Chapter 192: Chapter 190: Violent Storm
According to satellite images, Typhoon Hagibis—the 19th of the season—was vast, dwarfing the entire Japanese Archipelago. Over the ocean, its maximum wind speeds had reached Level 17.
The people of East Japan who lived outside the quarantine zone had just been breathing sighs of relief for escaping one disaster, but now they had no choice but to scramble for supplies, reinforce their doors and windows, and brace for the typhoon’s onslaught.
It would be a cruel joke to survive the plague and the gnawing teeth of zombies only to be taken out by a typhoon.
The typhoon’s path was aimed directly at the Tokyo metropolitan area. Worse, its landfall was predicted to coincide with a spring tide. The core region of East Japan was facing a perfect storm of wind, rain, and tide—a grim situation indeed.
However, Tokyo was already a quarantine zone, so that was one less thing for the provisional cabinet to worry about.
Along the Shizuoka-Nagoya defense line, a torrential downpour was also underway, having started even earlier than the rain in Kanagawa.
It was a deluge. The world outside was a blur where heaven and earth seemed to bleed into one, obscuring anything in the distance.
Kubo Shu gripped his rifle, his gaze fixed on the mountain forest across from their position. A knot of unease tightened in his gut.
Their section of the line was a mountain defense zone, right in Shizuoka Prefecture.
The position itself was a temporary fortification of sandbags built up against existing civilian houses, but the terrain was somewhat low-lying.
A trench had been dug in front of the position, and it was currently filled with the bodies of headshot zombies.
Whenever another zombie stumbled into view, it was instantly riddled with bullets from the machine-gun nest.
Facing these highly infectious zombies, warfare seemed to have reverted to the trench battles of the World Wars.
In the beginning, they would douse the downed zombies with gasoline right in the trench and burn them. But with the typhoon’s torrential rains, incinerating the bodies became impractical.
Besides, according to frontline command, there was no telling if the virus could survive in the smoke and cause new infections, so the practice had been forbidden.
Now, in their section of the trench alone, there were several hundred zombies with shattered heads.
Still, it was proof they had managed to hold back a significant number of zombie assaults.
The sky was already dimming. Between the evening hour and the storm clouds, true darkness could fall at any moment.
Kubo Shu stared forward nervously, the lenses of his gas mask already beaded with water.
He wiped the water from his mask and called out to his comrade in the machine-gun nest.
"Nagano, the typhoon’s here. Aren’t you worried? And this rain is so heavy..."
Nagano was sitting on an ammo box, cradling his rifle and smoking with his eyes closed. Hearing Kubo’s words, he waved a dismissive hand and chuckled, the picture of calm confidence.
"Kubo, you need to have a little more backbone. We’ve been through hell, but things have stabilized. The worst is behind us. As for the typhoon... the heavier the rain, the less the virus can spread. It just dissolves in the water. And in a storm like this, even if some of the virus was airborne, it’d be diluted so much it could never cause a new infection."
Seeing Kubo Shu’s lingering doubt, Nagano continued.
"Relax. I have a bachelor’s in pharmacology, so I’m something of an expert on this. Besides, in this weather, the zombies’ sense of smell will be shot. They probably won’t even be moving around."
Hearing Nagano’s confident, well-reasoned analysis, Kubo Shu couldn’t help but nod. He relaxed, a smile touching his lips.
"You really know your stuff, Nagano. Speaking of which, my family is in Kagoshima. They weren’t hit by the outbreak, but I’m still... What was that sound?"
A deep, thunderous rumble suddenly echoed from below, as if a colossal beast were stampeding beneath the earth.
Nagano was unconcerned. "Probably thunder. Or a small earthquake. I heard Chiba Prefecture had a tremor today..."
Kubo listened again. Suddenly, his face went white. He scrambled to the concrete wall of the fortification and stared out at the mountain forest, his voice trembling.
"No... Nagano, that’s... that’s a flash flood!"
The words had barely left his mouth when a raging torrent of muddy water, thick with debris, roared down from the mountain forest, instantly engulfing the trench and their defensive position!
Alarms blared and screams erupted, immediately followed by a barrage of gunfire.
The flash flood was teeming with zombies!
The moment the zombies washed into the position, they lunged like crocodiles at the nearest soldiers and began to tear them apart!
In the blink of an eye, the tide of mud and zombies completely overran that section of the line, pushing deeper into the defenses.
At the crest of the flood, zombies with missing limbs struggled to their feet. Through the dim light and sheets of rain, they mumbled with manic grins as they charged toward the populated areas beyond!
Meanwhile, soldiers in the urban defense zones were locked in fierce combat with zombies that were swimming toward them through the floodwaters.
At first, the zombies floated in like a mass of corpses. But upon reaching the defense line, they immediately crawled ashore and attacked the unprepared soldiers, plunging the area into chaos.
Though the soldiers were all fully equipped and wearing gas masks, they knew that if a zombie so much as scratched them, they would face not only its sharp teeth but also a bullet from their own comrades.
In a short time, both the northern and southern defense lines had descended into utter chaos.
No one could have imagined that the zombies would be smart enough to use the storm to their advantage, launching an attack on the human defense lines under the cover of the typhoon’s wind and rain!
...
On the street outside the Ota Elderly Care Home, dozens of Nanomechanical Robots had surrounded the two deeply mutated zombies.
