Chapter 79: Even a Cornered Rabbit Will Kill
Luna Dawson’s eyes narrowed. She reacted instantly, saying, "It’s the military! They’re also clearing out these mutated cockroaches!"
Evan Olson gazed at the distant fires, his tone steady. "Don’t let your guard down! The military is too far from us. For now, we have to rely on ourselves!"
"What do we do? We’re attracting zombies now!"
Miles Dawson shouted, his voice trembling. They had fought off massive zombie hordes before, but tonight, they faced tens of thousands of zombies and countless mutated cockroaches.
Luna Dawson thought for a moment, then steeled herself. "Then we’ll kill all the zombies! We can’t retreat. If we pull back now, the cockroaches’ Crystal Cores will be a free meal for the zombies!"
Thanks to Lynn Shelby and Aaron Palmer mowing them down with incendiary bombs, some of the cockroaches started giving them a wide berth, considerably easing the pressure on everyone.
Luna Dawson’s group was geared to the teeth, rotating between flamethrowers and assault rifles. With Rollo and Little Tiger also helping out, they handled the situation with ease, even finding the time to glance at the fighter jets in the distance.
Logan Sawyer’s group, on the other hand, was in complete chaos.
"Quick! Don’t let them climb up!"
Logan Sawyer roared, wildly swinging a burning backpack in his hand, his face a mask of panic.
Only a few sporadic jets of flame from Luna Dawson’s group provided them any cover. The other side of the building was a different story; dense swarms of cockroaches had already blanketed the wall, resembling a blackish-brown carpet—a sight that would make anyone’s skin crawl.
To make matters worse, a few of the critters that slipped past crawled right into their clothes.
"AHH!"
The old woman let out a horrific scream, her voice so hoarse it cracked. It was clear she was truly scared out of her mind.
Although she usually seemed fierce, she was over sixty years old, after all. The corner she was defending had let the most creatures through.
Several cockroaches were gnawing on her body, and the pain made her tremble uncontrollably.
Panicked and driven mad by the bites, she grabbed Tilly Lane, who was crouching beside her hacking at cockroaches, and viciously dragged her in front of herself to use as a human shield.
"Shield me! Quick, shield me!"
Tilly Lane was completely unprepared. She was yanked off balance, her foot slipped, and half her body tipped over the edge of the rooftop.
Before she could even struggle, a dozen cockroaches swarmed her, their bites sending waves of excruciating pain through her body.
Meanwhile, Lincoln Wright, now free from the cockroach assault, felt the pressure on her lighten instantly.
"Holy shit! What are you doing?!"
Bull was standing on Tilly Lane’s other side. With lightning reflexes, he grabbed the back of her collar and hauled her back onto the roof, swatting away a few cockroaches in the process.
Tilly Lane collapsed on the ground, frantically clawing the cockroaches off her body. Small, bloody holes dotted her face and neck, with blood trickling from the wounds. The injuries weren’t fatal, but the sight was gruesome.
She suddenly looked up, her eyes flashing with an unprecedented viciousness.
She grabbed Lincoln Wright’s collar, reached up to pull off a cockroach still tearing at her ear, and slammed it viciously onto Lincoln Wright’s face.
"Lincoln Wright! Are you insane?!"
"I’ve endured and endured, I’ve given in to you on everything, just because you’re Mingjing’s mother! But you keep trying to hurt me, again and again!"
Her eyes were redder than the nearby flames. Fat tears mixed with blood streamed down her face, and her voice was a raw mix of anguish and fury.
"Food, clothes, supplies... haven’t I given you first pick of everything? You haven’t set foot downstairs once since the apocalypse began! I’m the one who gathered firewood! I’m the one who melted snow for water! What gives you the right to treat me like this?!"
Tilly Lane roared as she shook Lincoln Wright relentlessly. "You even teamed up with Quentin Sawyer to bully me, all for a few boxes of self-heating rice! We had enough supplies at home for the two of us, so why did you have to be like this?! Why?!"
