Chapter 1

On the street, a dense fog had risen. The dilapidated and desolate streets were indistinct amidst the swirls of thick white, and the hidden ruins, like a still painting, lay concealed in the unknown.

Charlotte Devlin extended her hand, and even through the thick fog, her five slender fingers remained clearly visible. Not just her fingers, even as she glanced at the rearview mirror, the faded red frame was sharp. Only, when looking through the rearview mirror, half of the red car body was shrouded by the thick fog, and the black rear tires were completely lost in the white mist.

Looking at the dense fog that pervaded the heavens and the earth, she suddenly felt curious. Where exactly was the boundary between what was clear and what was unclear?

She sat in the car, with the windows open and the engine off. Wearing a white baseball cap, she sat motionless. Unless someone came close and looked carefully, no one could see her in the thick fog.

She felt a little nervous and leaned forward, touching the top of the rearview mirror with her fingers. She lightly brushed her fingertips over it and then brought them close to her eyes. On her fingers lay a thin layer of water mist.

At least there was one thing to be grateful for. After the beginning of the "Dark Age," nearly all the heavy factories had decayed. The towering chimneys no longer emitted black gases, and the thick pipelines no longer discharged polluted water into rivers and streams. This thick fog was certainly not smog. The thick smoke pervading the air was all water vapor. Water was a good thing.

Her palms slightly moistened, and she began to feel uneasy. She had never felt this way before, as if something in her heart was beating faintly, thudding repeatedly, making her feel uneasy.

She pulled out a black box from under the passenger seat, placed it on her knees, and opened it. Inside was a handgun, a black Glock 17 model. This was an old handgun produced before the Dark Age, with a maximum magazine capacity of seventeen rounds. In recent years, fully automatic handguns produced in Galaxy City had a minimum guaranteed magazine capacity of thirty rounds or more because, when people fought against zombie hordes, accuracy became less important than the number of bullets.

Suddenly, she heard the sound of a truck, approaching from a distance. It seemed to be driving towards her block.

She immediately tensed up, quickly released the safety catch, loaded the gun, and inserted it into a specially prepared holster at her waist. She didn't dare to make a sound.

The sound of a diesel engine grew louder and louder, and the truck was heading in her direction.

The information she had bought for 270,000 dollars from a scrapper dog was accurate. A smuggling gang's truck from the southern mountains had indeed appeared on time in Moon City's satellite town. This thirteen-meter long three-and-a-half axle truck could hold thirty tons of goods, mostly cigarettes, salt, liquor, cans, or clothes, as well as counterfeit Coke produced in a small workshop in the southern mountains. In this day and age, although this counterfeit Coke contained less than thirty percent of the sugar content of Coke before the Dark Age, a bottle could still be sold at a high price of fifty thousand knives.

Coke was a taste of the happy times, and everyone missed it.

Originally, there was a factory in the southern mountains that attempted to produce potato chips. Unfortunately, planting potatoes required too much land area, which could not be fully enclosed. Zombies could get into any small opening, and once they set foot on open fields, they contaminated them, rendering the potatoes useless.

Charlotte didn't need Coke or potato chips; she only wanted valuable A15 cans. She intended to rob this smuggled truck.

According to the scrapper dog's information, this smuggling gang had contacts in the satellite city who would unload part of the goods while the rest continued eastwards. There was also a large market in Yongkai City in the east.

She planned to make her move when they were transferring goods.

The truck whizzed past the street next to her, and no one noticed her.

When the van disappeared in the thick fog, she turned the key and started the car, but did not turn on any lights, and slowly followed the sound.

Driving in thick fog, nothing can be seen, and the visibility is no more than five meters. She can't see the back of the truck, and the only thing that can help her judge is the earth-shattering sound of the diesel engine.

This satellite town, outside the high walls of Moon, had long since been abandoned, and in the boundless mist, only the sound of two cars, one large and one small, echoed in Charlotte's ears.

The truck stopped.

Charlotte quickly pressed the brake and stopped the car, not daring to move.

Then, she heard the sound of the box of the truck being opened, and then someone was talking.

They are handing over!

Charlotte swallowed, touched the gun handle on her waist, and made up her mind. She stepped on the accelerator to the floor, and with a roar, she stepped onto the edge of the truck, opened the door and got out. She took out the gun on her waist and pointed it at the two men who were unloading the cargo.

Stop, A15 cans, all of them, loaded onto my truck. Do you hear me?

The two men unloading the goods saw that it was a young girl, and although she was holding a gun, they didn't take it seriously. They provoked, "Little girl, it's so dangerous out there. Why did you run out? Where do you live? Would you like to have a drink with your brother?"

I'm not kidding you.

The man didn't take it to heart. The girl in front of him had blond hair and blue eyes, and looked beautiful and fragile. She didn't look like a thief. He took a few steps closer and said, "Listen to your brother. Put down the gun. This thing is very dangerous."

Charlotte stopped talking nonsense and pressed the barrel of the gun down, shooting him in the foot. Immediately, blood spurted out like a pillar, and the man cried out in pain and fell to the ground. "I say again, load the cargo for me."

