Chapter 90 - 83: Bat

Chapter 90: Chapter 83: Bat

Time passed quietly, and in the blink of an eye, it was past noon. The sky remained a lifeless, hazy gray, the sunlight listlessly piercing the clouds to bathe the earth in a dull halo.

Inside the driver’s cabin, Xu Mo rested one hand on the steering wheel, his gaze habitually scanning the road ahead and to the sides. However, the long hours of driving, coupled with the almost unchanging desolate scenery outside, gave rise to an indescribable sense of monotony and tedium.

It had been the better part of a day since he left Cyan Pine Ridge Town, and apart from the brief encounter at the riverbed, the journey had been surprisingly peaceful. He hadn’t run into any swarms of mutated creatures, nor had he found any traces of other survivors. As far as the eye could see, there was only the utter devastation left in the flood’s wake—cracked mud, withered trees uprooted or snapped in half, and the occasional wreck of an abandoned vehicle on the distant horizon, scattered across the wild grass and dirt like carelessly discarded toys.

"Tsk." Xu Mo clicked his tongue softly. This uneventful driving was starting to make him antsy.

To dispel the boredom, Xu Mo reached out and turned on the radio on the vehicle’s center console. The SUV was well-equipped; its radio was fully functional, supporting multiple bands and featuring simple signal search and memory functions. The black LCD screen lit up, displaying the current frequency.

Xu Mo skillfully turned the tuning knob, his ear carefully discerning the sounds coming from the speakers. First came the harsh white noise and static, jumping and crackling between frequencies. He searched patiently, band by band, paying special attention to the frequencies he remembered the Jiang City Shelter commonly used.

The result, however, was disappointing. Aside from occasionally catching some unintelligible, intermittent Morse-code-like beeps, the steady, powerful broadcast voice he had hoped for never appeared. On the radio’s LCD screen, the numbers flickered continuously, but it could never lock onto a clear, stable signal.

’Maybe it’s just not broadcasting time,’ Xu Mo frowned. His finger paused on the tuning knob for a moment before he finally turned it off, and the monotonous drone of the engine once again filled the car.

After driving a while longer, Xu Mo sighed in resignation and turned on the car’s audio system. He just wanted to hear something.

Fortunately, the vehicle’s previous owner seemed to have been a music lover, as the built-in hard drive contained a large collection of songs. He randomly clicked on a folder named "Classic Oldies," and the mellow, slightly husky voice of a male singer began to echo through the cabin.

The music did alleviate some of the tedium. Xu Mo leaned back in his seat, listening to the melodies from another, more peaceful era, and felt his mood relax slightly.

But the songs created a stark sense of disconnect with the apocalyptic scenery outside the window. If anything, listening to them made it easier to recall the past, bringing on a hazy, surreal feeling.

Xu Mo shook his head and turned the volume down, letting it fade into the background. His focus remained primarily on driving and observation.

As the wheels rolled ever onward, the sky began to deepen in color, shifting from gray-white to a dusky yellow, then tinged with a hint of dull orange-red. The sun, like a giant, cold copper plate, slowly sank toward the western horizon, and the light between heaven and earth rapidly softened before growing dim.

「Night was about to fall.」

Xu Mo glanced at the clock on the dashboard, then looked out at the wilderness ahead, where there was still no sign of any artificial lights or building silhouettes. He began to seriously consider where to stop for the night.

Over the course of the entire day, he hadn’t seen a single building that could serve as a temporary shelter. The few places he passed that might have been villages were nothing but broken walls and ruins, completely unsuitable for spending the night.

Making do with a night in the car seemed like an option. Given the vehicle’s sturdiness and sealed interior, the risk wasn’t too high as long as he parked in a relatively hidden but open area and locked the doors.

But Xu Mo was inwardly resistant to this choice. Spending the night curled up in the cramped cabin not only meant poor quality of rest, but his reaction would inevitably be a beat slower if an emergency arose in his sleep. More importantly, a sense of urgency to reach his destination as soon as possible was quietly growing inside him.

The straight-line distance from Cyan Pine Ridge Town to the Jiang City Shelter was just over two hundred kilometers. Before the apocalypse, with the highways clear, that distance would have been a two- or three-hour drive at most.

Now, relying on this powerful SUV, even with the terrible road conditions limiting his average speed to maybe twenty or thirty kilometers per hour, or even less, it was still far faster than traveling on foot.

’At this speed, even with a few detours, I should be able to make it in two or three days, right?’ Xu Mo estimated. ’Instead of spending a nerve-wracking night in the wilderness, I’d rather push on and cover more ground. The sooner I get to Jiang City, the sooner I can rest easy.’

