Chapter 76: Mutated Cockroach
Everyone had just finished eating and was discussing tomorrow’s plan to wipe out the zombies at the university across the street.
Just then, a strange sound came from the living room window. KNOCK KNOCK.
Everyone looked at Luna Dawson, assuming it was someone from downstairs looking for trouble.
Luna Dawson shook her head. "It’s not human."
Hearing this, the hair on everyone’s arms stood on end. If it wasn’t human, what kind of monstrous thing could it be?
Luna Dawson quickly released her spiritual power. Within an eight-hundred-meter radius were countless zombies and mutated plants and animals.
And outside the door were two cockroaches!
Cockroaches bigger than the palm of a hand!
Luna Dawson’s pupils constricted. ’If there’s one of these things, it means there’s a whole swarm nearby!’
"A swarm of mutated cockroaches!"
Luna Dawson immediately stood up, waving her hand to store away the dining table. ’What rotten luck!’
’Why have we run into so many swarming creatures today?!’
"How could it be... cockroaches?!" Mrs. Dawson exclaimed in shock. "Aren’t there supposed to be no cockroaches in the north during winter?"
Kevin Keane answered with a grim expression, "There are, they’re just small. But when you say a swarm of cockroaches... how many?"
As they were talking, countless cockroaches began swarming from the direction of the city center, and it was clear they would arrive soon.
Luna Dawson threw open the door, impaled the two mutated cockroaches with her blade, then turned and tossed them on the ground. The others followed her movement with their eyes, and their faces instantly paled.
"You’re saying there’s a whole swarm of *these* things?!" Miles Dawson’s voice cracked in shock.
Luna Dawson pried open the cockroach’s exoskeleton and dug out two soybean-sized Crystal Cores. "Countless! A tide of them is coming this way!"
’It seems the rat swarm only had one mutated rat with a Spiritual Ability. At least I can sense these cockroaches.’
"Everyone out! Luna, store the villa!" Evan Olson urged the group.
Luna Dawson’s mind raced, trying to figure out a plan, but her hands didn’t stop moving.
With a single thought, she stored the villa and simultaneously brought out two helicopters loaded with incendiary bombs.
Luna Dawson took out several flamethrowers. These kinds of swarming mutated animals were all afraid of fire.
She released Little Tiger and Rollo, having them stay in the middle of the group with the children and the elderly.
"You all stay in the middle and kill any cockroaches that get through. The rest of us will be on the perimeter with flamethrowers. We’ll see if we can hold them off. If we can’t, we’ll get on the choppers and run."
Luna Dawson looked at her grandfather and mother as she gave the quick commands.
"Alright!"
The group responded.
Once outside the villa, everyone could finally see clearly. In the pitch-black night, they could see more than a dozen fires of varying sizes burning in the direction of the city center.
"Look, there are fires everywhere in the distance. The city center must have been hit hard! I wonder how the safe zone is doing."
Blake Blue’s brow was tightly furrowed. It seemed these mutated cockroaches were not to be underestimated.
Luna Dawson had always been disgusted by creatures like cockroaches. She was afraid of rats, afraid of bugs with too many legs, and also afraid of things with no legs at all...
Just thinking about it gave her goosebumps.
"We have to kill zombies during the day, and now we have to kill mutated creatures at night. I haven’t had a day this busy in my entire life!"
Aaron Palmer wailed. He had been enjoying a post-dinner "dirty bun" when the cockroaches ruined it!
Lynn Shelby yawned. "I’d really like to retire. Raising cats would be nice. All this killing all day really makes you old..."
Kevin Keane mercilessly called him out. "Who was that grinning from ear to ear while picking up Crystal Cores after the slaughter?"
The two of them: "..."
They couldn’t argue with that.
"They’re here!"
Luna Dawson felt every hair on her body stand on end.
The words had barely left her mouth when a dark, dense mass of mutated cockroaches flooded onto the road like a rising tide.
