“The plan’s about to begin.
The west wing is going to get pretty noisy in a moment, so brace yourselves,” Marvin said, taking up the role of field commander as he started directing everyone through the operation.
“Received.”
Elliot and David stood on opposite sides of the door, backs against the wall.
The MP5s hanging across their chests were already off safe and ready to fire at any moment, while both men had their hands clamped over their ears, waiting for the right timing—and that timing would come when the broadcast stopped.
Luo Guang had been ready for a while already.
Before the plan officially began, he had entered through the west-side fire door.
Behind it was a reception room.
Pass through that room, go straight down the corridor, then turn right, and the first door on the right was the Records Room.
When Elliot and David had headed for the Records Room earlier, they had already cleared the reception room along the way, so Luo Guang did not need to deal with it in advance.
On top of that, the reception room itself was separated from the west wing by another door, which was why Marvin felt safe enough leaving the fire door open by about a third.
At the same time, to avoid cross-channel interference, Luo Guang’s radio was set to a different receiving channel from Elliot’s.
So Marvin had placed two walkie-talkies in front of him, one on the left and one on the right, each corresponding to Luo Guang’s and Elliot’s channel respectively.
Once Marvin saw that Luo Guang was also in position beside the reception room doorway, he told both sides the same thing:
“The plan is starting.”
Hearing Marvin’s words crackle out of the radio at his waist, Luo Guang flexed the fingers wrapped around his pistol grip and waited for his moment to act.
Since the purpose of this operation was to cover Elliot and David’s retreat back to the main hall, Luo Guang had not taken out his telescopic dagger.
He was holding the gun in a two-handed grip instead, which would also make it easier to cover his ears later if needed.
The screeching feedback howled to life from the speakers in the west wing, instantly tearing apart the quiet air there.
Even though they had been mentally prepared, Elliot and David were still jolted by the sudden scream of feedback and immediately pressed their hands harder over their ears.
Luo Guang was farther away, with a door between him and the noise, and he also had the system’s help, so he could still barely tolerate it.
Originally, the system had not possessed any function like this.
But with the aid of the T-Virus it had modified, it could now make slight, temporary alterations to certain structures inside Luo Guang’s body and restore them afterward.
Marvin shoved the microphone up against the speaker and kept his eyes locked on the monitor.
The soundproofing between sections—and even between floors—was pretty good.
From where Marvin stood in the main hall, the screech was not very clear.
“It’s working.”
Seeing the Lickers outside Elliot’s door react without hesitation—bolting for the windows and fleeing the station as if they had been badly frightened—Marvin’s face finally showed a long-lost smile.
At last, they had managed to win back a little ground against those vicious creatures.
The zombies standing dumbly outside the Records Room were drawn by the noise too.
Unlike the Lickers, they did not seem to mind the sound at all, and most of them started moving toward the speakers.
The situation was developing beautifully.
Marvin immediately radioed Elliot and David to begin moving.
Marvin called out several times before Elliot finally noticed—or rather, noticed the little light on the radio indicating incoming transmission.
Elliot had not expected that enduring the screech for even a short time would feel this awful.
He felt as if he could barely stand upright.
Seizing the chance, he grabbed the radio and shouted to Marvin, “Marvin, kill that damned noise.
It’s making it hard for us to move.”
Marvin heard Elliot clearly, but he did not shut the sound off right away.
He first checked the Lickers’ status again.
“Marvin!” Elliot called again.
“Got it.”
Marvin pulled the microphone away, and the feedback stopped instantly.
Elliot still felt slightly dazed, as though he could barely keep his balance, but he shook his head hard and forced himself to focus.
He yanked open the door.
Elliot and David each took one side, raising their guns.
Besides the standard-issue Raccoon City police Beretta M9FS pistols they carried, they each also had one classic weapon—the MP5—which was part of what had given them the confidence to head into the Records Room to search for escape information.
After the feedback stopped, and once Marvin confirmed the corridor outside was clear, Luo Guang also opened the door connecting the reception room to the west wing.
He exposed only part of himself, arms raised, aiming down the corridor.
