Chapter 4: Refugees
's heart shot straight back up. She had only just started to ease out of that near-death tension, hadn't even warmed her seat yet.
And now there was another change? Was there no end to it?
Honestly, why hadn't she been in the first batch of ? At least then she'd have gotten a quick, clean death.
Her thoughts raced. She gripped the tight and looked warily toward the exit.
In a low voice still faintly tinged with that near-death feeling, she asked, "How many?"
[At least three, probably.]
's consciousness was now completely focused on the area outside the dormitory buildings in .
The camera he had just repaired, the one mounted on the sentry tower along the perimeter wall, was faithfully transmitting the footage back.
A military-green truck — by the look of the model, some kind of military transport. Its body was pitted and covered with dark scratches, one tire already flat, dragging an ugly trail as it struggled along the concrete road.
The truck wobbled along like a drunkard, not fast, but the roar of its engine cut through the dead silence with particular harshness.
And behind the truck, a little over a hundred meters back, trailed a pack of zombies.
Not too many — thirty or forty or so — but they were chasing hard, drawn relentlessly by the truck's noise, surging tirelessly toward the core area of the power station.
"How far away are they?" pressed.
The screen switched to show the truck's live surveillance feed.
[About three minutes until it reaches the plant gate.] 's answer carried a hint of uncertainty too.
Through the camera, he could make out figures stirring inside the truck — one in the cab, what looked like two or three more in the cargo bed — but they were too far away to see the details.
Still, if someone was driving through a godforsaken place like this, what else could they be but the living? It wasn't as if zombies had learned to drive stick.
's mind ran through the math.
New arrivals — good thing or bad?
The upside was obvious. More people meant more manpower.
If any of them were professionals — soldiers or engineers — it would be an enormous help in clearing the station and establishing defenses.
No matter how capable he, an "AI," was, he still needed someone to carry out the actual work.
With alone, clearing out three hundred-plus zombies would take forever and a day. She wasn't Superman.
But the downside was just as obvious.
First, you could never know what was in another person's heart.
Who knew who was coming? Soldiers of order, or thugs from the chaos?
What if they invited a wolf right through the door? Even if he wasn't human anymore, it would still be a real headache.
Second, resources. One more mouth meant one more share of consumption.
The station's stockpile was decent, but not unlimited.
That point wasn't urgent, though. The outbreak had arrived so suddenly, and the people here had evacuated so hastily.
A large stock of stored food had simply been abandoned, so feeding a few extra people should still be manageable.
Anyway, he ran on uranium-235 now; he couldn't be bothered with humans' low-energy food.
But third — the most urgent problem — that truck had a string of zombies on its tail.
Letting them in meant letting the trouble in along with them.
"Are they soldiers?" asked, looking at the truck's paint job on the screen.
[Hard to say. In this kind of chaos, the clothes someone wears don't tell you what kind of person they are.] typed out his concern.
fell silent.
She understood that truth all too well.
My daily routine is doing housework and reading, and being with strange uncles...
My daily routine is doing housework and reading, and being with strange uncles...
My daily routine is doing housework and reading, and being with strange uncles...