Chapter3

"Sizzle—"

A few drops of dark green acid rain slammed heavily against the windshield, instantly sending up acrid white smoke. The glass surface was instantly corroded, developing spiderweb-like cracks.

"You're insane! You're absolutely insane!"

Mechanic Mason gripped the steering wheel tightly, the pickup truck's tires spinning wildly on the muddy road. He glanced at the half-melted windshield wiper blade stuck to the glass, his voice trembling with despair: "Five kilometers from the checkpoint, the minefield, the craters, and that perfect wrecked car cover... you didn't read the road signs at all! What do you know?!"

"Shut up. Turn the steering wheel to the left and drive straight east."

I sat in the passenger seat, pulled a loaded Glock pistol from my tactical bag, and didn't even spare him a second glance.

I did die on this road in a past life.

“I can’t go east!” Mason slammed on the brakes, and the pickup truck swerved violently due to inertia, crashing into an abandoned railing on the side of the road.

I looked up, and less than four hundred meters ahead at the end of the road, a grayish-white fog was churning wildly. Thousands upon thousands of twisted black shadows surged forth like a flood bursting its banks—a horde of zombies driven mad by the acid rain. They crowded and trampled, their throats emitting chilling roars.

At the same time, three blinding beams of light suddenly appeared in the rearview mirror.

Hale's armored convoy had caught up with the road, and heavy machine guns were aimed at the rear of our vehicle.

Thousands of zombies lie ahead, and elite pursuers are closing in. This is the Highway of Death.

"Damn it! The hood's burned through!" Mason yelled in terror. The high concentration of acid rain had completely melted the radiator, a black fireball erupted from the front of the car, and the engine was completely destroyed.

"Abandon the vehicle!"

I kicked open the deformed car door, grabbed Mason by the collar, and dragged him into the ruins of the nearby overpass.

He had barely run twenty meters when the acid rain had already made the soil beneath his feet sticky. From the shadows to his left, a lone mutated zombie suddenly leaped high from behind a discarded tire, its barbed claws aimed straight at Mason's face.

"Ah!" Mason screamed in terror, instinctively raising his rifle and pulling the trigger.

"Click!"

The damp firing pin made a clear, hollow sound. It jammed.

The gaping maw dripping with foul-smelling slime instantly magnified in Mason's pupils. He closed his eyes in despair.

I didn't even blink.

Instead of retreating, I advanced, stepping forward with my left foot and using the slippery mud to dodge half my body, perfectly cutting in just past the edge of the zombie's slashing claws. I didn't even draw my gun; I was only gripping a rebar about the thickness of my thumb.

The moment it missed its target, I had already circled around to its blind spot.

"Pfft!"

Without any extra movement, the steel bar pierced diagonally from the base of its skull joint without any obstruction, going straight into its brain. With a casual twist, I instantly destroyed its central nervous system.

The zombie collapsed at my feet like a rotten lump of mud, its bones seemingly removed. It twitched twice before dying.

Mason collapsed into the mud, panting heavily, looking at me as if I were some kind of monster. He hadn't even seen how I dodged and turned the tables in a fraction of a second.

I ignored him and decisively pulled out the steel bar.

From the rotten flesh churning in the throat, a crystal core emitting a faint blue light rolled out.

I clenched it into my palm.

"Buzz—"

In that instant, that extreme sense of trembling exploded once again along my central nervous system! The faint light instantly entered my palm, and I could clearly feel my optic nerve throbbing.

This is the second charge.

The ability assessment instantly solidified in my mind: effective radius, three meters; stationary time, 0.5 seconds.

It sounds incredibly short, but in this life-or-death melee, even a fraction of a second of pause is enough for me to dominate the battlefield.

"Stand up! Follow me!" I grabbed Mason and pulled him up from the ground.

"Where are we going?! There are zombies everywhere ahead!" Mason pointed desperately at the vanguard of monsters that had already surged ten meters away.

"Charge!"

I didn't give him the right to refuse, and pushed him directly into the edge of the densest horde of corpses.

Three zombies rushed at us from the front at the same time!

I suddenly focused my attention.

The world was instantly veiled by a silver-gray filter. Raindrops hovered in mid-air, the distorted faces of zombies were frozen in front of them, and the foul-smelling saliva they spewed solidified like hailstones.

In that absolute stillness of 0.5 seconds, I pressed down on Mason's nape, forcing him to crouch and avoid the sweeping claws. At the same time, I took a side step and spun slightly, precisely shattering the kneecaps of two zombies with the steel bar in my hand.

Time flow restored!

"Bang! Bang!"

The two zombies instantly lost their balance and crashed heavily onto their companion, tearing a gap in the impenetrable web of zombies.

"Go!" I shouted as I used the momentum to move forward.

In the next thirty seconds, Mason felt the world around him completely turn upside down. Countless times, he thought the monster's teeth were already pressed against his neck, but in that split second, I always managed to push him away, dodge, or use the simplest straight punch to disrupt the zombie's balance with an absurd speed that defied the laws of physics.

We darted like two eels along the edge of a horde of corpses that resembled a meat grinder, slipping through the most dangerous hot zone and plunging headfirst into the depths of an abandoned bridge arch beneath the highway.

"Huff...huff...you...you f***ing, are you a human or a ghost..." Mason slid down against the moss-covered stone wall, his hands and feet still trembling uncontrollably, and his gaze toward me had changed from shock to extreme awe.

I didn't answer him, but took a deep breath to suppress the slight dizziness caused by using my abilities continuously.

Just as I was about to check the remaining amount of crystal nuclei, my pupils suddenly contracted.

"Whoosh!"

Three extremely imposing beams of high-pressure searchlights, like the sword of death, swept into the bridge archway without warning, pinning our shadows firmly to the wall.

Immediately following was the deep roar of the heavy armored vehicle's engine, and the cold click of an anti-aircraft machine gun being cocked. Hale, leading the team himself, had actually managed to pinpoint the location directly above the bridge arch.

In the darkness beyond the beam of light, countless blood-red eyes lit up at the other three exits of the bridge arch. Hundreds upon hundreds of zombies, drawn by the scent of the living, blocked all escape routes.

The real impasse has only just begun.