The reception room’s electrical system was not connected to the west wing’s grid.
Instead, it ran on the same power system as the main hall.
So the reception room still had electricity, and its light spilled out through the doorway, illuminating the path to life for Elliot and David. Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
Before long, Luo Guang saw the two men.
But in their hurry to get out of the west wing as fast as possible, neither Elliot nor David noticed one key detail.
Between them and Luo Guang was a straight corridor.
But only a few meters before the reception room, there was a branching hallway on their left.
Just like what Luo Guang had run into earlier in the East Office, not all ordinary zombies reacted the same way to sound.
Perhaps the virus controlling the corpses produced different tendencies.
Some zombies liked to actively pursue sound and hunt humans that way.
Others preferred to lie in wait and grab at someone’s legs when they were careless.
Others played dead.
And Marvin’s monitor screen was not large.
At most, it could display four views at once: one outside the west wing building, one in the corridor outside the Records Room, one showing the corridor Elliot and David absolutely had to pass through to reach the reception room, and the last one showing the reception room itself.
Since Luo Guang was standing just inside the reception room doorway, he naturally could not observe that other corridor either.
By a perfect storm of bad luck and blind spots, that side passage became invisible to everyone.
Just as Elliot and David passed the corner, a zombie lying on the floor in that side corridor suddenly lashed out and grabbed Elliot’s leg.
Still moving forward at speed, Elliot lost his balance and slammed to the ground.
The zombie’s head was still hidden inside the blind corridor, so Luo Guang had no angle to deal with it immediately.
Then Luo Guang saw David—who had been half a step behind Elliot—keep his feet moving after seeing Elliot go down.
David glanced toward the left corridor, his face changed drastically, and he yelled.
Immediately afterward, something long shot out from the blind corridor, passing right by the back of David’s head.
David did not even stop to check whether his scalp was still attached.
He took several huge strides, charged into the reception room, and kept running toward the main hall.
Luo Guang had originally been about to fire at that long shape, but when he saw David suddenly accelerate straight toward him, he had to pull himself back behind the wall to avoid friendly fire.
By the time David made it inside and Luo Guang leaned out with his gun again, the long appendage had already snapped back out of sight.
“There’s a Licker!”
Not caring about the danger, Luo Guang shouted the warning immediately to Elliot.
The moment those words left his mouth, Luo Guang heard the sound of something crawling in the blind corridor, as if it were pinpointing the source of his voice.
Shit.
With a furious curse in his head, Luo Guang stepped out of the reception room.
Hugging the left wall, he advanced with both hands on his gun, aiming toward the blind corridor.
Not to mention that Elliot’s MP5 had already flown several feet away—just Luo Guang’s shout of “Licker” alone had been enough to make Elliot not dare move so much as a muscle.
Fortunately, the corpse lying beneath him had softened his fall enough that it had not made too much noise, and what little sound there had been was covered by David’s scream.
Still, that bastard had just run.
Glancing toward his leg, Elliot saw that the half-body zombie at his feet was still pawing toward him with one arm, trying to reach him.
Marvin also realized something had gone wrong, but there was no time to switch cameras now.
And with the Licker in play, he absolutely did not dare use the radio to tell Luo Guang and Elliot what was happening.
Bang.
At the crack of a gunshot, Luo Guang immediately abandoned his original position and lunged for the MP5 lying on the floor.
In less than a second, a skinless Licker—with long claws on its limbs, an exposed brain, and drool dripping from its mouth—launched itself out of the blind corridor and clung spider-like to the vertical wall.
It struck at the position where Luo Guang had just fired, its tongue blasting forward and punching a hole into the wall beside the reception room entrance.
Ratatatatatat—
The MP5 barely had any recoil to begin with, and in Luo Guang’s strengthened hands it was as docile as a kitten.
He was able to pour the bullets precisely into the Licker’s head.
After taking that heavy barrage to the skull, the creature dropped off the wall and rolled across the floor—but that very movement caused the rest of Luo Guang’s burst, with the trigger still held down, to miss.
Click.
