations, execute him on the spot!"
"I'll repeat myself! All personnel must obey orders and evacuate in an orderly manner! Any act of causing trouble, looting supplies, or disrupting order—this will be the consequence!"
His voice remained completely still, as if he had not just killed a person, but merely cleared a roadblock.
The soldiers quickly dragged the body to the shadows by the roadside, leaving a dark trail on the ground that was soon covered by dust kicked up by more wheels.
The traffic, which had been briefly congested at the intersection, strangely quickened its pace slightly after the gunshot and the chilling announcement.
No one dared to question anymore, no one dared to try to squeeze past the military vehicle next to them, and even the voices of those who had been commotion about getting off the vehicle to "relieve themselves" or to find their lost family members disappeared instantly.
Absolute fear can sometimes maintain order more effectively than any persuasion.
Old Zhou felt his son trembling even more violently in his arms.
He covered his son's ears with his hands and pressed the child's face against his chest to prevent him from seeing the cruel scene, but he himself could not look away.
He saw the leg of the "robber" being dragged away still kicking unconsciously, and saw the soldiers indifferently dumping the body on the roadside, as if it were a bag of garbage.
He saw the complex expressions on the faces of the other survivors beside the roadblock, a mixture of fear, numbness, and a hint of shared sorrow.
This is order... an order forged from the coldest iron and blood.
It was ruthless and merciless, but at least on this devastating night, it offered most people a path to survival, even if that path was paved with the corpses of a few.
The convoy began to slowly incline again.
Old Zhou looked up and gazed at the night sky in the distance through the gaps in the roof of the carriage and the space between the vehicles in front.
The searchlight beams from the military district were sweeping more intensely across the sky, especially to the west.
In the area where the beam of light occasionally swept across, he seemed to see... a deeper, thicker darkness flowing within, unlike the inky black of the night sky; it was a kind of gloom that seemed to absorb light, an extremely unsettling darkness.
Moreover, he wondered if it was just his imagination, but he felt there was a faint, sweet, fishy smell in the air, a bit like rotting mushrooms, and a bit like... the smell of rust mixed with cheap spices.
The taste made his throat tighten, and the ominous premonition in his heart grew heavier.
The evacuation torrent struggled forward amidst gunfire and shouts, heading towards unknown refuges and a future shrouded in darkness, its fate uncertain.
Inside the carriage, only the roar of the engine, the rustling of the wheels on the road, and the undisguised, heavy, and terrified breathing amidst the deathly silence remained.
...
Meanwhile, about ten kilometers southwest of the Gucheng Lake gathering area.
On a makeshift military road connecting the outer outposts and the assembly area, an open-top military jeep, like a lonely firefly in the night, about to be swallowed by the boundless darkness, jolted and sped wildly along the bumpy road.
The engine roared almost tearing the darkness apart, and the headlights cleaved through the thick night ahead, illuminating the swirling dust and the indistinct outlines of withered trees and weeds rushing past on both sides of the road.
The vehicle was crammed with five people; they were a forward reconnaissance squad belonging to the 2nd Battalion of the 1st Infantry Brigade of Yezhou.
They are a garrison force stationed at an observation post 30 kilometers away from the Gucheng Lake settlement.
Half an hour earlier, before communications were completely paralyzed by strange static noise and unidentified bio-electromagnetic pulses, they received intermittent, highest-priority coded instructions from battalion headquarters: "'Furnace' activated! Abandon the outpost! All personnel and equipment! Immediately retreat to the 'Eagle's Nest' coordinates at full speed!"
The order came suddenly and decisively.
They didn't have time to destroy all the equipment; they only took the core encrypted communication module and weapons and ammunition. Driving the outpost's only jeep, they plunged into the perilous wilderness under the cover of night.
At this moment, everyone on the vehicle was fully protected. The heavy chemical protective suits made their movements clumsy, and the rubber edges of the gas masks clung tightly to their skin, producing a muffled breathing sound.
The atmosphere in the carriage was unusually silent, even filled with a sense of panic, a feeling of having survived a disaster but also of being bewildered and helpless.
The young private driving the vehicle gripped the steering wheel tightly with both hands, his knuckles turning white, his eyes wide open, staring intently at the limited road ahead, cut off by the headlights, not daring to be distracted for the slightest.
