Free Web NovelChapter 120: Chapter 120: Slaughter
Apes on horseback flanked two futuristic-looking heavy armored vehicles, wielding firearms and charging swiftly in this direction.
All the mercenaries present stood frozen on the spot, unable to believe their eyes.
’What is going on?’
"Are they filming a movie?" one of the mercenaries asked, stunned.
"Fuck... Planet of the Apes?" another muttered. "I haven’t heard anything about a fourth movie..."
The whole scene was too shocking, too utterly unbelievable. When faced with something that completely defies logic, a person’s first instinct is often not to react, but to fall into a state of confusion while trying to process what is happening.
A few seconds later, Chuck was the first to snap out of it. "Get down! Defensive positions!" he yelled.
Judging by the guns in the apes’ hands and the two armored vehicles, their intentions were anything but peaceful.
But it was too late.
In those few seconds, the enemy had already come within range.
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM...
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT...
The main cannons and heavy machine guns on the two armored vehicles opened fire first, targeting the men holding rocket launchers.
The Snake Eye Company mercenaries had just left the cover of their own vehicles. They were in the open ground between their convoy and Wuyou Town, still in a tight, undispersed formation. It instantly became a massacre.
The armored vehicles’ cannon shells tore straight through the crowd.
Anyone in their path was either torn in half at the waist or had their head blown apart, their bodies completely dismembered.
"RPG!" Chuck, who had just hit the deck, watched helplessly as his men were blown to pieces. His eyes went bloodshot as he roared.
The men with the rocket and grenade launchers were all taken out in the first volley.
At the same time, the fire spouting from the heavy machine guns swept through the crowd, kicking up clouds of blood mist.
In the first exchange alone, seventy to eighty of the three hundred-plus men were killed.
Only then did the rest of the men finally hit the ground. Fortunately, they had several heavy-duty combat jeeps, which immediately became their primary cover.
The heavy machine guns mounted on the jeeps swiveled around to engage the enemy.
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT...
Muzzle flashes flickered, knocking several apes from their horses and even blasting them to pieces.
But just then, the sound of anti-tank missiles tearing through the air arrived. Several cylindrical projectiles shot from the Ape Cavalry’s position, streaking toward the heavy-duty jeeps!
’These apes even have man-portable anti-tank missiles!’
Before the mercenaries’ despairing eyes, the anti-tank missiles slammed into the heavy-duty jeeps.
BOOM! Fireballs erupted, and the mercenaries who had been using the jeeps for cover suffered devastating casualties.
"Fire! Fucking fire back!" Chuck roared, pulling the trigger and loosing a stream of bullets at the enemy.
The remaining mercenaries were roused to a frenzy and returned fire.
But by now the Ape Cavalry was less than a hundred meters away. At that distance, a warhorse’s charge would take less than ten seconds!
The Ape Cavalry let out battle cries, hunched low over their mounts, and used the horses’ bodies as cover, firing fearlessly as they charged straight ahead.
The surviving mercenaries fired for their lives. Though they managed to shoot down a few members of the Ape Cavalry and their mounts, it was nowhere near enough to stop the thundering charge.
Worse, the apes were crack shots. Lying prone on the open ground, the men were nothing more than stationary targets, constantly raked by a dense hail of bullets.
Many didn’t even get a chance to fire before puffs of blood bloomed from their bodies. They fell to the ground and never moved again.
Chuck aimed and fired, screaming frantically, "Shoot! Shoot! Volley fire! Stop them!"
’Antichrist. This has to be the work of the Antichrist!’
Then, he felt a sudden sharp, numbing pain in his shoulder, like a mosquito bite, immediately followed by an agonizing, tearing sensation.
He’d been shot.
At first, a few men had responded to his shouts, but after a few seconds, the gunfire and cries around him died down.
The vanguard of the Ape Cavalry was now right in front of him.
Chuck’s eyes bulged. He fired his last few rounds, taking down one of the Ape Cavalry. In the next instant, a warhorse’s iron-shod hooves were descending upon his head.
With a thunder of hooves, nearly a thousand members of the Ape Cavalry crisscrossed over the mercenaries’ exposed position, trampling everything beneath them.
The last few dozen mercenaries didn’t even have time to scream. Most were trampled into a bloody pulp by the storm of hooves.
The two heavy armored vehicles rolled over the position next, silencing the last of the piteous screams.
A few mercenaries on the fringes were deliberately spared and left alive.
Ordinarily, these mercenaries from the Snake Eye Company were an elite force with considerable combat prowess.
Had they been in proper trenches or behind solid fortifications, their chances of defending against the Ape Cavalry’s charge would have been fifty-fifty.
After all, in the age of firearms, battles aren’t won by numbers alone.
But they had been caught in the open ground between their convoy and Wuyou Town, with only two heavy-duty jeeps for cover.
Combined with the precious seconds lost to their initial shock, they had no time to mount an effective counterattack against the high-speed charge of the Ape Cavalry and their heavy armored vehicles.
It became a one-sided slaughter.
And though the Ape Cavalry lost several dozen of their own warriors, it was a negligible loss in comparison.
"Regroup!" Kuafu growled.
The scattered Ape Cavalry immediately regrouped. They pulled the few surviving mercenaries from the pools of blood and threw them onto their horses.
The bodies of the fallen Ape Cavalry were lifted onto their comrades’ horses and tied securely behind them, to be brought back to the Stone Statue Apocalypse for burial.
The dead warhorses were left behind, covered with pieces of cloth and some sand and stones in a makeshift burial.
Over nine hundred Ape Cavalry remained, though many were wounded.
But their faces were filled with excitement.
They had seen other humans with their own eyes. frёeωebɳovel.com
Whether these humans were good or bad, their existence proved one thing: human civilization had not perished from this world. It was still functioning.
The Savior hadn’t lied to them. He really did have the resources to conduct genetic research!
The sliver of hope they had clung to was real!
A glimmer of hope for the continuation of the Brain Ape Race had finally appeared!
Kuafu took a long look at his kinsmen. His gaze was resolute, without a trace of sorrow, as he declared loudly:
"Return!"
Soon, the nine-hundred-plus Ape Cavalry and the two heavy armored vehicles surged into Wuyou Town like a tide.
Chuck was slung sideways over a horse’s back. He had a bullet in his shoulder, several broken ribs, and his spine was out of alignment.
But he was still alive.
He struggled to open his eyes, turning his head to see just where these apes were taking him.
’Just who was this person who could command this bizarre Ape Cavalry?’ frёeωebɳovel.com
Soon, the horse he was on reached the center of Wuyou Town’s main street.
He saw the Ape Cavalry pull their horses to a halt in perfect unison. They dismounted, walked forward slowly, and knelt on one knee with their heads bowed. They raised a hand above their heads in a gesture of profound respect.
"Savior!" the nine-hundred-plus members of the Ape Cavalry roared in unison, their cry loud enough to shake the very rooftops.
In the middle of the road stood a man with an Asian face, wearing a surgical mask. His gaze was as sharp as a sword.
