Fire Truck

Before long, someone spotted the train slowly passing overhead.

But seeing the zombies wandering between the vehicles and the elevated tracks dozens of meters above them, most people gave up hope of calling for help.

After more than ten days of torment, the survivors had grown emaciated and gaunt, and their minds had gone numb.

Anyone with real courage would never have lasted this long; they would have already become one of the wanderers.

But a boy trapped inside an SUV seemed to see a glimmer of hope.

While the zombies nearby were distracted by the train overhead, he quietly unlocked the door and slipped out of the vehicle.

Following the route he had observed over the past two days, he climbed onto a car, then circled around a pile of trucks jammed together and carefully made his way across the asphalt.

A pair of eyes watched the wandering zombies nearby intently.

He held his breath and kept his footsteps as light as possible.

But as he passed a van, he overlooked the zombie driver inside.

"Thump!"

A dull sound came from the window.

A rotting face pressed hard against the glass, its blood-red eyes greedily fixed on the boy.

The boy's scalp prickled. He immediately panicked and started running.

Fortunately, the zombie driver in the van made no sound.

The boy darted this way and that, yet somehow didn't run into a single living zombie.

There were a few now and then, but they had all died horribly, their heads impaled on jagged metal spikes jutting from the sides of the vehicles.

Everyone above saw it happen.

Su Huan watched as two zombies ahead of the boy were suddenly pierced through the head by metal spikes that burst out of a nearby car. He glanced at Qi Xiaoba, seated in the wheelchair beside him.

With an interested look, he asked, "Can you really reach this far now?"

Xiao Ba pressed his thin lips together, his gaze beneath his tousled fringe following the boy below. "There's no limit to the distance. It just takes more energy the farther away the target is."

"No wonder it's a high-tier ability," Su Huan remarked.

His gaze followed the boy below, too, wanting to see how long he could keep it up.

Of course, he was wondering how long Qi Xiaoba could keep it up.

The people on the train weren't the only ones who saw this astonishing sight. Some survivors spotted it, too.

They didn't know what was causing it, but they didn't want to miss their chance either. One after another, they opened their car doors and fled.

The commotion immediately alerted the zombies below.

The howling horde made everyone's spine crawl.

A woman had barely gotten out when a zombie tackled her to the ground. Just as its gaping mouth was about to bite down, a steel rebar fell from the elevated tracks.

With a wet squelch, it pierced the zombie's skull.

But there were more than a dozen people trying to escape below.

The boy who had gone first tried to help the woman, then panicked and crashed into a cluster of zombies. They tore him apart alive.

"Help—!"

"Please, save me! I have gold! Let me onto the train, I'm begging you!"

"Mom! Run..."

Realizing there was no hope of escape, some people began pleading with the train passing overhead.

But their shouts only agitated the zombies.

"Let my child onto the train! I'm begging you, let him live! I'll do anything, just let him live—!"

A woman knelt on top of a car, holding up a child of about ten and shouting toward the people above.

The zombies surged forward and swallowed her up.

The young child fell into the horde, too.

Their anguished cries filled everyone with sorrow.

Su Huan still wore a smiling expression, but the frost in his eyes seemed about to spill over.

"I... I got them killed." Qi Xiaoba's face was pale.

"No one likes watching their own kind get slaughtered, especially when they die for nothing. But if you want to change things, you have to bear the consequences that come with it." Su Huan's voice was calm, even a little cold.

This time, he didn't comfort Xiao Ba or try to force his own ideals on him.

He only told him what power was and what it cost.

No one could convince everyone. You couldn't persuade someone stronger than you, or someone on about the same level.

Eventually, you'd find you couldn't even persuade those weaker than you.

Before long, the dozen or so survivors below were swallowed by the horde, too.

Su Huan lost interest in watching. He left the carriage and went to the locomotive cab, where Liang Kuan was focused on the tracks ahead.

A train had derailed, leaving a large section of track broken and twisted. They had already passed that stretch, but it was better to be cautious.

If dozens of carriages derailed, the team wouldn't have the means to save them.

A railway map of Mojiang City hung behind the cab.

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

Su Huan studied the map for a moment, his gaze settling on a road outside Mojiang South Station. If he remembered correctly, several fire trucks were stuck there.

They were all loaded with water. When the apocalypse broke out, the fire trucks had tried to get to a fire, but ended up stuck.

Later, someone had managed to get the vehicles out, and they became the core vehicles of the Mojiang Mutual Aid Convoy.

Their sturdy bodies, made of high-quality carbon steel, along with their large supply of clean water, had been key to keeping the convoy together in its early days.

Now that Su Huan had a train and water purifiers, he naturally had no interest in the fire trucks or the several tons of clean water.

He had his eye on something else the fire trucks carried.

Guns and ammunition!

The fire trucks had been carrying a number of officers from the law enforcement bureau. Many of their weapons had later been left behind.

Hu An and his gang had ended up taking all of them.

Last time, at the Water Plant, there had been too many Evolutionary Beasts left inside the building, so they hadn't searched extensively after finding the water purifier.

The last few bullets had all been wasted on Gao Zhe.

Without bullets, a pistol was just dead weight.

The tracks ahead would pass through more cities. Before the Evolutionist team took shape, modern weapons were the best substitute.

Some of the bigger weapons would still be useful even late in the apocalypse.

Having sorted out his thoughts, Su Huan raised his head.

Just then, he saw several staggering zombies appear ahead on the tracks. Hearing the train, they rushed toward it excitedly, as if it were a delicious can of food.

"Don't enter the station later. Just stop outside. There are too many zombies inside, so it'd be hard to get out and move around," Su Huan reminded him.

Liang Kuan pulled down the control lever. "Understood!"

The train ran over the zombies, severing their legs and crushing them beneath its wheels.

The Armed Train continued steadily forward without a hitch.

The ground on both sides gradually rose to the same level as the train. High-rises lined the area, but barriers blocked off both sides of the tracks, so they weren't surrounded by a horde.

"There's something up ahead," Liang Kuan said quietly.

There was a lot more blood on the track ballast, along with scattered body parts and debris.

Su Huan narrowed his eyes and looked. A strange figure was perched on the fence beside the tracks, hunched over so that it looked only about a meter tall.

Its bare upper body was a metallic green, and its back was covered in fleshy growths that hung from it like fruit.

Most were dark red, but a few were black.

Its blood-red eyes stared fixedly at the train. With a strange, cackling laugh, it tore a black growth from its back.

[To avoid real-world implications, the map is entirely fictional. The population, firearms, and models have all been changed.]