In the co-pilot's seat, the squad leader was a fourth-level sergeant major in his early thirties. Like the other grassroots squad leaders of the 1st Infantry Brigade of Yezhou, he had been transferred from the army group.
He leaned forward slightly, his right hand unconsciously resting on the holster of his pistol at his waist, while his left hand braced against the edge of the dashboard. In the dim light of the car's instrument panel, he kept checking a simple compass and a paper map in his hand.
The three soldiers in the back row huddled together, clutching their rifles, their bodies swaying violently with the vehicle's jolting. Behind their gas masks, their eyes flickered with uncertainty in the occasional flashes of external light.
The carriage was unusually silent at this moment, mainly because no one knew what to say.
Just before tonight, or even just a few hours ago, they were filled with almost blind optimism about the future of the Jinling Military Sub-district and Gucheng Lake.
Under the leadership of Commander Du Yuming, they swept away the surrounding bandits with overwhelming force, and built up a place of despair into a basic structure. The support from the war zone was stronger and stronger each time!
At that time, everyone privately discussed that Nanjing would become the second "Night Market" and another glorious foothold for the eastward advance of the Central Plains War Zone!
This optimism reached its peak after receiving news that the Sixth Army Group had already marched eastward along the Yangtze River and would arrive soon.
A heavily armed army group!
No matter how strange the things in Jinling City are, what waves can they make in the face of absolute power?
But who could have imagined that the upheaval would come so suddenly, so violently, so... beyond imagination!
It wasn't the expected horde of zombies, nor the mass charge of mutants, but rather a spore cloud floating in the sky, completely out of reach!
They saw with their own eyes that the familiar night sky in the direction of the distant outpost was stained with an eerie, deep darkness, and that "clouds" that looked like living things were hanging low...
If it weren't for the squad leader's decisive action in evacuating them, they would probably have been submerged by now.
"Squad leader...Gucheng Lake...is it really impossible to defend it?"
In the back row, the youngest soldier, whose voice was still tinged with the last vestiges of puberty, finally broke the suffocating silence. His voice, muffled and trembling, came through his gas mask.
The squad leader did not answer immediately. He looked up from the map and gazed at the distant horizon through the dust-covered and insect-dead windshield.
There, where one should have been able to see the scattered lights and searchlight beams from the direction of the Gucheng Lake settlement, now seemed to be shrouded in a deeper darkness. Only the faint, constantly flashing red alarm light, like the heart of a dying beast, was weakly beating.
"...The order is to evacuate." The squad leader finally spoke, his voice hoarse, but he tried his best to remain calm:
"The activation of the 'Metallic Atlas' signifies the highest level of threat assessment. The settlement... is likely organizing a relocation."
"Relocate? Over a hundred thousand people...where to relocate them?" another soldier asked hoarsely.
"How big is the 'Eagle's Nest'? Can it accommodate everyone?"
"That's not our business!" the squad leader interrupted sharply, his tone hardening again.
"Our mission is to reach 'Eagle's Nest' alive, return to base, and then carry out the next orders! Everyone, stay alert! We're not safe yet!"
Silence fell again in the carriage, but the heavy fear and confusion about the future did not dissipate; on the contrary, it became clearer amidst the roar of the engine and the howling wind outside.
They were like small boats that had narrowly escaped disaster in a raging storm. Although they had temporarily escaped the most immediate catastrophe, they were completely lost, not knowing where the shore was or when the next giant wave would crash down.
A driver focused intently on driving, their eyes glued to the road, their nerves taut to the extreme.
The road conditions were poor, and visibility was low in the dark, so he had to be fully focused.
Suddenly, he felt something flicker at the edge of his field of vision in the right rearview mirror.
Is it an illusion? Or is it a reflection of the red light from an alarm in a distant gathering area?
He subconsciously turned his head and quickly glanced at the rearview mirror on the right.
In the mirror, apart from the dark road that was blurred by the dust kicked up by the car and was rapidly receding into the distance, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
He breathed a sigh of relief, cursing himself for being overly sensitive, and was about to turn back to focus on what was ahead.
Just as his gaze was about to leave the mirror—
His pupils suddenly shrank to pinpoints!
No! It's not an illusion!
Further back! Far beyond the range of his earlier scan, at the end of the road where the jeep had already passed, on the desolate horizon completely shrouded in night...
A suffocating, boundless, cold and sticky fluorescent light, like the rising tide at midnight, silently surged up!
