Chapter 63: Water Ghost
"Cough... cough..."
The pale red mist, borne on the night wind, seeped through the cracks of the broken window—a stench of rotten fish, rust, and meat that had been decomposing for months all mixed together.
immediately covered her mouth and nose, her other hand quickly pulling a smaller boy closer and covering his as well.
Behind her, the other children hurriedly covered their noses and followed her, moving carefully into the adjacent room where the windows were still intact.
Almost the instant the mist drifted in, the "water ghosts" roaming downstairs grew restless all at once, as if they had been shot up with stimulants.
Their normally slow, clumsy fleshy appendages suddenly sped up. Tentacles thrashed wildly, stretching longer and thicker than before, their tips splitting into dense masses of fine filaments.
The dark matter inside their translucent sacs churned and churned, and the dark red cocoon husks over their lower bodies split open, revealing even more writhing thread-like tissue.
"Gurgle... gurgle..."
The monsters' low calls became denser and shriller, no longer the lazy stirring sounds from before—more like some form of specialized communication.
Watching the bizarre scene below, felt a chill creep up her back. In times like this, anything out of the ordinary was anything but good news.
"Big Sis..." A six-year-old boy behind her clutched her clothes in fear, his voice as thin as a mosquito's buzz.
turned and made a shushing gesture.
Just then, the roar of an engine swelled from far to near, shattering the eerie atmosphere.
's eyes went wide as she stared in disbelief at the other end of the dam road.
A black sedan with its low beams on was cruising over at a leisurely pace, coming to a smooth stop less than a hundred meters from the administration building.
The headlights lit up the space ahead, where several dozen "water ghosts" were gathered, tentacles waving excitedly toward the car—yet none of them moved forward.
The door opened, and a figure stepped out.
It was a woman.
She wore a clean white business suit, her black high heels clicking crisply against the grime-stained ground.
Her hair was neatly pinned at the back of her head, her makeup immaculate. She looked like an office worker just getting off her shift, utterly out of place in this horrifying world.
The tentacles of the "water ghosts" reached out toward her but stopped about a meter short, then slowly drooped—like employees catching sight of their boss.
stared fixedly at the woman. By now, she no longer believed this could be a rescuer.
How could anyone stay so calm amid a pile of monsters and not be attacked by them?
The woman ignored the monsters around her and walked straight toward the lake. Her high heels crossed the mud and stepped into the dark red water, and the surface quickly closed over her head.
She simply sank straight down into the lake, vanishing completely.
About three minutes later, the woman walked out of the water.
Her soaked hair clung to the sides of her face, and water dripped from the hem of her clothes.
She seemed to be holding something new in her right hand, something that gave off a dim red glow in the moonlight.
squinted desperately, trying to make out what it was, but she was too far away—she could only barely see an irregular outline.
The woman didn't look back at the lake, nor did she seem to care about her drenched clothes.
She calmly opened the car door, apparently about to drive off—but just then, something unexpected happened.
Instead of getting in, the woman suddenly turned her head, her gaze locking with pinpoint precision on the third-floor storage room where and the others were hiding.
Even across dozens of meters of distance and through the filthy glass, felt as though she had truly been seen. In that instant, her hands and feet went ice cold.
Sure enough, the moment the woman drove away, all the "water ghosts" seemed to receive a command. They abruptly turned and, in perfect unison, "looked" at the administration building.
"Go! Move!" warned the other children in a hushed voice, then snatched up the steel rebar, turned, and shoved open the storage room door behind her.
"Head for the stairs on the other side!"
Scared out of their wits, the children scrambled after her, charging toward the fire exit on the other side.
led the way into the safety passage at the other end of the corridor, following the emergency escape route they had planned in advance.
From below came the wet, sticky sound of climbing, and the glass on the first floor shattered with sharp cracks.
"Gurgle!"
A " " was the first to burst into the first-floor lobby, its fleshy appendages sliding rapidly over the smooth floor tiles, leaving a trail of foul, reeking slime.
Then a second, a third... more and more "water ghosts" flooded into the building.
They no longer wandered aimlessly as before, either—they began searching room by room.
led the children in one breathless dash from the third floor down to the first, but when she shoved open the iron door at the end of the fire passage, she discovered in despair that the back exit was already covered with the creatures.
At the same time, a dense succession of squelching sounds came from the stairwell overhead—the sound of "water ghosts" treading on the steps with their fleshy feet.
They had caught up!
Trapped front and back, there was no way out.
" !" With a deep breath, spun around and grabbed the shoulder of a slightly older boy behind her. Her voice was rapid and trembling.
"You take them and run the route we planned. Once I've drawn them off, you run. Got it?"
The boy named froze, his young face utterly panicked. "Big Sis..."
"Remember!" gave her last instruction. "Run as hard as you possibly can!"
With that, she stopped looking at the boy named . She took a deep breath and forced onto her face a smile uglier than crying.
