Volume 9: Molten Mine Chapter 450: Escape
In the two seconds that Allen hesitated, the huge body of "SP Mutant No. 61" suddenly bent down, instantly sweeping away all the soldiers on a wall that was more than ten meters long.
Those soldiers were either crushed into meat paste or caught by the "human-shaped tentacles" extending from the "centipede's" abdomen. Only one guy with quick reaction jumped down from the city wall in time and survived.
"Damn it! Everyone, get off the city wall!" the officer screamed at the top of his voice, "Don't stay on the city wall, find cover and fight back freely! Prioritize attacking the humanoid organs in the target's abdomen!"
Then he said to Allen, "Hurry up and go! Zhang San! You should go with Allen too!"
"Yes!" The one who was shouted was a sturdy, square-faced man. He carried four individual guided missiles on his shoulders. The combined weight of these four missiles and the launch tube was nearly one hundred kilograms... and in his arms, he was holding a fully automatic shotgun with extremely terrifying recoil and belt-fed ammunition.
Zhang San is not the real name of this muscular man, but a nickname. When he first joined this elite team, others asked him what his name was. He said that his name was too difficult to pronounce, so they asked everyone to just call him Zhang San Li Si... Although everyone thought he was joking at first, over time, everyone got used to this extremely casual name.
If nothing else, at least it sounds quite smooth.
"Allen, let's go!" Zhang San grabbed a box of new ammunition belts, jumped off the wall, and ran towards the No. 2 armored vehicle parked not far away.
"If we leave, sir, you and the others..."
Allen was interrupted by the officer before he could finish his words: "Can you two stay here to change the situation? Get out of here! Don't waste the time that others have given you at the cost of their lives! Don't think that I'm asking you to be a deserter. You have a more difficult and more important mission to complete!"
"But, brother--" Allen suddenly changed his address.
"Why don't you leave? Are you planning to disobey orders?!" The officer raised his leg and kicked him. Allen stumbled back a dozen steps until he hit the wall and stopped.
“…”
The kick was so powerful that Allen felt as if his internal organs were dislocated and for a moment he couldn't even utter a complete sentence.
"Do you want me to kick you to death? Get out of here!"
The officer's body from the waist down is a cyborg made of an alloy frame... During a mopping-up mission with heavy casualties, he had his legs bitten off alive by indigenous creatures in order to save his brother who had fallen behind.
Because the wound was not treated in time, a series of complications such as blood loss and infection almost took his life... Although his life was saved later, he missed the chance to regenerate his severed limbs and had to undergo prosthetic reconstruction surgery.
"Brother! Why don't you go? I'll stay and cover you!"
"Are you an idiot? I am the highest-ranking officer here, how can I leave?" the officer said angrily, "Get out! Don't let me and others die in vain!"
"I...I understand." Allen gritted his teeth, turned around and jumped off the wall.
Allen quickly ran to the armored vehicle, got into the cab, inserted the key, and started the car.
"Alan! Hurry! Those guys are rushing over here! One hundred meters... no, only eighty meters!" Zhang San was sitting on the roof of the car, his hand tightly holding the trigger of the vehicle-mounted machine gun. The roar of the machine gun made Allen's ears buzz. From time to time, thick smoking shells leaked in from the gap in the turret cover and hit the floor of the car, making a crisp sound.
The "those guys" that Zhang San mentioned were naturally the seeds of erosion that survived the second wave of offensive. After the appearance of the "giant centipede", also known as the "SP mutant No. 61", no one cared about these small fish and shrimps.
Although Type B mutants are just small fry compared to SP mutants, they are still highly deadly and dangerous creatures for individual soldiers. If they are approached, a Type B mutant can easily massacre an elite team of fifteen people - even if all members of the team are equipped with living ammunition against the Seed of Erosion.
When fighting against such monsters, long-range weapons are the only advantage humans have.
It takes about ten seconds to restart the external monitor, which is too late now. Allen had to open the observation window and look out - he saw four Type B mutants rushing towards them at full speed, and the distance between them was less than thirty meters.
"Alan, step on the accelerator as hard as possible! Let's crash into it! Crash right into it!" Zhang San yelled.
The vehicle-mounted machine gun was not equipped with active ammunition, and its killing power against these monsters was extremely limited. Moreover, after shooting continuously for more than ten seconds, the barrel had become red hot and could be scrapped at any time.
Zhang San let go of the machine gun and took out his fully automatic shotgun instead - his position in the team was the firepower man, mainly responsible for suppressing the enemy with heavy firepower and dense barrage of bullets. It was also for this reason that his weapon was not equipped with active ammunition.
"Allen! Give me your gun - forget it, it's too late, I'll suppress them, you just switch to full manual driving mode and get the car moving!" Zhang San said, the second half of his sentence was directly drowned out by the deafening sound of the fully automatic shotgun firing, and Allen didn't hear it clearly at all.
But as comrades who have fought side by side for several years, there is still some tacit understanding between the two. Even though he didn't hear it clearly, Allen knew what Zhang San was talking about - the automatic driving system, the assisted driving system and the monitor all need time to initialize, but the fully manual driving mode does not require it. At the same time when his left foot released the clutch, his right foot had already stepped on the accelerator to the bottom.
Doing so would cause considerable damage to the engine, but the situation was urgent and no one cared about such details. The entire body of the armored vehicle shook violently and then rushed forward.
Allen only felt a strong push on his back suddenly, and watching the tachometer reading begin to climb wildly, Allen pushed the gear lever and decisively changed to high gear. At this moment, he heard a muffled "bang" sound, as if something hit the bucket in front of the armored vehicle.
