Chapter 99 Zombie: Passing Through East Bridge

Chapter 99 Zombies: Crossing the East Bridge

By the time Everly had finished clearing out all the supplies on the boat, darkness had fully set in.

The sightseeing boat was currently in the middle section of the Chatta River. The current here was fairly swift, and after drifting for over ten minutes, the boat had already floated beyond the boundaries of the state park.

Due to the river's erosive effects, the banks rose steeply on both sides. At present, relative to their direction of travel, the left bank was an endless stretch of steep cliffs, while the right bank belonged to Radyard under the night sky.

Tonight, Radyard was bound to be anything but quiet.

After leaving the state park, the overall terrain of Radyard trended upward, and suitable spots for building docks became rare. Along the boat's journey, Everly had to stand on the deck and stretch up on her tiptoes just to catch a glimpse of the roads and streetlights on shore.

Even so, the sounds from land came in waves, drifting to her ears with the night breeze.

The boom of cars crashing, the roars of zombies, the cries of the victims, the screams of onlookers, the sounds of smashing and breaking, gunfire, and the sharp, ominous wails of ambulances and police sirens from the distant city... A chaotic mix of sounds blended together. Without needing to witness it firsthand, Everly's mind painted one horrific, tragic scene after another.

Moving further ahead, as the riverbanks shifted from suburbs to busy downtown districts and densely populated neighborhoods, the wind carried even more chaotic sounds. Everly saw burning vehicles, fleeing crowds, chasing zombies, and the brilliant flash of explosions. As they passed a residential area, she even saw a mother and daughter, pursued by zombies, jumping helplessly from a high-rise rooftop...

Of course, there were also smart people who, while fleeing, thought of the nearby river and tried to climb the river railings to escape by water. But these folks rarely even reached the riverbank before being caught up by zombies, tackled and bitten. As more people got the same idea, a big pack of zombies even gathered by the river, waiting to ambush anyone trying to escape by water.

The boat had been going for a good while, and Everly only saw one person actually make it over the railing and jump.

The second that person hit the water, he started screaming at the top of his lungs, desperately calling out to Everly and the others on the river for help, clearly couldn't swim. But Everly didn't dare bring the boat closer, because she'd clearly seen the zombie bite his arm before he hit the water.

She ducked into the cabin and told Misha to fire up the engine, gunning it to put distance between them and the guy in the water. Only once she was sure he couldn't catch up did she kill the propeller.

Things were really bad. At this point, the city was basically lost, and the water wasn't exactly safe either.

Everly didn't even want to think about what would have happened to her and Misha if they hadn't gone out to the park, if Misha hadn't stumbled on that video, or if she hadn't studied Radyard's map ahead of time.

The sightseeing boat continued drifting downstream with the current. A little past 8 PM, a gleaming white bridge came into view up ahead—the "East Bridge," the gateway linking Radyard's east side to the outside world.

It was a single-pylon cable-stayed bridge. The deck hung dozens of meters above the water, with a tall concrete pylon rising from the middle of the river. Cables fanned out from both sides of the pylon, holding up the bridge deck below.

The East Bridge was all lit up tonight. Before the boat even got close, Everly and Misha could already hear the bloodcurdling screams from the bridge.

At the far end of the bridge, away from the city, whether from a crash or someone using illegal weapons, a huge fire was blazing. The flames had burned the cars below down to their frames, blocking the cars and people still trying to flee the city.

Meanwhile, more and more people were pouring onto the bridge from the city behind, and quite a few of them had been scratched or bitten by zombies. Before anyone around them could react, they suddenly turned, turning into new sources of infection, lunging at the people trapped nearby.

The big crowd and all the noise drew in the rest of the zombies wandering the city. Even though the trapped people initially banded together and managed to deal with the zombies that had infiltrated their ranks by smashing their heads, as more and more zombies converged, the survivors gradually began to falter.

Some, in a desperate gamble, tried to physically charge through the sea of flames, but they often collapsed midway, unable to withstand the heat and smoke, screaming as they fell into the fire. Others climbed the bridge pylon to escape the zombies gathering below—some succeeded, while a few slipped and fell onto the deck, where they were torn to shreds by the swarming zombies. Still others climbed over the railing, attempting to bypass the fire by traversing the outer edge of the bridge, but they quickly discovered that the concrete railing, scorched by the intense flames, had become unbearably hot. As the boat passed beneath the bridge, several people, unable to maintain their grip, screamed and plunged into the water, their bodies only surfacing much later...

Besides humans, zombies were also falling from the bridge.

Everly didn't know whether it had been pushed by someone or had simply fallen by accident. It was dark beneath the bridge at night, and outside the coverage of the bow light, she first heard a heavy splash.

At that moment, Everly thought another person had fallen from the railing.

Falling from that height, a person would be either dead or crippled. It was so dark that she couldn't see where the person had landed, nor could she determine whether they were infected. In such a situation, there was no way she and Misha could risk a rescue.

So Everly remained composed, merely urging Misha to give the propeller a spin and speed up to move away from the bridge.

Once the sightseeing boat had cleared the area beneath the bridge and was no longer in danger of being hit by falling bodies, Misha shut off the engine and let the boat continue drifting downstream.

As the boat moved away from the East Bridge, the uproar on the bridge gradually faded into the distance. The ceaseless sound of flowing water replaced the anguished cries and screams, becoming the dominant melody on the river.

However, it was amidst this monotonous sound of water that Everly heard another noise.

"Scritch scratch... scritch scratch..."

It sounded like chalk scraping across a blackboard, or fingernails clawing at glass—unpleasant and grating, sending chills down one's spine and making the scalp tingle.

Misha still needed to steer the boat, so Everly took a flashlight from her bag, held a folding trekking pole in her other hand, and stepped out of the cabin.

