Chapter 81 – Terracorp (2)
[There are 6 hours left until sunset. I will count every 30 minutes.]
In general, infectious agents have the characteristic of becoming more active at night.
There is no particular difference between day and night for the entities moving around inside the building.
I don’t know if it’s a problem of light or temperature, or if it’s the nature of the infection itself.
After authenticating the commander, I checked the downloaded internal drawing.
“Let’s see.”
An estimate was given on how to clean up this place.
[You look excited.]
The shoulder cam was looking at me.
“I feel like a soccer player in a legendary match.”
[It’s a strange analogy.]
As the shoulder cam returned to its original position, I could hear her giggling.
The team was divided into three.
“Team 2 secures the area of Building B repair shop.”
[Lager.]
With a dull voice, three robots moved into the front passage.
“Team 3 searches the product blueprints from Building C’s Quality Control Department and the subcontractor list from Building D’s Production Management Department. “Let’s search mainly for slips and expenditure resolutions.”
If you are a subcontractor of a helicopter factory, you will be a treasure trove of high-quality materials.
It’s not something refugees can eat, and the government also doesn’t have the power to manage and requisition small and medium-sized businesses.
There is a high chance that it will remain intact.
These are places where a detachment needs to be sent out and swept away whenever possible.
If you know the type and amount of goods due and the address, you will be able to get a rough estimate whether it is a place worth visiting.
“I will secure the escape route.”
Two robots followed behind me.
We must be able to run not only through the passage we passed through, but also in another direction if necessary.
Although it is a necessary task, it is relatively safe compared to other missions.
30 minutes after the search began.
From time to time, suppressed gunfire could be heard from other areas.
However, it is not enough to be transmitted beyond concrete and plywood to a colony of infectious agents hundreds of meters away.
[Wait a minute, check the 30m point in front of the left side of the passageway.]
Artemis discovered something with the shoulder cam and stopped me.
When I went to the location, I found a corpse of a soldier.
It was easy to miss it because her hand was just slightly sticking out through the crack in the door, but I couldn’t avoid her eyes.
[It was about 2cm, but I could see the military uniform pattern.]
Kiinggiing-.
The shoulder cam moves up and down as if it were a gesture from Artemis.
I lightly stroked the cam.
Giiiiing-!
[What are you doing!]
Then, it shook strongly from side to side, as if shaking off my hand.
The soldier’s body appeared to have run out of strength after crawling while injured. Dried blood stains continue in one direction.
While following it, an additional soldier’s body appeared.
The place we arrived at was the personnel waiting room.
This is a place where service workers who arrive by bus are distributed to necessary locations.
It is believed that the National Guard met its end here. This is because it was full of decomposed soldier corpses.
[This was not caused by an infectious agent.]
Artemis said after analyzing the condition of the corpse.
“It’s a grenade.”
I picked up a half-broken skull in front of me.
A piece of debris stuck in the upper part of the eye socket. This is a fragment of a fragmentation grenade.
“The entrance is sealed…”
A barricade was set up with miscellaneous items behind the shutter that was lowered to the floor.
The internal passageway we entered was open, and it appears to have been opened by a soldier running away from a grenade.
In the end, he was caught in the explosion, suffered serious injuries, and died while crawling.
There are no traces of combat, such as bullet holes in the walls or shell casings on the floor.
It appears that he received a devastating blow from a single grenade in an enclosed area. Was it the torturer’s mistake?
[The soldiers here died instantly.]
The area designated by Artemis was littered with remains scattered in a circular explosion. It seems like a grenade exploded in the center.
“They were student soldiers.”
I lifted the rifle that was lying damaged between the bone fragments.
Sick of K2.
Although student soldiers are active-duty soldiers, they are provided with equipment belonging to the reserve forces.
There is no need to look at the equipment.
I’m not a professional forensics expert, but I’ve seen remains more than once.
You can tell how much bone hasn’t ripened.
[There are many different age groups mixed together. Mainly between the ages of 16 and 18.]
“… Okay.”
A stretcher placed right next to the center of the explosion comes into view.
There is a corpse lying on top of it.
Since there were fellow soldiers between the grenade and his path, he was less affected by the explosion, so the bone fragments were still intact.
[The soldiers here escaped immediate death, but died from excessive bleeding or shock.]