One hand tightened around the short, snapped steel rebar; the other snatched up a broken plastic stool from the corner. Then she yanked open the fire door.
"I'm right here! You monsters! I'll kill every last one of you!"
Her voice rang out clear and loud, her mind completely emptied, and she charged forward for all she was worth.
The two "water ghosts" at the door were drawn to her immediately, the tentacles atop their heads swiveling as one to point at her.
didn't hesitate. She ran straight at one of them and jammed the steel rebar deep into the flesh cocoon of its lower body!
"Thunk!"
The rebar sank in, and dark red fluid burst out instantly.
The " " let out a sharp scream, its upper sac body convulsing violently.
Before it could react, she raised the stool and slammed it into the sac of the second " " on her right.
That one's sac caved in, and it stumbled back two steps.
"Come and get me!"
Seeing that she had successfully drawn the attention of all the monsters, she turned and ran for the outside.
Behind her, the monsters' speed suddenly shot up. From some of their flesh cocoons, masses of thread-like tissue shot out like needles, chasing the girl's fleeing back.
In almost an instant they closed on the desperately running girl, and the dark red threads were about to pierce her back—
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
A continuous volley of gunfire exploded through the silent night like thunder!
The upper sacs of the several "water ghosts" nearest burst on cue, like water balloons popped, splattering green fluids and blurred chunks of tissue everywhere.
The huge impact knocked them off balance, and they crashed to the ground, their threads tangling into a mess.
Someone?!
's eyes snapped open, and she looked toward the source of the gunfire.
A beam of flashlight light tore through the night, illuminating the entrance to the ramp.
Behind the beam were several figures and a modified vehicle.
"Run over here! Quick!" A young man's voice came from that direction.
didn't hesitate. She turned and ran.
***
Earlier. During the day.
, on the border of .
More than forty vehicles of every sort formed a temporary camp, taking up most of the service area parking lot.
A crude defense line of overturned shipping containers and barbed wire enclosed the outer perimeter of the convoy, and several armed Sentinels stood watch at the high points.
At the center of the camp, a young man with a composed, quiet bearing sat in a folding chair, head bent over a paper map on the table.
He wore a gray soft-shell jacket. His features were handsome, but his brow carried a literary, brooding melancholy.
"Brother Chuan! Brother Chuan!" A young man with a ran over, a white plastic bucket in hand, water sloshing inside.
"Something's wrong with the 's water!" The young man thrust the bucket in front of the man.
"What's wrong with it?" The man stopped what he was doing and looked up.
set the bucket on the ground and bent over to catch his breath. "See for yourself."
The man's gaze went to the bucket, and he immediately frowned.
The water in it was an unnatural reddish brown, murky and filthy. Leaning closer, a faint, foul fishy smell could be detected.
"Algal bloom? Or chemical plant pollution from upstream?" The brooding young man muttered to himself, but his tone was perfectly ordinary.
"No idea," the young man said, scratching his head. "I saw something was off, so I didn't dare let the brothers use it straight away. 's a big city—how did its water quality get this bad?"
Their convoy had pushed east all the way from deep in the southwest, crossing two provinces, and they had never seen river water turn like this.
"Who knows?" The man called Brother Chuan shrugged. "Maybe environmental protection was doing fine all along!"
" , bring me the microscope."
The middle-aged man with glasses beside him answered, then took a portable optical microscope out of the trunk of a modified van.
The man took it, drew a drop of the water into a prepared slide, and put it under the eyepiece.
After a series of practiced operations, the man's brow knit even tighter.
"Microorganisms way over the limit—large quantities of unknown red single cells and filament structures." He straightened up and said to the , "Spread the word: stop drawing river water for now. Use up the bottled water on the vehicles first."
"For the river water, try letting it settle with alum first, take the clear water from the top, run it through a filter, then re-test and see what it looks like. We'll decide then."
"Also, take a few men into town to search. Be careful. Focus on large supermarkets and bottled-water plants to replenish our stocks."
"Yes, Brother Chuan." The nodded and left to carry out the order.
The man, meanwhile, returned to the map, studying the 's water-system distribution with a slight frown and deep eyes.
" , where did we last draw water? What was the quality like then?"
The man called thought for a moment. "When we passed the Wanning stretch the day before yesterday, it was still fine. The water quality was normal."
So the water really only started going bad here in .
He went back to the map and examined it carefully once again.
A moment later, he finally made up his mind.
" , !" he called. "Take two vehicles and come out with me."
"Oh! On it!"
***
Three vehicles drove upstream along the riverbank road.
The farther up they went, the darker the river became—shifting from reddish brown to dark red—and the stench in the air grew stronger and stronger.
It made everyone in the vehicles tense up. They all understood that if the had a problem, it threatened far more than just a single city.
