Chapter 11: Road to Survival 10
Game Day 3, 4:41 PM
They had been driving on the highway for an hour.
She opened her phone again and played the radio aloud.
The constant repetition of the broadcast gave her immense motivation.
“We are currently on National Road 713 and need to continue along this road for about seven more hours.”
Lu Qingyuan began to tell her about the upcoming journey, “This car doesn’t have enough gas to get us to City X.”
“We can find abandoned vehicles on the road for some gas,” Chu Yian said.
Lu Qingyuan glanced at her with a cold face, as if disdainful of her feigned cleverness.
“The national road won’t always be this easy to drive on.”
He said slowly, “We still need a sturdy vehicle with strong off-road capabilities.”
Such a vehicle would be able to withstand stronger impacts and wouldn’t get its chassis stuck on obstacles or corpses.
Unfortunately, all the vehicles they had passed by on the roadside were mostly scrap.
Lu Qingyuan rubbed his eyes; the injury and prolonged tension had left him somewhat fatigued.
“Teacher Lu, let me drive now.”
Chu Yian pulled out bottled water and anti-inflammatory medicine from her backpack, and took over the driver’s seat. “Just follow the national road, right?”
She reconfirmed the route.
“Yes,”
Lu Qingyuan nodded. “Don’t stop for anything you encounter on the road.”
“Okay.”
Chu Yian fastened her seatbelt and drove in the direction Lu Qingyuan had indicated.
Driven by pressure, her driving skills improved incredibly fast. On the road, she could not only dodge obstacles but even zombies, bumping along for dozens of miles.
Bad news—the fuel tank was almost empty.
Good news—there were many cars ahead on the road.
Worse news—these cars were jammed into every lane, and who knew how many zombies were hidden inside.
Chu Yian stopped about a hundred meters from the traffic jam, making no sound. Lu Qingyuan, who had been resting nearby, opened his eyes. He looked ahead. “There’s a service area about five hundred meters away.”
After the zombie outbreak, the first reaction of people with cars was, of course, to flee.
They could avoid vehicles at the highway toll booths, but not those in the service areas.
Many cars, many people, meant many zombies.
“Get out and walk on the other side of the highway?”
Chu Yian observed that all the vehicles were jammed on one side, while the opposite lane was empty. There was also a guardrail in the middle that could offer some slight protection from the zombies.
As for a vehicle… they had long wanted to switch to a car with higher ground clearance, and there were surely some usable ones on the road.
“When we get there, we’ll find a better car.”
“Okay.”
Lu Qingyuan nodded. Although the plan was rough, there was nothing to object to.
A few minutes later,
A slightly loud snapping sound made the zombies a hundred meters away suddenly jolt and roar. Their heads whipped around to face backward, their drooling mouths agape, and their tiny, green-bean-sized pupils rotated mechanically.
There was nothing.
After a small disturbance, the zombies returned to their idle state.
At this moment, Chu Yian and Lu Qingyuan were huddled behind the narrow door of a minivan. They pressed tightly together and slowly shuffled to the left.
They reached the opposing lane.
With car doors blocking both sides, they moved forward like a sandwich cookie.
The stench of blood and the smell of leaking gasoline grew stronger. They had reached the congested part of the road, and through the glass above, they could just see the zombies on the other side of the fence.
Chu Yian secretly took a peek, then quietly pulled her head back.
There were quite a few zombies on the other side, by her estimation.
If they all rushed over, the fence in the middle of the road wouldn’t hold them back. And these two thin minivan doors certainly wouldn’t.
Better run fast.
Chu Yian lowered her head and pedaled her legs furiously, making Lu Qingyuan in front of her look like a duck being herded.
But very soon, she stopped again.
No, the person in front stopped.
“What’s wrong?”
Chu Yian looked up, puzzled.
“Car.”
Lu Qingyuan answered concisely.
Following his gaze, they had reached the opposite side of the highway service area. A dozen cars were parked inside the service area, some of which looked quite good.
However, there were also an extremely large number of zombies in the middle.
Chu Yian looked at Lu Qingyuan. “Do we have to take a car from there?”
“Not necessarily.”
Lu Qingyuan countered, “Can you guarantee that a car abandoned on the side of the road will be in good condition and have enough gasoline to support us for the next seven hours of our journey?”
Such words… you’re handsome, so you’re right.
Chu Yian pulled out her pistol. “Teacher Lu, what do you say we do?”
“You go get a car, I’ll go find spare fuel. Meet at the service area in five minutes.”
He finished speaking, grabbed a minivan door, and ran, moving extremely fast, crossing the middle fence in the blink of an eye.
Hey!
Chu Yian stood up, then quickly crouched down again when she saw the zombies with their backs to her.
Lu Qingyuan left too quickly, giving her no time to prepare.
Chu Yian observed outside through the car window. She was directly opposite the service area, only about ten meters away.
Normally, this distance could be covered in a few seconds. But within this distance, there were eight zombies just standing on the road. Moreover, the vehicles in the middle were jammed together, with no direct path to rush through.
Wait, there was one.
If they went another twenty meters forward, there were fewer vehicles, but it looked like an accident had occurred, with several cars crashed together.
Chu Yian took the long way around, holding the minivan door, planning her route backward in her mind.
Finally, she reached the spot with the fewest zombies, where vehicles provided cover and made it easy to hide. However, the downside was that the larger minivan door had restricted movement, making it easy to bump into things and make noise.
She hesitated for a moment, holding the car door, then decisively placed it by the roadside and went in light.
She climbed over the railing and hid behind a red sedan.
She watched the zombies standing idly in the middle of the vehicles, hunched over, and carefully moved past the abandoned car bodies.
She was extremely nervous, her palms sweating, not even daring to breathe too heavily.
But just then, a roar sounded. It was so close, right behind her!
Chu Yian’s hair stood on end. She gripped her pistol tightly and aimed it backward.
A zombie was just two meters from her, its lower body caught in the car’s grille and bumper, its upper body desperately reaching towards Chu Yian.
It couldn’t crawl over, a false alarm.
Chu Yian swallowed, hunched over, and continued forward.
Bang—!
A crashing sound came from a nearby car. She turned her head and found herself face-to-face with a zombie inside the car.
Their eyes met, and the zombie became even more frantic. It repeatedly slammed against the glass car window, the sound attracting zombies from all directions to surge towards them…
