Fatty's sudden illness - 3

As the crowd seethed with righteous indignation, the person most deeply moved was not Wang Chen, but Tian Maocai. The old con artist was so frightened he nearly pissed his pants. Long full of awe and terror toward the Special Operations, and harboring a tiny, ingrained sense of superiority over the ordinary civilians under their protection—having witnessed how helpless and submissive ordinary folks were under the tyranny of hardened criminals like Boss Tian, making him feel like some sort of bigshot superior to the common rabble—he never imagined that these very same commoners could turn red-faced, vein-bulging, and on the verge of frenzy!

In truth, there was nothing all that strange about it. Even a cornered rabbit will bite, let alone people pushed to the edge of an abyss with hope right before their eyes.

Discovering unexpectedly that the popular will could be harnessed, the morale of the Special Operations officers soared right along with it. After the briefing concluded, everyone dispersed to their respective duties. Wang Chen and Sheng Qingru went directly to the cottage specifically assigned to Dai Jian, intending to watch the live-feed video of the processing plant transmitted by the drone in real time.

Yang Xiaohua and Ma Tian had not attended the briefing; they had arrived at the cottage ahead of time to join Dai Jian and prepare for the drone reconnaissance. Normally, Yang Xiaohua and Dai Jian alone would have been more than enough to handle this task, leaving Ma Tian with nothing much to contribute. However, given the suspected presence of a mole at the outpost, Ma Tian was concerned for the safety of the communications technicians and had volunteered to provide security—a move that felt entirely natural and seamless.

As Wang Chen stepped into the room, he happened to catch the sound of Dai Jian cheering aloud, prompting him to ask casually, "Any good news to share?"

"Oh, Captain Wang, Doctor Sheng, you're here," Dai Jian said, hastily standing up to greet them.

"Don't call me doctor; I'm not a licensed physician. Just call me Qingru—you're older than I am anyway," Sheng Qingru said straightforwardly.

Dai Jian gave a sheepish chuckle, sitting back down in his chair with a hint of embarrassment, before remembering he hadn't answered Wang Chen's previous question. He quickly explained, "I just successfully deployed the drone's second video transmission repeater, and the connection went through on the very first try, so I got a little excited. The third drone is already airborne and will reach the processing plant in less than two minutes, at which point we can initiate live video transmission—well, live reconnaissance, I mean."

"The second video transmission repeater?"

"Oh, it's like this, Captain Wang. The military drones we have on hand are large, fast, and lack a hover function. Trying to fly one inside the workshop for reconnaissance is too much of a stretch; we absolutely must use a drone capable of hovering. The drone I have can handle that easily, but its maximum video transmission range is only two kilometers. Even with a DJI model I specially modified earlier using adaptive resolution, directional signals, and Lightbridge technology, the transmission range still can't exceed ten kilometers. Therefore, we had to set up two repeaters first to meet the requirement of conducting real-time reconnaissance across the entire processing plant."

Wang Chen had no desire to admit that he hadn't understood at least a third of the jargon tumbling out of Dai Jian's mouth. He stealthily glanced sideways at Ma Tian, only to find the young fellow shrugging with a helpless gesture of his own. Fortunately, Yang Xiaohua stepped in to rescue the moment: "To conserve battery power, we made sure the drone arrived near the processing plant before starting the high-definition live transmission. You guys came at just the right time—Dai Jian, look at the thumbnail, it's already over the processing plant."

"Oh, right, almost there. Turn on the HD video feed," Dai Jian acknowledged. He let go of the drone's control sticks with both hands, flew a command into the keyboard, and hit the enter key.

After a delay of five or six seconds, the main window on the computer screen in front of Dai Jian finally brightened with the drone's real-time video feed. Through Dai Jian's plain and easy-to-understand explanations alongside the imagery on the main display, Wang Chen finally understood that there was still a distinct difference between an HD video feed and a live video stream. A live stream was continuous video at twenty-four frames per second; real-time video compression placed a heavy burden on the drone's related systems and drove up power consumption. The HD video feed, by contrast, was more like watching a sequence of still frames, capturing anywhere from one to six frames per second with much higher clarity. It was simply more tiring on the eyes to watch flashing images, and a few individuals might even experience dizziness and nausea.