Fortunately, the density in the area seemed low. Along the way, they only ran into a few scattered packs of zombies, all easily dispatched by the ram bars on the vehicle fronts and the machine guns mounted on the roofs.
By the time they had tracked the polluted water all the way to the , night had already fallen.
And then they saw the children trapped by the monsters.
"Open fire!"
The man gave the order without hesitation.
The heavy machine gun on the roof spat a lethal stream of fire, precisely shredding the several "water ghosts" that were surrounding .
The sudden attack threw the monster horde into a flurry of confusion.
"Run to me! Quick!"
The young man named leaned half his body out of the driver's seat and yelled at as she ran over.
froze for a second. Survival instinct made her react instantly, and she scrambled toward the car.
But the "water ghosts" reacted faster.
After the brief chaos, they seemed enraged.
The flesh cocoons on the lower bodies of dozens of "water ghosts" contracted violently. The next moment, countless strands of dark red tissue shot out of the cocoons like arrows from a bowstring, aimed straight at !
's pupils shrank. He wrenched the wheel, and the car slid into a clean drift, blocking the attack.
"Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!"
The red barbs struck the steel plates bolted onto the car's body like javelins, sending a teeth-grinding screech through the air.
"What the hell! What are these things?!" shouted from behind.
"Who cares what they are! Retreat!" The lead man yanked the girl into the car and ordered the withdrawal without a second thought.
"Got it!"
let out a low shout and floored the accelerator. The engine roared as the car rammed through several "water ghosts" blocking the way and broke out of the encirclement.
"Behind us! There are still people behind us!" twisted around to look at the building, screaming at the top of her lungs.
"No time!" shouted back, pointing at the rearview mirror. "Look at those things!"
Behind the car, an enormous, pitch-dark army of "water ghosts" was pursuing at a shocking speed.
There were too many of them!
"Shit! I'm already doing sixty! How the hell are these things so fast?!" cursed. " ! Hit them with something hard!"
"On it!"
in the rear car leaned out, shouldered a 40mm rocket launcher, and fired a round into the monster horde behind them.
Boom!
The blaze of fire lit up the entire dam area. A dozen or so "water ghosts" were blown apart, but more were sweeping around from both flanks.
The blast wave briefly stalled the monsters' pursuit. Seizing the chance, drove the car into the underground parking garage of a nearby abandoned office building and quickly killed the engine.
But even with the target out of sight, the monsters didn't seem inclined to leave. Instead, they surrounded the entire building and began searching slowly, relentlessly.
"Little sister, did you kill their parents or something? They're chasing you like you owe them money." muttered, cold sweat seeping from his forehead.
"I don't know... there was a woman, and then... the rest of us ran... they didn't know you were coming..." The rapid-fire shifts in the situation left frantic and muddled—she couldn't explain anything properly.
The man beside her pressed down on her shoulder and said in a gentle tone, "Take it easy. Speak slowly. You're safe now, so there's no rush."
"Start with your name. I'm . What's yours? What's your name?"
With the reassurance of the man named , gradually calmed down. A little nervously, she said, "My name is ."
"I—" The girl didn't get to finish, because the monsters had searched their way over here, and the sound of gunfire cut her off.
and the others had no choice but to break out by car and fight again. Running and shooting, they fell back all the way into town.
The monsters still refused to let up. What was more, the zombies roaming the county town were also drawn by the gunfire and explosions and joined the chase.
They fled until the sky began to lighten, when they were finally forced to take shelter on the third floor of a shopping mall.
-type zombies scaled the walls, and picked them off one by one with precise shots. For now, the defensive line was still holding.
But their ammunition was running low.
was so nervous he was drenched in sweat. "Brother Chuan, what do we do now?"
"What do we do? How am I supposed to know?!" said between aimed shots. "Either way, the thing to do is hold out! and the rest will definitely find us."
"As long as we hold out until—" didn't finish. A piercing shriek interrupted him.
"Shoom—boom!"
A rocket, trailing a long tail of fire, flew in from the east side of the street and landed squarely in the middle of the horde below.
The fierce explosion sent dozens of zombies, along with several "water ghosts," flying into the air, shredded flesh and dust rising in a towering column of smoke.
Everyone—even the monsters outside—was stunned by the sudden attack.
and the others instinctively looked up toward where the rocket had come from.
Dawn was just breaking, pale golden sunlight tracing a silhouette along the city's edge.
There, atop the ruins of a half-collapsed building, a figure covered head to toe in silver-gray armor, an absurdly large rocket launcher on his shoulder, stood bathed in the morning light like a god descending to the mortal world.
Then the "iron man" took the rocket launcher off his shoulder with one hand and set it at his feet.
He raised a hand and pressed the side of his helmet. The crackle of a loudspeaker came online, carrying clearly into everyone's ears.
"Hey! Anyone there? I followed the signs of the firefight here!"
"If you're still alive, make some noise!"