Chapter 38: Christmas Mask
Even the slowest among them now understood what was happening.
A zombie had infiltrated their gang.
But their leader was writhing on the ground, incapacitated, and no one was in charge.
“Boom—”
Just as someone was trying to rally the remaining gang members, the truck exploded a second time.
This explosion ripped the overturned truck in half, sending flaming debris flying.
And Lin Jiayao, now getting the hang of using a gun, calmly fired, picking off the remaining gang members one by one.
She could now consistently hit targets within 10 meters, a decent achievement for a firearms novice.
This was thanks to Mask’s enhanced strength, which kept the gun steady, almost eliminating recoil.
The scene, like something out of hell, terrified the survivors.
They were experts at brutalizing humans, but dealing with a zombie attack was another matter.
They had tried shooting back, but the target was just a pale head.
And the head had even used numerous bone spikes to shield its face, leaving only slits for its eyes—like a bone helmet.
How were they supposed to hit that?!
None of them were sharpshooters capable of threading a bullet through those slits, and shooting the body or arms didn’t even make it flinch.
That wasn’t its real body; even if they blew it to pieces, they wouldn’t harm it.
What a bullshit zombie, so unfair!
The remaining seven or eight gang members climbed over the barrier and scattered across the abandoned fields beside the highway.
They didn’t try to escape by car. The monster, controlling “Cheng Lu,” had placed jerrycans all the way to their convoy, and now the entire convoy was on fire.
Their only hope was to scatter and pray that some of them would survive.
Seeing them flee, Lin Jiayao quickly abandoned the burning body, unfurled her ten pairs of bone legs, and gave chase.
These gang members probably never dreamed they would be the ones being hunted.
They were fast, but they weren’t Awakened; they couldn’t outrun Lin Jiayao.
It was like a jumping spider hunting ants—their mobility wasn’t even on the same level.
Not to mention Lin Jiayao’s 150-meter range Bone Spike Lurker.
“No! Please, I beg you! AAAAAH!”
The last gang member, collapsing in the grass, soiled himself in terror as Lin Jiayao caught up.
He even pleaded with the emotionless zombie.
But he could only watch as the merciless bone chain hook pierced his skull, extinguishing his last hope.
「Extraction Time 00:09:10」
【Extraction Point: 387m】
Ten minutes until extraction, and the extraction point, a village, was almost 400 meters away.
But hadn’t one of the gang members said that the two men from the truck had escaped to the village?
Why had the system designated the village as the extraction point?
There were humans there who could pose a threat to Mask.
Or had the system already determined that those two were dead? Had it predicted all of this hours ago?
She would know if there were any humans there once she used Bone Spike Lurker to scan the area. If there were, she would eliminate them.
Lin Jiayao didn’t rush to the extraction point. Instead, she crawled back towards the burning convoy.
The entire lane was engulfed in flames, but several people were still lying on the ground, moaning and crawling.
Lin Jiayao reached the front of the convoy, raised a bone spike, and severed the leader’s head. The head rolled to the side.
Then, she connected Mask’s head to the severed head and stood up, controlling the Awakened’s body.
Feeling the strength, roughly equivalent to a Sprinter that had consumed 10g of blood crystals, Lin Jiayao estimated the E-rank Awakened’s capabilities.
Much stronger than an ordinary human or a Biter, but not as strong as an evolved mutated zombie.
Lin Jiayao then took the blood-red spray-painted rifle from the leader’s back and aimed at the moaning and still figures on the ground.
“Rat-tat-tat-tat—”
One shot to the head for each. Lin Jiayao controlled Mask and eliminated everyone, until the only sound she could hear through Bone Spike Lurker was the crackling of flames.
“Boom—”
Another explosion erupted from the burning vehicles, leaving little of value to scavenge.
Lin Jiayao used her bone spikes to remove the leader’s ammo vest and belt, took the rifle from his back, and hung them all on the bone spikes extending from her neck.
After collecting a few usable weapons and ammunition, Lin Jiayao, laden with weapons and magazines, walked towards the village.
The weapons clinked and clanked against each other as she moved.
From a distance, Mask, with her bone spikes spread out and laden with items, looked like a Christmas tree…
Only the ornaments were firearms.
And instead of a star on top, there was a pale head.
Reaching a point about 10 meters from the extraction point, Lin Jiayao saw it: a dilapidated ancestral hall in the village.
It looked like a place for ancestral worship.
But before entering, she detected something unusual with her Bone Spike Lurker.
The creaking of wood.
Someone there?
Glancing at the extraction time, she had five minutes. She decided to eliminate the potential threat first.
“Clang—Clatter—”
Clinking and clanking, Lin Jiayao quickly crawled towards the source of the sound.
But she found it strange that despite the noise she was making, the creaking remained steady and rhythmic.
Along the way, she saw several Biter corpses, their wounds fresh.
Soon, Lin Jiayao reached the source of the sound.
It was a dilapidated small hut. The red-painted wooden door was barely hanging on its hinges, two sets of adult footprints visible in the dust at the entrance.
She pushed open the door with a bone spike. The interior was clearly visible.
A short, thin man lay dead, clutching a knife embedded in his abdomen, his face contorted in a grimace of anger and disbelief.
In front of him were two elderly Biter corpses, their heads cleaved open by the knife.
But the two Biter corpses were neatly arranged, their withered hands crossed over their chests.
And in the center of the hut, a tall, sturdy figure hung from a rope, his lower body soiled, clearly dead.
The creaking sound came from the rafters, strained by the weight of the hanging body.
Clearly, this man had been the last one alive, but the reason for his suicide was unclear.
Lin Jiayao didn’t want to speculate. She’d seen too much death and separation in the apocalypse.
After five years, even the not-so-sentimental Lin Jiayao had become numb.
Confirming there were no survivors, Lin Jiayao closed the door and returned to the extraction point.
「Extracting in: 6.2」
When the extraction was complete, Lin Jiayao put a loaded pistol into the safehouse and opened her eyes.
Her sister was gone from the bed beside her.
…
Leave a Reply