Armed Train in the Apocalypse

On the wasteland shrouded by Eternal Night, there were no stars, no moon, not even a trace of dim light—only the vague outline at the edge where sky met earth, stained a dark red by artillery fire. The flashes came and went in an instant, hundreds and thousands of self-propelled howitzers squatting in the night, barrels rearing like a forest, their matte tactical paint not reflecting the slightest gleam.

Qin Mian leaned back in the concrete-assembled trench, head tilted up, clutching his rifle. His cheeks worked hard as he chewed; although the gum in his mouth had long since lost its flavor, he still couldn’t bear to spit it out. Here they had more than enough to eat and drink, but things like gum were luxuries—there wasn’t much in the entire camp.

This one stick had been forcibly wrung out of the battalion commander’s hand by the company commander, who was afraid he’d get nervous his first time on the battlefield, so he gave it all to him.

In fact, he wasn’t nervous at all, but he couldn’t quite describe his state. Two years ago, the first time he passed through Lion’s Gate, he really had been nervous then—blood surging, limbs tingling, too wired to sleep all night.

As it happened, they didn’t need to sleep anyway. Every day there was endless work: if they weren’t hauling dead-heavy ammunition, they were digging trenches day and night. At first he was still curious who they were going to fight, but later he was simply too exhausted.

He felt like a marmot. Blink and every day was just digging, digging without end. The skin on his palms would blister and heal, then blister again. His whole body reeked of dirt.

At the beginning he still grumbled inwardly that maybe the brass had gotten drunk again and were just screwing with them—until all kinds of excavators and heavy machinery were sent in, roaring day and night without pause. Only then did he viscerally realize that something big really had gone down.

But that didn’t mean they could slack off.

Once the fortifications were ready, piles of equipment he’d never even heard of were shipped to the front like they cost nothing. The old ”Iron” series rifle in his hands that had been passed down who knew how many generations was swapped out for the newest ”Dragon” series. Every day after work, they were dragged to the firing range to practice. No bullshit tactical drills or movement training, just one word—shoot!

Didn’t matter what gun, there was a fixed target, ten magazines, and they just kept firing.

Every weapon issued to the company had to be used by every single person. Hitting the target accurately wasn’t important; everyone just had to know how to use them. Ammunition was almost unlimited. They fired for a full three months, the recoil swelling their shoulders black and blue.

And then, Eternal Night descended.

He guessed it might be the end of the world, but the company commander said that was bullshit, and the squad leader told him to go to bed early.

By the time he woke up, the war he’d already forgotten about had quietly arrived. But he never saw the enemy—he just heard the artillery pounding for three straight days, and whole units vanished as complete formations.

Then came all sorts of dizzying redeployments, and he heard the ones who came back say the world had changed.

The place was crawling with zombies and Evolution Beasts, but they only heard this kind of news in the first month. Under sweeps by modern forces, corpse tides that hadn’t fully formed posed no real threat—few zombies even made it past the embryonic phase.

The darkness went on and on; even the dullest person would notice something was wrong.

The college kids in the company said that without the sun, everyone would die, frozen to death by the cold.

Later it did get a lot colder, but not to the point where people froze to death. Then the college kids said their bones would become brittle, their muscles weak, their hormones all out of whack—until they died miserably under the combined torment of mind and body.

But after living more than a year without sunlight, Qin Mian instead felt like his physical condition was better than ever.

He had even awakened a strange Evolutionary Ability: his eyesight was sharper, his shooting more accurate. Even without lights, he could hit a hundred-meter target by feel alone.

At first, not seeing the sun made him irritable, but later the barracks turned on lighting for eight hours a day, and slowly he got used to it.

In the days that followed, he often heard other companies wiped out as full formations. He was curious, and he felt Fear, but after hearing it too many times, it became routine. Whatever Evil Anomaly, whatever enemy—it never made his workload the next day any lighter.

He obviously had never been on a battlefield, yet he felt like an old soldier.

Life passed in this calm, numbing way, and then on an ordinary night, he was reassigned to this trench to guard the self-propelled artillery position.

When the signal flares went up, the deafening roar of the guns almost made him vomit up the luncheon meat he’d just eaten. He hurriedly put on his ear protectors—these had been specially issued to them by the squad leader before the battle, saying Evolvers had sensitive hearing and could be easily injured.

Feeling a lot better, Qin Mian cautiously poked his head out of the trench.

Not far away was the artillery camp, and a bit further the crisscrossing trenches and underground fortifications. Although they hadn’t dug this part themselves, seeing such a massive position, a sense of shared pride welled up in him.

Directly ahead, at the core of the battlefield, searchlights sliced through the darkness, and swarms of drones hovered and circled, buzzing like bloodthirsty iron mosquitoes.

Infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers were packed tight, forming layered steel defenses. Heavy machine guns and grenade launchers on the roofs were Gathering Strength, ready to unleash. Just the sight of it made his blood surge a little.

What he was more curious about, though, was: what kind of enemy could withstand this steel torrent?

When his gaze followed the artillery arcs across the sky and dropped into the enemy ranks, in his black pupils, besides the blood-like firelight, there stretched endless... cavalry?

The wind, carrying sand, grit, and the stench of blood, howled past, sweeping over the dense silhouettes of men and iron riders on the wasteland, letting out a wailing roar, as if heaven and earth were mourning this brutal slaughter.