Chapter 54: The Great Battle at Suyuan Bridge and Four Virtues Park (Part 2)

The Ministry of Health spent the night observing through infrared binocular cameras, but since the zombies had no body heat, they saw nothing. However, the sound sensors manufactured by the Ministry of Industry detected a great deal of noise, all of which was recorded by the data collection software, ready for analysis and the development of a new automatic monitoring system.

At dawn, the troops sprang into action. After breakfast, each unit set off. Li Fengyi felt that, to a large extent, humanity had returned to the rhythm of working at sunrise and resting at sunset. He watched, somewhat lost in thought, as the bright red regimental flags led three battalions into operation. Li Fengyi rarely engaged directly in the work himself now. General Liu had repeatedly advised him and Li Qiang, “Your main duty is to command. Once you step onto the front lines, there’s little hope left. Don’t cause panic among the soldiers.”

Li Qiang, on the other hand, felt that his own military achievements were lacking and his pre-apocalypse rank had been low. He intended to earn enough merits before stepping back into a command role, so that everyone would be convinced of his capability.

Sun Xiaoshan led the automotive engineers along the highway, selecting only the high-powered off-road vehicles that could still run. They picked out more than twenty in total, planning to convert ten into excavation machines and the rest into battle vehicles. Lacking sufficient steel plates, they welded rows of steel pipes onto the vehicles instead. Fortunately, the zombies had yet to learn how to climb, making it easier for the soldiers behind to thrust at them from a distance. This time, the troops were equipped with five-meter-long steel pipes.

The driver’s seat was reinforced with scavenged steel plates, pieced together into a cylindrical enclosure to prevent the driver from being scratched or bitten by zombies. With the help of abundant auxiliary labor, the modifications were finished in one morning, along with the production of a large number of petrol bombs.

The battalions responsible for sealing the breaches made smooth progress. The park’s western boundary was lined by a highway, which provided ready-made roadblocks, and about two-thirds of the other sides had already been closed off. Li Fengyi decided it was time to act.

The first step was to have the steel-pipe battle vehicles advance in a square formation at a speed of six kilometers per hour. Inside the square, soldiers wielding five-meter steel pipes followed at a run, while numerous cars were pushed forward in their wake. When they reached about five hundred meters in, the density of zombies increased dramatically and the advance slowed, so they halted and formed a battle line.

The Ministry of Industry drove excavators into the designated positions, attached iron plows, and began digging trenches—two meters deep, one meter wide, spaced five meters apart—digging all the way back to the starting point, with no retreat path left open. When retreating, the vehicles would not be pulled back; instead, the soldiers would simply leap over the trenches to return. On the other side of the trenches, a sniper line would be established and the process repeated until they returned to the starting point. Multiple rows of battle vehicles had already been piled up beside the starting area, with more being added behind. This was meant to wear down the zombies’ numerical advantage.

Seeing their “food” approaching, the zombies grew excited, emitting guttural roars. The Ministry of Health explained that these were merely the result of air passing through their vocal cords, with no actual linguistic meaning, but that the sound could rally other zombies to attack—much like a cafeteria whistle signaling meal time.

Humans, when charging, instinctively avoid hurting themselves, seldom exerting more than seventy percent of their strength. Zombies, however, had no such concerns; they hurled their hundred-pound bodies directly at the vehicles without reserve. The steel-pipe vehicles rocked violently from the impacts, the drivers barely escaping under the cover of the soldiers, who thrust fiercely at the zombies from between the frames. Archers loosed volleys of bolts, creating a suppressive zone a hundred meters ahead.

In a separate section of the battle line, soldiers hurled petrol bombs with their enhanced strength, easily reaching distances of about a hundred meters, forming a wall of fire. Li Fengyi watched through his binoculars, carefully observing the effectiveness of the bolts and the fire wall. The twenty-centimeter steel bolts had tremendous kinetic energy, piercing zombies and pinning them to the ground—sometimes penetrating several at once. Unless a bolt struck a zombie’s head, the creature would simply stagger and keep moving, which was less than ideal. Still, fallen zombies impeded the advance of those behind, quickly forming a relatively even wall of bodies. The fire wall served a different purpose: as zombies were almost completely desiccated, they ignited easily, yet felt nothing. Human-shaped torches surged forward, blocked by the dense ranks ahead, setting others alight in turn. Only when their legs or brains were destroyed would they finally stop.

“Record this!” Li Fengyi ordered the staff officers beside him. “A sufficient number of archers can build a zombie wall, slowing the constant onslaught and disrupting their attack rhythm. The fire wall easily ignites zombies, but it takes a long time for them to burn out.”

Li Fengyi then ordered the archers and petrol bomb throwers to shift positions, wanting to observe the effect of igniting the zombie wall. Soon after, the wall of bodies was set ablaze, and the archers built another wall of corpses at the fire line.

The results were satisfactory: the zombie assault was halted. After all the zombies between the fire wall and the vehicle formation were destroyed, those behind, though continuously pouring into the flames, were mostly unable to mount an effective attack, burning to death before they could climb over the fire. The few that did staggered through, only to collapse after a few faltering steps. The carefully prepared trenches were not needed at all.

“Zombies aren’t so hard to deal with after all,” Li Fengyi concluded. “With proper preparation, even a horde is no cause for fear.” Everyone present broke into smiles, their long-standing worries about field combat with zombies eased by this initial victory.

By afternoon, all three battalions had sealed the breaches, and the park was cleared of zombies. As night fell, Li Fengyi decided that everyone would camp in Side Park and continue operations the next day.

That evening, a debriefing was held. The soldiers were in high spirits until the staff presented their report.

“Of the one hundred thousand crossbow bolts fired, eighty thousand were recovered. We made over two thousand petrol bombs and used more than a thousand,” the staff concluded. “Defeating zombies isn’t the problem—in the pre-apocalypse era, with uninterrupted production, this would have been easy. But now, with all supplies needing to be scavenged, the pressure on resources is immense.”

“Setting zombies alight with gasoline is instantaneous,” they further summarized, “but it takes fifteen or sixteen minutes to kill a zombie completely by burning. Zombie-to-zombie ignition takes about ten minutes. Those indirectly set alight, with no accelerant, rely only on their own body fat to burn, taking about an hour to fall. If the area ignited is small, they may even extinguish themselves. A large blaze is needed to maintain the heat and ensure continuous ignition.”

There was nothing more to be said. After the debrief, guards were posted, and everyone settled down for the night.