Wasteland Border Inspector - Chapter 570
Chapter 570: Chapter 203: Quadruple Infection, Frenzied Golden Legend! (Part 2)
“How did you find out?” He forced down the stray thoughts and asked again, his tone still so steady it didn’t have the slightest ripple.
The more it’s a time like this, the less you can panic.
If the nearly thousand pairs of eyes around them caught even a hint of something wrong, they wouldn’t even need to wait for inspection—every last refugee would scatter and run tonight, and no one would be able to stop them.
Seeing that he was still this calm, Luokuke finally relaxed a little inside, while also having to sigh.
Comparing people to people will piss you off.
Garcia, this Second-stage Inspector, had already been scared out of his wits after hearing it was an unknown infection source.
With performance like that, he could forget about ever getting promoted to Third-Phase; he wasn’t even as good as an Intern Inspector.
“Chang Kai, tell Inspector Cheng what happened.” Luokuke called out.
From the crowd, the patrol captain they’d met earlier unexpectedly stepped out again, his face waxy yellow without a trace of blood, his lips trembling—clearly scared out of his mind.
“Inspector… Inspector Cheng, I… I’m Chang Kai, it’s… it’s like this…”
He was stammering a bit, but Cheng Ye didn’t rush him. He only nodded lightly, using his eyes to signal him to take his time.
Then he casually picked up the topic, asking a couple of simple questions like “How many shifts did the patrol team split into today?” and “Were there any changes to the route?” to ease his nerves.
Only after the man’s breathing steadied a little did he shift the subject, guiding it back to the two Infected Bodies.
“We just walked the same patrol route as during the day one more time, and still couldn’t find the two missing people.” Chang Kai swallowed hard, forcing himself to calm down. “We only found some leftover traces at the water outlet by the dock. We’re not sure if they were left by them. But… but after we came back, when I counted heads, the team was just like before—without a sound, we had… those two back!”
Fuck!
Cheng Ye suddenly felt his scalp explode.
What kind of ghost story was this?
Two people had just gone missing from the team, one of them infected. They could still chalk that up to being parasitized by the infection source and just call it some inexplicable death.
But now, two extra people appeared out of nowhere and came back to camp with them—what the hell was that supposed to be?
Cheng Ye suddenly felt that the fact Chang Kai could still talk right now meant the guy was a real warrior.
If it were him, nobody in Dapo Town would be sleeping tonight. He’d turn the whole place upside down if he had to, but he’d drag every last one of these spooks out.
“These two aren’t the two team members who went missing this afternoon?”
As he spoke, his gaze involuntarily slid to the two on the ground. They both had very typical Eastern People looks, nothing special about them. But he’d never seen the missing team members, so he couldn’t match them directly.
“Absolutely not!” Chang Kai shook his head at once. Perhaps infected by Cheng Ye’s calm, his tone was smoother than before. “How could we mix up the faces of our own team? We’ve never seen these two before! But the creepy thing is… the way they talk, their memory of the patrol route, even the pistols and bullets in their hands, all of it was exactly what Inspector Luo handed out today!”
“Their faces are different, but everything else matches?” Cheng Ye’s frown tightened even more.
“What did they say after they were discovered?”
“After we discovered them, they said they’d lost their memories. They claimed they forgot what they did this afternoon and only said they’d found a place to slack off and sleep.”
Chang Kai swallowed again, his voice starting to shake once more. “It wasn’t until Inspector Luo came over and shot them on the spot that these patterns started appearing on their bodies…”
“Where did they say they slept?”
“In the water, in the water!” Chang Kai suddenly clenched his fists, his eyes full of terror. “They kept muttering about how warm and comfortable it was underwater, and even told us to go down and try it too…”
“Enough!”
Cheng Ye raised a hand, signaling him not to go on.
With that many bizarre symptoms piled together, even without the patterns it was enough to nail them as Infected Bodies.
What mattered most now was confirming two things:
First, what exactly was the connection between these two and the missing team members?
Second, if there was no connection, then confirm their identities as fast as possible!
Were they the missing patrol members, or had some “water ghosts” come ashore and taken over their identities, or had people on the Blue Zone’s side gone missing as well?
“Huang Liang!” Cheng Ye turned his head and called out.
“Here!” Huang Liang ran over at once.
“Have everyone move to the sides. Do a headcount according to the daytime groupings. Family groups stick together, couples gather up, working-age men regroup with their units.”
Cheng Ye spoke extremely fast. “Tell each group leader they have to cross-identify everyone’s identity. Make sure everyone knows the people beside them. No strangers are allowed to slip in!”
“Got it!” Huang Liang turned and shouted, his voice cutting through the crowd.
As soon as an infection source was mentioned, people’s level of cooperation shot up, and during the daytime grouping, Cheng Ye had already required each group to memorize faces and call out names to each other. That was now coming in handy.
The 75 family groups were checked very quickly. Every household could point each other out with no anomalies.
The couples group was missing a few. A quick question revealed they’d been hiding behind the supermarket out of fear and rushed over as soon as they heard.
The working-age men’s group had even less of an issue. They’d been patrolling together half the day and were already familiar with one another. Once they were counted, not a single person was missing.
The speed of it all left Garcia so stunned he forgot to tremble, his face full of dawning realization and disbelief.
Only when he glanced at Wang Kang, whose face was still a bit pale, did he belatedly realize that it wasn’t that this Intern Inspector had surpassed him, a Second-phase one. It was that this “intern” couldn’t be understood by common sense.
Was it really the right choice to oppose him, just to keep climbing up?
For a moment, Garcia stood there dazed, unable to snap out of it.
But no one was paying attention to his reaction right now. Once he had the full headcount, Cheng Ye finally let out a small breath.
“Five hundred people. We’re not missing a single one. Everyone, don’t panic.”