Chapter 107: Accelerating War Preparations
In , the anomalous fog zone that had always sat quietly in the heart of the area had drifted at some unknown point.
It had shifted roughly three hundred meters toward , then stopped and gone still once more.
The shift was not large, and it had already come to a stop, so 's drones had not detected this tiny anomaly right away.
Staring at the image on the screen, the room fell into dead silence.
The newer arrivals had never faced the danger of head-on, but they all knew of the monster lurking right on their doorstep.
So at this moment, everyone understood full well what a change in could mean.
A creature with an estimated body size of over two hundred meters—this was not something a second-stage or could match.
For a long time, it had stayed silent within the bounds of , so much so that everyone had come to treat it as part of the scenery.
But now it had moved—and that meant they were about to lose their minds!
"Any other anomalies?" pressed.
[Flesh tissue has already covered nearly every building in the entire ,] replied calmly. [Ordinary zombies are almost nowhere to be seen on the streets.]
[Everything has been replaced by several kinds of brand-new flesh mutants.] pulled up an aerial view captured by a drone at high altitude.
Streets whose building outlines could once still be made out were now completely covered in dark-red muscle tissue.
Writhing blood vessels climbed across the walls; pulsing membranes of flesh had replaced the glass curtain walls.
And amid that thicket of flesh, brand-new mutants of every conceivable shape were slowly roaming.
They were unlike any monster seen before—as grotesque as if assorted internal organs had sprouted limbs.
There were slithering, tube-shaped monsters like enormous intestines, masses of eyeball-type monsters flying low in the air, and enormous centipede-like things creeping along like animated spinal columns—the list went on.
[For now, it has sunk back into calm. There is no sign that it will keep moving.]
"But something has definitely happened—or is happening right now." rose to his feet, his gaze locked hard on the in the image.
"I'll produce a complete contingency plan for the defense of and counterattack against as soon as possible."
"In addition, I recommend that, starting today, the boundary between and be placed on Level One alert.
"All defensive fortifications under construction must be accelerated. will commit itself fully to building the defensive line.
"That thing is too big. If war breaks out, we must do everything possible to keep it from setting foot in ."
[I agree.]
"I agree too!"
"..."
voiced his approval first, and the others quickly followed suit.
The meeting's atmosphere instantly shifted from the ease of "reviewing the past and looking to the future" to the tension of a great battle about to begin.
Everyone knew that once the problem erupted, it would inevitably be a decisive battle that determined whether the lived or died.
So before the crisis erupted, every operation had to speed up.
***
The day after the meeting, the entire operating tempo of abruptly accelerated.
No one knew what challenges that great beast would bring, but everyone understood that they had to stockpile more strength before it flipped the table for good.
Survivors sent back from in batches began to be absorbed into the at an accelerated pace, and long lines formed outside the .
The temporary administrative team led by worked from morning to night—verifying identities, arranging housing, and assigning positions.
Even with 's assistance, it was still a complicated job.
The more than one thousand intellectually impaired survivors were ultimately housed together on the converted care floors of , with dedicated caretakers assigned to look after them in shifts. Their lives were simple but orderly.
Some of them could handle simple manual work; others just sat quietly, staring blankly out the windows.
On the whole, nothing caused any trouble.
***
To the southwest— .
stood atop a tank, gazing at the blocks ahead that gunfire had plowed into scorched earth. The air was thick with the mingled smell of gun smoke and burned protein.
"Second Squad, advance three hundred meters and set up a temporary defense line! Third Squad, mop up the remnants!" His orders reached every team member through their identity cards.
On the ground, thirty-six main battle tanks formed a torrent of steel, easily crushing all resistance along the way.
Any that dared to show its head would, the next second, be blasted into a sky full of fragments by a 125 mm main gun.
In the sky, the swept like a cruising falcon, leading a metallic cloud of more than ten thousand drones, pouring a deadly rain of lasers and explosions onto every corner of the city.
And behind them, a bare-bones mother platform had already been erected.
Countless replicating drones busily darted back and forth, breaking down the metal in the ruins, devouring it, and converting it into more of their own kind.
In just a few days, nearly all of 's large mutants had been basically wiped out, and zombies, in droves, were turned into warm, disposable repair tools.
And so, a miraculous sight simply came to pass in .
