Chapter 77: Heavy

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Gao Yuan expended a lot of effort explaining who exactly he was. He didn't want to boast, but he also didn't want to intentionally hide it, so the result was that everyone in his squad knew he was a celebrity, yet no one could figure out how he had become one.

It didn't matter if they couldn't understand, as soon they were too exhausted to ask any questions.

The march was long enough, a full ten-plus kilometers, but after a month of training, the Volunteer Corps was still able to handle it with ease.

Finally, they arrived at their destination.

This was a village transitioning from the plains to the mountains. Beyond this point, all the villages were still uncleaned and occupied by zombies.

Two kilometers away from the village, Gao Yuan and the rest stopped to rest, while Da Hong Third Company dispatched a reconnaissance team. After observing the terrain, the team moved forward again, and then stopped about six or seven hundred meters from the village.

No one spoke; from the moment they entered within two kilometers, they had strictly enforced noise discipline.

Zhou Shaoqiang waved his hand to signal the construction of machine gun emplacements. The soldiers of Da Hong Third Company quickly dispersed and methodically began to construct the machine gun positions.

No cover was needed, as their enemy were zombies, not an army. Therefore, the setup of the machine gun emplacements was completely unlike what traditional warfare experience would dictate. Instead, they constructed a roughly semi-circular machine gun emplacement that could still form a crossfire.

Humans wouldn't run into such a firepower trap, but zombies were different.

Once the machine gun emplacements were set up, Wei Guo no longer had concerns. He walked to the front of the Volunteer Corps and loudly said, "Next, we will lure all the zombies out of the village and eliminate them. Once the emerging zombies are wiped out, we will need to thoroughly search and clear the entire village. That's when you'll come in. Alright, now observe from behind the machine gun emplacements."

The volunteers all dispersed, taking positions as spectators.

At Zhou Shaoqiang's command, a soldier raised his rifle and fired a shot into the sky.

Shortly after, there was movement in the village. One figure appeared outside the village, followed by a second and a third.

The first few zombies appeared sporadically, but soon they emerged in groups. However, as soon as the first zombie reached the front of the machine gun emplacement, the subsequent zombies had just started to run out of the village.

"Fire!"

At this point, certainly not all machine guns would fire at once.

The machine gun in the middle of the semi-circle fired first. It was an 88-type machine gun; a short burst went out, and blood splattered from the zombie, which immediately fell to the ground.

If it had been a person, they would have been dead by then, but it was a zombie.

After rolling around on the ground for a moment, the zombie got up again and ran towards the machine gun emplacement, its speed barely reduced.

The machine gun fired again. This time, after being hit by bullets yet again, the zombie advanced another four or five meters before finally falling down, motionless.

It took at least twenty bullets to deal with one zombie, and that zombie must have been hit by at least five bullets before it finally stopped less than thirty meters away from the machine gun.

The second zombie, the third zombie—only one machine gun was needed to handle the zombies in the front, but when a dozen zombies came together, they had to fire three machine guns at once.

The 88-type machine gun's power was too weak. When forty or fifty zombies surged forward together, Zhou Shaoqiang finally yelled out, "Heavy machine guns, fire!"

12.7mm bullets, undoubtedly overkill on a human body, would sever an arm upon contact, break a leg if it hit one, and though hitting the torso wouldn't cut a body in half, it would certainly create a massive hole.

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But the zombies were still advancing.

Zombies with severed legs could still crawl forward, even though they would soon bleed to death, and those missing an arm did not slow down their pace at all.

So the machine guns had to sweep back and forth until the zombies were completely taken down.

Gao Yuan understood why they couldn't enter the city.

There were only a few hundred zombies here, at most not exceeding three hundred, but twenty machine guns were used. Although these twenty machine guns handled the zombies without much effort, it was not as effortless as Gao Yuan had imagined.

The main reason was that zombies didn't lose their ability to move due to pain; in other words, the zombies' resistance to being hit was too strong.

For normal humans, a single bullet could incapacitate them, rendering them unable to continue fighting even if they weren't dead, but zombies were still a threat as long as they were not dead.

This was just against a few hundred zombies, but what if there were thousands of them, or even tens of thousands?

Ammunition could run out, and when it was exhausted, it had to be reloaded, but even if there was an unlimited supply of bullets, the barrels of the guns would overheat. Overheating not only reduced accuracy but could also lead to the barrel bursting.

And a heavy machine gun could only fire a few hundred rounds before its barrel turned red hot.

Therefore, even if every soldier in the shelter had a heavy machine gun with unlimited ammunition, they still couldn't resolve a city full of zombies.

Luring the zombies out for a battle, as the Da Hong Third Company was doing now, was indeed effective, but there were millions of zombies in the city!

When the zombies kept pouring out of the city endlessly, no number of machine guns would be sufficient because there would inevitably be gaps in the gunfire, as well as in the line of fire.

The sound of machine guns stopped, and in front of the defensive position there was now a pile of corpses, the zombies stacked layer upon layer, up to five meters high.

This was why when there were a certain number of zombies, it became impossible to shoot, as the pile of corpses would continuously move forward until it reached the machine gun position, if the machine guns could keep firing until that moment.

The machine guns stopped because there were no more zombies emerging.

The zombies had fallen one by one along the way, with a pile of bodies at the front, about fifty meters away from the machine gun position.

Why let the zombies get so close?

It was to conserve ammunition. It was feasible to shoot at three hundred meters or even five hundred meters away, but doing so might mean that fifty bullets wouldn't even kill one zombie.

One shot per zombie was impossible, even for a sniper. And don't forget that the speed of the zombies was at least one-third faster than that of normal humans, at the very least.

The battle ended, and it became very quiet after the gunfire stopped.

Wei Guo also saw a relatively large-scale battle for the first time. He kept looking at the corpses of those zombies and was silent for a long time.

Finally, Wei Guo turned around.

Looking at the volunteers under his command, Wei Guo spoke seriously and loudly, "Zombies won't run away, so you don't need to surround the entire village. Just form the densest possible line and proceed with the search and cleanup. Remember! Once you encounter zombies, don't panic, don't get disorderly, just do as you were trained. Now, everyone group up in teams, watch your positions, and follow me!"