Chapter 394: Kill Him Herself
Han Zhi emerged from an overturned stall with blood running from his hairline.
He looked from Yuche to the weapons collapsing throughout the aisle and seemed to reconsider how much explanation was necessary to let him keep living.
"Three of the entrances were compromised," he reported. "Head Luo’s remaining men opened the loading doors. The Red Jackals are moving toward the upper offices and private storage. The eastern fence won’t hold against the herd."
"It doesn’t need to," Yuche replied just as he reached the main aisle and extended his power through the warehouse floor.
The steel freight-yard gate began opening.
Han Zhi stared toward the noise outside. "That will let the zombies into the market."
"It will let them into the yard," Yuche countered.
The freight yard sat between reinforced warehouses and rows of stacked shipping containers. The rival gang had filled it with vehicles, armed men and mobile sirens.
Yuche turned the first row of containers.
Steel shrieked across concrete as the enormous boxes slid from their positions. They formed two solid walls leading from the open gate into the center of the freight yard.
He was making a funnel.
The zombie herd changed direction as soon as the opening appeared. Bodies struck the container walls, clawing uselessly at solid steel while the rest poured down the path Yuche had created.
The attackers in the freight yard finally understood what was happening.
When they tried to leave, their engines roared. But unfortunately for them, their vehicles didn’t move at all.
Yuche crushed the wheel rims around their axles. Driveshafts twisted beneath armored trucks as doors sealed inside their frames and the steel bumpers sank into the pavement as though roots had grown from them.
The sirens continued calling the zombies closer.
"Open the interior freight barrier," Yuche ordered Han Zhi. "Close it when the last of their main force has entered the yard."
Han Zhi raised his radio. "And our people?"
"Get them out of the funnel."
Yuche turned toward the section leaders gathering near the central aisle. Some of them were professionally armed and ready for action while others looked as though they were still deciding whether the market had a new head or merely another temporary problem.
Scoffing to himself, he pushed his powers out harder causing metal shelving to groan around them.
Every gun in the aisle lifted from its owner’s hand and dozens of weapons floated overhead before turning toward the men who had carried them.
The market became silent around Yuche.
"The market remains open," he announced, his voice cold and ringing. But no matter how authoritative he sounded, the distant gunfire and zombie screams made the statement absurd.
Even then, no one questioned him.
"Anyone wearing a grey band dies. Anyone who opened a gate for them dies. Protect the healers, restricted storage and supply warehouses. Customers can fight, hide or leave." Yuche wasn’t willing to play around, but he wasn’t about to lose the market now. Now when he knew that it belonged to Lingyun, and therefore Rouxi.
One section leader glanced toward the people crouched behind the stalls. "What about evacuating the civilians?"
"This is a black market," Yuche replied. "There are no civilians."
The man lowered his head even as the people around him snickered.
"If anyone uses the attack to steal from the market," Yuche continued, "Lingyun will deal with them."
Lingyun walked into the aisle with blood on his hands and an unfinished bandage visible beneath his shirt.
He smiled brightly at everyone, but it wasn’t the same smile he gave Rouxi.
Instead of being assured by the smile on his face, several merchants actually stepped back, moving farther away from the merchandise nearest them.
Yuche released the suspended guns and they returned only to the hands of men who had already chosen the correct side. The remaining weapons folded in half and dropped to the floor... completely useless.
"Seal warehouses two and three," he continued to bark orders to Han Zhi expecting them to be done fast and well. "The Red Jackals already inside them will stay there."
"There are market guards trapped with them."
"Then the guards can prove they deserve their positions," Yuche shrugged in a move that was very much a Rouxi move.
Nodding his head, Han Zhi transmitted the order.
Steel shutters dropped throughout the district, but this time Yuche controlled where they fell. Invaders were cut off from their reinforcements. Escape routes vanished. Service doors sealed around the hands of men trying to hold them open.
A group of attackers rounded the next aisle, firing before they even managed to see him.
But it didn’t matter if they saw him or not, the results were still the same. The bullets stopped completely.
They hung in the air several meters in front of Yuche, flattened by the force holding them. Behind them, the barrels of the rifles began collapsing inward.
The attackers stared at him in sock, even as Yuche sent the bullets back before they could respond.
They tore through the men’s shoulders, knees and weapon hands, dropping every man to the ground without even touching the stalls behind them.
Lingyun stepped over the first body, looking vaguely disappointed. "You left them alive."
"They may know who sent the signal."
"I only need one to get the information," Lingyun replied, rolling his eyes. "The rest are all useless." He raised his hand and his fingers flickered with fire.
A narrow flame crossed the aisle, but Yuche did not look back to count how many Lingyun kept.
Han Zhi’s radio crackled with a report from the freight yard. "Qiao Ren is here. He’s directing the attack from the armored truck beneath the crane."
Yuche extended his senses through the yard, and found the truck immediately.
Thick armor surrounded the vehicle, reinforced around the doors and windows. Qiao Ren had chosen a mobile steel box as his command center while attacking a metal-powered Dragon Head.
But steel box wouldn’t protect him. Yuche scoffed as he reached forward, closed his fist, and the truck compressed completely.
Like it was nothing more than a toy, the truck’s doors folded into the frame. The armor plates bent around the wheels, locking them in place as the roof lowered several centimeters. But still, Yuche didn’t go far enough to actually crush the occupants.
Maybe he was getting soft in his old age.
However, it was enough to teach them what would happen if Yuche tightened his hand again.
Lingyun wiped a streak of blood from his jaw. "Do you want me to burn him out?"
"No," the other man replied, shaking his head. Yuche looked toward the red crane towering above the freight yard while the zombie herd closed around Qiao Ren’s trapped vehicle. "We need to take him alive."
Lingyun’s eyes brightened as he practically started vibrating with excitement. "Why?"
Yuche thought of Rouxi alone in the secured room, interrupted while absorbing the cores she had needed badly enough to leave home for. He thought of the stranger’s voice announcing that they had found her, as if she were an object waiting to be taken and traded.
The metal surrounding Qiao Ren’s truck tightened another fraction.
"He tried to take what is mine," Yuche said. "Rouxi may want to kill him herself."