At this moment, a fat man jumped out of the truck cab and shouted, "What's going on?"

Charlotte turned around and pointed the gun at his head, "Do you want to try it too?"

The fat man saw his companion lying on the ground, wailing, and his face turned white: "The gun..."

Charlotte raised her eyebrows and said, "I only need A15 cans, so I won't make you feel embarrassed. Just fill them up and put them in my trunk. As long as they're full, that's fine."

The fat man winked at another subordinate, and the two of them looked at each other and gave up their resistance and began to move the light brown cardboard boxes one by one into Charlotte's trunk.

Charlotte was surprised that they were so cooperative. She glanced into the truck's cargo box and saw something unexpected.

She reached in, ripped open a box, and pulled out a tin can.

"Oh, it's a cigarette... This guy is really valuable. Help me carry two boxes to the back seat."

Upon hearing this, the two men neither resisted nor spoke nonsense, but silently carried several boxes of cigarettes for her and placed them in the back seat as she instructed.

Cigarettes are valuable goods in Moon City, and this box of cigarettes alone can be worth the 270,000 intelligence fees she paid to the abandoned dog. The more she thought about it, the happier she became. "Let's move a few more boxes, and we can pack less canned food."

But before she could figure out how much money she could make on this trip, a car suddenly approached in the thick fog, which seemed particularly abrupt in the silence. By the sound, there should be more than one car.

Charlotte was shocked. She realized that something was wrong. She looked around and found that there were no other vehicles except for the large van and her red sports car. If they were unloading at the meeting, how could there not be a second vehicle?

Her face turned pale. The contact had not arrived yet. The person who came now should be the contact! What a hell!

Before she could react, she heard bursts of gunfire behind her, shooting in her direction. The sound of bullets cutting through the air was particularly sharp and ear-splitting. She heard the gunshots and instinctively crouched down, only to see her red sports car hit directly by the bullets, sputtering and smoking, leaving a row of bullet holes.

"Damn it!" Charlotte said without saying anything, regardless of cigarettes or cans, quickly climbed into the car and stepped on the accelerator to the floor, leaving: "These bastards have guns too!"

She didn't have time to close the trunk and ran off as fast as she could.

She didn't know how long she had been driving, but she was constantly looking at the rearview mirror. She couldn't see anything in the thick fog, so she had to stare at it, afraid that a car would suddenly appear from the fog and appear behind her.

But before she could see anything, a burst of glass shattered, and a dense rain of bullets shattered her rear window, passing through the car body and shattering the front window, leaving the entire car riddled with bullet holes. Fortunately, Charlotte had retrofitted steel plates behind the driver's seat, so far she had not been penetrated by bullets.

She shrunk her head and said, "Shit, it's still a submachine gun!"

She wanted to step on the accelerator, but the old car twenty years ago was not awesome. She could almost hear the roar of the car behind her getting closer and closer to her.

She cursed the useless dog a hundred thousand times in her heart. The dog bastard emphasized many times that there were only three people on the truck, and Charlotte alone had a gun to deal with them. But why didn't he say that the contact had a submachine gun? If she had known they had a submachine gun, she would have died before taking this risk.

Another shot rang out behind her, and Charlotte locked her neck and hid in front of the backrest of the seat. Suddenly, she saw a flash of fire in the rearview mirror, and turned to see that the fuel tank had been hit and was on fire. It would not be long before it exploded.

“Shit!”

Charlotte quickly hit the brakes, opened the door, and ran out.

But to be honest, she really had to thank the thick fog. She escaped into an abandoned street on the side and disappeared into the fog. But she didn't dare to take it lightly and kept running forward, the farther away the better. Those bastards with submachine guns might still get out of the car to chase after her. She only had a pistol now, and if she was caught by them, she would be doomed.

Charlotte didn't know how long she had been running through the foggy streets and abandoned towns, but she finally stopped, panting.

But when she looked closely, she saw the familiar big truck again. After going around and around, she ended up back where she started!

The fat man saw Charlotte and shouted, "She's over there! Hurry up!"

Charlotte cursed and ran away again. She was exhausted, and she dared not run around the streets anymore. Her sense of direction was terrible, and the abandoned streets were all the same. If she turned back, it would be very dangerous.

She found a building and climbed up the stairs. She reached the top floor and hid in a small room. There were thousands of rooms here, hoping they would never find her.

She closed the door and sat down on the ground, panting and sweating.

After she settled down, she began to look around the room. However, she suddenly stopped and the cold sweat that had just stopped came out again - someone was living in this room.

What a concept! All the satellite towns outside the high walls of Yuecheng have been abandoned. No one will live here, and even if there are stubborn people who are unwilling to leave their hometown, they will soon become one of the zombies. This situation has lasted for almost twenty years.

However, she looked at the clear water in the glass on the table, the traces of someone lying on the bed, and the can that had just been opened on the table, which was still fresh, without mold or insects.

A figure appeared in front of her.

Her face turned white instantly.

Her instinct drove her to take out her gun and point it at the person coming:

"Who are you?“