Lincoln Wright had already lost a lot of blood from the cockroach bites. She couldn’t withstand such violent shaking and was so dizzy she nearly collapsed.
But her words were still vicious. She screamed with her hoarse throat, "You useless, barren hen! What’s the big deal about blocking a few roaches?!"
Those words completely ignited Tilly Lane’s rage.
A vicious look entered her eyes. She tightened her grip on her dagger and, without hesitation, plunged it into Lincoln Wright’s abdomen. SQUELCH! The blade sank deep, nearly to the hilt.
Tilly Lane violently ripped the dagger out. Blood sprayed across her body, but she paid it no mind, instead giving Lincoln Wright a hard shove off the edge of the roof.
"This is what you owe me!"
"AHHHHH—!"
Lincoln Wright’s horrific scream tore through the sky as her body plummeted toward the abyss below, but she didn’t fall directly into the zombie horde.
She was caught by the metal awning of an illegally constructed second-floor balcony with a loud BANG. The sound of the impact was horrifying.
Bull stared at Tilly Lane, his face a mask of shock. "Damn, even a cornered rabbit will bite!"
Logan Sawyer and Charlotte Caldwell watched helplessly as she fell, so scared they froze in their tracks and almost dropped the daggers in their hands.
A mountain of writhing bugs and shambling corpses was already piled up at the base of the building, clinging to the wall.
The moment Lincoln Wright’s scream faded, countless zombies went into a frenzy, scrambling over each other to get to the edge of the balcony awning.
"AWOOOO—!"
"GURGLE—!"
"ARGHH—!"
The chorus of zombie roars rose and fell, making the scalps of the survivors on the roof prickle with fear.
At the very top of the corpse pile, a tall male zombie leaped onto the balcony awning. It pounced on Lincoln Wright and, with a snarl, bit down on her shriveled, wrinkled cheek, brutally tearing off a large chunk of flesh.
Lincoln Wright still had a breath left in her. She weakly stretched an arm toward the roof.
"...Save... save me....."
"It hurts... so much... ah..."
After a few chomps, the male zombie swallowed the mouthful of flesh and immediately went back to gnawing, moving down her jaw to her neck.
With a wet RIP, her carotid artery was torn open. Blood gushed out, spraying all over the faces of the surrounding zombies and driving them into an even greater frenzy.
One, two, then a dozen zombies leaped onto the balcony awning, swarming around Lincoln Wright.
Lincoln Wright’s cloudy eyes suddenly became surprisingly bright, filled with despair and malevolence. She stared fixedly at the people on the roof, as if to burn their faces into her very bones.
Another zombie bit into the other side of her neck. Clamping down on the flesh, it thrashed its head wildly, tearing a huge gash in her throat.
The rest of the zombies had a clear goal. They all pounced, tearing at her down jacket. Their sharp nails dug in, sending blood-stained feathers scattering through the air.
The jacket was soon torn to shreds. Dozens of zombies’ hands plunged into her abdomen, pulling out her liver, kidneys, and intestines all at once, and began to devour them in great, tearing bites.
Blood dripped down through the cracks in the balcony awning, but not a single drop reached the ground before it was snatched up and devoured by the cockroaches below.
One or two First and Second Order mutated zombies, their strength astonishing, reached out with their claws and cracked her ribcage open.
A still-beating, steaming heart was instantly fought over and devoured by several zombies until not a single scrap was left.
In no more than ten seconds, the once arrogant and vicious Lincoln Wright had been torn to pieces, her remains scattered across the balcony awning.
The metal awning, long since oxidized and rusted, was already buckling under the strain. With a dozen zombies trampling and tearing at the scene, it finally gave way with a loud SNAP. The broken structure, along with Lincoln Wright’s remains and the feasting zombies, plunged into the cockroach swarm below, disappearing in an instant under a writhing tide of insects.
On the roof, the survivors watched, a chill running through them. It was dead silent, as if the horrific scene had never happened at all.
They exchanged a look, then silently resumed hacking at the swarming cockroaches.