The surrounding zombies heard the commotion and started running along with the mutated cockroaches. Some zombies even threw themselves to the ground.
The scent of the First Order Crystal Cores attracted the mutated zombies. They frantically grabbed cockroaches and stuffed them into their mouths, dark green slime constantly dripping from their jaws.
The cockroach swarm wasn’t to be outdone. They completely covered the heads of the Aberrant Zombies, and the two groups began to devour each other.
Kevin Keane’s expression changed. "The zombies and cockroaches are all coming over! Throw the incendiary bombs at the base of this building! Let’s get a fire started!"
BOOM! The pile of furniture and abandoned vehicles at the base of the building instantly burst into flames the moment the incendiary bombs landed.
Cockroaches that rushed to the base of the building were immediately engulfed in flames, making a loud SIZZLING sound, like hot oil being poured onto raw meat.
Wearing masks, the group smelled the acrid stench of burning cockroaches and the foul reek of incinerated zombie corpses, a smell so suffocating it made them wrinkle their noses.
More cockroaches continued to pour in, trampling over the charred bodies of their comrades to push forward, once again covering the platform and walls below in a dense, writhing carpet.
There was no end in sight. The road outside the residential complex’s walls looked like a flowing river of cockroaches, and the surrounding buildings seemed to be wearing coats woven from them.
Their legs rubbed together frantically, creating a piercing SKITTERING sound that merged into a scalp-numbing noise that even the cold wind couldn’t drown out.
"Fire!"
Luna Dawson yelled.
Miles Dawson had been waiting for his sister to give the word. The few people holding flamethrowers immediately pulled the triggers.
Several jets of scorching flame erupted from their hands, forming a large circle around them.
WHOOSH! The flames shot out, erecting a half-meter-high wall of fire along the edge of the rooftop.
A few Second-tier Zombies struggled out of the cockroach swarm, climbing up the tower of zombies at the building’s base. One zombie, which seemed to have a flight-related superpower, had astonishing jumping ability.
It stepped on the heads of several of its companions, dug its long, black fingernails tightly into the cracks of a windowsill, and scrambled upwards, leaping to a third-floor balcony in the blink of an eye.
CRASH! It shattered the glass and squeezed into the building.
Smelling the delicious scent from the rooftop, it opened its cavernous, bloody mouth and excitedly rushed upstairs.
On the first floor.
Countless zombies and cockroaches were piled together, tirelessly clawing at the building’s exterior walls.
’Fragrant!’
’The smell from upstairs is so fragrant!’
The zombies packed at the very bottom, feeling no pain, tried to straighten up, driven by instinct to climb upwards as well.
Under the pressure and scratching, the glass on the third floor began to deform, one window after another. Ordinary glass is fragile, and under the constant squeezing, it finally gave way.
SHATTER!
Shards of glass rained down.
Several zombies and cockroaches climbing the tower poured into the building like a flood through an open gate!
"GURGLE GURGLE!"
"SKITTER SKITTER..."
The two types of creatures were surprisingly in sync, spreading through the building together.
Inside a room, Logan Sawyer and his group, who had been jealously watching Luna Dawson, heard the huge commotion and looked around in alarm.
Bull was the first to run to the stairwell, just as a zombie with two fleshy tumors on its back charged onto the sixteenth floor.
It was wearing a food delivery uniform. Half the skin from its face, along with its scalp, had been torn off. The remaining flap, with its thick hair, dangled next to its neck. Neat teeth were faintly visible through the dark red, rotting flesh. The gory mess of its head was particularly jarring under the dim, yellow light.
Upon seeing a living person, its eyes flashed with a crimson light, and it flapped the dangling skin tissue as it made its final sprint!
"AARGH!"
"AAH!"
The screams of the zombie and the man rang out at the same time.
Bull swore he had never been so agile in his entire life!
His adrenaline exploded. He dodged into a room next to the stairwell and slammed the door shut with a BANG!