Chapter 96 Zombie: Go to the Dock and Get Some Fries… Ah, Forget It, Get a Boat

Chapter 96: Zombies: Go to the Dock for Some Fries... Nah, Scratch That, Grab a Boat

There was a reason she had the driver head to the park instead of leaving Radyard city limits altogether.

Radyard had a weird layout. It was nestled against mountains and water, with its west and north sides backed up against the tail end of the Abanayaqi Mountains, one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world, while its east and south sides faced the mighty Chata River.

The L-shaped bend of the river and the winding mountain range boxed Radyard in. If you wanted to leave the city without getting lost in the deep woods, your only options were to head out from the east or south side, crossing one of the three bridges over the Chata River.

These three bridges were Radyard's only land connections to the outside world—apart from flying or taking a boat. The earliest settlers had used this natural barrier to keep clear of the Civil War's fire and smoke, but as the shadow of war faded, the lousy land connections left Radyard's economy stuck in a rut, struggling to get going.

Before she'd even left, Everly had downloaded and studied a map of Radyard. Jack-Field Airport sat in the northeast corner of the city, right next to the Chata River, but it was over twenty klicks from the bridge on the east side.

Though the distance wasn't far, the route passed through several residential areas and shopping districts. For one thing, there were tons of traffic lights, so you couldn't get anywhere fast. Another was that more people meant a higher chance of running into the infected. If a few infected individuals mixed into a crowd and started attacking anyone in sight, the streets would quickly descend into chaos—car accidents, traffic jams, even explosions could all happen.

And even if the car somehow made it through all that to the east bridge, there was a good chance you'd hit a massive traffic jam right on the bridge.

There'd been an attack downtown this morning, and by afternoon the virus had already spread to the airport. At this rate, there were probably already a ton of infected downtown. Frightened by these infected, folks in the city center would probably choose to flee by car.

When everyone rushed over at once, trying to leave the city through only three bridges, traffic jams were guaranteed.

Remembering what happened during the cockroach disaster in Lemot Town, Everly didn't even want to think about what would go down if a few infected got stuck on a jam-packed bridge—people wouldn't be able to escape, and they'd just get bitten and turned.

So, after the air route fell through, Everly ditched the land route without a second thought and went for the water.

She had her eye on the sightseeing boat she'd ridden this morning at the park.

Being the cautious type to the bone, Everly had also snapped a photo of the park map when she'd come in that morning. The map listed the operating hours of the park's facilities. The park was open from 6 AM to 8 PM, but stuff like the cable car and sightseeing boat needed staff to run them, so they shut down at 6 PM.

When the taxi pulled up to the park, it was 5:42 PM. Only about a dozen minutes left before the sightseeing boat shut down. Everly paid the driver and headed into the park with Misha. Looking around, she saw that since the park was out of the way and it wasn't dark yet, most of the tourists had already cleared out. The main path was pretty much empty now, with just the occasional small group of visitors heading for the exit.

Another good thing was that it was quiet—no infected had shown up yet.

Everly retraced her steps to the dock where she'd taken the boat earlier that day. On the wide river, the last sightseeing boat was chugging along the swift current. It would swing around a small triangular island sticking up out of the middle of the river, making a big loop so passengers could take in the steep cliffs and jagged rocks along both banks before heading back to the dock.

Everly ducked behind some bushes, checking her watch as she waited. At 5:57 PM, the sightseeing boat finally turned around. It cut two long wakes across the water and pulled up smoothly to the dock.

The cabin door opened, and a couple of tourists trickled out. Once the passengers were gone, two crew members came out of the cockpit—one stood on the deck taking a long drag on his cigarette, while the other unclipped a set of keys from his belt, bent down to lock the cockpit, then headed with his buddy to the ticket booth by the dock.

Five or six minutes later, the lights in the ticket booth went out. Counting the two who'd gone in earlier, three staff members walked out of the booth chatting, locked the iron gate behind them, and took off from the dock.

By now, Everly was just about done hiding behind the mosquito-infested bushes.

Earlier, Misha had used the bushes for cover to sneak another peek at her phone. From the time they'd left the scenic area that afternoon until now—just over an hour—the number of eyewitness posts about crazy biters on the forum had already exploded to scary levels.

And as more and more cases popped up, people had started to figure out that this "mad biting" thing was contagious. Once you got bitten or scratched by one of those crazies, it wouldn't be long before you joined their ranks—losing your mind and turning as savage as a wild animal.

[They eat people, only people! I saw with my own eyes a girl pinned down by two crazed people, chewing her face off until she stopped breathing... Then, just minutes later, that girl "came back" as a new attacker! It's exactly like zombies in the games!]

[What do I do? Downstairs from my place is already full of wandering zombies. Their hearing is amazing—any little sound and they look this way. I don't dare open the door.]

[Go for the head! Hitting anywhere else doesn't work—you gotta pop the head!]

