CH 33

Chapter 33: Windtalkers

The white terror violently crashed into the Hummer behind them. The squad members in the vehicle lacked the experience of facing these kinds of beasts head-on. Moreover, the machine gunner in the vehicle was still too unseasoned to aim properly at the beast. They neither dared to jump out of the vehicle, nor to open the window and shoot directly at it.

In addition to the constant ramming of their Hummer, the white terror fiercely roared, stunning the squad members into a stupefied silence—all except for their team captain Toby, who shouted, “Mobilize the gun! I’ll do it!”

“A buncha idiots!” Wu Yun felt immensely helpless.

Seeing that the Hummer was about to flip over, Zhou Yu locked onto the target from his gun’s scope and fired a single shot. It hit the white terror on the back of its head and it flipped off the hood of the Hummer. The Hummer’s car door and hood had almost been trampled flat.

“Oh my God, that was intense!” Wu Yun patted himself on the chest.

“White terrors are organisms that locate their prey based on their fear. All of us were injected with suppressants, so how did it know to attack us? Something went wrong here.” said Zhou Yu.

Before Wu Yun could reply, Zhou Yu slipped on an oxygen mask and opened the door to step out of the vehicle, scaring the daylights out of Wu Yun.

“What are you doing, Zhou Yu?! Get back here, hey!”

The squad members in the second Hummer were all crammed inside the vehicle, not daring to open the door and come out of the car. They watched the scene with their eyes wide open as Zhou Yu walked right past the white terror.

Just as Wu Yun was about to open the door and follow him, Zhou Yu’s voice sounded from the walkie-talkie: “You better stay in the Hummer, Wu Yun!”

Wu Yun tightened his grip on the steering wheel with both hands and whispered into the walkie-talkie: “Then you get the hell back in here too. What’s going on?”

Suddenly, Zhou Yu turned around and ran to the car. He pulled open the door and slipped inside, then slammed the door shut and took off the oxygen mask on his face.

Wu Yun looked back and saw that countless black bugs were flying out in dense swarms from the fallen body of the white terror! It seemed like the insects had consumed the white terror.

Wu Yun stretched out his neck to check, and sure enough, he saw the shrunken corpse of the white terror. It looked like a deflated balloon; only its leather hide remained.

The other squad members in the Hummer behind them also showed horrified expressions. This time, their panic was different from when they had been attacked by the white terror.

Wu Yun looked at Zhou Yu and said, “What on earth are those bugs?”

“According to Juli Corp’s database, those bugs are called ‘windtalkers.’ They can penetrate through the skin and into an organism’s body to feed on their flesh and blood. They can even enter into bone marrow and the brain. Once it’s in the brain, it can control organisms as parasites. The white terror probably attacked us because the windtalkers were controlling its mind.”

“My God, it’s a windtalker! I’ve heard of this insect, it’s practically a myth. I didn’t expect it to be real, and I just saw them with my own eyes! What should we do now, head back to base and get ready to come here again? What if we happen to come across those insects again?”

“Don’t worry, the swarm of windtalkers that just flew away should soon be dead. Don’t forget that I hit the white terror with the neurotoxin. The windtalkers came out from the white terror’s body, so they also absorbed it. They won’t be able to last long before dying from it.”

“What if there’s another swarm of windtalkers? We’re not that familiar with Zone 12, and I suddenly have a bad feeling about this.”

This time, Zhou Yu agreed with Wu Yun’s doubts. He opened the locator. Their newest locator had been upgraded by Li Qian and was now powerful enough to send radio waves that matched the magnetic field of Nibelungen, allowing them to communicate with the base.

After Zhou Yu reported the situation involving the windtalkers to Song Zhi, Song Zhi told them that the first aid kit in the trunk of their Hummer contained a new, yellow-colored medicine that had been developed at the base. It could help them defend again the invasion of various parasitic insects.

