A short cooking later...
"Xiaoyun, what did you do in the six hours?" Leyan curiously asked as she put the plates full of food onto the dining table.
"I went to Yiming to establish a police force by picking twenty people from the militia to work as police full-time.
And their new department is going to be one of the finished buildings in the commercial district for now."
Xiaoyun explained as he grabbed a bowl of rice for Lily before getting one for himself from the rice cooker.
"Are they under civilian or military?" Yuqi asked next.
"Civilian, so they are under your control. Although I'm planning only to have more people join the police if they go through militia training first."
"I always wanted to be a police officer! Can I join?" Yueyue excitedly asked.
"Yueyue, you can't do any physical jobs, did you forget already?" Leyan warned.
"Fine... I guess I will join after this."
As Yueyue rubbed her belly in disappointment, no one could really help her argue back against Leyan's point.
"Speaking of a physical job, Mom, are you sure your job isn't too risky? Working in a hospital?" Yuqi questioned.
"Nah, it's not risky at all. I don't actually need to take care of any patient. I just communicate between the doctor and nurses.
It's more of a management role, which I didn't expect either, to be honest. But I prefer it much better than working in the office." Leyan explained.
"Oh, I almost forgot to ask this. Xiaoyun, can you create some winter clothes for the storage and the store?
Some of the newer people in the town don't have warm enough clothes, and the shops in the commercial district only have t-shirts and pants," Nami requested.
"That might be a little difficult. I can't make clothes that fit everyone, and the sizes and styles are very limited."
"I have an idea. Maybe we can supply the stores with more clothes and cotton. And give them a no-interest loan to expand first.
We can use them as a government contractor as well to produce clothes for the soldiers, too."
Yuqi suggested that she give an explanation that confused everyone in the room, except Xiaoyun, who instantly agreed with it.
"That's a perfect plan. We just need to tell that to the commercial department tomorrow... I'll take care of that."
"Okay, okay, enough talking about work. It's supposed to be a break day today. Let's focus on eating now."
Leyan ended the conversation as everyone went back to eating the food at the table.
---
The next day...
Yuqi and Yueyue were sitting inside the office, relaxing as Xiaoyun headed out for today to put the clothing plan into action.
Just as the two were about to fall asleep on their office chair, someone suddenly knocked on the door.
Yueyue quickly walked over to the door, only to see Yezi standing outside as she opened it.
"Where's Xiaoyun?"
"He's in the storage unit right now. What's wrong?" Yueyue curiously asked as she brought Yezi into the office.
"Then, Yuqi, you have to decide this. It's an emergency." Yezi stated that after seeing Xiaoyun wasn't in Yuqi's office.
"What do you mean by emergency?"
"The zombies are finally starting to move out of the city, forcing our rescue mission to a complete halt now.
Right now, the outskirt is completely overrun with zombies, and we can't even send a scouting mission.
I already tried it myself, and the moment we step inside the outskirts, they chase us out like mad dogs." Yezi explained.
"Wait, then wouldn't the horde chase you back to here?" Yuqi questioned, realizing the trail it could leave.
"Nope, for some odd reason, they are just staying on the outskirts for now... It's almost as if someone is controlling them."
Yezi murmured, his face filled with caution as he gave out his theory behind the zombie's erratic behavior.
"Let me call Xiaoyun and Yiming over. I can't decide this."
As Yuqi took out her phone, she quickly noticed there were no signals. Not even a single bar for calls to go through.
"Huh? Yueyue, does your phone have any signal?" Yuqi asked.
"Uh... Nope. Oh no. Did everyone just lose signal?"
As Yueyue checked her phone and saw there was no signal, Yezi took out his phone as well before finding out he had lost signal as well.
"Shit... communication is going to be much harder now," Yezi murmured, realizing the impact this could cause.
"Well, at least we still have walkie-talkies... but they are only used by the militia and soldiers communicating with Yiming." Yueyue pointed out.
"Perhaps we can set up a civilian use channel," Yuqi suggested.
"But everyone can hear you if they listen to your channel. Especially if you mix civilian and the military ones," Yueyue warned.
"I guess we have to have people get there to discuss manually... man, we are slowly going back to the Stone Age," Yuqi complained.
"Yeah... Ahem, we need to get back on topic. What do you want me to do with the zombies at the outskirts?" Yezi asked.
"If the zombies aren't moving out of the outskirt area, just keep a watch on them for now... I'll talk to Xiaoyun later when he comes back.
"Okay, I'll go set that up."
As Yezi turned around and left the office, both Yuqi and Yueyue let out a small sigh as he closed the door behind him.
"Always more problems to deal with... If water is also cut off next, we are doomed, aren't we, Yueyue?"
Yuqi asked as she leaned back onto her seat, looking a little lost as she felt the wall around them starting to get tighter and tighter.