A playful smile touched Shen Feng’s lips. He’d never seen zombies mutated to this degree before. The thrill of the hunt surged through him; he couldn’t wait to dissect their brains.
"...Meat...tasty meat...welcome...so hungry..."
"...Polite...want to eat...the coming..."
The two zombies wore eerie smiles, their dark brown pupils stark against their blood-red eyes. Mumbling nonsense, they suddenly let out a furious roar and leaped five or six meters into the air, pouncing toward Shen Feng!
Their speed and strength were immense. The explosive force of their jump was so great it snapped their own shin bones, sending sharp shards piercing through their flesh, yet they seemed to feel nothing at all.
Shen Feng’s pupils contracted. The speed of these zombies was bestial, astonishingly fast!
"ROAR—" While still in midair, the two zombies shrieked, unleashing a powerful electromagnetic pulse that blasted toward Shen Feng.
A metal wall formed from a Nanomechanical Cluster shot up from the ground, intercepting the EMP. It instantly disintegrated into a cloud of dead black dust.
At the same time, the Nanomechanical Robots surrounding the two zombies suddenly elongated their arms, raising them three meters into the air, directly in the zombies’ path as they fell.
Mikiko and Tokugawa fell swiftly. As they passed the height of the raised arms, their bodies suddenly shuddered.
The next instant, they disintegrated in midair, sliced by invisible blades into small, uniformly sized cubes of flesh that rained down from the sky.
They had been turned into a pile of diced meat.
Only their two heads remained intact.
Just like that, the two insanely powerful zombies had been hacked to pieces.
Shen Feng nodded in satisfaction.
A dozen or so Nanomechanical Robots simultaneously retracted the interconnected nano-filaments from their hands.
The toughness and sharpness of the nano-filaments were truly astonishing.
The key was that the stuff was invisible to the naked eye, yet sharp enough to kill without a trace.
Looking up at the dark sky as the storm continued to rage, Shen Feng couldn’t help but smile even more broadly.
He hadn’t wanted to reveal his hand, so he had refrained from unleashing the Gray Tide on a large scale. This weather, however, provided the perfect cover.
The tornado-like vortex of the Gray Tide that had surrounded him had long since seeped into the ground, where it was now rapidly devouring the asphalt, concrete, and soil, and even the structures of vacant buildings, secretly expanding its mass.
Facing the frenzied zombie horde and this terrifying Evil Spirit Virus, Shen Feng had to be thoroughly prepared.
The zombies’ EMP ability was troublesome, but if the situation grew uncontrollable, he wouldn’t hesitate to reveal his existence and use a colossal Gray Tide to wipe them all out in one fell swoop.
If worst came to worst, he would have no choice but to sacrifice the Japanese Archipelago, transforming the entire place into a nanomechanical construct.
Of course, that was only a last resort.
After all, a move like that would inevitably expose him to the Whisperers.
Even the power behind the "True Apocalypse Game" was suspected to be under attack by the Whisperers; Shen Feng knew he was nowhere near ready to face them directly.
As these thoughts ran through his mind, Shen Feng mounted his bicycle again. He took up the reins of the eight zombies, and with a flick, they lunged for the severed arm they could never reach, pulling the bicycle at a frantic pace through the downpour.
Several Nanomechanical Robots retrieved Mikiko’s and Tokugawa’s heads from the pooling water and sprinted after Shen Feng.
Now, under the cover of the storm clouds, Shen Feng’s methods changed. As he traveled, he cast out clumps of the Nanomechanical Cluster, which quickly linked together.
On the ground, sheets of the Nanomechanical Cluster silently spread and crept along, trailing behind him.
Controlling a Nanomechanical Cluster required the transmission of commands. There were two ways to do this. The first was to have a stable network connection, allowing Shen Feng’s Consciousness Antennae to control the cluster remotely. The second was Gray Tide mode.
Simply put, Nanomechanical Clusters that were interconnected or in close proximity could transmit command information between themselves, eliminating the need for an external network.
Each Nanomechanical Cluster was, in effect, its own signal relay.
Therefore, once an interconnected network of Nanomechanical Clusters was formed, he could command it as easily as his own limbs.
This network wasn’t just forming where Shen Feng passed. The interconnected Gray Tide was silently spreading underground, expanding toward the entire Tokyo Region to form one massive web.
The Gray Tide’s greatest strength was its sheer scale!
The return trip was much faster. Shen Feng soon arrived back at the original hospital, scaled the exterior of the building, and entered the virus lab.
Placing the vial containing the residual drug and the syringe on a tray, Shen Feng asked quickly,
"Jingwei, what’s the progress?"
A Nanomechanical Robot, busy studying the components of the Antiviral Serum, turned its head and replied,
"I have good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?"
Shen Feng frowned.
"The good news."
"The good news is that through the combined efforts of hundreds of medical elites and their lab teams around the world, assisted by several of the most advanced supercomputers, we have a preliminary grasp of the Antiviral Serum’s chemical composition. We can begin mass-producing a generic version at any time. Many large pharmaceutical companies are already setting up production lines."
Shen Feng allowed himself a small smile. "Excellent. That should buy us at least a month. What’s the bad news?"
Jingwei’s voice turned grim.
"The Shizuoka-Nagoya defense line has been overrun."