Chapter 63: The Advancing Tide of Corpses

Chapter 63: The Advancing Horde of the Dead

There was no doubt about it; the shelter was a temporary and hastily constructed affair.

Under the direction of Umbrella operatives, the terrified refugees stumbled inside.

With a swift flash, Luo Ke slipped away and concealed himself in the backyard of a nearby house, completely unnoticed by anyone.

Inside the shelter.

It had looked perfunctory from the outside, but the interior was even more rudimentary. Forget about food or drinks; there wasn't even a single chair. It looked and felt precisely like a barren warehouse.

The problems were glaringly obvious, but faced with the chilling, dark barrels of assault rifles, no one dared to stick their neck out.

Thousands of people were packed tightly together like a tin of expired, rotting sardines. The overpowering stench of sweat and unwashed feet made the air feel as toxic as poison gas.

The refugees retched continuously, some choking so hard that tears streamed down their faces.

Bang—

The moment the final refugee stepped inside, the heavy iron door slammed shut and was securely locked.

Panic instantly erupted among the crowd, who began hammering frantically against the walls.

"What do you think you're doing?!"

"Has Umbrella lost its mind?! My husband is a Wall Street tycoon!"

"Get me my lawyer! I have the right to appeal!"

"This is the Land of the Free! You cannot act so lawlessly!"

They exhausted every threat they could muster, desperately trying to cling to a shred of hope.

Aaron's mocking laughter drifted in from the outside. "Ha, if this weren't the Land of the Free, we wouldn't have the audacity to do this."

Hiding in the shadows, Luo Ke nearly burst out laughing. The Umbrella folks actually possessed a shred of self-awareness; being backstabbed by one's own people in the Land of the Free was quite a sight.

"Don't worry, you aren't going to die. You'll just be living in a different way!" Aaron's voice vanished.

Then came the sound that sent everyone scrambling.

Hiss...

Thick, billowing fog poured out from several sprinkler heads mounted on the ceiling.

"Cover your noses!"

"Dad! Mom!"

"Overthrow the tyrannical Umbrella!"

In the blink of an eye, the mist filled the entire room. Those who inhaled it wept bitterly; those who inhaled it collapsed.

In less than ten seconds, every single person hit the floor, knocked completely unconscious. Anywhere from ten minutes to a few hours later, they would stagger back to their feet, rush into the city, and begin the infiltration.

Aaron curled his lip coldly. "Open the door, then fall back."

However, before they could make a move, they felt the ground begin to shake violently.

Under their bewildered gazes, several human-like figures sprinted around a distant street corner, leaping across a pile of crashed cars. At first glance, they looked like wild monkeys driven mad by rabies.

"Are there still survivors we missed?" Aaron frowned.

At that moment, an Umbrella operative lowered his binoculars, trembling in absolute horror as he stammered, "Boss, those... those don't look like people."

Aaron's eyelids twitched. "Speak clearly! Stop cutting your sentences in half!"

"Zombies! They're zombies!"

The two Umbrella operatives guarding the checkpoint suddenly roared, opening fire as they frantically retreated.

At least a thousand zombies surged around the corner, coalescing into a terrifying horde. They thrashed their arms, lunged their upper bodies forward, and sprinted with an astonishing, death-defying speed.

Boom!

A massive group of zombies also burst from the adjacent woods, tackling the two guards to the ground and tearing into them.

Under Aaron's disbelieving gaze, his two subordinates lay limp on the ground, twitching as if suffering from severe seizures, only to spring back to their feet within ten seconds to join the increasingly terrifying horde.

"It's those mutated zombies they mentioned!" Aaron snapped to action. "Shoot! Open fire!"

Bang, bang, bang—

Bullets wove a dense barrage of fire, and successive grenade explosions blasted several craters into the zombie horde, but the gaps were filled almost instantly.

"There are more appearing over there!"

"Shit! There are some behind us, too!"

"Wait, those in the forest aren't zombies... Brown bears? Tigers? They're animals! Animal zombies?!"

The horde swarmed in from all directions, cutting off their retreat path.

Some Umbrella operatives tried to run for the helicopters, but they were no match for the erratic, fast-moving zombies, and were quickly torn apart and devoured.

Several bloodied, muscular brown bears leaped onto a helicopter, smashing the rotor blades to pieces with just three heavy swipes of their paws.

