The Chinese New Year break soon flew past. Everyone was back to work, as much as they wanted to continue the holiday.
Xiaoyun prediction on the rescue team was surprisingly wrong as the outskirt rescue ended right when March was about to rolled around.
"We have nowhere else to search in the city outskirts. It's all cleared of survivors." Yezi explained in front of him
"We will have to go inside the city proper to look for more survivors. I know you don't want to do this, but we will have to if we want to keep growing."
As Yiming argued, Xiaoyun looked over to Yuqi, whose face did not look optimistic after he asked his own question.
"I know. I will allow it as long as there's enough firepower ready... Yuqi, how many weapons and ammo do we have left?"
"We have enough to cover every squad to have one RPK with two full mags, and the MP-40 has been given to all of them," Yuqi replied.
"Very well then, you two can start planning how to enter the city. I'll be there later with you guys."
Xiaoyun signed the authorization paper in front of him, handing it over to Yezi before the two of them headed out towards the exit.
"We'll wait for you there."
"I almost forgot to tell you, the MG-42 is having some production issues. It might take a week to be able to start producing it." Yuqi warned.
"It's fine, those are mostly used to be mounted on the wall... Anything else I need to know before I go?"
"Nope."
With Yuqi turning back around to work on the computer, he got up and left the office.
---
When Xiaoyun arrived at the security room, Yezi and Yiming were sitting there, waiting for him.
"You're finally here. Let's talk about how to get inside the city," Yezi murmured as he took out the map and laid it onto the table.
"There are six main entrances to the city. The closest one to us is the main southern entrance right here."
On the map, Xiaoyun could see heavily dense buildings throughout what seemed to be apartment rows.
"This area is the most populated part of the city. So I recommend we take the slightly farther southwest entrance right here."
As Yezi pointed to the southwest entrance, he could see it was the only logical path, as it conveniently happened to be on a more intact highway.
"Hm, seems pretty good to me."
"This route is too risky," Yiming suddenly argued.
"What? Why?"
Yezi was clearly confused. Xiaoyun looked just as confused as both of them looked over to Yiming.
"There's a nearby military outpost there. We will be under their surveillance every time we go into the city.
We should instead take the southeast entrance over there. The military has no outpost there at all since it's the opposite side of their forces."
Yiming directly pointed his finger towards the opposite side of Yezi's idea, a route that would add much longer time to the operation.
"That's almost a twenty-minute longer drive that can be spent on rescuing people. And do we need to hide from them when they already know us?"
Yezi quickly argued back, only to have Xiaoyun side with Yiming as he looked over to him with an eye signal.
"Yiming, can you tell him about the capital?"
"What capital? What are you guys talking about?" Yezi questioned, looking slightly confused as the two of them.
"Well, it's a long story..."
After Yiming explained the entire thing to Yezi, he let out a small sigh as he finally realized why Xiaoyun switched sides on the idea.
"Why didn't you two tell me earlier that we might need to worry about the military attacking us?" Yezi questioned, his voice sounding a little irritated.
"That's if they one day want to turn us into a military town like the one in the north... I doubt that will actually happen though," Xiaoyun explained.
"Whatever... Let's do Yiming's path."
As Yezi accepted the change, all three sides had reached a consensus. They left the security room before heading out to the training field.
All the soldiers were standing underneath the cloudy day already, waiting for them to reveal the announcement.
Xiaoyun stepped up to the podium first to announce the plan, as well as the new weapons to the soldiers.
The soldiers were calm initially.
They were fully expecting the order to go to the city next, but they didn't expect the announcement of new weapons at all.
Everyone immediately went back inside their lockers to pick up their new weapons as soon as Xiaoyun dismissed them.
After just a few minutes, all of the soldiers were back with their brand new toy.
"Is everyone ready?" Xiaoyun asked out loud.
"Yes, sir!"
All of them yelled back in ecstasy, their hand holding tightly onto their new weapons as the three of them smiled.
"Very well then. Everyone go to their assigned bus."
As everyone started to go to their assigned bus with their unit, some of them soon noticed Xiaoyun following behind them.
"Um, Commander Xiaoyun, you are going on the mission too?" Jixi questioned in confusion as he saw him following right behind.
"Yes, I want to see the inner city myself. Both of them already went there, but I'm the only one who hasn't explored it yet."
Xiaoyun quickly took a seat next to him, not giving Jixi a choice as he signaled the bus driver to start driving.
---
When the buses traveled through the outskirts, there were still hordes of zombies standing around aimlessly.
After driving for almost thirty minutes, they finally arrived at the city's south-eastern entrance, where a high school was located nearby.
When Xiaoyun told the bus driver to stop, it immediately caused all the other buses to come to a complete stop.
"This is going to be the base of our operation headquarters. Yiming and Yezi had already planned out everything."
As Xiaoyun finally handed the detailed plan over to Jixi, he didn't complain at all as he began silently reading it.
