Fire Truck

Soon, someone discovered the train passing slowly overhead.

But looking at the zombies wandering through the gaps between the vehicles and the dozens of meters of height of the viaduct, the vast majority of people gave up hope of calling for help.

Over a dozen days of torment had left these survivors gaunt and emaciated, and even more so, mentally numb.

Those with true courage would not have waited this long; they would have long since become one of the wanderers.

But a teenager trapped in an SUV seemed to see hope.

Taking advantage of the zombies around him being distracted by the train overhead, he quietly unlocked the door and slipped out of the car.

Following the route he had observed over the past two days, he climbed onto a sedan, bypassed a pile of jammed trucks, and walked cautiously along the asphalt road.

A pair of eyes stared intently at the nearby wandering zombies.

He held his breath and focused, keeping his footsteps as light as possible.

However, while passing a van, he overlooked the zombie driver inside.

"Thud!"

A muffled sound came from the car window.

A rotting face was pressed tightly against the glass, its scarlet eyes staring greedily at the teenager.

The teenager's scalp tingled, and he instantly lost his composure, breaking into a run.

Fortunately, the zombie driver in the van did not make any sound.

The teenager darted left and right, surprisingly not encountering a single living zombie.

There were a few occasionally, but they had died quite miserably, their heads impaled on jagged metal spikes protruding from the sides of the cars.

This scene fell into the eyes of the people above.

Su Huan watched as two zombies in front of the teenager suddenly had their heads pierced by metal spikes from a nearby car, and he glanced at Qi Xiaoba, who was sitting in a wheelchair beside him.

He asked with interest, "Is the distance already this far?"

Xiaoba pursed his thin lips, his gaze beneath his bangs following the teenager below the bridge. "There is no limit to the distance, only that the further it is, the more energy it consumes."

"As expected of a high-level ability," Su Huan remarked with emotion.

His gaze also followed the teenager below, wanting to see how long he could hold out.

Of course, he was watching to see how long Qi Xiaoba could hold out.

In addition to the people on the train, some survivors also saw this miraculous scene.

They did not know the reason, but they were unwilling to miss this opportunity, and one by one, they opened their car doors and fled outward.

Such a commotion immediately alerted the zombies below.

The boiling roars of the corpses made people's spines turn cold.

A woman had just emerged when she was tackled to the ground by a zombie; just as its blood-stained maw was about to bite down, a steel bar fell from the viaduct.

With a squelch, it pierced the creature's skull.

But there were over a dozen fugitives below.

Because he had taken a moment to look after this woman, the teenager from before panicked, collided with a pile of zombies, and was eaten alive.

"Help—"

"Save me, I have gold, please let me on the train!"

"Mom! Run..."

Realizing that escape was hopeless, some began to plead with the train passing overhead.

But their loud cries only stimulated the zombies.

"Let the child on the train, I beg you, let him live, I'll be your beast of burden, just let him live—"

A woman knelt on a car, holding a child of about ten years old in her hands, shouting toward the top.

The zombies surged up and submerged the woman.

The innocent child also fell into the horde of corpses.

The shrill cries made everyone feel a sense of sorrow.

Su Huan's face remained smiling, but the frost in his eyes almost spilled out of their sockets.

"I... caused their deaths," Qi Xiaoba said, his face pale.

"No one likes to watch their own kind being slaughtered, especially deaths that have no value, but if you want to change things, you must bear the consequences that come with it." Su Huan's voice was very calm, even carrying a hint of coldness.

He did not comfort Xiaoba this time, nor did he attempt to instill his own philosophy into him.

He simply told him what ability was, and what the price was.

No one can convince anyone else; you cannot convince those stronger than you, nor can you convince those on par with you.

In the end, you will find that you cannot even convince those who are worse off than you.

Soon, the dozen or so survivors beneath the bridge were also submerged.

Su Huan lost interest in watching, stepped down from the carriage, and made his way to the locomotive cockpit, where Liang Kuan was staring intently at the tracks ahead.

Because a train had derailed earlier, a large section of the rails had shattered and twisted; although they had already passed that stretch, caution was still the better part of valor.

If dozens of carriages were to truly derail, the team currently lacked the capability to recover them.

A railway map of Mojiang City hung behind the cockpit.

Mojiang City had three stations in total: Mojiang South Station, Mojiang Station, and Mojiang North Station.

Su Huan observed it for a moment, his gaze lingering on a street outside Mojiang South Station; if he remembered correctly, several fire trucks were blocked there.

They were fully loaded with water, and when the apocalypse broke out, those fire trucks had been trying to put out fires, only to end up trapped.

Later, the vehicles were driven out by others and became the core assets of the Mojiang Mutual Aid Convoy.

Relying on the sturdy high-carbon steel bodies of the fire trucks, combined with a large supply of purified water, they became the key factor in maintaining the convoy's early cohesion.

Now that Su Huan had the train and a water purifier, he naturally looked down on the fire trucks and those few tons of purified water.

What he had his eye on was something else inside those fire trucks.

Firearms and ammunition!

The fire trucks had been carrying quite a few law enforcement officers, and later, many weapons were left behind on them.

Hu An and his bunch of hangers-on had swept them all up.

Last time at the Water Plant, because the building was infested with Evolutionary Beasts, they hadn't conducted a large-scale search after finding the water purifier.

In the end, the last few bullets had been wasted on Gao Zhe.

Without bullets, the pistols had become mere ornaments.

The tracks ahead would pass through more cities, and before an Evolutionist team could be fully formed, modern weapons were the best substitute.

Some of the heavy-duty gear would remain useful even in the late stages of the apocalypse.

Having sorted out his thoughts, Su Huan looked up.

Just in time, he saw several zombies swaying on the tracks ahead; hearing the sound of the train, they lunged forward excitedly as if they had spotted a delicious can of food.

"Don't enter the station later; just stop outside. The number of zombies inside the station is too high, making it inconvenient to disembark," Su Huan instructed.

Liang Kuan pulled the operating lever, "Understood!"

The few zombies were directly sheared at the legs and crushed beneath the wheels.

The Armed Train continued to move forward steadily, without the slightest tremor.

The terrain on both sides gradually leveled out with the train, and high-rise buildings stood in rows, but both sides of the tracks were blocked off, so they did not find themselves besieged by a zombie horde.

"There's something ahead."

Liang Kuan said in a low voice.

He saw that the railway ballast was stained with quite a bit of blood, along with some scattered corpses and debris.

Su Huan squinted to look, only to see a bizarre figure crouching on the fence beside the tracks; its body was hunched over, making it appear only about a meter tall.

Its naked upper body was an iron-green color, and its back was covered in fleshy tumors that hung from its body like pieces of fruit.

Most were dark red, with a small portion being black.

With scarlet eyes, it stared fixedly at the train, cackling with a strange laugh as it tore a black tumor from its back.

[To avoid real-world factors, the map, system population, and firearm models have all been altered]