As the fighting neared its end, a survivor who had desperately held out for months, hearing the commotion above ground at last die down, plucked up his courage and pushed open a manhole cover.
Before his eyes, there was no longer a single living —only drone swarms filling the sky and squad after squad of strangers in black exoskeletons, like soldiers from the future.
"You... who are you..." His voice was hoarse; he could hardly believe his eyes.
A soldier stopped, handed him a bottle of water and a compressed energy bar, and said in a clear, steady voice: " of City, ordered to retake .
"Don't worry. You're safe now."
The survivor took the supplies in a daze. Watching the backs of the troops as they kept pushing forward, his eyes grew hot, and he collapsed straight onto the ground.
Farther off, in an office building, more than twenty survivors were packed into an office on the eighth floor.
Half an hour earlier, they had been fighting for their lives against zombies breaking through the door, certain there was no hope left.
But then a blasted a hole through from the floor above and dropped down. Its rotary machine gun swung half a turn and, within six seconds, cleared every in the room.
Then the robot's spherical camera turned toward them, and a steady electronic voice came from its speaker:
"This is the rescue force of the . You're safe."
One campaign, and 's survivors had been rescued before they had even processed what was happening.
The whole thing was basically: totally dazed, no idea what was going on—but hey, the official side was badass!
Meanwhile, in .
's had completed its final mopping-up work and gathered roughly three thousand survivors.
Then, without pause, the convoy replenished its ammunition and moved out directly westward, charging with the same thunderous momentum toward a new target— .
At the junction of and , had already led and a batch of newly replenished troops into building a new defensive line.
Row after row of solid fortifications rose from the ground, and countless gun platforms and heavy firepoints formed an iron Great Wall.
The entire was like a war machine ramped to full power. Everyone's heart was strung tight, each person striving to be a little faster.
In the past, they had more or less known that the situation was terrible, but they had never had a clear grasp of just how terrible.
Somewhere in their hearts, they had still hoped that, out there, a national main force of sufficient scale was still fighting.
But that map had shattered everyone's illusions.
No one held any wishful thinking anymore. They only wanted to raise the 's strength a little more.
If there really was no great army left out there, then they themselves were the great army!
***
Even as everyone sped up, scattered vehicles and people on foot kept appearing on the roads around the outskirts of City.
The seeds of hope, once sown, will always take root and sprout.
The cards had deliberately distributed earlier were finally beginning to show results.
The first group to reach the outer sentry post of was a band of more than thirty.
At its head was an old veteran whose legs were not in good shape, using a steel pipe as a cane, followed by a crowd of gaunt, sallow-faced men, women, and children.
After them came a small convoy of seven or eight battered trucks and off-road vehicles, led by a police officer named .
After the catastrophe, he had gathered the few colleagues left at his police station and built up a survivor group of more than forty, scraping by with difficulty in the ruins.
From then on, convoys like this appeared every day—people clutching the cards they had found, coming to with their last shred of hope.
They were travel-stained and ragged.
Some drove vans that were on the verge of falling apart; some pushed homemade handcarts.
Some came in crowds of dozens; others were small bands of three or five huddling together.
And when they stepped into , every one of them would, without exception, stop in their tracks and stare in a daze at the scene before them.
Smooth, clean asphalt roads, with Robots patrolling automatically along both sides.
In the distance, the towering black loomed like an insurmountable mountain range. Along its walls, cold gun muzzles glistened with a metallic sheen in the sunlight.
There were no half-naked "burdens," no law of the jungle, and no numb, despairing eyes.
Patrolling soldiers wore identical standard-issue gear and radiated energy;
workers passing by might have looked tired, but their eyes held no fear—they even had the leisure to chat about what to have for lunch.
It was like a world utterly different from the apocalypse outside.
"Welcome to ."
Then the security squad member in charge of reception would promptly step forward to conduct the routine questioning and registration.
"This is the outer security checkpoint of . Please cooperate with registration and a basic health examination.
"After passing the inspection, dedicated personnel will arrange your housing and meals.
"Please be assured: here, as long as you follow the rules and contribute your labor, you will receive the respect and security you deserve."
Whenever this happened, most survivors reacted the same way.
First they would freeze, then choke up, and some would even burst into tears.
They had finally found a place where they no longer needed to run—a place where they would not be treated as burdens to be casually discarded.