Capítulo 46: Rescue and return
"Are there any other people in the house?" Liushi asked.
"... There are 2 people in the backyard... they... are toys..."
"Toys?" Zhuying asked with discomfort, having moved closer to Liushi.
"They were tortured, for their amusement" another girl explained quietly, making the group eyes widen.
"Qingping, go and check on them. Sun Kun, go with her. If they are alive, carefully take them to the truck and have the Wen sisters scan them. If there is too much damage, end their suffering."
They nodded and rushed to execute his orders.
"Blood Wolf and the others lived in the upper floors, right?" he asked the girl, who nodded. "Zhuying, Haizi, check the upper floors. If there is a locked door or safe you can't open, come and get me. I'll take care of it."
Once the 2 were gone, Liushi focused on the pale, emaciated and bruised girls. These women, without self-protection abilities or notable skills, had become lambs for slaughter after doomsday.
"You girls, have a choice to make... The world wasn't an easy place before. It has become harsher and more unforgiving since doomsday. If you want to survive, you have to work hard, sometimes risk your lives. If you can't, you either become someone's pet, or you die. The first is followed by the second when your owner get tired of you. You have the choice between being a human, being a lowly b*tch..." he pulled out his handgun "Or put an end to your fears and pains."
The silence that followed was oppressive for the girls.
"What will happen if we want to live?" asked one of them softly.
"You can stay here and try to survive on your own. We will leave you enough to recover and take care of yourselves. You can come to our camp, and you'll have to pull your weight there or be cast out. I don't think we have a lot of people there who can afford to waste their ressources on useless people, and put additional strain on the group. You have until my team is ready to leave to make your decision."
With that said, he left them alone and joined Zhuying and Zhang Hai. He found them in the personal room of Blood Wolf. All useless items had been thrown out. There was only his bed, and all the supplies and precious materials he had gathered. Monster meat, dry food, weapons and a significant amount of amnutions, and 10 grenades. The best was the mutant beast core he kept in a box near his bed.
That wasn't all. After that, they checked the vehicles parked in the front yard. One of them was a small truck filled with a large variety of dried food like rice and vegetables, but also canned food. They also found 3 body armors and 2 bulletproof shields. It was quite the large haul they had gained.
Back in the Doomsday Ride, Xiaotian was feeling miserable. When Qingping and Sun Kun checked on the 'toys', one of them had already died. They caried the other to the truck, following Liushi's instructions. When Xiaotian saw the state of the girl, she fainted.
Seeing bodies disfigured by zombies wasn't the same as seeing someone disfigured by torture. Zombies attacks were akin to animals attacks. And she had gotten used to that. What was presented to her then, someone had done it on purpose. It wasn't an accident, but the result of human's raw malice and cruelty. The shock was too much for her sensible heart.
Lu was the one to deal with the issue. They took the unconscious girl to Xiaotian's bed because it was the bottom one, and Lu operated the medical scanner. The result of the scan made all 3 people present hold their breath. The visible damage was already worse than some of the corpses they had to gather the previous day. The internal damage made Lu and Qingping squirm and hiss. The 'toy' had her holes destroyed. Sun Kun just shook his head and turned away. She had suffered much more than they could have imagined, and it was a honest wonder that she was still alive.
When Xiaotian regained consciousness, the tortured girl had already been put out of her misery. When she was caugh up on the events, she had been horrified. Furtheremore, Qingping had beratted her for her reactions, and called her worthless before leaving. Following that, Xiaotian apologised to Lu, but demanded her to be left alone.
And she silently cried. She cried for the unfortunate women. She cried because of the level of wickedness humanity was capable. She cried because bad things happened when she thought things would only get better. She cried because of her own weakness. She thought she had gotten better, and was proven wrong.
She didn't feel better after crying. If before she was afraid of Liushi because of his willingness to kill in cold blood, then she got afraid to be abandonned by him. She watched through the window as he and the rest of the group checked the vehicles, wondering what the future held for them, and for herself.
