58. Old Soldiers Never Die, Part 3

"Wanrong, Wanrong. Captain Wang, there is no need to be so formal. Just call me Wanrong."

Regaining his composure, Ren Wanrong endured the throbbing pain from the wound in his left hand and swept his gaze across everyone present, including the foolish fat man, in the beam of the flashlight. He nodded and said, "They were all deceived here by that bastard Qi Baotian. They are ordinary people. No problem."

"All right. Everyone, stay calm and follow us. In a moment, after we wash up by the basin in the front hall, we will leave in the armored vehicle outside the museum."

Wang Chen did his best to reassure the men and women before him. Compared with Pablo, who did not speak Chinese, and Sheng Qingru, whose neck was wrapped in bandages, only he and Yang Xiaohua were capable of calming these poor souls, who had long since been terrified out of their wits.

Washing up was necessary. These people had been bound for two or three days, and those two lunatics certainly would not have allowed them any chance to relieve themselves. Wang Chen did not want the armored vehicle to turn into a cesspit, so these survivors had to clean themselves first.

After washing up, the trembling group emerged one by one from behind the curtains. The front courtyard of the museum was still deserted, though more than a dozen zombies had gathered in loose clusters before the electric sliding gate. Wang Chen, rifle in hand, was just about to test his skills when Ren Wanrong stepped forward, raised a hand, and pressed the muzzle of Wang Chen’s gun downward.

"The sound travels far," he said. "It will cause a lot of trouble."

After saying that, he turned and held out his hand toward Sheng Qingru, indicating the suppressed submachine gun in her grip, though his eyes remained on Wang Chen. "May I?"

Wang Chen gave an undisguised glance at Ren Wanrong’s severed left hand, then met his eyes for a few seconds. Seeing the other man’s round, plump face and those eyes that held no trace of madness, only a faint, quiet pain, he nodded at Sheng Qingru.

After suffering such misfortune, it was only right to let the man vent a little.

As long as Wang Chen agreed, Sheng Qingru naturally raised no objection. She removed the submachine gun and handed it to Ren Wanrong. At the same time, Wang Chen drew his pistol and thumbed back the hammer, his caution plain to see. Ren Wanrong understood and smiled. He trapped the front end of the weapon under his severed arm, deftly engaged the safety and chambered a round with his right hand, then raised the submachine gun. Without even aiming, he held it tucked under his arm and turned toward the zombie horde.

Puff. Puff.

Suppressed did not mean silent, only quieter. The rhythmic sound echoed in everyone’s ears. At first, the first two shots only struck one zombie in the shoulder, but after a slight adjustment, Ren Wanrong unleashed a string of short, rhythmic bursts.

Wang Chen was stunned.

If Ma Tian or Fang Qiang had been present, they would have been intimately familiar with this sight, just as they had been on that mission at the Sino-Korean border, when Zhang Fu and the old special agents had displayed their astonishing marksmanship. Ren Wanrong’s shots, too, never missed their mark, and most struck the forehead or the brow of the zombies.

Of course, Zhang Fu and the others had been firing at a much greater distance than Ren Wanrong was now, and they had been shooting moving targets. Even though the courtyard of a county museum was wide, the straight-line distance was only a few dozen meters at most. The zombies gathered motionless before the sliding gate were practically fixed targets, and the submachine gun fired pistol rounds, with far less recoil than even an assault rifle, let alone a light machine gun, so it was easy to control.

But one must not forget: Ren Wanrong had only one hand.

This kind of marksmanship, soaked into the bones until it became muscle memory and subconscious instinct, was far beyond what a competent shooter like Wang Chen could compare with. Even if Wang Chen had shouldered his rifle and followed standard firing procedure to blow off a zombie’s head, he could not have confidently claimed such a hit rate. Yet Ren Wanrong, operating the weapon one-handed and aiming entirely by feel, had achieved a hit rate close to one hundred percent.