“A newly developed drug? Are you sure it’s reliable?” Wu Yun couldn’t help but ask.

“Enjoy your trip to Zone 12,” said Song Zhi.

Wu Yun was completely speechless: “Why didn’t he tell us earlier before we left that we had drugs in the trunk?”

“Because we already have the suppressant inside our bodies and there may be side effects if we inject the new drug. Han Li said that the side effects include dizziness, tinnitus, and vomiting, but I prefer being dizzy, vomiting, and having tinnitus to being controlled by the windtalkers.”

After that, Zhou Yu notified his teammates in the Hummer before taking out the drugs from the trunk. Everyone took turns injecting the drug before they continued on the road again.

A few hours later, they finally arrived at their destination. They could see a few trucks parked out in the woods a distance away.

However, the driver and front passenger seats were empty. Sunlight fell onto the roof of the vehicle through the gaps in between the leaves in a charming and carefree way, just like an oil painting.

However, the silence gave Zhou Yu a bad feeling.

Wu Yun and Zhou Yu did not get off the Hummer. Instead, Zhou Yu squinted his eyes and asked, “Where are the people?”

Wu Yun also looked around, keeping alert without rolling down the window: “Yeah, why isn’t anyone here? If they wanted to rest and stay in one place, then they should have followed Juli Corp’s orders and stayed inside the car. This is the primitive forest, not the base. And you can tell that the doors and windows had been opened. They seemed to have abandoned the truck in a panic.”

Before Zhou Yu could inform the Hummer behind them of the situation, its team had already taken action. They got out and went to inspect the truck. They opened the door of the truck and found that all the rations inside of it were still there. When the team captain made a thumbs-up sign at Wu Yun, Wu Yun and Zhou Yu only felt that things had become even stranger. The rations were here, but where did the people go?

Zhou Yu picked up the walkie-talkie and said to the team captain Toby, “Return to the car immediately. Something’s not right here.”

The place where the trucks were parked was densely forested. What had prompted them to drive to such a place where they could neither advance nor retreat?

But team captain Toby turned on the radio in the truck and tried to get in touch with the missing crew members.

Wu Yun shook his head and said, “Forget it, even if you’re doing it for their sakes, they’ll only think that you want to order them around and won’t listen to your suggestions.”

Wu Yun picked up the walkie-talkie and said to the team leader, “Can you check to see if the truck’s fuel tank is empty?”

“Huh, weird! The tank is still two-thirds full, more than enough for them to drive back to base!”

The feeling that something was wrong got even stronger. Zhou Yu urgently spoke through his walkie-talkie in a harsh tone and said, “Get back here right now! Things here aren’t right.”

Suddenly, a sound came from the woods. The team immediately turned to point their guns in its direction, followed by the simultaneous clicks of their guns being cocked.

Zhou Yu also pointed their vehicle’s gun that way.

They watched as a figure in camouflage walked out. He raised both his hands and showed a look of surprise: “Hey! Are you trying to scare me to death like this?”

Captain Toby immediately lowered his gun: “Frank! It’s you! Where’d you go and why is no one here on standby?”

Zhou Yu stared at Frank from behind his gun’s scope and said in a low voice, “Everyone, stand on alert.”

Captain Toby glanced at Frank’s arm and found that his blood vessels were protruded, and even black in color. Looking back at his eyes again, he saw that they were bloodshot.

“Don’t move!” Toby quickly raised his gun to aim between Frank’s eyebrows.

Frank looked surprised and took another half-step forward: “Toby, what’s wrong with you? I’m Frank!”

“I told you not to move!”

All guns were pointed at Frank, but Frank did not look as frightened as everyone expected. Suddenly, Frank’s eyes widened and he recklessly launched himself at Captain Toby. Toby reflexively pulled the trigger and hit Frank on the forehead. Instantly, countless black bugs emerged from the corners of Frank’s eyes, his ears, and even from underneath his skin. A large mass of whining, buzzing insects filled the skies and blocked out the sun.