A few meters away from the explosion site, there are corpses that appear to have died while crawling to the edge.
Few limbs were intact, and in some corpses, the lower half of the body was missing.
[There is a decent cam. Let’s check the video material.]
It is a body wearing a bulletproof hat with a captain rank insignia.
The body is curled up on the ground with its abdomen badly damaged. I removed the cam and played the saved video.
* * *
The beginning of the video was at a time when the military was alive and well.
Many refugees have set up a refugee camp in front of the factory, and relief supplies and medical support are being provided under the control of soldiers.
The following video is also a repetition of similar content.
Just as the date changed, the number of tents increased, and the people’s behavior became worse.
Then the video cut off, and what resumed was an intense battle situation.
The refugee camp was in chaos, and the army, last encamped at the factory entrance, was fighting desperately.
A signal soldier is desperately trying to communicate next to the captain, the cam owner.
“Company Commander, it’s still not working!”
A young soldier wearing glasses said. The rank of the boy with acne was private.
“Whether it works or not, keep trying. You don’t have to shoot, so just hold on to that until you die. If you succeed in communicating, you live. If you fail, you all die.”
The captain spoke coldly and put together his last magazine.
Even during that brief conversation, soldiers’ screams could be heard from the front. It gets closer and closer.
The signal soldier gritted his teeth and picked up the communication device.
I tried, tried, tried constantly to communicate.
Slam!
The captain, who has fired the last ammunition, snatches all the magazines the signal soldier was carrying.
“Company commander?!”
He spoke coldly to the signal soldier who looked at him in surprise.
“What are you doing?”
“Yes? Oh, no, I heard wrong?”
The captain pressed the receiver against the signalman’s ear. The shattered screams of the transformer echo.
However, the captain did not stop and rubbed the signalman’s ears until they turned bright red.
In peacetime, this would have been an issue that would have been brought to light by harsh acts, but no one cares about that now.
“You didn’t have to fire a single shot, so I told you to just focus on communication until you fell, right? “Did you just forget about it?”
“I’m sorry.”
Meanwhile, the front lines are deteriorating.
Communication was finally resumed when the battle line, unable to withstand, was on the verge of collapse.
“Success!”
The captain who was shooting immediately ran over and snatched the receiver.
“Loyalty! Order to retreat right now… Yes?”
The slight hope contained in the cold voice quickly turned into astonishment.
The signal soldier was startled by the flying receiver, and only managed to catch it after several juggles.
“Katsu!!!!!!!”
The captain shouted towards the front.
“Kaaaaa!!!!!!!”
The captain shouted again.
He shouted so loudly that his voice cracked, and he coughed in just two shouts.
“Katsu?”
A signal soldier looking at the captain with a stupid face.
“Katsu!!!!! Cass!!!!! Wow… As.”
Boom-!
The captain’s voice faded as he saw a bomber suddenly appear behind the factory.
And then I heard a sound.
A faint sound that steadfastly announces its presence even in a battlefield filled with screams, shouts, gunshots, and explosions.
Tick.
The sound of a bomb being released.
Two fat aviation bombs hanging from the bottom of the bomber are dropped.
The bomb flew forward through inertia, but was violently shaken by air resistance. Like a top that is about to collapse after running out of strength.
The cam screen quickly scans the surroundings following the captain’s gaze.
But no matter where you look, there are no soldiers wearing gas masks.
He is busy firing bullets at the monsters that come to chew, tear, and tear him and his companions.
“Kass! Kas! Kaaaaass!!!! Oh, shit! Use a gas mask!! “You idiots!!!”
With those words, the captain took out a gas mask and put it on, and the foolish signal soldier also put on a gas mask only after being punched in the face.
Only then did the soldiers around him start wearing gas masks.
But those fighting on the front lines could not.
Maybe he didn’t hear the captain’s warning in a noisy battle situation, or maybe he forgot the MOPP training and didn’t know what ‘Kass!’ Meant.
Only God knows.
Boo!
A total of six bombs, including those dropped by additional bombers, fell in the middle of the fierce battle.
Empty!
Bang!
The bombs that were dropped with a loud noise did not produce any sparks or flames.
Therefore, most of the soldiers thought for a moment that it was an unexploded ordnance.
