Chapter 55 Run! Run fast!

Hearing Gavin's words, Eugene grinned and shrugged nonchalantly as he lay in the backseat.

"Why wait to see? Let's just move in directly. With the weapons we have right now—even without the two of you—if you just let me hold a suppressed sniper rifle and roam around the perimeter of the estate for an afternoon, I could wipe out the zombies all by myself!"

With that, Eugene gave his MK11 a confident pat.

Hearing this, Madison glanced back at Eugene, pointed contemptuously at his leg, and said, "Eugene, when you're acting all badass, can you at least stop shaking your leg?"

"Fuck!"

Eugene slapped his own thigh hard and cursed.

"I'm not nervous! Why would I be nervous? This is excitement—a fucking veteran's excitement!"

"I didn't even say you were nervous. What the hell are you making excuses for?"

Madison let out a scoff and turned back to face the front.

Staring at old Mac's back, Eugene rolled his eyes, tapped the driver's seat, and said to Gavin, "Boss, you understand this kind of excitement, right?"

"Oh, yeah, right, right, right."

Gavin teased, mimicking Eugene's pitiful tone. "Boss, don't do this, I'm fucking a little scared~"

"Ha! I wonder who said that. It couldn't have been you, could it, Eugene?"

Gavin looked back at Eugene with amusement. Eugene irritably rubbed his scalp, struggling to reply, "That's different! Damn it, driving fast isn't my specialty, so of course I was fucking scared, but shooting is completely different!"

"Ha, fine, if you say it's different, then it's different~"

Madison let out a chuckle, and then joined Gavin in laughter.

Irritated by the laughter, Eugene simply inched closer to the window, huffing as he looked outside, and changed the subject. "By the way, Boss, how much farther to your estate? How come I haven't seen any cattle yet?"

"Cattle?"

Gavin spared Eugene's feelings and dropped the teasing, explaining instead, "We're right below the Chambers Lake spillover here. Who would keep cattle around this area?"

"My estate is about thirteen kilometers away from Chambers Lake, situated a bit further north, well away from the Chambers Lake spillover zone."

"As for where my beef cattle graze, that's another sixteen kilometers past the estate, on the eastern side. The dairy farm is much closer, only about two kilometers away. You'll see it in a moment."

With that, Gavin lit a cigarette, slowed the vehicle, and rolled down the window.

Smoking, he continued, "Enough of that. Let's keep our minds on the task at hand."

"First, we'll approach the dairy farm, which is also where the cowboys' quarters are located. According to old Burt, the number of zombies there shouldn't be more than we can handle."

"We need to observe the surroundings of the dairy farm, and then try to gather the zombies near the quarters. Eugene, you'll pick them off one by one."

"No problem."

Eugene nodded briskly; he knew what his job was.

If he hadn't brought a suppressed sniper rifle, it would be a different story, but now that he was fully equipped, he naturally wouldn't shirk his duty.

Seeing Eugene nod, Gavin nodded too and smiled.

"With a suppressed sniper, a lot of things become easier. We just need to hide eight hundred meters out and pull the trigger one shot at a time."

"We also have the car; even if we alert the zombies, we can leave. A distance of ten kilometers is more than enough to shake them off."

"Even if a stray zombie or two wanders into the resort, a few dozen or a hundred of them won't be able to form a massive horde in the obstacle-filled resort woods—not to mention we still have that set of plate armor."

Saying this, Gavin broke into a rare, relaxed smile.

At that, Madison and Eugene's moods lightened considerably as well.

However, once Gavin mentioned that luxurious set of plate armor, Madison couldn't help himself.

He asked Gavin, "Boss, if that armor is so useful, why didn't you wear it this time? Could it be you're saving it?"

"Saving it? What's there to save?"

Gavin shook his head with a smile.

"The armor is useful indeed, but would you want to use that thing in a vast, open field to fight a hundred crazed zombies all at once?"

"Stop joking. At most, I could take down six or seven of them before a hundred zombies swarmed me from all directions and piled on top of me like a human pyramid."

"That thing is better suited for environments with lots of corridors, where I can ensure I'm facing zombies primarily from a single direction."

