Outskirts of Qingyun Town, 10:45 AM.
The air was as thick as drying cement, with only the occasional distant roar of zombies breaking the eerie silence. At this distance, through high-powered binoculars, one could clearly see the figures wandering aimlessly within the town—workers in tattered overalls, older women carrying vegetable baskets, students with backpacks... The former residents had now been reduced to the walking dead, densely clogging the narrow streets by the thousands.
On a high ground two kilometers away from Qingyun Town, inside a modified Stryker command vehicle, the Black Watch Commander "Viper" sat before a tactical terminal. The eerie blue light of the screen reflected off his expressionless face, his fingers resting lightly on the communicator like a pianist prepared to strike the first note.
"All units, this is Viper. Sync watches; it is now 10:45. Operation Hammer Heart Acupoint Strike begins."
His voice was steady and cold, without any inflection.
"Copy, Aerial Hunters are in position."
Two attack helicopters instantly skimmed over the treetops from a low altitude, their rotors roaring as they sliced through the air. Like two black birds of death, they suddenly pulled up and headed straight for the abandoned gas station on the east side of Qingyun Town.
"Target confirmed. Hellfire, launch."
"Whoosh—BOOM!!!"
Two Hellfire missiles, trailing long plumes of fire, accurately dove into the gas station's storage tank area. A second later, a massive orange-red fireball soared into the sky. The violent explosion shook the ground, and the shockwave instantly leveled several nearby houses.
Just as Viper had predicted, the massive noise and heat source instantly activated the dead town. The sluggishly wandering zombie hordes on the streets seemed as if a switch had been flipped; they let out a collective, skin-crawling roar and then surged like a black tide toward the firelight on the east side.
"Target group mobilized. Density increasing... 70%... 73%..." On the tactical terminal, the red dots representing zombies were converging frantically.
Viper looked at the screen, his lips curling into a cold arc: "The prey is in the net. Armored group, fire at will. Show them what a firepower-covered hell looks like."
"Armored group copy. Sending them on their way."
Six main battle tanks, already lying in ambush on the western high ground, rotated their turrets simultaneously. The black muzzles of the 120mm smoothbore guns were aimed at the zombie tide exposed on the main road, their backs turned to the tanks.
"Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!"
Six massive roars erupted almost simultaneously, with the tanks' muzzles spitting out flames several meters long. Six high-explosive (HE) shells whistled through the air, instantly slamming into the center of the dense horde.
There were no screams, only the dull thuds of flesh being physically torn apart. Zombies within a dozens-of-meters radius of the explosion centers were instantly vaporized, their severed limbs and broken bodies mixing with black blood and raining down like a downpour. Immediately after, the heavy machine guns and coaxial machine guns on the tanks began a frantic roar. The large-caliber bullets, like the whips of death, lashed out bloody and mangled furrows through the horde. If even grazed, a zombie's body would shatter like a brittle cracker.
"Effect confirmed, 30% clearance rate. Infantry squads, cut in." Viper calmly switched channels. "Execute Plan C, demolition-style advance. I don't want to see a single intact window or door."
"Bravo Squad copy! Advance! Advance!"
Accompanied by the crunching sound of tracks crushing gravel, twenty-two infantry fighting vehicles formed two columns. Using them as cover, hundreds of Marine Corps members, holding their rifles and crouching low, quickly cut into the town's entrance.
"Left, two o'clock, two-story house, possible ambush!" a Marine Squad Leader roared.
"Don't bother confirming! Level it!" the Vehicle Commander responded coldly.
The armored vehicle's turret spun rapidly, and the 25mm chain gun emitted its distinct "thump-thump-thump" sound. The first-floor wall of that house was instantly riddled with holes, bricks flying and dust billowing. Several zombies hiding inside didn't even have time to rush out before they were shredded into mincemeat along with the wall by the large-caliber shells.
"Clear! Keep moving!"
This was an asymmetric massacre. The Marines strictly followed the order of "no room searching, no holding back." For any building within their line of sight, they first greeted it with a round of 40mm grenades followed by machine-gun fire. Only after confirming that nothing living could remain standing inside did they continue their advance.
"Commander, Special Infected detected at the intersection ahead! It's Lickers! Six of them, approaching rapidly along the walls!" an urgent report came from the front line.
On the screen, six highlighted red markers were leaping across the exterior walls of buildings at an astonishing speed, attempting to bypass the armored vehicles' frontal fire and ambush the infantry from the flanks.
Viper didn't even blink: "Aerial units, pick them off."
"Copy. Death descending."
The attack helicopters circling at high altitude suddenly dipped their noses, and the 20mm Gatling machine guns beneath their noses instantly spat out long tongues of fire.
"Zzzzz—!!!"
A dense rain of bullets instantly covered the exterior walls of those buildings. Those six Lickers didn't even have time to jump before they were pinned to the walls by the metal storm descending from the sky, their bodies instantly riddled with holes as black blood flowed down the walls like a waterfall.
"Threat neutralized," the pilot's cold voice came through.
"Continue the advance. Maintain the rhythm, do not stop." Viper watched the blue line on the tactical map representing their controlled area steadily swallowing the red area representing enemy territory, his fingers tapping the desk rhythmically. "This isn't a war; it's a cleaning operation. Tell the front line to speed up; HQ is waiting for our report of victory."
On the street, the tracks crushed over the corpses and meat slurry covering the ground, making a tooth-grinding "squelch" sound. A young Marine soldier, looking at the hellish scene before him, couldn't help but gag, but he was immediately slapped hard on his helmet by a veteran beside him.
"Don't puke! Swallow that damn vomit back down! Stay focused! This is our job!"
"Yes... Yes, sir!"