On his way here, Luo Ke had coincidentally encountered dozens upon dozens of wild beasts in the mountains. As it happened, these creatures lacked common sense and wanted to pick a fight with him.

Adhering to the principle of "if the beasts don't attack me, I won't attack the beasts," he graciously bestowed upon them the option to evolve (against their will).

Who would have thought that the moment he stepped out of the forest, he would run into an Umbrella bus? He had proactively waved the vehicle down, hopped aboard with great enthusiasm, and even warmly greeted the brother who opened the door for him.

Oh, that brother was currently on the ground, being licked by eight erratic zombies.

He must have deeply felt Luo Ke's burning enthusiasm by now.

Rumble...

The entire mountain forest trembled. Aaron and his remaining men watched in helpless despair as the number of zombies continued to multiply.

Three thousand, five thousand, eight thousand, ten thousand... fifteen thousand, twenty thousand!

And it still wasn't over. Once tens of thousands of the undead fully emerged, the nearby roads and woodlands were packed shoulder-to-shoulder, leaving not an inch of empty space.

The advancing horde of the dead!

They weren't just attacking the Umbrella personnel; a portion of them split off to smash surveillance cameras, while another group circled around to destroy their communication equipment.

"Gulp." Aaron swallowed hard, paralyzed by a terror so intense that his assault rifle slipped straight from his trembling hands as he fumbled frantically for the sidearm at his waist.

"What do we do?" asked a curly-haired operative with a tearful whine.

Bang!

A bald operative put a bullet through his own head, seeking an early release.

Having set the precedent, two more men chose suicide in rapid succession, while another pulled the pin on a grenade and charged straight into the zombie horde.

Soon, Aaron was the only one left alive.

Several two-meter-tall, grotesquely muscular zombies approached with low growls. The thick bone blades piercing through the skin of their joints made Aaron feel as though he were suffocating.

Aaron emptied his magazine, but even when his bullets struck the skull of a bone-blade zombie, they lacked the sheer kinetic energy to pierce the dense bone.

Filled with despair, he closed his eyes and awaited death.

"What's going on?" Aaron suddenly realized he wasn't being torn apart and devoured; instead, he was hoisted onto a zombie's shoulder and carried away.

Since he wasn't dead yet, a spark of hope reignited in his chest. He fished out a dagger, planning to break free. If he could just hurl himself down into the river at the nearby cliff, he might have a one-in-ten chance of survival.

Slap!

The dagger was knocked from his hand, leaving Aaron completely stunned.

How could these zombies be this smart? Were they being controlled by someone?

Then, Aaron panicked even more.

Because he had been thrown back inside the shelter!

The sight of the people lying haphazardly all around him filled him with an even deeper, bone-chilling dread.

He was dead for sure, but before death took him, he was doomed to endure the agonizing torture of anticipation.

"Pardon me, would you like to apply for legal aid?" Luo Ke tapped on the door frame, letting out a low chuckle.

Aaron felt a chill shoot straight from his tailbone to his brain, the overwhelming terror suffocating his lungs.

"Who... who are you?!" He tried to contact headquarters, only to discover that the communication device on his body had already been crushed to dust by a bone-blade zombie.

"Never mind who I am, worry about yourself first," Luo Ke smiled.

Awakened by the dread, Aaron snapped his head around.

Behind him, a dense crowd of "people" stood silently, staring at him with unblinking, single-minded focus.

...

Broadcasting networks around the world.

"We have received an anonymous tip along with several video recordings concerning Raccoon City, provided by an anchor from Raccoon City Channel 7."

"The disaster in Raccoon City is suspected to have been caused by the Umbrella Corporation!"

However, shortly after the news broadcast aired, all reports uniformly shifted to the following narrative:

"New evidence has now clarified the previous reports. It was nothing more than a tasteless prank; the video tapes were entirely fabricated, meant to fool the public and make a mockery of a real tragedy!"

"A severe malfunction occurred at the nuclear power plant reactor—this is the greatest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl!"

"The governor has personally expressed gratitude to the Umbrella Corporation for their rapid response!"

"The masterminds behind the hoax—Alice, Charles, Valentine, and Carlos—are currently wanted fugitives! They are inextricably linked to the meltdown at the power plant."

(End of this chapter)