"Not exactly, we can dig wells and build water tanks... Not to mention there's a river that flows into the lake deep in the forest.
But I'm not sure if it is a freshwater river, though. Come on, Yuqi, I'm sure we can figure it out along the way."
Yueyue gave a much more positive outlook as she tried to cheer her up, but Yuqi still looked a little worried as she started tapping her pen on the table.
"Mhm..."
---
When Xiaoyun came back to the administrative office, it was already three o'clock in the afternoon.
"Hey Yuqi, everyone's complaining that the signal in the town is cut off," Xiaoyun said out loud as he walked into the office.
"Yeah, and there's nothing we can do. Also, Yezi came here earlier to report an emergency." Yuqi replied.
"What emergency?"
"The zombies are moving out of the city to the city outskirts. So our rescue missions are at a complete halt.
And he thinks something is leading the zombies as they only stay on the outskirts and don't move out of it."
"You telling me there is some sort of zombie leader?" Xiaoyun questioned, realizing what she was trying to imply.
"Yes, that's the worst-case scenario. But we don't have any proof of that for now."
Xiaoyun quickly reached over to his pocket to pull out a walkie-talkie, calling Yiming as he tuned his frequency.
Ten minutes later...
As Xiaoyun opened the door for Yiming to come in, his face looked surprisingly calm and confident.
"Yiming, you heard about the zombies at the outskirts?" Yuqi asked right away.
"Yeah, I just ran into Yezi earlier and he told me all about it," Yiming replied.
"What do you think we should do... Looks like you already have a plan?" Xiaoyun questioned.
"We can't sit here and hope that they go away on their own. We need to strike at the zombies first."
Yiming paused for a second, then continued.
"We have ten cars and three buses, so we can perform hit and run repetitively to thin their number down.
However, this might trigger the entire zombie horde to come for us. So there is some risk in assaulting the zombie headfirst." Yiming suggested his idea.
"Yuqi, open the drawer and take out the map."
Yuqi quickly pulled out a map from the drawer as Xiaoyun asked, laying it down onto the desk, showing a map of Luoping and Guangzhou together.
"So you are suggesting we drive to the city outskirts here, then use our rifle to shoot any of them that chase us.
Then, since they don't chase too far, we can do this on repeat after making sure we lose them on the highway?"
Xiaoyun questioned as he pointed his finger along the road between Guangzhou and Luoping on the map.
"Yep, that's exactly what I'm planning to do."
"Yuqi, how many people can be drafted when martial law is declared? And how many soldiers do we have exactly?" Xiaoyun asked.
"Let's see... The town has seven hundred thirty-two people now. But around five hundred people went through enough basic training to defend the wall.
Around two hundred of them were militia in the past or are currently in the militia. And we currently have one hundred full-time soldiers."
Yuqi finished explaining as she read through the personnel file from her cabinet, looking back at Xiaoyun, whose face looked a little concerned.
"Okay, so we can load convert the three buses to a mobile firing station. Each of them can fit... Let's just say twenty-five soldiers on each bus.
So there were seventy-five soldiers out of the equation. Now, if we use the ten cars fitting four soldiers, that would be forty.
We can just load some of the militia to fill in the gap... Then we can have the rest of the mobilized civilians to guard the wall," Xiaoyun suggested.
"Seems good to me... but are you sure you can keep up with the bullet production? That is a lot of ammo going to be used." Yiming warned.
"You're right. There's no way I can keep this up. Only if we got an artillery or something."
Xiaoyun quickly realized the resource restraint that would be required to pull this plan off, especially considering he was the only source of ammo.
"We still don't have an arms industry... No one knows how to make them, and we don't have the equipment to make them either," Yuqi added.
"I know."
Just as the room fell into silence, Yueyue suddenly chimed in with her own idea.
"How about if we use explosives? We can use the TNT we got from the casino, setting them up right at the narrow entrance to the town.
We can almost wipe out an entire horde with it. And if there's more, Xiaoyun can always create more TNT to throw from the wall."
As she pointed her finger along the narrow path, both Xiaoyun and Yiming quickly realized the vision she had suggested.
"Oh my god, you are a genius!"
Xiaoyun quickly ran up to her, hugging her in excitement as she looked a little embarrassed with Yiming still in the room.
"I should have never let you out of the militia..." Yiming mumbled to himself as he started to regret his decision.
"Well then, we've got a plan... Let's try both of them for now and see how it works."
Just as Xiaoyun and Yiming were about to leave the room together, Yuqi quickly pulled Xiaoyun back for a second.
"Wait, do you guys think we should also make the wall taller and reinforce it before the zombies get here?" Yuqi suggested.
"Yeah, we probably should do that too... Yuqi, can you direct the construction crew for that?"
"Okay!"