Of the fifty rounds in the magazine, Ren Wanrong used fewer than thirty. By the time he was done, the ground before the museum’s sliding gate was covered with dead zombies, and this time they were truly dead.

Wang Chen offered no praise, nor did he show any greater surprise. After Ren Wanrong returned the submachine gun to Sheng Qingru, Wang Chen thoughtfully patted him on the shoulder.

"Get in the vehicle first. We’ll talk in detail on the way."

If one were to say that Ren Wanrong’s performance had not included some element of showing off, that would not be entirely true. Had he not nearly been treated like a living tin can and eaten bit by bit, a man of his forty-odd years and all his experience would not have gone to such lengths to prove himself. It is better to hide one’s weakness than to display one’s clumsiness; restraint and humility were the usual code of conduct for men his age.

Clearly, the ordeal at the museum had had an enormous impact on him.

From Ren Wanrong’s point of view, the laws and regulations of this age had already been reduced to ashes. When meeting strangers, one had to be extremely careful and never trust anyone lightly. To have used old connections to find a special-response team to save him was already an unexpected stroke of luck. Whether he could then persuade that team to take him in, protect him, and even let him take up a gun again and fight alongside them for his life in this ruined world would naturally depend on whether he possessed enough ability to move them.

So Ren Wanrong gritted his teeth and endured the pain in his wound, even at the cost of making the injury split open again and bleed from the recoil of the submachine gun, just to put on a display of extraordinary shooting.

Wang Chen’s reaction was somewhat unexpected to him. Was the man simply well informed and worldly, or was it because he, after all, had lost his left hand and was of little use, fit only to be a burden? You little brat, so young and already the captain of a special-response team, and you really think you are somebody, do you? The ordeal inside the museum had also thrown Ren Wanrong’s mood badly out of balance. Seeing that his performance had not produced the effect he expected, a fierce irritation rose in his chest, and he ground his teeth audibly.

"Oh dear, your wound is bleeding!"

Once they were in the vehicle, Yang Xiaohua, with her sharp eyes, noticed that Ren Wanrong’s wound was oozing blood without stopping. She hurriedly took out the first-aid kit from the car, gave him a local anesthetic injection to reduce the pain, and then clumsily tended to the wound.

As Ren Wanrong looked at Yang Xiaohua’s focused expression and endured the slight sting of the sutures, the fierce anger in his heart came quickly and went quickly as well. After more than forty years of life, Ren Wanrong of course had his own moral bottom line. Even if Wang Chen looked down on him, he still could not bring himself to do anything as vile as repaying kindness with betrayal.

Forget it. What was the point of hopping around now that he was crippled? And yet he truly was unwilling to be reduced to freeloading like this. Was this not the plight of a tiger fallen to level ground?

A trace of bitter self-mockery appeared at the corner of Ren Wanrong’s mouth.

In truth, Ren Wanrong had wronged Wang Chen. After getting in the vehicle, Wang Chen even handed the driving duties over to Pablo and sat motionless in the front passenger seat, clearly lost in thought.

Because Wang Chen had realized something from Ren Wanrong’s performance.

Not only Wang Chen, but everyone in Team Zero-Eight, including Fang Qiang, who prided himself on his broad social experience, had overlooked a very important detail: what was the likelihood that someone with some connection to the security services or the upper levels of the country would be a completely useless ordinary man? Not very high, surely? If the person seeking help were not ordinary, then most would know at least some survival skills. At the very least, if they were capable of handling firearms with skill, how much trouble would be at their side when they had no choice but to rely on connections and ask for rescue?

Could all of that really be fully conveyed by nothing more than an informal plea for help?

Could it truly be something that a halfway self-taught special-response team could solve?

Probably no one could say for certain.

In the end, one must never be too optimistic about an unofficial rescue mission.

This time, Sheng Qingru merely gained a knife scar on her neck. Next time, if they were careless again, there would be nowhere to find a cure for a full team meal ticket to the grave.