“Fucking hell!” Wu Yun was stupefied by the scene before them. The rest of the squad members scattered in a disordered mess and waved around their hands to shoo away the bugs.

Frank fell flat on the ground, his body slanted to the side. He only left behind his camouflage clothing. His skin clung to his bones, drained of all its moisture.

Because all the squad members had been injected with the drug, the insects could not parasitize their bodies and they made a harsh, annoying noise while surrounding them.

They turned and flew to Wu Yun and Zhou Yu’s vehicle, then repeatedly slammed into the glass windows with all their might.

While they were besieging Wu Yun and Zhou Yu, the other members of the team went to head back inside the Hummer, but to their surprise, the members of the original transport crew emerged from the woods.

They also carried guns.

Wu Yun and Zhou Yu, who could not see what was going on, could only hear the crackling of gunfire.

“Toby! Toby, please respond! What happened?” Wu Yun could only contact the team leader through the walkie-talkie.

“The windtalkers! It wasn’t a coincidence that the transport crew drove their truck here; there must be a windtalker nest here. After controlling the transport crew, they contacted base to have someone pick them up, which would bring more fresh food to the windtalkers.” Zhou Yu wore a chilly expression. “If I’m not wrong, then the transport crew controlled by the windtalkers should be currently fighting with Toby’s team.”

“But we can’t go outside to fight them. Once we open the door, the windtalkers will rush in. As things stand, we still can’t see outside.” Wu Yun’s hands tightly gripped the steering wheel and prepared to withdraw immediately if Toby’s team was killed.

The food supply was only a minor matter, surviving was what really mattered.

“Have you realized that Song Zhi never assigns us the easy tasks? I don’t think Nibelungen is too bad at all, but Song Zhi is pretty scary.”

Wu Yun stared into the dark glass windows before him.

Zhou Yu raised up his wrist to look at his watch. “In half a minute, those windtalkers will die.”

The force and sound of the insects hitting the glass windows became weaker and weaker until it gradually ceased.

The gunfire outside had also stopped.

Who had won? Was it the transport crew controlled by the windtalkers, or Toby’s team?

Wu Yun started up the wipers and swept away the insects on the front windshield. Before them, Toby was leaning against a tree with a pained expression. His wrists had been twisted into distortion.

Suddenly, someone knocked on Wu Yun’s window, and all the insects coating its surface dropped off. They saw a smiling face on the other side.

“Hey, if you don’t want me to shoot Toby, then come outside.”

Wu Yun stared at him with wide eyes.

That man was Morris, the captain of the transport crew.

Morris’s eyes were bloodshot and Wu Yun could see something squirming around in the blood vessels of his neck exposed outside his camouflage suit.

“Go!”

Zhou Yu suddenly shouted as he put the car in reverse gear for Wu Yun.

Wu Yun slammed down on the gas pedal and they quickly took off.

As Wu Yun drove in reverse, Zhou Yu observed the delivery crew from the scope of his gun. He pulled the trigger and instantly downed two to three of them.

However, Morris also took the rest of them into Toby’s car and quickly caught up to them.

The forest was too densely spaced for Wu Yun to turn around in, and Morris was getting closer and closer.

They also aimed their guns and fired at Zhou Yu and Wu Yun.

The bullets struck their front windshield. The machine guns were capable of doing penetrative damage to their vehicle, and if they continued like this, then their windows would soon break. Zhou Yu used their machine gun to fire back at them.

Sparks flew in the air.

Every time he heard the crackling sound of gunfire, Wu Yun’s heart almost leaped out of his chest!

At some point, their rear tires seemed to catch on something, and no matter how much they revved the engine, they remained stuck.

Morris, on the other hand, continued forwards and ran straight into them. With a “bang—”, Wu Yu’s neck almost snapped in half from the jolt.

“Damn it—” Wu Yun threw the gun to Zhou Yu. “Get out of the car!”