"When we explore the power plant later, or check out police stations and hospitals in other towns, that's when we'll use that baby."

As Gavin spoke, he raised a hand to point at the area beyond the road to the front-left.

"All right, we're almost there."

Following Gavin's gesture, Madison and Eugene looked past the river beside the road, across nearly two kilometers of yellow grass, and onto a cluster of square and circular buildings.

Gavin continued his explanation.

"The square buildings are the dairy barns, and the circular ones house the old rotary milking parlor. That tall one right there is the main milking center."

"As for the cowboys' quarters, we have to go a bit further to see them. We... huh?"

Just as Gavin reached this point, he abruptly cut himself off.

He slammed his foot on the brake, bringing the car to a dead stop on the side of the road, and instantly brought a pair of binoculars to his eyes.

Jolted by the sudden stop, Eugene banged his head and roared while clutching his skull, "What's the situation? What did you see? Your eyes are practically a bald eagle's!"

Even as he tossed out the compliment, Gavin didn't reply, instead cursing in a cold voice, "Dog shit!"

"What dog shit? What happened, Boss?!"

Madison swallowed hard, tension gripping him.

Gavin shoved the tightly gripped binoculars into Madison's hands and immediately threw the car into a sharp U-turn!

In the passenger seat, Madison took the binoculars, and at just a single glance, his heart nearly leapt out of his chest.

Meanwhile, even without binoculars, Eugene could already see a billow of dust kicking up from the direction of the dairy farm!

"Dog shit!"

Eugene cursed even louder than Gavin, pointing in horror toward the rising dust as he roared, "What the fuck is that? Is that a fucking Terminator riding a Harley with a shotgun coming to kill me?!"

"It's a cow! It's a fucking zombie cow! And... ugh... and it's a zombie cow with the flesh and hide on both sides of its body completely torn open, dragging bloody hide as it charges straight at us!!!"

Madison shouted back in utter shock, then shoved the binoculars into Eugene's lap.

At the same time, Gavin drove the turning car hard, intending to flee, while roaring at the two of them, "Cattle have a sense of smell sharper than a dog's, and their hearing is two to three times that of a human. I don't know what tipped it off, but I'm certain it bolted out of the farm and charged at us from over two kilometers away. Fuck this!"

Hearing this, Eugene completely flipped out.

"Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck! Run! Drive! This dairy cow runs faster than my grandma's modified motorcycle!"

Clutching the binoculars, he screamed at Gavin to accelerate.

Yet right at that moment, Gavin suddenly slowed down.

"How many?"

Gavin asked him in sheer disbelief.

"What do you mean, how many?"

"What do you mean, how many? My grandma's bust size?" Eugene stared blankly at Gavin.

Seeing Eugene's bewildered expression, Gavin stopped the car entirely, grabbed the binoculars back, and began scanning again.

Seeing the vehicle halt, Madison's teeth began to chatter, while Eugene frantically licked his lips in agitation.

Yet Gavin simply sat there in deep perplexity, muttering skeptically to the two of them, "Strange... is there really only one single zombie cow?"

"When I just saw it, that cow literally squeezed its way out through the dairy farm's iron gate, which is why the skin on both sides of its body was torn open like that."

"I thought all the dairy cows would come stampeding out after it in a wave, but why is there still only one?"

"Did the zombies only attack a single cow?"

"Did this dairy cow somehow fail to attack or infect the other cows after turning?"

"None of this fucking makes sense!"

By the time Gavin finished speaking, the zombie dairy cow had already closed nearly seven hundred meters, leaving it less than fifteen hundred meters away from their vehicle.

Even so, upon hearing Gavin's logic, Eugene quickly caught up to his train of thought and asked, "Yeah, why is there only one? I thought we were going to see a ten-thousand-cattle stampede!"

Saying this, Eugene raised the MK11, rolled down the window, rested the barrel, and silently aimed down the sights at the oncoming cow.

"Boss, check again—is there really only one zombie cow?"

"If so, I guarantee it won't make it within five hundred meters of us!"

As his words faded, Eugene braced his body behind the rifle.

And the eyes he cast toward the scope...

Were those of a lone wolf.