The Trouble in the Mud

At 6:12 in the evening, the people sent into the convoy from the camp to finish off the team had been replaced four or five times.

The rust spots on the outside of the vehicle's iron shell were very fragile. With a slight tap, they turned completely into powder and quickly spread out on the ground, turning into a messy and mottled color.

The guys tightened thin steel wires on the outside of the car to reinforce it, broke up the mud crust, and used long hooks to drag the bodies out like moving cargo, sealing them one by one in vacuum bags.

I patiently watched the group of people carry out the bodies one by one, counting silently in my mind, and as the number grew larger, my heart sank.

There are too many bodies.

By the fifth minute of convergence, the number had far exceeded thirty-five.

I stared at the completely indistinguishable human figures, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed a scarred figure limping towards me with about five or six people.

I handed him the engineer shovel in my sweaty hand. The team leader's face shrank quickly in pain, but he didn't take it and touched his earlobe, which was missing a small piece.

"Report: The few of us on patrol are fine. The four-eyed man who is still lying there, Zhou Tingmao, is also fine." He spoke slowly, hesitated for a moment, and then continued:

"The captain... the captain is still alive. There is hardly any healthy skin on his body. The complications from the infection are very serious, and his spine has been severely deformed. The team doctor said it's best to deal with him before he completely turns into a ghost."

My mind was still full of counting sheep, thinking about the extra people, and I was stunned for a moment when I heard the words, a little caught off guard. The last vicious long face in the moonlight that was obviously more cunning and inhuman, and fled away, was not Xu You?

Isn't he the source of the mutation?

I immediately thought of something and walked to an unidentifiable corpse. I said "don't blame me" three times in my heart, and used the sharp edge of the engineer shovel to cut open the clothes on top and slid down.

With a little force, the edge of the engineer's shovel scraped the oily skin on my thumb. But I couldn't cut into the corpse at all. The so-called "like rotten leather" is not an adjective, but my most real feeling at the moment.

The team leader immediately calmed down and stood in front of me, taking over the shovel handle skillfully, his face a little gloomy, waiting for my instructions.

There was no need to be polite at this time, so I asked him to be more careful, open the front chamber for me, and check the lungs to see if there was any foam or mud.

Shopkeeper Yan Er heard this and his expression changed several times. After a long while, he slowly let out a breath and asked:

“Is this where the majority of people are?”

That's a bit confusing, but that's exactly what I meant.

"They all came out of the mud," I said, not caring about the commotion this caused. "They might be the guys who drowned in the pit before and got in."

"Those in the convoy died of limb deformities. There may be blood foam in their lungs, but there shouldn't be mud."

The team leader and several other teammates turned pale and immediately turned to cut the other bodies.

I am still unsure whether these people in the mud are the ghosts sent by the pit, or the spoils of war killed by the pit by chance, and whether they have any connection with the "sentry box". I waved to Yan Er, wanting to sort out the details.

Let's start from the beginning:

Yan Jinger actually reminded me that day. He said to me: "Everyone is basically here, so who is driving?"

Then he saw several deformed human figures coming into the room, and they screamed in fear.

Although I have never been a very kind person, seeing how frightened he was, I felt sympathetic and did not take his words to heart.

Now that I think about it calmly, although Yan Jing'er is timid, he is very cautious in doing things. Otherwise, all the precision and important machines in the fleet would not be managed by him alone.

From what we spent together that day, he really let me sleep in the critical moment; during the more than three hours of vigil alone, he took many photos to check for omissions for me, and left me messages, and did not wake me up even once out of fear.

This kind of person may be a little awkward in his actions, but I believe he is indeed reminding me of something in a subtle way. It's just that I don't have anyone I can trust, so I can't say it directly.

He said the room was full, and I'm afraid he meant that literally. At that point, there were already many more people in the convoy.

A person who was watching the surveillance cameras every day first noticed something unusual in the team, but then found that most people, including the team leader, were very suspicious and had nowhere to turn for help.

——If it were me, what would I do?

When I kicked Glasses into the cavity in the wall, he seemed to say something nonsense, saying that they couldn't see what was behind the wall.

Many things flashed through my mind, and I immediately told Yan Er and his men to stop what they were doing and dig out the carriage of my grocery store.

I want to take another look at the cavity behind that wall, and I want someone from the camp to check the tapes for any tampering.

Damn it, I was so furious, thinking to myself that the thief was stealing from the company and was playing the thief cry thief.

It was too easy for a person in charge of installing surveillance cameras to play tricks in my room. When this guy saw the hand in the videotape, he screamed and fell down, and the sound was so sincere and heartfelt.

Just as I was gritting my teeth, someone shouted that something was found in the broken wall of my room.

Another videotape.

Just at this moment, there was a commotion in the corner of the camp, and I saw a figure staggering towards me, as if he wanted to say something to me, and suddenly his whole body was stained red with blood.

He fell to the ground, and his blood kept soaking the dirt as he twitched. Like a canvas after being painted, the dirt on the ground was soaked in red.

Glasses looked at me, his mouth moved slightly, and tears welled up in his eyes.

I was shocked by this sudden change, and without thinking, I went over to support him. He looked at me with some surprise, as if he didn't understand, then smiled and fixed his eyes on the front.

Then, another team doctor from the corner of the camp also chased out. He was hit on the forehead by a surprise attack and was still bleeding. He was at a loss what to do when he saw the situation.

"He... I was giving him an IV drip, but he suddenly..."

It’s okay, I said, with mixed emotions, I covered my eyes with glasses and put him down.

