Fortunately, the citizen closest to the zombie was no weakling in either strength or reflexes.
Though he had no time to dodge, he forcibly threw himself backward, braced both hands against the ground, pressed his legs together, and kicked violently into the air like a rocket launcher, striking the zombie square in the chest.
With a dull bang, the zombie's chest visibly caved in. It flew away like a kite with its string cut, then hit the ground hard with a smack.
Yet before the terrified citizens could scatter, the zombie with the sunken chest rose again. Its eyeballs bulged completely from their sockets, its mouth split all the way to its ears, and even more barbed, wildly writhing tentacles erupted from deep in its throat, making a scalp-prickling, nausea-inducing "slurp, slurp, slurp, slurp" sound.
That was what made monsters like zombies so difficult to deal with.
Perhaps zombies mutated from ordinary people did not possess particularly powerful offensive abilities.
But when it came to clinging on like burrs and refusing to let go, they were absolutely first-rate.
Worse still, there was more than one zombie.
During the brief half-minute clash between the humans and the Rat Tide just now, at least a double-digit number of ordinary citizens had been scratched or bitten by rat monsters.
At first, no one took such minor flesh wounds seriously.
They often did not even have time to squeeze out the pus and blood or disinfect and bandage their wounds before throwing themselves into another round of battle. Amid punches and kicks, their accelerated circulation allowed the terrifying Zombie Virus to instantly invade their blood, spinal cords, central nervous systems, and cerebral cortices.
Very quickly, the wounds of these citizens blackened, purplened, and swelled, just like those of the first citizen to mutate.
Blackish-purple