Luo Guang had fired a little over ten rounds, and the standard thirty-round magazine was already empty.
The Licker twisted violently, flipped itself upright, and slammed one claw down beside Elliot.
Then, just as it was about to launch itself at the spot where Luo Guang had been firing the MP5 from, another fifteen shots rang out in rapid succession.
Luo Guang had simply emptied the magazine of his Beretta M92F.
This time, the Licker finally stopped moving and collapsed limp onto the floor.
Luo Guang did not rush back into the reception room.
While reloading, he walked slowly to the corner and leaned out just enough to check the blind corridor.
“Move.”
After confirming there had only been that one stray Licker, Luo Guang spoke to Elliot, then kept his gun up to cover him while Elliot got back to his feet.
Elliot kicked away the zombie still pawing at his leg and stood up.
Although his MP5 had been battered around enough that the magazine was empty now, Elliot still bent down and picked it up.
As he passed Luo Guang, he muttered quietly, “Thanks…
and sorry.”
Luo Guang only nodded.
Without lowering his guard, he backed up with his gun still trained outward, escorting Elliot into the reception room and then back to the main hall to regroup with Marvin.
Because Luo Guang had taken rear position to cover the withdrawal, Elliot made it back into the main hall first.
Since Luo Guang was the one covering and bringing up the rear, the sight waiting for him when he stepped back inside the hall was Elliot clenching a fist and drawing back to punch David right in his fat face.
Marvin had already rushed over from the side and gotten between them.
He had not even had time to shut the west-side fire door yet.
“Calm down, Elliot!” Marvin shouted, grabbing Elliot’s arm.
Marvin had seen everything clearly through the cameras, so he did not bother asking what Elliot was trying to do.
“Marvin, you saw what that bastard did just now.
That damned coward!” Elliot exploded.
The moment he got back to the main hall and laid eyes on David, anger surged through him.
He had already saved David multiple times.
For the sake of keeping him alive, he had even handed over the last fully loaded MP5 magazine he had.
And when Elliot himself had run into danger just now, David had not fired a single shot before running.
If there had not been a corpse under him to cushion the fall, and if David’s scream had not distracted the Licker, Elliot would already be a corpse with a hole through him.
And if Luo Guang had not already explained the Lickers’ habits—and had not risked himself to shout that warning and pull the creature’s attention onto himself—then Elliot would have been dead for sure.
The more Elliot thought about it, the angrier he became at David.
Thinking back on a few earlier incidents only made that anger burn hotter.
“Enough.” Marvin held Elliot’s arm and stood in front of David.
“Marvin!
You saw on the monitors what he did!” Elliot shouted back furiously, repeating himself.
Marvin knew full well that David’s decision to run had every right to infuriate Elliot.
But at a moment when they all needed to work together, Marvin could only play mediator and stop the conflict from escalating further.
“Elliot, what David did was wrong.
But objectively speaking, that yell of his saved you.”
Marvin had seen it clearly: the Licker’s first target had been the screaming David, which spared the fallen Elliot from its initial strike.
“Hmph.
That only changed when I died, not whether I died.” Elliot was still furious.
“If it weren’t like you said, I wouldn’t be stopping at a punch.”
Elliot and Marvin argued intensely, while David, even now, still looked shaken out of his wits and said nothing.
That silence, at least, was useful.
David was not saying anything stupid like “You were the one who fell because you weren’t paying attention,” which would only have made the conflict explode even further.
That let Marvin focus entirely on getting Elliot to calm down.
“Yeah, yeah, I know.
But now is not the time for us to turn on each other.
Once we get out of here, say whatever you want.
Right now, calm down first.
I need to tell you something.”
Marvin did not simply deny everything Elliot said.
He offered him a way to step back.
Elliot really had seen red, but after Marvin blocked him a few times like that, his overheated head cooled slightly.
Unable to vent his rage on David, Elliot could only seethe in silence and ask bitterly, “What is it?”
Marvin did not answer right away.
He pulled Elliot aside, leaned close to his ear, and said in a low voice:
“Brad’s dead.”
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