Once the thought took root in his mind, it quickly solidified into a firm decision.

’I’ll rest when I get to Jiang City!’ Xu Mo resolved, his gaze refocusing with determination. He checked the vehicle’s condition: the fuel was sufficient, and the headlights were working properly. After adjusting his seat, Xu Mo prepared himself for a long night of driving.

Just as the last glimmer of sunset was about to be swallowed by the horizon and the world plunged into the deepest gloom of dusk, Xu Mo sharply noticed some uninvited guests appearing outside his window.

At first, there were only one or two black shadows, like flickering phantoms, zipping through the low altitude not far from the side of the SUV. They were incredibly fast, their paths hard to follow.

Soon, the number of shadows began to increase—three, five, then seven, eight... They circled the vehicle, maintaining a certain distance as they swooped up and down, as if performing some kind of reconnaissance.

They were bats.

These bats seemed a size larger than the common bats from before the apocalypse. In the deepening gloom, all he could make out were their blurry black silhouettes and rapidly flapping, fleshy wings.

Xu Mo’s heart sank slightly. In the old world, seeing bats returning to their roost at dusk might have prompted a joke about being blessed with good fortune. But here, any living thing that approached of its own accord had to be presumed hostile.

"Back in the old world, I might have joked that I was blessed, but this is the apocalypse," Xu Mo muttered with a hint of cold self-deprecation. Without a moment’s hesitation, he slowed the vehicle slightly, took his left hand off the steering wheel, and expertly drew the TT33 pistol he always carried.

He rolled down the window, and the cool night air, thick with the smell of earth, instantly flooded the cabin. Xu Mo held the gun in his left hand, resting his arm steadily on the window frame, his sharp gaze locking onto the black shadows darting through the twilight.

The bats seemed particularly interested in the moving vehicle and the "aura of life" emanating from within. They circled closer and closer, and the bolder ones even began to approach the window!

BANG!

The first gunshot ripped through the silence of the wilderness. A bat that had been attempting a dive from the front-side exploded in a mist of blood, its tattered wing and body falling limply to the ground.

BANG! BANG!

Xu Mo’s eyes were icy, his finger pulling the trigger with a steady, rhythmic cadence. The TT33 pistol cracked sharply, and each shot brought down another bat. His aim was incredibly precise; relying on his superhuman dynamic vision and body control, he practically couldn’t miss. Small bursts of blood-red flowers bloomed in the air as bat corpses rained down one after another.

However, the gunshots and the scent of blood were like a boulder tossed into a calm lake, instantly stirring up much larger waves.

More bats swarmed in from unknown corners in all directions, their numbers far exceeding what he had seen before. In the blink of an eye, a small, roiling "black cloud" formed around the SUV.

The swarm, which had only been circling the vehicle, seemed to have been thoroughly enraged—or perhaps driven into a frenzy by the death of their kin and the smell of blood. They let out shrill SQUEAKS, the sounds merging into a hair-raising wave of noise.

The bats were no longer just circling; they began to fearlessly and madly slam into the SUV, like a suicide attack.

THUD! THUD! THUD!

A continuous series of dull thuds echoed out—the sound of flesh-and-blood bats slamming into the doors, windows, hood, and windshield. Although the impact of a single bat was limited, the dense and frequent barrage still made the vehicle shudder and obstructed his vision.

"Damn it," Xu Mo cursed under his breath; the situation was more trouble than he’d anticipated. He quickly rolled up the window, preventing any bats from slipping inside.

The swarm went completely insane. They attacked the SUV with their bodies, teeth, and claws. The sharp scraping of their talons on the paint created a grating sound that set one’s teeth on edge, while the dense impacts continued unabated, like a hailstorm. The entire SUV seemed to be enveloped by a restless, malevolent darkness.

Xu Mo’s brow furrowed. He knew he couldn’t remain passive. An obstructed view was the greatest danger; if he couldn’t see the road ahead, the vehicle could easily fall into a ditch or crash into an obstacle.

He slammed his foot on the accelerator. The diesel engine let out an angry roar, and the SUV shot forward as he tried to shake off the frenzied swarm with sheer speed.

At the same time, Xu Mo’s left hand flicked on the front windshield wipers and sprayed washer fluid, clearing a relatively clean, fan-shaped field of view.

The SUV sped wildly across the dim wilderness. Behind and on both sides, the black "cloud" gave chase, relentlessly continuing its assault.

Xu Mo’s eyes were sharp, fixed on the small patch of ground illuminated by the headlights. He gripped the steering wheel tightly, maneuvering the vehicle over the bumpy road while simultaneously trying to clear away the stubborn bats clinging to the glass and blocking his view.