She assumed the sound might be some nocturnal bird or animal that had landed on the boat, its claws scraping against the metal. However, when Everly followed the source of the sound to the stern of the sightseeing boat, under the pale, stark light, she saw a face covered in bite marks, bloody and mangled.

It was a zombie, half of its body already lying on the boat.

Just as Everly had seen in the video earlier, the zombie's pupils were covered by a thick layer of white film, and the whites of its eyes were bulging with veins, all shot through with red blood vessels. The skin from the left corner of its mouth to its ear had been completely torn and chewed away, with the remaining bits of facial skin hanging limply, exposing the dark red flesh and oral cavity beneath—disgusting, terrifying, and grotesque.

Everly had no idea when it had managed to climb aboard.

The sightseeing boat had a relatively flat structure. When passengers inside the cabin sat by the windows, the water surface was only about a dozen centimeters below the windows. The bow and stern were slightly higher than the middle, with the highest point nearly forty centimeters above the water.

The zombie was lying between the middle and stern of the boat, where there were a few steps leading down into the cabin.

The upper half of the zombie's body was sprawled on the steps, but due to the awkward angle, its lower half was stuck outside the boat. The scratching sound Everly had heard was the zombie clawing at the steps, trying to pull itself fully onto the boat.

Perhaps startled by the light, or catching the scent of living human flesh, when Everly approached, the zombie that had been clawing suddenly stopped, raised its head, and opened its gaping maw toward Everly not far away, revealing a mouthful of drool-covered fangs, letting out a guttural "growl" from its throat.

Seeing a zombie for the first time, Everly was genuinely startled. Her survival instinct made her instinctively want to turn and run.

But she quickly realized that this boat was the only safe haven she had right now. She couldn't retreat, or it would put both herself and Misha in danger.

So Everly took a deep breath, steadied herself, and observed carefully. She noticed that the zombie seemed to be caught on an iron hook on the boat's edge used for securing ropes. It looked terrifying, but in reality, as long as she didn't get close, it couldn't harm anyone.

She had seen with her own eyes how agile these zombies were on land. She had to kill it before it broke free!

With that thought, Everly called out to Misha in the cabin, asking her to bring the fire axe from the helm. She herself sidestepped and casually grabbed a decorative American flag from the stern of the sightseeing boat, draping it over the zombie's head. This would both prevent blood from splattering and block the zombie's bites.

Once the axe was handed to her, she stepped forward, raised it, and brought it down in a fierce chop onto the head beneath the Stars and Stripes—

"Crack!"

A crisp sound several times louder than smashing a watermelon rang out, and the zombie's growling came to an abrupt halt.

Horror Movie Survival Rule #15: Always finish the job.

Everly didn't let her guard down. She raised the axe and struck the bulging area under the flag several more times, until the body below stopped moving and her palm began to feel numb. Only then did she set down the filthy axe, used the wooden pole with a net at the end to hook the zombie's upper body, maneuver it past the iron hook, and slowly pushed the corpse, along with the flag, into the river.

The zombie's body floated on the surface, drifting further and further away with the current, until it finally washed up against the shore and got snagged on a tree branch hanging over the bank.

Only when the zombie was completely out of sight did Everly let out a long sigh of relief.

Next, to be safe, she carefully walked around the boat several times with her flashlight, confirming there wasn't a second zombie clinging to the hull, before returning to the cabin to take over from Misha.

"You go rest in the cabin for now. I'll take the helm."

"Okay."

Misha replied, grabbed her phone, and walked into the cabin. She had barely lain down on the passenger bench when she suddenly scrambled back up and hurried over to Everly: "Everly, does your phone still have signal?"

"What?"

Everly's nerves had been on edge ever since the boat approached the East Bridge, and she hadn't had a chance to check her phone. Hearing Misha's question, she immediately pulled out her phone and lit up the screen. Sure enough, just like Misha's, her phone had no signal! Whether browsing the web or making calls, nothing worked.

"What's going on—have the communication towers been destroyed?"

Having lived through the cockroach plague in Lemot, Misha's first thought was that the cell tower was down.

Everly, though, saw it differently.

Times had changed. With mobile communication becoming more advanced, phones had become an indispensable part of people's lives, and cities had way more cell towers than they used to.

Back when Lemot lost contact with the outside world, it was because the whole town had just one signal tower. When roaches chewed through the wiring, the town lost contact, plain and simple. But now, even a remote town like Lemot had five base stations, and a city like Radyard had thousands, even tens of thousands, of cell towers. Every tower overlapped with the next to keep the signal strong.

Sure, the two of them were currently on the river at the edge of the city, but judging by the internet speed they'd had at the state park earlier, Everly figured Radyard had plenty of towers. Even if a few signal towers were damaged, others would still provide support, so there was no way the network would just go down all at once.

So Everly leaned toward the idea that someone had deliberately cut the signal here.

In man-made disaster flicks, cutting the network is a classic move. On one hand, it cuts off outside support and leaves the protagonist isolated and helpless. On the other, when the disaster spirals out of control, the U.S. government could pull an "info blackout plus fake news" to bury the whole thing and save face.

As for how it would ultimately be resolved—come on, wasn't that exactly what bombs were made for!

As if to prove Everly right, from afar, the two heard the roar of spinning rotor blades.

Everly walked to the window and, together with Misha, looked up through the glass. In the distant sky, a helicopter with blinking signal lights was flying from afar toward the city.

"It's a military helicopter!"

Misha, who had once witnessed the military sweeping through Lemot, recognized the aircraft at a glance and let out a startled cry.

"Yeah, it's about time the military got involved."

However, whether the military's arrival would bring salvation or destruction was another matter entirely.