"There's an Erosion Seed hanging on the bucket teeth!" Zhang San's voice came from above his head, "Raise the bucket by 30 centimeters, squeeze this guy under the car, and run it over!"
"I know! But the hydraulic rod that controls the bucket's lifting and lowering seems to be stuck, and I can't press it down no matter what!" Allen replied.
"It's not stuck, it's the monster that's holding the bucket with its arms... The power of this thing is too abnormal, just wait, I'm going to break its arms!" After Zhang San finished speaking, he grabbed the shotgun and climbed onto the turret of the armored vehicle, grabbed the pull ring on it, and crawled towards the front of the vehicle little by little.
The external monitor was finally started up, and the screens around the driver's seat showed the scene outside the armored vehicle, but Allen only glanced at it and shouted to Zhang San: "Pay attention to the right rear! At about four o'clock, a Type B mutant is catching up, and it's getting closer and closer! Do you see it - be careful! It jumped up!"
Before he finished his words, the roar of an automatic shotgun rang out on the roof of the car. Allen saw the Type B mutant that had pounced on him suddenly fly backwards and fall heavily to the ground... but in an instant, he seemed to have captured a few frames of the picture: the mutant that fell off the car seemed to be holding a large bloody object in his hand.
The whole process took only a few tenths of a second, and Allen did not see clearly what the mutant was holding. Although the images on the monitor could be played back, he did not have the time to check the video frame by frame.
"Zhang San? Zhang San? Are you okay?" Allen asked anxiously. After the sound of the automatic shotgun stopped, Zhang San seemed to have stopped moving.
"...For now...still alive." After several seconds, Zhang San's weak voice came from the headphones.
He slowly crawled from the blind spot of the monitor to the front of a camera. Allen then discovered that the armor on Zhang San's right lower abdomen was torn open by a terrifying force. The broken part of the armor was a bloody mess, and the intestines could be vaguely seen wriggling in the stomach...
"Hold on! I'll help you treat your wound once we're out of the combat zone!" Allen shouted in a panic, "Do you have a medical kit? Stop the bleeding yourself first... This wound isn't fatal! It's okay, you won't die!"
"..." Zhang San lowered his head and covered the wound on his abdomen with his hands. Blood was constantly flowing out from between his fingers, dyeing the dark gray tactical gloves dark brown.
"Can you...can you turn around a little? I can't see...can't see your wound on the surveillance screen...Don't worry, you'll be fine...I've learned battlefield first aid, I can do debridement and suturing, just hang in there..." Allen held the steering wheel with one hand and desperately searched in his open backpack with the other, "Damn... where's the first aid kit...I need scissors, gauze...and hemostatic forceps..."
"It's useless, Allen." Zhang San shook his head at the monitor. "I had direct contact with that thing. Even if you can treat my wound, I will soon become one of them..."
Allen was stunned... Zhang San was right. When fighting against the Seed of Corrosion, the most taboo thing was direct contact - directly touching the body of the Seed of Corrosion could lead to infection, not to mention being scratched by the other party.
Those highly aggressive alienated cells have already spread throughout Zhang San's body along the blood vessels... It won't be long before he becomes a container, and this process is completely irreversible.
He was alive, but dead.
"Sorry, it looks like you have to complete this mission alone." Zhang San said weakly. After giving himself two shots of painkillers, he stopped sealing the wound and let the blood flow out of it.
He took out several , strung the pull rings of the grenades together with a strap, and then hung the string of grenades on his chest.
Then, he removed the warheads of those individual missiles, set the fuses to timed detonation, and stuffed them into the ammunition bag on his waist.
"Two more Corrosion Seeds are chasing us. I'll help you stop them. The rest of the way is up to you." Zhang San said, and then he tore off his helmet and directly injected a high-concentration stimulant into the aorta in his neck. Directly injecting stimulants into the carotid artery is almost the same as suicide in the eyes of ordinary people, but for a dying person, this is one of the fastest ways to stimulate the drug effect...
As the medicine was injected, his eyeballs bulged outwards as if they were about to roll out of their sockets at any time. His originally pale cheeks turned red due to congestion, and the blue veins on his forehead and neck bulged like earthworms and throbbed vigorously.
His facial muscles twitched violently, and his mouth opened and closed, as if he wanted to say something to Allen in the end, but no words came out.
He stood up, let out an inhuman roar, and jumped towards the rear of the car.
“Boom! Boom!!”
Accompanied by a loud explosion, the strong air wave blew away the two seeds of corrosion that were chasing the car, and also blew Zhang San's body into pieces.
A small piece of minced meat even stuck directly to the camera lens. Allen noticed that a delicate tentacle was sticking out from the meat.
"I'm sorry..." Allen muttered to himself, and took the initiative to detonate the two pieces of reactive armor hanging on the rear of the car. With the help of the shock wave , he swept the "contaminated" pieces of meat off the car.
The warriors who died in the battle against the Seeds of Corrosion cannot even leave their ashes behind... This is cruel, but there is no other way.
The gunfire in the distant support base had not stopped, but it was much less frequent than before. Allen didn't know how long they could hold out... In front of a monster like that, the power of ground combat units like them was too small, and even the saturation fire of active ammunition could not be effective... Perhaps, only the main gun of the heavy cruiser could kill that big guy...
Just as Allen was thinking this, the Seed of Erosion that was previously hung on the bucket finally broke free and quickly climbed onto the roof of the car - the moment Allen discovered its trail, it had already drilled into the car without having time to close the roof!
