71. The Recon Squad Runs Into Xia Xinglan

The Recon Squad Runs Into Xia Xinglan

“Hey, Deadwalker, what do you think that is?” asked a man in dark brown and gray urban camouflage, pointing at the towering structure north of their position. “Think it’s an enemy stronghold?”

“Possible,” the aforementioned Deadwalker muttered in a whisper that was barely audible. “I doubt it, though.”

Everything about the tall, muscular, fully armed Marine seemed dim, lifeless, and faded.

From his voice, which was far too low, to his battered uniform, which remained ragged no matter how many times he requested a replacement, to his rifle, which at first glance looked more like reeds swaying in the wind than the very deadly large-caliber assault weapon it actually was.

Even when walking in broad daylight, or firing at the enemy, Deadwalker was hard to see.

People’s eyes slid off him, almost refusing to look, unless the observer already knew he existed and had a rough idea of where he was.

That was one reason he had been chosen for this mission.

“The architecture is different. The materials seem different too, even though the enemy also uses metal. And its roof isn’t packed with undead.”

“I think it’s a trap,” growled a third soldier, his powerful physique making his voice deeper than normal, but also sharper, almost like a howl. “We’ve been here long enough. Someone must have noticed us and set this up.”

“Nobody asked you, Mad Dog,” said the man in urban camouflage. “I say we check it out. This route leads that way anyway, and investigating enemy strongholds is part of the mission.”

“Fuck the mission!” another man cut in from behind.

He was carrying a grenade launcher, the kind of weapon that should have required a crew, and somehow looked only slightly awkward doing it.

“We’re already dead. We just don’t know whether the zombies or some mutated zombie virus is going to get us first.”

“Shut up, Big Guy,” the camouflaged man snapped. “This is the army, not a damned democracy. We follow orders. If you didn’t want to be here, you shouldn’t have volunteered.”

“Volunteered, sure,” muttered the man, very appropriately called Big Guy. “Everyone here has powers. If you think we could refuse this dressed-up suicide mission, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. It’s in downtown Detin, two blocks behind the enemy lightning-tower line.”

“Shut up!” the camouflaged man hissed. “I think I heard someone coming.”

The whole squad immediately found cover. They had suffered enough to know better than to underestimate even the weakest monsters, or even ordinary zombies. If a single enemy spotted them, a hunting party would follow soon after.

“You boys were making enough noise that I could have shot you in the dark,” called a voice as clear and crystalline as silver bells.

“Then again, ever since our night vision doubled along with everything else, shooting in the dark has not been especially hard.”

Before the wary soldiers could respond, two women casually walked into their hiding place and somehow did not get shot.

They were clearly women.

And extremely… womanly.

That was probably why they did not get shot.

The two brown-haired women stood a full six feet tall, give or take a centimeter, and had hourglass figures most models would have killed for. They wore shorts and tank tops several sizes too small, barely covering what they were supposed to cover.

Their long brown hair fell over their shoulders like shining waterfalls, arranged with artful care. Its luster spoke of health, excellent genetics, and the kind of expensive cosmetics usually affordable only to professional actors.

Their heart-shaped faces had identical amber eyes sparkling with mischief, identical French noses, and ruby-red lips as vivid as mirror images of each other.

And despite having walked out of an actual war zone, they were very clean. Their skin was dewy, smooth, flawless, and almost glowing.

In short, they were the most beautiful women the four men had ever seen.

And they were identical twins.

As expected, they reached the soldiers before the men had fully managed to close their gaping mouths. One of them had even been drooling.

Somehow, each woman produced a pistol and pointed it at two soldiers, which was not exactly surprising either.

“If you are tired of hiding from demons in the ruins, we can invite you into our castle,” said the brown-haired woman on the left.

“We have fresh food, clean water, fully charged phones you can play games on, and some fairly thick walls between us and anyone who wants to attack,” said the brown-haired woman on the right.

“Hmm,” said the man in urban camouflage. He was the first of the four soldiers to recover, though it sounded more like a cough or an attempt to speak before deciding what words should be involved. “Is this an official invitation, or an ‘invitation’? Because if it’s the second kind, we need to talk first.”

“No, no. The guns are just to make a point,” the woman on the left told them.

“A rather sharp but elegant point, don’t you think?” asked the woman on the right.

“…Are you that kind of identical twin?” Mad Dog suddenly blurted.

The two women giggled.

Somehow, the sound was also faintly like cackling.

The interior of the metal-walled fortress they led the four soldiers into was a scene of busy chaos.

More than thirty children and young adults were carrying bundles of clothes and food, barrels filled with water, oil, and even gasoline, and heavy steel tables, desks, and chairs to brace against doors or build temporary but intelligently designed barricades.

In short, they were doing everything ordinary civilians might do to prepare for a siege.

If the reconnaissance squad had not just spent an entire day searching for survivors without finding a single one, all of that might have been expected. Surprising as it was, though, it was not the most remarkable thing.

The remarkable thing was how calm these civilians were, how organized, how practiced their preparations looked. Almost disciplined.

No, not civilians, corrected the former commando codenamed Tumbleweed.

Over there, he saw a girl welding metal desks together with her bare hands, bright arcs sparking from her fingers.

Over there, a boy who was definitely still in middle school was pulling one sandbag after another from the many pouches on his belt. Since when did civilian belts come with pouches?

In the kitchen, a cook who had only just reached adulthood was working over a dozen cheerfully bubbling pots with inhuman speed, managing multiple dishes at once with skill beyond even the fastest professional chef.

More interesting, and also more concerning, was the short silver-haired man in a doctor’s coat pouring bottle after bottle of pills into a genuine purple-glowing cauldron.

His companion, a goth-styled young man, was tearing pages covered in luminous writing from a stack of sketchbooks. Those pages bent and twisted on their own, becoming origami animals that flew off or scurried away, trailing glowing sparks behind them.

“How is…?” Mad Dog stammered, then stopped completely. “They’re all enhanced. I mean all of them!”

“That’s right, we are,” one of their twin escorts admitted with a pleased smile. “It is one of the three reasons we are still alive.”