Chapter1

Before the acrid smell of the bullet piercing my skull had even dissipated from my nose, I was struck hard on the back by the butt of a rifle.

I'm not dead ?

My knees were hitting the hard, gravelly ground, and my nostrils were filled with the familiar smell of cheap industrial oil from the Fifth Checkpoint.

"You only have half of your weekly quota for clearing out enemies, and you still want more food?"

On the platform ten meters away, Hale exhaled a puff of cigar smoke, not even glancing at me. "The Fifth Checkpoint doesn't tolerate useless stars. Disqualify Ethan from passage and throw him out of the gate."

The guard pressed the barrel of his gun against the back of my head and pushed me outwards.

I stood up from the ground without resisting, and used the movement of getting up to glance around.

The machine gunner at the eastern sentry post was not on duty, and the tower was empty.

The corrosion on pipeline D at the oil depot on the left was much greater than I remembered, and high-pressure gas was continuously leaking out of the crack.

Looking up at the sky, thick, dark green cumulus clouds had pressed down to the edge of the camp, and the acid rain belt had arrived a full ten hours earlier than in his previous life. Hale was sitting on a powder keg about to explode.

"Clang!"

Two guards pushed me out of the way, and the heavy steel gate was tightly shut behind me.

I had barely taken five steps.

"boom--"

A deafening roar tore through the air. The oil depot had exploded.

The enormous fireball shot more than 30 meters into the air in an instant, and the high-temperature blast wave generated by the explosion directly overturned the pipeline area, twisting the railing of the high platform where Hale was standing into a pretzel.

The alarm immediately blared throughout the camp. Hale was dragged out of the rubble by his men, his forehead covered in blood. Through the iron bars, he spotted me unharmed outside the gate.

Without the slightest hesitation, he yelled into the camp's loudspeaker: "It was this bastard who did it! Ethan sabotaged the fuel supply! Snipers on the east flank, fire! Kill him!"

Bang!

A 5.56mm bullet instantly shattered the rock behind my heel.

They didn't know there were no snipers on the east side. I turned and ran, cutting directly into the 50-meter blind spot on the left. Bullets could only sweep across the ground like blind men. I climbed onto the roof of an abandoned pickup truck, gripped the edge of the barbed wire with both hands, used the momentum to flip over the breakwater, landed with a tactical roll, and steadily took cover behind the outer concrete roadblock.

Hale behind him was still cursing in a helpless rage, but the wind suddenly shifted in the direction in front.

A nauseating stench hit me. I looked up, my gaze passing over the abandoned car frames along Highway 89.

Under the pale, gray light of the sky, the entire highway was filled with a dark, surging tide. Thousands upon thousands of zombies were charging forward, propelled by the early arrival of the acid rain's vanguard. Their roars merged together, shaking the ground.

This is a new wave of zombies.

In my previous life, I died on this dead-end road, caught between bullets and zombies. Hale and his gang of idiots only ever saw zombies as an endless source of infection until their deaths.

Only I now know that deep within the skulls of these monsters lie glowing "crystal cores." These are the true hard currency of the apocalypse, and the only key to unlocking time manipulation abilities.

Hale thought that cutting off my rations and right of passage was tantamount to sentencing me to death.

I drew the tactical straight knife from the outside of my thigh and wiped the mud and water off the blade.

First, survive and kill a lone craniotomy victim. Once I get the crystal core and have leverage, I'll personally go back and uproot Hale's chair.