While Jixi was reading the plan, Xiaoyun began speaking through the walkie-talkie to order Gantian's company to clear the high school first.
After ten minutes, Gantian reported back that the school was cleared.
Xiaoyun and Jixi's company finally got off the bus and entered the high school. The two met up with Gantian in the middle.
"Hm, I don't see any issue with the plan," Gantian murmured as he quickly scanned over the plan Jixi handed.
"Then let's get working."
Jixi and Gantian started ordering the platoon to clear the buildings outside of the schools and started assigning them areas to clear.
---
After clearing for an hour, almost fifty people were rescued.
Most of them looked malnourished. Their legs and hands looked almost like skeletons as soldiers slowly walked them into the high school one by one.
"A-are you guys the military?"
One of the surviving civilians asked out loud as Xiaoyun happened to walk right past him while directly at the soldiers.
"We are civilian militia with permission in the form of a safety zone to operate rescue missions."
Xiaoyun quickly came up with a vague answer to create an illusion, as he didn't really have any 'official' authority other than having guns and an 'illegal' army.
Fortunately, it was more than enough, as none of the civilian survivors questioned it. They all patiently waited for their turn as they slowly got onto the buses next.
With more and more of the buses getting full, Xiaoyun ordered one of the platoon units to start driving some of the buses back to the town.
Soon, the time was about to hit noon.
Over two hundred survivors had been saved and transported to the town, with fifty more standing at the high school waiting for the next bus lift.
Everything was looking up, until suddenly, an emergency was called by one of the platoon.
"What happened?"
Xiaoyun questioned as he quickly followed Jixi to the radio operators, who were just two people holding oversized walkie-talkies.
"The platoon is trapped inside a building. They can't break past the five tank mutants that are guarding them." The radio operator answered.
"All units report back to the school, over... The two of you, start packing up."
As Jixi spoke through the walkie-talkie himself and ended the transmission, it left Xiaoyun curious as he followed behind him.
"How are you planning to save them?" Xiaoyun asked.
"Using the buses to lure them out first, then destroy them with new firepower we got," Gantian answered for Jixi.
"That's not going to work in the city. If the buses get trapped between two zombie hordes or get blocked by traffic, we will lose both the bus and the trapped platoon."
Xiaoyun immediately warned, his mind strongly disagreeing with their plan. Still, he didn't outright reject it as they had much more experience with rescue missions.
"What suggestion do you have, commander?" Jixi questioned, keeping an open mind as he signaled Gantian to be quiet.
"I was thinking, maybe we can concentrate all our forces into the street that the platoon is trapped in.
Then we will be able to create a gap between the zombies. We get the platoon into the bus, and we get out.
But we need to get it done fast, as this will create a massive amount of noise within a heavily dense part of the city." Xiaoyun explained.
"Let's go with your plan, commander... Platoon number ten, you stay behind to guard the survivor here."
Jixi quickly began directing one of the platoon units to stay behind to watch over the base as the rest of the platoon unit in the base got onto buses.
After waiting for ten minutes, the other platoon units that were out on other rescue missions in the city had arrived back at the base.
They all got into the bus just like Jixi directed before all the buses began driving towards where the trapped platoon was located.
As the bus arrived on the street the trapped platoon was in, there were thousands of zombies and five tank mutants.
"Everyone get off the bus and start firing!" Xiaoyun yelled.
The soldiers began getting off the bus one by one as Xiaoyun directed. None of them wasted any time as they started firing with their rifles and RPKs.
"Grenade out!"
Jixi and Gantian yelled out loud as the tank mutants approached closer, almost too close to comfort, as they ran past the zombie hordes.
All of the soldiers who had grenades threw them, which instantly caused a massive explosion to knock out three of the mutants at once.
"Again!"
As the soldiers threw their second one to finish off the other two tank mutants, the new overwhelming fire was thinning out the horde like a hot knife through butter.
"Platoon unit six, you all can come out now, over," Jixi spoke through the walkie-talkie as the area became clear.
"Copy that." The sixth platoon unit responded.
As the bus and soldiers advanced toward the building that the platoon was trapped in, they finally got to see the soldiers come out one by one.
Their faces were all full of relief when they saw Xiaoyun's troops. Not a single one of them fired their gun at the zombie as they all just full-sprinted.
It was more than clear to both Jixi and Xiaoyun that the entire 6th Platoon was completely out of ammo.
"Everyone get back on the bus! Stop firing!"
Xiaoyun yelled as he could see another zombie horde grouping far in the distance, farther than any of the soldiers through the naked eye.
"Listen to Commander Xiaoyun! Get it moving! We need to leave now!"
As Jixi repeated his command out loud, it finally made the soldiers stop killing off the remaining zombies who were immobilized.
More and more of the soldiers immediately rushed back into their assigned bus, with some needing to be crammed inside as 6th platoon had some surviving civilians.
Soon, everyone could see a massive black dot on the horizon, big enough to block out the sun where they were at a moment ago as the bus drove out of the area.