Chapter 84: A Million Zombies Mutate! The Semi-Classic Mutation Begins

A two-kilometer stretch of the Capital Airport Expressway between Sanyuan Bridge and Xiangyu Middle School had been cleared for the operation. The tank battalion was stationed at the entrance, waiting for the soldiers to retreat one by one. The bridge was overrun with zombies. Then, with a roar of engines, the tanks surged forward, crushing over mounds of corpses. Occasionally, a hatch would open, and a soldier wielding a long-handled saber would hack away the zombies, revealing trapped comrades within. Barbed fishing nets were thrown out, and the tanks’ winches were used to haul the soldiers aboard, then reverse, handing them over to the troops behind the defensive line. Tank after tank rushed forward, halted, rescued the trapped, then retreated. The zombies on the road were mashed into pulp, their dark blood and flesh streaming down the bridge. Sometimes, a soldier on top of a tank would accidentally fall onto the bridge, forced to await the next rescue run.

Once all the soldiers were saved, it was time for the tanks to perform their deadly dance on the bridge—charging, rampaging, flattening the remaining zombies, then withdrawing to the entrance to await the next wave. When the bridge was again swarming with the undead, the tanks would realign and repeat the process.

The mobile inspection unit dispatched by the Ministry of Science and Technology reported that the soldiers were in no mortal danger and showed no signs of infection. They had merely been crushed by a surge of abnormally strong zombies pressing in together.

Though most of the Ministry’s recommendations had so far been more fanciful than practical, Li Fengyi still breathed a sigh of relief.

Now that the cause was clear, Li Fengyi decided to bind several soldiers together so that no single one could be easily seized by the zombies. They would form a formation reminiscent of a three-headed, six-armed figure and push deep into the horde. He remembered a pre-apocalypse team-building exercise where participants were tied together with ropes; if they didn’t cooperate closely, the activity would fail, but with tight coordination, success was possible.

In a crisis, if the leaders faltered, morale would collapse and all would perish.

He leapt onto the roof of a roadside car and shouted, “Form teams of three! Stand back-to-back and tie yourselves together with rope!”

Seeing the hesitance and fear in the soldiers’ eyes, he called out, “Party members, step forward!”

Thanks to Commander Liu’s rigorous efforts at recruiting new Party members in the field, many soldiers immediately stepped up. Li waved over two guards and demonstrated, tying them together. “Just like this! Three people, back-to-back, tied together! Then follow me in!”

He untied the rope, jumped down with the guards, then retied himself. The soldiers behind began binding themselves together as well.

When the tanks had crushed another wave and cleared the road of zombies, Li Fengyi led the teams forward. They advanced no more than five hundred meters before the zombies surged back, but this time, no one was knocked down. The zombies struggled to grab hold, but with the soldiers locked in their three-headed, six-armed formation, they had no way to seize a target. The tight defense protected them from all sides, and the teams fought in place. The soldiers farther back, seeing the effectiveness of the tactic, quickly formed into trios and pressed deeper into the horde.

The new tactical formation was promptly relayed to all units.

To prepare for the tireless undead and their nocturnal assaults, the Ministry of Industry restored power to the streetlights in the area, enabling the battle to continue under their glare through the night.

By a little after 10 p.m., half the stretch of road between Sanyuan Bridge and Siyuan Bridge had been retaken.

Suddenly, a thunderous shout erupted from the northern units—the remaining zombies had broken through! Though the soldiers there had also formed trios to block the horde, the relentless, desperate surge of the undead, unconcerned with their own survival, broke through the shallow lines. Nearly two hundred thousand zombies burst northward like a flood of mercury.

Zombies cared nothing for roads; they moved in straight lines. Human pursuers, however, had to consider light, terrain, exhaustion, and more. By the time vehicles circled around to the north, the horde had already vanished into the distance.

All night, reports from sentries north of Sanyuan Bridge described the zombie horde’s passage, tracing a straight line on the map. The undead avoided neither rivers nor buildings, making a beeline for the Huairou mountains.

The Special Committee ordered the Ministry of Armed Forces and the United Front Department to urgently notify the Huairou region of the zombies’ movement and their latest evolutionary developments, along with the effective response involving chainmail-armored soldiers. With the success of this tactic, all human bases were notified; those with the industrial capacity and skilled personnel had already begun producing chainmail, sabers, and iron-bar rifles. Though Huairou’s output was still low, they now had a contingent of chainmail-armored soldiers.

Before midnight, the Special Committee's sentries in southern Huairou reported a massive zombie incursion crossing the border, racing north along the G101 highway at a speed surpassing the fastest human sprinters since the apocalypse. The horde passed through before any interception was possible.

In just over an hour, the zombie horde had sprinted more than forty kilometers, leaving Beijing behind and entering the mountains.

A survivor from the sports university remarked that if he took performance enhancers, he could just about finish a marathon at that speed. He kept his last thought to himself: “After a run like that, a person would be completely spent.”

When asked if he could manage such a feat after a day of fighting without food or water, he pretended not to hear and busied himself loading zombie corpses onto a truck.

Thus ended the final operation to purge the last zombie horde from the Beijing area—not with a triumphant bang, but with a whimper. Though the result was that no large groups of zombies remained in Beijing, Li Fengyi felt no joy. The zombies now possessed intelligence and organization. This terrifying revelation eclipsed any sense of victory.

More than 230 soldiers perished in the fire at Side Park, and nearly a thousand were seriously injured by crushing, over half of whom would be left disabled.

No one slept that night.

Even the zombies missing arms had fled with the rest. Many one-legged zombies still clung to life and were packaged up and sent to the Ministry of Science and Technology for research.

When delivering the zombies, Ma Huaibo couldn’t help but smirk, thinking the scientists consumed far too many resources—especially food, since they were supplied daily with meat as per work rations. Absurdly, they even asked for items that had been considered luxuries before the apocalypse. The most disappointing part was that they had yet to produce many practical results.

After Minister Liu signed for the delivery, Ma Huaibo casually remarked, “Minister Liu, we’re running low on food.”

Noticing the complicated look on Liu’s face, Ma smiled to himself and added, “After a day and night of battle, supplies are running thin.”

Liu grimaced as if chewing bitter herbs. “Minister Ma, our researchers don’t do much physical labor. Do you think we could switch to non-work rations? Reduce resource consumption and contribute more to the front-line soldiers?”