I can upgrade the shelter-Chapter 514 - 512: The So-Called "Zombies

Indeed, something has gone wrong.

And it’s an extremely serious matter, something the "Revolutionary Army" is simply powerless to handle.

As mentioned before, the initial rioters were due to the spread of disease, with a large number of people falling ill in the shelter, and Lucia’s officials failing to properly address the issue, leading to public outrage and the outbreak of the riot.

But after the riot broke out, the disease spread problem was not resolved.

On the contrary, because of the riot, a large number of people emerged from the previously sealed shelter, creating pathways for disease spread, producing a large number of infected individuals in a short period.

The Revolutionary Committee originally planned to tackle the disease issue once the situation stabilized.

They simply isolated the infected individuals and dispatched the few doctors they had for some basic treatments in hopes of controlling the situation.

Initially, this approach seemed to pose no issues, but viruses are prone to mutation.

As long as the virus replicates, its genome is constantly undergoing mutations, most of which are lethal, with only a few capable of surviving.

During a virus’s infection process, there are naturally opportunities for mutations as it proliferates millions of times.

Typically, viral mutations only make the virus more adapted to the environment, but occasionally they can become quite dangerous, with characteristics like lethality, airborne transmission, and droplet spread.

Although the chance is extremely low, theoretically, there is still a possibility of a virus mutation causing zombie-like aggression.

In fact, this scenario isn’t unheard of, such as the well-known rabies virus, which after infection attacks the nervous system, causing people to exhibit agitation and aggression.

Of course, this is merely a possibility, and even a mutated virus would only make living people highly aggressive; expecting them to move post-mortem with rudimentary intelligence like in movies is a violation of biology.

As for the high-speed evolution and instantaneous self-healing, the standards found in zombie novels, and things like telekinesis and brain stones, those exist only in fantasy.

The problem the "Revolutionary Army" faced was that some of the infected suddenly became agitated, filled with aggression, and even started biting others.

This scene, reminiscent of a zombie movie, frightened everyone and instantly threw the majority of the infected into panic; they could not differentiate between rabies and zombie virus, leading to assumptions that this was zombie infection.

And so, they collapsed in an instant.

Everyone was screaming to flee the quarantine zone, even severe infected individuals whose mobility was impaired struggled to distance themselves from those resembling zombies.

But they wanted to escape, and the people outside the quarantine zone dared not let them out.

Are you kidding? Behind the gate was that group as fierce as zombies; who could guarantee these infected individuals weren’t a problem?

For a moment, the door to the quarantine zone became a line of life and death, outside was life, inside was a deadly hell.

Fortunately, although the incident happened suddenly, the Revolutionary Committee still had some reliable people who immediately notified the committee, bringing leadership members like Dalia and Vasily to the scene at once.

Seeing this tragedy, Dalia naturally wanted to release the infected individuals inside immediately.

But her decision was stopped by someone.

"You can’t let them out! They’ve already turned into zombies; releasing them will kill us all!" A few armed strong men from Lucia showed expressions full of fear, although they held guns, their legs were shaking.

Even though Lucia’s men fear nothing, even daring to slap a brown bear twice, zombies are different.

Thanks to the popularity of zombie movies over the years, everyone knows they are contagious, getting bitten turns you into the same thing, so no one dared to open the door.

Even though Dalia has consistently had authority, no one wanted to listen to this order at the moment.

Especially with screams constantly echoing from inside the quarantine zone, ensuring no one wished to open this door separating life and death.

But still, someone rushed up, preparing to open the door.

"What are you doing! You can’t open the door!" Two strong men guarding the door directly aimed their guns at Vasily who was opening it.

However, Vasily simply ignored the gun pointed at his head and calmly stated, "These people can still be saved; even zombies can’t block bullets. If we don’t control the situation now when there are fewer infected, it will become uncontrollable when more get infected.

And remember, the virus can spread through the air. If it was infectious, you’d be infected long ago, it’s not something spread just by a bite!"

The two strong men frightened by Vasily’s words continued to aim their guns at Vasily’s head but didn’t pull the trigger.

Until he really opened the door, letting the infected inside escape, their guns remained silent.

Vasily and the two strong men, along with everyone standing at the door, quickly made way to avoid being scattered by the surging crowd.

However, these escaping infected didn’t run far; the quarantine zone was part of a shelter section, the door they just ran out of connected to the underground passages, already sealed off by Vasily’s previously arranged people.

Though these infected escaped the quarantine zone without being bitten by zombie-like individuals inside, they were still restricted and isolated at this moment.

Vasily didn’t bother with those fleeing; instead, he grabbed a gun from the strong man’s hand beside him, directly aiming and firing at an emerging infected with mouth full of blood and a hideous facial expression.

The bullet proved effective, piercing the head of the infected with a blood-filled mouth.

At this moment, Dalia also grabbed another gun and stood beside Vasily, firing together as more blood-drenched, aggressive infected were taken down.

Seeing Vasily and Dalia successfully bring down these "zombies," with the power of "leading the charge," the guards who were sent to watch finally summoned the courage, following them into the quarantine zone.

"Tie up any ’zombies’ that aren’t dead yet, and remove the bodies. They might be virus mutations; we’ll need professionals to take a look." Vasily thought of the doctors who helped treat the wounded earlier, believing they might know what’s happening.