Chapter 265 - 146: Mori Town

Chapter 265: Chapter 146: Mori Town

Beside the gas station stood a small convenience store. Its doors and windows were long gone, leaving only a pitch-black interior.

Fortunately, the gas station’s structure seemed relatively intact. A few pumps stood forlornly by the concrete island, their canopy sagging but not collapsed. More importantly, Xu Mo’s sharp eyes spotted that one of the nozzles was still hanging on its rack. There even seemed to be a port for a manual pump next to it—this meant the underground storage tank might still have fuel, and it could be extracted by hand.

But misfortune followed close behind.

Just as Xu Mo’s SUV slowly approached the gas station entrance and he was about to find a good place to park, everything changed.

One by one, shambling figures began to appear on the street.

The zombies were clad in rags, their skin a deathly gray, and some had nothing but hollow sockets where their eyes should have been. The moment they heard the sound of the engine, however, it was as if someone had hit their fast-forward button. They all turned their heads and began dragging their mangled bodies, converging on the SUV.

In just a few dozen seconds, twenty or thirty figures had appeared within his line of sight, and more were still coming. They poured out from every corner, forming a loose ring of encirclement.

A chill went down Xu Mo’s spine. He knew he couldn’t linger here. He quickly surveyed the gas station’s layout—the entrance was wide enough, but if zombies blocked the exit, it would be difficult to turn the vehicle around quickly. He immediately shifted into reverse and lightly tapped the accelerator, preparing to back out onto the more open road.

However, the moment he began to reverse, several zombies from further away suddenly lunged forward, moving much faster than the others. Their withered arms even slapped against the rear bumper of the retreating SUV.

"Tch!" Xu Mo wrenched the steering wheel. The SUV swung out in an arc, escaping the lunge of the few fast zombies and returning to the main road. But that brief delay was all it took for more zombies to close in. The nearest ones were now less than ten meters away.

’Can’t stop!’ Xu Mo knew that if he let the horde completely surround him, not even this modified SUV would be enough.

Realizing this, Xu Mo slammed on the gas. The SUV shot forward, ramming through two regular zombies in its path and temporarily breaking free of the immediate encirclement.

But after breaking free from the regular zombies, Xu Mo didn’t immediately speed away. Instead, another thought flashed through his mind: ’Maybe I can lure these zombies away?’

And so, Xu Mo drove in a small semicircle on the open ground at the edge of town. He then turned around again and headed down a street in the opposite direction from the gas station. At the same time, he reached out and slammed his hand on the horn in the center of the steering wheel.

"HONK—!!!"

The piercing, high-pitched blare of the horn suddenly erupted, echoing far and wide across the silent, dilapidated town.

The sound of the horn was like a drop of cold water hitting a pan of boiling oil. The horde, which had previously only been drawn by the engine, instantly erupted into a frenzy.

The horn seemed to have an unusually stimulating effect on them. More regular zombies crawled out from the ruins of buildings, from basements, from any corner they could hide in. Gurgling and growling, they surged madly toward Xu Mo’s SUV. The once-loose tide of zombies suddenly became dense and focused.

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

"SWOOSH!" "SWOOSH!" "SWOOSH!"

Several figures, far swifter than the regular zombies, suddenly leaped down from the taller rooftops on either side of the street and from behind collapsed billboards. They landed almost silently, then dropped to all fours and sprinted toward the SUV with astonishing speed.

’Level-one Agile Zombies! And there’s more than one!’ With a quick glance, Xu Mo saw at least six or seven Agile Zombies locking onto him.

’This is bad!’ Alarm bells screamed in Xu Mo’s mind. Without a moment’s hesitation, he slammed the accelerator to the floor.

The SUV’s engine roared to life as it shot forward like a startled beast.

Just as Xu Mo raced out of town, fleeing along the same highway he’d driven in on, even more mutated forms emerged from other parts of the town.

In addition to the Agile Zombies that joined the chase, those hulking Strength Zombies—whose running made the very ground tremble—also roared as they joined the hunt.

This led to the current scene: a filth-covered SUV tearing down the road, with a dozen Agile Zombies, like soul-reaping ghosts, hot on its tail. Behind them were the relentlessly pursuing, hulking Strength Zombies, and on the horizon, a vast and tireless tide of regular zombies stretched out.

The sight was more striking than any words could describe.

It taught Xu Mo a harsh lesson in the cruelest way possible: the terror of the apocalypse wasn’t just about individual mutations. It was about the horrifying zombie tides that, once triggered, could become an endless flood, enough to overwhelm anyone who let their guard down.

In regions where the order of human civilization had collapsed, especially in former population centers, the density of zombies and the proportion of mutated ones could far exceed what he’d seen in the relatively "clean" outskirts of Jiang City.

Xu Mo gritted his teeth. ’I can’t keep running like this. I came here to find fuel, not to burn it.’

A plan quickly formed in Xu Mo’s mind as he observed the road ahead. The highway stretched into a long, straight path here, flanked by relatively open wastelands covered in low weeds and shrubs. A forest lay in the distance.

’This is the place!’

A sharp glint flashed in Xu Mo’s eyes. He gunned the engine, putting more distance between the SUV and the zombies behind him. Then, he eased off the accelerator and began to slowly steer the vehicle toward the side of the road.