[...]

Post after post kept popping up on the forum, and it was clear things were going south way faster than anyone had imagined. Yet those staff members were taking their sweet time, completely clueless about the bloodbath going on outside, and it was driving Everly up the wall.

She forced herself to stay patient, watching the three men walk off into the distance until they turned a corner and vanished from sight.

"Misha, let's go!"

"Okay!"

At Everly's command, the two split up immediately. Misha's job was to hit the vending machine across from the ticket booth. They'd left in a rush without packing much food, and who knew how long they'd be floating around out there—so Misha needed to grab as many snacks and drinks from the machine as she could and haul them onto the boat.

As for Everly, her target was the ticket booth.

The three staff members hadn't carried the boat keys when they left. The sightseeing boat keys should be stored in the ticket booth, and Everly needed to get them to successfully take the boat.

The ticket booth was a small wooden hut slightly larger than a newsstand. Two sides were walls, one side had a window fitted with horizontal iron bars to prevent people from climbing through, and the fourth side had an iron door.

The staff had put a padlock on the iron door when they left. Everly checked out the lock and was bummed to find it had an anti-pick core—even a pro locksmith would have a tough time with it. She didn't have any tools and wasn't that good at it, so odds were she wasn't getting it open.

Left with no choice, Everly had to find a way through the window.

She went to the iron bars and studied them. Unfortunately, the bars weren't screwed in place—they were welded directly onto the window frame.

She curled her fingers and knocked on the bars, then grabbed them with both hands and tried to pry them apart. The bars were about finger-thick, solid, but not rebar—more like cast iron rods. Even with Everly's strength, bending them barehanded was difficult.

Fortunately, Everly had another way to solve this problem.

Once she had a sense of the material properties, she took off her backpack, pulled out a towel, soaked it in the river to wet it, then tied it between two of the iron bars. She found the collapsible trekking pole tucked into the side of her backpack, inserted it into the middle of the towel, and twisted it like tightening a tourniquet.

One turn, two turns, three... The towel grew tighter and tighter, water squeezing out from the edges, and the bars trapped in the middle of the towel began to groan with a "creak, creak" sound. Everly didn't stop, continuing to twist the lever with force, until finally—"crack"—a light sound came, and the iron bar wrapped in the towel snapped in the middle as if torn apart by immense force.

This was a trick Everly had learned from Old John. Using the lever principle and the mechanical properties of a wet towel, one could bend or even break metal bars with relatively little effort. However, the effectiveness varied depending on the material strength of the towel and the metal bars, so it was necessary to determine the bar's material beforehand.

There were no other attractions around the dock—only sightseeing boat tourists would come here. Once the boat stopped running, the entire dock fell into silence.

Everly looked around, saw no one nearby, and grabbed the broken metal bars with both hands, prying them outward with force. She repeated this four times, bending both broken bars fully apart, until a gap just wide enough for a person to squeeze through appeared in the grating.

Perhaps thinking the bars were secure enough, the ticket booth staff hadn't even locked the glass window behind them before leaving. Everly easily opened the window, then grabbed the bars on both sides, pushed off the wall below with her legs, and hauled herself up with her arms, quickly climbing over the grating and slipping into the booth.

No one was around, so Everly simply turned on the light. The booth was tiny, and it didn't take her long to find the sightseeing boat keys hanging from a hook on the wall.

Besides the keys, she also found a few bags of chips in the ticket drawer and two life jackets tucked in a corner of the room.

The sightseeing boat did have life rings hanging on it, but life jackets—things you could actually wear—were always better to have more of.

Everly tossed the life jackets and chips out through the window first, then grabbed the keys and climbed back out. By this time, Misha had nearly cleaned out the vending machine. At her feet were piles of soda, sparkling water, mineral water, and other drinks, but only a few bags of snacks—mostly chips, which wouldn't fill anyone up.

"This machine hasn't been restocked in a while. Not much food."

"It's fine, let's just get these onto the boat first."

Everly picked up the life jackets from the ground, grabbed a few bottles of water with her other hand, and led the way toward the sightseeing boat at the dock.

Radyard State Park wasn't doing great business, so the dock only had one sightseeing boat. It looked similar to the tourist boats common in scenic areas back in China, but was much smaller.

The boat was about five to six meters long and over two meters wide. The hull was made of wood, flat and low in the water, with the bow and stern slightly raised as standing platforms. The center of the boat held the cabin and cockpit.

The cabin had only sixteen seats, where tourists could enjoy the scenery through the windows on both sides. The cockpit was near the bow, connected to both the cabin and the bow by iron doors.

Once on board, Everly dumped everything she was carrying into the cabin, then ran to the cockpit door and tried the keys one by one. Misha followed behind her, carrying load after load of drinks from the shore to the boat like an ant moving its colony.

By the time Misha finished, Everly had already found the right key and broken into the cockpit.