Chapter 92: Corrosion Infection

The third wave of those nasty liquid blobs hit the freaked-out soldiers, and man, the way it corroded was insane. Screams were echoing everywhere, with soldiers rolling around on the ground. Once that corrosive stuff stuck to them, it was game over, kinda like getting hit with napalm.

"Spread out, spread out, move it!"

The officers, realizing the mess they were in, were running around like headless chickens, trying to get the soldiers to scatter. The splatter range of that liquid was no joke; one blob could mess up everyone in its path. Even a tiny splash was enough to eat through to the bone before anyone could do anything about it. Just a little bit could take a soldier out of the fight.

The apocalypse is a brutal place; the injured are left to fend for themselves, eventually starving to death on the streets.

The scattered soldiers couldn't get a good shot at the zombies on the wall. The zombies, who had been chilling up there, started pouring down, landing on the corpses below, then getting up and charging at the humans. With those long-range liquid attacks backing them up, they launched a counterattack.

The zombies were moving with freaky precision, like someone was pulling their strings.

Nobody had a clue how these zombies were shooting the liquid or how much they had left. But as they charged, a fourth wave of liquid came flying from their tubes, whistling through the air before smashing into the soldiers.

The scattered soldiers took fewer hits this time, but those dozen or so blobs still made dozens of soldiers scream and hit the ground.

With the zombie horde rushing in, even the officers started to lose it. Human tactics against zombies hadn't changed in years; they were all about mobile tactics. But this sudden long-range attack threw them for a loop. They didn't know whether to regroup and shoot at the zombies or stay spread out to avoid the corrosive liquid.

The columns weren't far apart, but when stretched out, orders got all mixed up. Without a proper communication system, orders were relayed by runners. In a smooth battle, runners could move between columns, delivering commands. But now, with everything in chaos, runners were getting knocked down by panicked soldiers or hit by the liquid, making it nearly impossible to pass orders.

With orders all over the place, each column did its own thing.

Some columns, seeing the zombies charge, regrouped and stuck to their old tactics, using concentrated fire to take down the zombies. Other columns kept their soldiers spread out to avoid getting splashed by the liquid.

These mixed orders led to even more deaths.

A dozen special infected, seemingly under command, didn't go for the scattered soldiers but aimed their tubes at the gathered ones. A dozen liquid blobs were fired, crashing into the soldiers, who screamed and fell. The corrosive power was brutal; those hit were either dead or severely injured, like getting hit by a dozen brutal cannons.

These special zombies were a total nightmare; nobody saw this coming. Who would've thought zombies could level up like this?

Wellington was starting to get why human settlements either got slowly eaten up by zombies or had to keep on the move. With these long-range zombie attacks, basically like artillery, and humans without heavy weapons, the infantry was pretty much screwed.

The Bureau's troops had snipers, but out here on this flat wasteland, with just a wall and a sea of zombies, sniper rifles were useless. Plus, these special zombies were smart; they only popped out to shoot and then hid behind the others.

If it was just the corrosive stuff, a dozen special zombies wouldn't be enough to take down the human soldiers.

But these corrosive liquids had some alien virus in them, too. While they were eating through the soldiers, the virus was turning them into zombies in minutes.

People were so freaked out by these new zombie types that they didn't even notice their injured or dead buddies at their feet. Those guys were mutating, getting up all stiff, and then grabbing the nearest soldier, chomping down with their blackening teeth.

Terrified soldiers couldn't believe it, pushing the zombies away, clutching their gushing wounds, and slowly falling.

This internal chaos was the real killer. After a few waves of liquid attacks, over a thousand casualties turned into zombies right next to the soldiers, causing even more deaths. Soldiers focused on shooting were getting silently attacked, and it wasn't until thousands had died that everyone realized what was happening.

In the chaos, zombies were everywhere. Soldiers with guns didn't know if a zombie would suddenly pop up in front of them, leaving them totally lost.

The zombies rushing out from the salt well crashed into the columns in the chaos. Like waves hitting rocks, the zombies reached out with corrosive hands, grabbing soldiers and biting down. Amidst gunfire and screams, the black mass of zombies surged like a tide, swallowing the soldiers. In one clash, half of the thousands-strong column was wiped out.

The change happened way too fast. With orders hard to relay and the line stretched too long, there was no time to react.

Luckily, the commanders weren't complete idiots. They quickly pulled their troops out of the zombie mess and switched to mobile tactics, shooting at the zombies while running. The soldiers were scared out of their minds, and their aim was all over the place, but it still worked, with charging zombies getting hit and falling.

Other columns weren't about to let the zombies get close again. The current mess was just because they were too shocked by the zombies' new tricks and didn't react in time. Once they got their heads straight, they quickly pulled back from the zombies.

"These idiots!"

Wellington stared in shock at the human soldiers' massive defeat. In just ten minutes, the zombies, who had been getting their butts kicked by humans, were now chasing and biting them. The speed of the change was unreal. Even crazier, nearly a third of the almost twenty thousand soldiers had fallen to the zombies' counterattack in no time.