But could not just one or two, but all six, be unexploded bombs?
The truth is that bomber pilots fired a delayed fuse for soldiers who did not hear the chemical bomb warning in a sudden danger close situation.
But unfortunately, the boys on the battlefield did not know that the missile paint signified chemical bombs. This is because they were sent to the battlefield after only 10 days of training.
After a while, dark green gas burst out like an explosion.
They instantly engulfed nearby infected entities, and a hellish howl filled the battlefield.
The sound of the monsters coughing and vomiting was truly grotesque.
It was good to delay the front line that was on the verge of collapse, but the problem was that the gas was moving towards the soldiers at a high speed.
A group of soldiers who were fighting so fiercely that they didn’t know the gas was approaching were swallowed up by the dark green cloud.
After a while, they too were screaming along with the monsters.
The soldiers further behind were able to see what was going on.
The problem is that it takes 10 seconds to put on a gas mask, but the infectious agents in front of you will bite you faster than that.
Will I be torn to death by these guys while wearing a gas mask? Or will you die painfully by inhaling gas while fighting a monster?
It was a choice between death.
The soldiers were divided into two, and most of them gave up the fight and immediately put on gas masks.
On the other hand, there were some who gave up their gas masks and chose to engage in combat.
The machine gunner caught on screen is just such a person.
The boy continued to pull the trigger even as his colleagues all put on gas masks.
Even when the green gas reached right in front of us, we maintained fire until the end to protect our colleagues wearing gas masks.
And was swallowed by gas.
Here, the video was cut off for a moment and then resumed, showing the video from the time of taking refuge inside the factory.
This is where the soldiers were wiped out.
Outside, the ferocious cries of the infected continued to be heard.
The screams of the infected and the soldiers dying from the poisonous gas formed a harmony, but it quickly subsided.
There are still huge numbers of monsters searching for survivors on the battlefield.
There were only about 10 soldiers left, wearing gas masks and shivering.
“In action! Stop playing and hit everything that feels heavy!”
The captain led the way and set up barricades.
“Keluk… Kellook…”
A soldier is suffering on a stretcher, looking terrible.
He was a selfless soldier who pulled the trigger until the end to buy time for his comrades to put on their gas masks.
I don’t know how his colleagues rescued him, but he was brought into the building, but he was not alive.
Vomit filled his mouth and poured down his cheeks, and his eyes, where all the blood vessels had burst, were stained with blood.
As the urination progressed, the groin area was covered with disgusting waste.
“Keluk… Kelook…”
Every time he coughs, vomit and blood are mixed and fly into the air.
‘Ugh… Soft… Ebal… Ugh… Soft…’
He pleaded with his tears and snot, but no one listened.
Because the poor boys were in a state of panic.
Monsters that seem ready to break through the sealed door at any moment, the war situation has reached its worst, parents who are not even sure if they are alive or dead, and no reinforcements.
Everyone was half losing their senses.
‘Ugh… Uh… Uh…’
The machine gunner muttered continuously, but it was only an empty sound.
After about 10 seconds, shouts and screams suddenly erupted.
Bang! Bang!
Two gunshots rang out, and a sergeant with a puzzled expression looked at the machine gunner he had shot dead.
To be exact, the chest.
A grenade tumbled from the small arms, and everyone’s eyes focused on it.
The safety pin was not inserted.
“Fuck, get down!”
The last thing to appear in the video, along with the captain’s shout, was the machine gunner’s face.
‘I can finally feel comfortable.’
A peaceful face filled with one thought.
Boom!!!
The grenade exploded, and that was the end of the meaningful video.
From then on, it was a boring video with only the moans heard from various places gradually getting smaller.
I put down the cam and walked over to the body on the stretcher.
“Haa…”
This is where the war got so bad.
If the law of the world is that those who act altruistically suffer losses, the battlefield shows this to the extreme.
It piles up and piles up until at some point everyone becomes a victim.
[Let’s stop. There is no more meaning here.]
Artemis urged.
She left the room as she said and looked behind her for one last time.
A machine gunner lying on a stretcher.
The ending wasn’t good, but I don’t feel like criticizing.
The boy was a brave soldier who could face hellish horrors.
It’s just that I couldn’t endure the hellish pain.
