Survivor 02

After cleaning up the platform and waiting room, Xiao Fan's people took a break near the waiting room.

The station's front door had been locked, and although there were a lot of zombies outside in the front plaza, they were unable to get inside.

By walking all the way along the platform to another section and climbing over a high wall, they would be able to enter the steel factory grounds, so Xiao Fan's people did not need to leave the station.

After fighting for several hours, the troops were a bit tired and began preparing meals in the waiting room.

Xiao Fan boredly looked over the radar map.

Numerous green dots appeared on the radar map.

These dots were not far from him, only about a few hundred meters away, at the location of the front plaza. It looked like they were hiding somewhere in the front plaza.

Xiao Fan looked outside, but with so many zombies he couldn't quite make out where these survivors were.

"Strange, where are these survivors hiding?"

"Nevermind them for now. My main task right now is to collect steel. After the steel is loaded onto the train, I need to return to Yanshan Town as quickly as possible."

"As for these survivors, that depends on their fate. If they have the ability to make it over here to the station, then they're fortunate, and I can rescue them. But if they don't have the ability to come over, there's no way I'll take the risk to go over there."

Having made up his mind, Xiao Fan accepted the meal that Xue Ninger handed over.

The quartermaster had cooked beef noodles in brown sauce with meat from mutated wild cattle, very nutritious.

Xiao Fan ate three whole bowls of noodles, and felt full of energy.

"Let's go, to the steel factory!"

It was now past noon, and the ammunition for the soldiers' firearms had refreshed to full capacity.

Led by Xiao Fan, over a dozen three-star infantrymen worked together to directly push down the surrounding wall.

"Leave a few people to clear up this gap, we'll possibly need to transport a lot of steel through here later on."

About ten engineering corps members stayed behind to clean up, while the rest entered the interior of the steel factory.

Compared to the train station, there were far fewer zombies inside the steel factory.

Xiao Fan's people didn't even need to open fire, just using bayonets to kill all the approaching zombies.

When Xiao Fan opened the warehouse inside the steel factory, he realized this train might not be enough to transport everything. There was steel everywhere, with weight that couldn't be estimated.

"Go find some forklifts, flatbed trucks and things like that. We can't carry all this by hand."

The soldiers immediately got busy, with everyone putting down their guns and starting to look around for transportation tools.

The area between the platform and steel factory immediately became a busy construction site.

At times like this, Xiao Fan felt a bit bored, and sat in an open area taking a break, continuing to look at the dots representing the survivors.

"Huh! Those dots are moving, and they're heading towards the interior of the station!"

Xiao Fan was rather surprised. In his opinion, with over ten thousand zombies crowding the front plaza, it would be no simple task for survivors to get through there, let alone for his own troops. Without heavy vehicles for protection, trying to cross by themselves would be suicidal.

How did these survivors manage it?

Xiao Fan became a bit interested, and based on the survivors' direction of travel he decided to take some people over there and check the situation.

"The rest of you keep working, security squad come with me."

Bringing along Xue Ninger, Sun Feifei, and Shen Ruihui's entire security squad, Xiao Fan walked over in the direction indicated.

When they were within about twenty meters of the survivors, he still hadn't seen anyone. At this point, Xiao Fan realized what was going on.

The sewers!

The survivors must be inside the sewers, which is why they showed up on the radar map, but he couldn't actually see them.

"Step back a bit, these sewer covers are probably about to open up."

Xiao Fan and the others retreated about ten meters. Sure enough, within five minutes, the sewer covers opened up.

An extremely filthy group of people crawled out from within.

Upon seeing Xiao Fan and the others, the first person to climb out let out a cry and burst into tears.

"Wonderful! This is just wonderful! We finally waited until there was a rescue, dear military comrades I'm overjoyed."

This survivor seemed to want to rush over, but Shen Ruihui's military dogs would not permit strangers to approach Xiao Fan so easily.

Although these people didn't seem hostile, they smelled far too foul.

The dogs barked wildly, forcing the survivors to halt their footsteps.

Xiao Fan didn't speak, just silently counted the number of survivors.

When the last one climbed out, there were a total of 22 people.

Every person's entire body was covered in mud, making it impossible to discern their original appearance, only a rough judgement of whether they were male or female based on body shape.

Xiao Fan spoke up, "I understand your current feelings, but you need to listen to me say a few things first."

"Yes sir, please go ahead, we will absolutely not conceal anything."

"Roughly how many people were living in these sewers across the entire city?"

One man spoke up, "There's nobody left, we're probably the only ones, just us."

"That can't be. With millions in this city, there should have been quite a few people taking shelter in the sewers."

"Sir, there were a lot in the beginning, but there's no food in the sewers. Many couldn't stand the hunger and starved to death."

Xiao Fan's expression was a bit solemn as he asked another question, "Then how did all of you avoid starving to death?"

The man spoke a bit awkwardly, "Because we ate rats."

The rest also nodded in agreement.

One woman said, "Sir, we really couldn't hold out any longer. The rats down there got bigger and bigger. Originally not that many of us would have died, but later on, it wasn't us eating rats but the rats eating us. If not for all of you showing up, our final desperate gamble to come over here, probably within ten days all of us would have died."

Xiao Fan nodded slightly. He believed what these people said, because despite looking miserable, they had at least retained some humanity.

Among them there were even two children, currently held in the adults' arms, seemingly not in good condition.

Xiao Fan let out a breath, and asked another question, "What kind of jobs did all of you have?"

They chimed out all sorts of professions, some were office workers, some did odd jobs, some were housewives, some students.

But he noticed that several of them were actually from a TV station.

"You're actors?" Xiao Fan looked at these muddy monkeys and asked.

"No no, we're just ordinary staff members. We originally came to Chishui to do interviews, but got trapped here. Only she, Xin Xiaodi, is a news anchor for the TV station."

Xiao Fan's gaze fell upon one of the women.

Although covered in filth, it was still clear this woman was rather pretty, and fairly young too.

And Xiao Fan found her quite familiar, clearly a news anchor no doubt about it.

Xiao Fan had been ready to rescue this group of seemingly useless people, but upon seeing this woman, he suddenly had an idea.

Perhaps someday, these two might prove useful.

Xiao Fan waved his hand, signaling the quartermaster to bring them some food.

The rest of the survivors gratefully headed over towards the quartermaster, but the woman Xin Xiaodi stopped in her tracks.

"Sir, when I went into the sewers I had a satellite phone. From there I learned some news about Yunzhou City, would you like to hear it?"

When Xiao Fan heard this, his heart stirred.

Yunzhou! A large city on the northern border of Yun Province, near the provincial boundary.

That was precisely where he wanted to develop a base, Yunzhou City.