By now, day had fully broken, though the sun remained hidden behind drifting clouds without revealing its true visage. The grey-brown surroundings of the factory grounds were still dominated by deciduous trees. As the drone flew past, brownish-yellow fallen leaves fluttered down in the wind, imbued with a deep, late-autumn, withered sense of desolation beneath the scattered morning sunlight. Occasionally, a few leaves were swept up by the autumn breeze, seeming to acquire a brand-new lease on life as they danced alongside the wind, yet unable to conceal the reality that they were mere fragments of dead wood, having lost any reason for existence long ago.

The drone first circled the entire factory compound. Aside from the familiar figures of zombies seen countless times before, there were no particular discoveries, nor were there any fresh tracks of vehicles on the ground. Combined with earlier satellite remote-sensing images, it appeared that no living person had set foot in the processing plant since Wang Chen and his team had evacuated.

Following Wang Chen's instructions, Dai Jian expertly maneuvered the drone through a workshop window. Because of the rapid movement, the image became somewhat blurry; to prevent the drone from being damaged by the zombies inside, Dai Jian quickly gained altitude, making it hover close to the workshop ceiling before switching the HD feed mode over to real-time video.

Once the video stabilized and cleared, everyone's breathing grew somewhat heavy.

While lower temperatures certainly inhibited the scent of brains, flesh, and viscera from spreading on the wind, it was far from cold enough to freeze souls the way the northern frontier could. Consequently, the corpses of nearly three hundred individuals—after Wang Chen and his team's 'post-processing'—had not required much time for their exuded odors to attract virtually all the zombies lingering around the processing plant. The fresh bodies had provided a veritable feast for the neighborhood zombies. Inside the previously cavernous workshop, the undead gathered in small groups of three to five, lingering around the carcasses that had not yet completely frozen solid, gorging themselves. Judging by their distended and in some cases ruptured abdomens, many of the zombies had apparently never stopped eating since arriving at this spot. Guided by their mindless instincts, they would not depart until they had eaten everything here down to the bone.

Seeing the gastrointestinal tracts ruptured from the zombies' gluttony, purplish-blue intestines spilling out in bloated heaps onto the floor and still twitching as other zombies continued to feed, the scene seemed to radiate the distinct, acrid stench of raw meat and entrails straight through the screen. Sheng Qingru muttered in self-congratulation, "Thank goodness I didn't eat breakfast."

Fortunately, chewed and swallowed through the maws of zombies, these flesh fragments would accelerate in decomposition and spoilage. Even if they dropped out from the ruptured bellies of the zombies, no other undead would subject them to 'secondary processing,' meaning the people watching all this via the live video feed would not be subjected to any further 'stimulation.'

While the scene was a chaotic mess, it also served to verify the deduction that no living person had entered the factory since Wang Chen's party had retreated. At the same time, because the site had been so thoroughly 'ravaged' by the zombies, and the flight altitude could not be lowered to improve image clarity without compromising the drone's safety, no clues related to the epidemic had been found for the time being.

Bypassing these zombies, the drone pressed onward, finally hovering above the sterile workshop. The situation here was slightly better than inside the main workshop; the relatively enclosed environment had shielded the scene from being vandalized by zombies, and the bodies strewn across the floor had dissuaded the undead from venturing deeper into the workshop before they could finish devouring the flesh right before their eyes. Therefore, when Wang Chen and his company gazed upon these corpses through the drone—especially observing the changes that had occurred over the past dozen hours in Boss Tian, whose clothes had been stripped away for identity verification, alongside several female corpses that had lacked clothing to begin with—they all involuntarily widened their eyes!

What the hell was this situation? Was this an 1980s Hollywood B-movie?