Under the surgical precision of the Black Watch Commander, Qingyun Town was undergoing a thorough baptism. No mercy, no hesitation—only the absolute order constructed of steel and gunpowder was crushing the remains of the infected inch by inch.
Qingyun Town, Central Commercial District.
The advance, which had been proceeding in an orderly "cleanup," was forced to a halt at this moment. In the air, besides the smell of gunpowder, there was suddenly a sickening, sweet and metallic scent, similar to rotting fruit mixed with high concentrations of ammonia.
"Beep, beep, beep..." A sudden, rapid alarm sounded, drawing the attention of the Marines present. It turned out to be a virus detection drone that had flown over the ruins of a building, flashing a brilliant red light.
Immediately after, a low and serious voice came through the communication channel.
"D Squad, pay attention. High-energy bio-thermal reaction in the building ruins ahead. Stay alert!" a Marine Squad Leader's voice rang out in the channel, carrying a hint of confusion.
Just as several soldiers from D Squad approached the rubble of a pharmacy collapsed by tank fire, a violent hissing sound, like a boiling pressure cooker, suddenly erupted from beneath the debris. Following that, four round monsters with sickly translucent orange skin suddenly lunged from the shadows. They looked like meatballs forcibly fused from multiple corpses, their bodies covered in massive, pulsating pustules. A pale yellow liquid flowed beneath their paper-thin skin, emitting a faint, eerie glow.
"What is—Fire! Open fire!"
"Rat-tat-tat!"
Bullets struck the abdomen of one of the monsters, but instead of killing it as usual, it was like puncturing a hydrogen balloon filled with gas.
"BOOM!!!"
A deafening blast rang out, accompanied by a soaring green mist and dark red plasma. The monster exploded instantly, the resulting shockwave directly throwing back the two Marines who were closest. Even more terrifying was that the splattered yellow liquid was highly corrosive; as it landed on the soldiers' body armor and skin, it instantly made a loud "sizzling" sound, accompanied by the smell of scorched meat.
"Aaaargh! My face! My eyes!" The screams tore through the rhythm of the battlefield.
Following that, more "Explosive Infected" rolled out from the sewer openings on both sides of the street, broken windows, and even from beneath the piles of corpses. They were extremely fast, like bio-mines with legs, charging fearlessly toward the armored vehicles' tracks and the infantry formations.
Inside the command vehicle, Viper watched the flashing red dots of casualties on the screen, his eyes showing not even a ripple of emotion. His fingers, clad in black leather gloves, tapped rapidly on the keyboard, pulling up the spectral analysis data from the moment of the explosion.
"Spectral analysis complete. Composition: Highly unstable bio-methane mixed with strong acid. Bio-threat level: Beta-4." Viper's voice reached every combat unit through the encrypted channel, as cold as a soulless computer. "All infantry squads, retreat fifty meters immediately and establish a vacuum isolation zone. Do not attempt to shoot at close range. Repeat, do not shoot at close range."
"But Commander, D Squad still has wounded up there—" an anxious voice from a Marine Platoon Leader came over the communication channel.
"They have lost their combat value and are in a state of acid corrosion; the rescue cost is too high." Viper cut him off coldly, his tone brooks no argument. "Alpha and Bravo Squads, switch to white phosphorus grenades. Armored group, adjust machine guns up by 3 degrees and perform coverage fire on areas above the second floor on both sides of the street to prevent jumping attacks from above."
On the battlefield, the surviving Marines gritted their teeth as they watched their colleagues rolling and convulsing in the green mist. However, in the face of the Black Watch's harsh orders, they could only obey and quickly retreat under alternating cover.
"Firebird 1 and 2, descend to 50 meters. Execute 'Scorched Earth Protocol'," Viper issued the command again. "Target: All moving orange bio-thermal sources. Authorization granted for the use of napalm pods."
In the sky, the two attack helicopters suddenly dove.
"Copy. Hellfire is ready."
As two blinding dragons of fire dove from the sky, the street that was originally filled with green mist was instantly engulfed in crimson flames. The high temperature produced by the napalm instantly reached over a thousand degrees, causing the Explosive Infected attempting to approach to detonate early in the heat.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
A series of dense explosions rang out in the sea of fire, and the green acid mist was rapidly neutralized and evaporated by the high temperature. Those originally terrifying meatballs twisted and shriveled in the flames, finally turning into charred remains.
"All squads pay attention, snipers lock onto those pustules. Those are their core pressure zones; as long as you shatter them, they will detonate early." Viper accurately pointed out the monsters' weakness through the high-definition footage sent back by the drones. "Everyone, maintain a combat distance of over 30 meters. This is target practice; I don't want to see any more pointless non-combat casualties."
Under Viper's almost surgical precision in command, the originally chaotic situation was quickly reversed. The Marines found their rhythm again; they were no longer panicked but used the heavy armor of the vehicles as cover to accurately shoot down every Explosive Infected that poked its head out from the ruins.
One Explosive Infected tried to rush toward an armored vehicle from behind a broken wall on the flank, but before it could get close, a precise 25mm machine gun shell directly hit the massive pustule on its back.
"BOOM!"
The monster exploded halfway into a green firework, and the acid splashed onto a roadside lamp post, instantly corroding and snapping it.
"Cleanup progress resumed; current area threat level decreased to 15%." Viper looked at the thermal reactions gradually subsiding on the screen and lightly adjusted his collar with his slender fingers. "Continue the advance. These biological mutants have high research value. Recovery Team, put on hazmat suits and go collect some unexploded tissue samples. As for those dead Marines... incinerate them along with the ruins. I don't want to leave any potential sources of cross-infection."
"Understood, sir."
The flames burned fiercely on the main road of Qingyun Town, reflecting on Viper's expressionless face. To him, this was merely a numerical game that consumed a bit of ammunition and a few lives; for the sake of the big picture, all of it was worth it.