At this time, the sky was already getting dark. I looked at the sky, took a deep breath, and asked Manager Yan Er to copy the video for me personally, and at the same time prepare the equipment for going to the field.

Shopkeeper Yan Er was completely stunned: "Advisor, you want to go to the ground at this time?"

"I'll feel more at ease if I go down and watch the video." I smiled and pointed at my glasses on the ground. "If we don't get to the bottom of this quickly, we'll be letting him down on his last wish. Besides, it'll be hard to settle the score with him later."

Seeing that the confused old shopkeeper Yan Er was still hesitating, I was in no mood to beat around the bush with him, so I pulled him aside.

"I know what the current situation in the camp is." I went straight to the point. Seeing that he was still skeptical, I sneered and said, "Then I have three questions."

First, looking around, the plain is flat, so where is the pit?

Old man Yan, who had been stiff-necked and silent, suddenly looked up at me.

Second, where are the other Zhang family members in the camp?

Third, why are the convoy and us survivors still alive and well in the camp and not being inspired any more?

The three questions are actually the same. I watched with displeasure as Old Man Yan's face turned from red to purple, and finally became as trembling as he was when I woke up just now.

"—we are in the pit now, aren't we?"

Old man Yan's face turned completely liver color.

"That day...that night, the Zhang family's sentry suddenly issued an early warning, saying that the tide in the forest had risen and was approaching."

I sighed. Perhaps because there were too many shocks today, I wasn't really angry. "I guess they took a group of loyal subjects and withdrew directly. You idiots still think that the land wilderness is just a mirage."

"Now that the men who saved their lives have all left, you can only cram for the last minute and worship me, Zhang. I wish my dreams could be promoted and turned into iron laws. Otherwise, the camp will explode and there will be no way to resolve it."

I was really speechless. My emotions were still churning. The funny thing was that among all their stupid moves, one actually worked a little bit.

When I was pulling Old Man Yan over here, I saw that the entire camp was surrounded by iron checkpoints, and there were surveillance cameras at many high angles. Even the chef would come out to patrol with a spoon in his hand. It can be said that the full guard was done to the extreme.

The set of rules about the guard booth that I dare not forget even in my nightmares seems to be still useful at the moment.

But after all, we are already in a pit, and our effectiveness will probably lose effect after nightfall or even cause a backlash.

More importantly,

"Tell me the truth, how did the team become like this?"

Old Man Yan looked at me with some fear, but finally confessed reluctantly, his eyes full of fear.

It is said that the moonlight rolled up the entire pit, and the idiots in the camp who had not yet left the tent watched helplessly as the mud churned and gelatinous slime crawled out.

Then the sentry on the high ground discovered that a silent convoy was approaching in the distance, pressing down on the moonlight. Screaming human figures kept crashing into it, being rolled into the mud, their limbs and facial features were all crushed and filled with mud, and then being rolled onto the body of the vehicle.

Having said that, Old Man Yan paused for a moment, his face looking extremely ugly.

"The next day, we came out and found that the entire ground was sinking and tidal, like a swamp, and all the buildings were sinking continuously. We sent some people to clean up the stopped convoy and found that almost all the guys inside were dead... Our people came back to report, but..."

However, the shopkeeper Yan Er, who was overwhelmed by the accident, was counting the logistical supplies while habitually glancing at the waiter who came back to report.

As soon as I took a look, I realized something was wrong.

The guy's face was indeed very familiar. He remembered him as someone he knew. All the equipment and gadgets on his body were also the same for the whole team.

But his equipment was too complete and too new.

Manager Yan Er was startled, thinking someone was trying to remind him, so he quietly walked around the camp and found that there were many people dressed neatly like this.

There were quite a few guys cleaning up the silt in the camp, and Yan Er, the shopkeeper, thought that the number of people was not a problem. But he still subconsciously counted them, and immediately collapsed to the ground, almost terrified.

I didn't understand, so I frowned and told him to stop playing tricks.

"I, I counted the intact equipment, all of them are at least 90% new, and then calculated the conversion price."

Shopkeeper Yan Er said awkwardly: "...I calculated how much I should have made under normal circumstances, and then went back to check the accounts."

"..." This is the most outrageous inference I have ever heard among all the ridiculous things I have experienced in such a long time, so much so that I was a little amused for a moment.

Some people actually relied on corruption to discover a batch of things that shouldn't exist.

Seeing me sneer and about to take action, Yan Er panicked and immediately added the most important piece of information:

After he found out about this, he couldn't sleep or eat, and didn't dare to tell anyone. After I and a group of guys were rescued from the convoy, he was even more afraid to get together with the crowd.

Later in the morning, he remembered that six days before this incident, on the day that pissed me off, he seemed to have seen someone like that behind Xu You and me in the communication. But at that time, he couldn't notice it and thought it was normal.

"On the communication screen that day, there were about a dozen people on your side who seemed to be approaching you."

"There was another person who kept following your leader, looking at the camera and laughing. I could smell an uncomfortable earthy smell all over his body through the screen. The background was very noisy, as if there was always some kind of noise."

I thought about it and said okay, let Yan Er, the shopkeeper, continue to prepare, and bring the video with me to explore the depths of the pit at night. We should handle the past and the future together, and there should be no delay.

Shopkeeper Yan Er had a sad face and didn't dare to say no.

Seeing him turn and leave, I slowly raised my hand, pulled off a button on my clothes, let it fall to the ground, and suddenly asked Old Man Yan from behind:

“Is it something like this sound?”

“Pah.”

Shopkeeper Yan Er trembled and shouted, "This is it!"