They had no intention of fighting Morris after they exited the vehicle; that was irrational.

Wu Yun and Zhou Yu climbed into the back of the vehicle and opened both doors. Sure enough, a hail of bullets came raining down, but they were blocked by the open doors.

They left the vehicle, only to find that the roots of a tree poking out from the ground had jammed their rear tires.

Without any undue hesitation, the two men, armed with guns, quickly entered the woods that enveloped them on both sides and hid there.

Zhou Yu knew time was almost up for the parasites inside the transport crew, and that they would need a new host soon.

Looking around, he found that he and Wu Yun were the only people around; there was not another organism in sight. They most likely had already been “eaten up” by the windtalkers.

“Hey, are you two planning on leaving Toby behind?”

Morris also got out of the vehicle with a gun, and he and the others randomly fired into the woods. A bullet narrowly brushed by near Zhou Yu’s leg, but Zhou Yu only raised his chin and squinted his eyes, patiently lying in wait.

Beside him, Wu Yun also raised the muzzle of his gun before exchanging looks with Zhou Yu.

When Morris and his men walked to a place parallel to where Zhou Yu and Wu Yun were hiding, Zhou Yu held down on his gun and aimed quickly. Without even blinking, he pulled the trigger and hit Morris in the leg.

“Ah—” Morris fell to the ground and finally caught sight of Zhou Yu, but the neurotoxin soon killed him.

Wu Yun was also an old and adept hand at this, and the next shot got rid of another person.

A surge of windtalkers flew out from their corpses and toward Zhou Yu and Wu Yun, but they were unable to invade them.

Zhou Yu leaned patiently against a tree, waiting for them to die from the neurotoxin. Wu Yun went a step further and drew out half a cigarette from his pocket. He also took out his lighter to light it. The insects rushed to the flame produced by the lighter and were set ablaze to produce acrid fumes. Just when Wu Yun finally had the chance to take half a drag of his cigarette, the insects died and fell on the ground and onto their bodies.

Zhou Yu and Wu Yun brushed them off from their shoulders and stood up.

From behind his clenched teeth, Wu Yun said, “Even if I take a hundred baths, I’d still feel sick.”

“Let’s go back to look for Toby and the others.”

There was no time to change the tires. Zhou Yu and Wu Yun got in the Hummer that had been driven here by Morris.

Before they left, Wu Yun took a look at Morris’s body.

“He was a veteran too… I didn’t think he would die at our hands.”

“No, he died at the windtalker’s hands.”

Zhou Yu pulled down the hand brake for Wu Yun.

“I just had a sudden thought: is Song Zhi using us as an experiment?” Wu Yun asked.

“Hm, maybe. With Song Zhi’s mental acuity, it’s impossible for him not to realize that there’s something off about the transport crew driving into Zone 12. Plus, we had the newly developed antiparasitic drug in our trunk, as if he was expecting us to meet the windtalkers.”

“We got played by him again.” Wu Yun sneered, “Don’t stop me when we get back, I’m going to wring his neck.”

“I won’t stop you.”

When they drove back to the place where they had fought with the transport crew, the transport vehicle was still there, but the squad members who had been knocked down by Morris had disappeared. Even Toby, who had been leaning by the tree with his dislocated limbs, had vanished.

Zhou Yu and Wu Yun looked at each other.

“I have a bad feeling about this…”

“Me too.”

“The situation is unknown, we need to evacuate immediately.” Just as Wu Yun was about to turn back, he suddenly heard Toby’s cry for help.

“Help me— Help me— Don’t go!”

Zhou Yu looked up and found that while they were gone, Toby and other members had gotten tangled up in some kind of silk and were strung up on an ancient tree.

“What the…” Wu Yun gritted his teeth. Since Toby was still alive, they couldn’t just abandon him here. “Zhou Yu, what is that?”