Meanwhile, Liushi left Qingping, Zhang Hai and Sun Kun to stock of everything, and went to see the recently freed girls. Zhuying stayed with him.
"Me and my group are going to leave soon" he said the moment he got in the room. "Have you come to a decision?"
"Yes" said the first woman to have spoken when they arrived. "Most of us want to stay here. We don't want to be at someone else mercy again. We want to try and live on our own, for better or worse. The rest want to go to your camp."
"Then those who want to leave, go out and wait near the door. You" he pointed to the woman who spoke "come with us and see what we will leave you."
Out of 16 people, from teenagers to women in their 30s, 5 choose to join the camp. They quickly got out of the room. While leading the apparent leader of the new woman group, Liushi talked to her.
"We will leave you 7 days of supplies. 3 days to recover from your injuries, and another 4 to recover from the malnutrition, build some strenght. We will also leave you some weapons. Forget about using the guns against the zombies. You don't know how to use them, and you can't use the limited amnutions for training. You will waste bullets and only bring more zombies to you. The guns we will leave you, will be deterents against others people trying to enslave you again. We will leave you a machine gun, to use only if you come across a mutant beast."
He left her with the 2 men to sort what they would leave, and went to his double trailer. He used the Starseed to make 3 spears, 2 machetes, 2 axes, and 4 pump-action repeating crossbows. He could have made bows, as they had a faster firing rate. But it would require more skills for the girls, and they would tire faster from maintaining the bow drawn before firing. He made them with some of the good quality materials he had prepared the previous day.
During that time he had the micro-factory build the parts of a small mechanical machine to carve and cut additional bolts out of wood. With all the designs the Starseed had in memory from everything he scanned, it was all too easy to modify them. 30 minutes later, he was done. With Zhang Hai's help, he transported the gifts to the leading girl.
They were ready to leave. They would take one of the Bloody Wolves truck with them to transport the extra materials, driven by Zhang Hai. The girls would be in the SUV with Sun Kun. Liushi adressed the leading girl one last time.
"Once you are ready to be active, I suggest you take a week to gather a lot of ressources, and leave the city. Move to a small town or a village nearby. You probably won't want to stay here in the future."
"What do you mean?" she asked, scared at the prospect of leaving an already functional base.
"Something that I realised a few hours ago. I have learned, from reliable sources, that paranormals and mutant beasts grow stronger as time passes. Why shouldn't the same apply to zombies? You know, we may call them that, but they aren't actually undead."
The woman looked at him with growing horror.
"They won't stay stuck in the same areas for long" he said while looking at the sky, where more clouds gathered. "They are going to start to wander around, and once they find this place, you will be swarmed. The cities, which currently hold a vast amount of ressources to sustain their large populations, are going to be no-mans-lands, where only the toughest teams of scavengers would go." He returned his eyes to her one last time. "Be careful, and good luck." He turned away and paused. "Oh! And biker gear are resistant to zombie bites!"
With that said, he returned to the Doomtrooper, and they left.
"Brother? What did you say to her? She looked scared."
"I just told her that there was still a lot of hardships they will have to deal with."
It was never Liushi's intention to stay in Nanjing after finding Zhuying. He had always intended to go to Shenhai Island, and possibly find Li Yuxin. Xiaotian's friend was also supposed to have gone there with other refugees from Jiangbei. Finally, they would probably have better ressources and informations than Satellite Town.
Once they got back to the camp, the people were overjoyed to see them return. They had left the previous day in the morning, and had been without any news about them. All the powerful people of the camp had left, and if something had happened to them, it would have been a serious blow to their ability to survive. The new girls were welcomed with pity, and the most compassionate women rushed to take care of them.
Zhang Hai boasted about their victory over the notorious Bloody Wolves, and the loot they got from them. In fact, they had an excess of ressources. Under Zhuying's rule, people's share of loot depended on their contributions, and Liushi and his equipment did 70% of the job. He was nice enough to only take 50% for himself and the Wen sisters, making everyone else happier.
Still, what he wanted most was mutant beasts cores. They had enough to trade, but the military at Satellite Town wouldn't spare any more cores for them.
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