Zhou Yu narrowed his eyes and spotted some translucent, silkworm-like creatures among the bushes. They squirmed and secreted silk from their mouths, spinning Toby and the others into cocoons, layer by layer.

“According to Juli Corp’s database, they should be crystal silkworms. They don’t produce silk to make cocoons, instead, they use it as a digestive organ.”

“So they’re going to eat Toby! Damn it! How aggressive are those silkworms?”

Suddenly, a chilling scream came from Toby. The silk threads had started to wrap around Toby’s neck.

“They are not very aggressive, but the mucus and silk in the bodies are highly corrosive!” Zhou Yu took out a sedative gas grenade from his waist pocket and rolled down the window. “Toby! Hold your breath!”

Toby stopped shouting. Zhou Yu threw the grenade into the air, and then quickly closed the window. He and Wu Yun took out their masks and put them on.

After the sedative gas was released, the crystal silkworms stopped moving, and some even dropped to the ground.

Zhou Yu and Wu Yun got out of the vehicle. Wu Yun climbed up the tree and kicked off the crystal silkworms, one after another. He came to Toby and carefully cut open the silk cocoon before tying a rope around Toby. Underneath the tree, Zhou Yu slowly released the other end of the rope to let Toby down.

When they cut off all the silk threads around Toby, they found that the camouflage suit he had underneath had been almost been completely corroded. If they had waited for a few more seconds, Toby would have given them an even more blood-curdling scream.

Wu Yun went to free the others too, but when he cut open the silk, he found that they were no longer breathing. Some of them were already badly mangled.

“I don’t understand why there are so many insects here…” Wu Yun muttered as he handled Toby’s wound.

Suddenly, Zhou Yu realized what it was. He quickly threw Toby over his shoulder and said, “That doesn’t matter right now! We need to return to base right away!”

“What’s wrong?”

“There may a higher-ranking insect species here. Just like a kingdom with a strict hierarchy, those insects could have been scavenging for food for that species!”

Without another word, Wu Yun immediately returned to the vehicle, pulled the door open, and stuffed Toby into the back seat.

They headed back immediately.

Suddenly, a familiar voice appeared in Zhou Yu’s mind.

“Watch out behind you.”

Just as Zhou Yu was about to turn around, he was hit hard on the top of his head and fell to the side. Everything happened so fast that Zhou Yu lost consciousness.

“What are you doing—Toby!” Wu Yun turned around and was about to point his gun at Toby.

However, Toby’s movements were surprisingly agile. He grabbed the butt of Wu Yun’s gun and slammed it upwards, hitting Wu Yun in the nose. It hurt so much he almost teared up, but he still pulled the trigger, the bullet hitting the glass. He was about to fire a second shot, but Toby twisted his wrist.

Toby’s strength was incredible. Wu Yun had his teeth clenched and his veins bulging, but he was still unable to match Toby’s strength. Toby’s eyes were wide open, and there was a trace of madness in them that Wu Yun had never seen before.

“Toby! What the hell is wrong with you?!”

Just then, a silver spider crawled out from behind Toby’s collar.

Unlike normal spiders, it only had four legs. Its eyes were clouded with white, making Wu Yun suspect that it could not actually see.

“Zhou Yu! Wake up! Zhou Yu! ” Cold sweat soaked Wu Yun’s back as he watched the silver spider crawl along Toby’s shoulder onto the back of his hand. Toby’s hand suddenly got stronger and he snatched the gun from Wu Yun’s hand.

“Fuck!”

Even though his gun was gone, Wu Yun still did not plan to give up.

80% of it was because that silver spider was the one controlling Toby!

Wu Yun mercilessly swung a punch at the spider. The spider jumped up and threads of extremely fine silk that were attached to Toby could vaguely be seen. Toby’s also aimed his fist at Wu Yun and struck him squarely in the face with one blow. He then took advantage of the opportunity to pull back Wu Yun’s head and slam it hard onto the steering wheel.