Doomsday America.

Chapter 321 Longhorn Motel

As soon as he finished speaking, Gavin released the talk button on the walkie-talkie.

The next moment, a burst of cheers came from the walkie-talkie.

Fortunately, although the men were excited, no shots were fired to vent their emotions.

As it turned out, the operatives trained by Edward and Eugene, these excellent soldiers, still retained some of their military spirit. Although they were somewhat roguish, they wouldn't turn their men into the psychopaths found in the wasteland. Gavin chuckled inwardly as he picked up his binoculars and turned to look at the last stretch of straight road ahead.

Stephenville is located in the last area of ​​influence of the Dallas metropolitan area in Texas.

Stephenville, with a population of over 20,000, was also among the last major cities within hundreds of kilometers of Dallas to be influenced by Dallas culture. Further out of Stephenville were cities like Dublin, De Leon, or Comanche, which, while not small in area, had populations of only a few thousand. In short, although Gavin and his group spent an entire day advancing their distance by a little over 200 kilometers as the crow flies on the map, after passing Stephenville, the road ahead appeared to be completely smooth on the map.

Interstate 20 runs through Texas, allowing convoys to travel all the way to the Mexican border.

There, the highway also connects to Highway 10, the main highway leading to Silver City.

In other words, once the crew reaches Highway 20, they can immediately accelerate to at least 150 kilometers per hour after nightfall, advancing at this insane speed. If they're lucky, they might spot the Brotherhood's camp near Silver City by tomorrow night, or even tomorrow afternoon. Of course, that's assuming the Brotherhood members don't wander off!

While listening to the cheers coming through the walkie-talkie, Gavin turned to Wang Ling, who was slowly waking up in the back seat, and said, "Ling, after we find the camp, help me organize the radio. I need to have a quick chat with the Brotherhood to confirm their location, calm them down, and get a better understanding of their situation."

"Yes, boss!"

Upon hearing Gavin's order, Wang Ling, who had slept all afternoon, wiped the sweat from the corner of her mouth...

Cough cough, let's just assume it's sweat.

In short, after wiping the water off her face, Wang Ling patted her skin, which was a little rough from being ravaged by the Texas spring winds for a while, and instinctively said to Gavin, "Tsk tsk, that sounds so official. Is this still America? I almost thought I'd slept back in China..."

"Ahem, Xiao Wang, I understand!"

Gavin interrupted Wang Ling's mutterings in Chinese, sounding rather annoyed.

After a brief silence, Wang Ling suddenly lowered her head and grabbed her katana.

Gavin rolled his eyes at Wang Ling, then couldn't help but laugh himself.

His words now do have a slightly more official tone than before, but this is a deliberate choice on his part.

After all, with more and more members in the camp, the camp's development needs to become more institutionalized and scaled up.

While unorthodox methods can certainly help people survive in the apocalypse, the more institutionalized they become, the faster they can develop. Gavin's current bureaucratic style isn't about wasting everyone's time with empty rhetoric, nor is it about building a chain of suspicion around his orders to maintain his authority. He genuinely uses more written, official, and detailed orders to ensure his men truly understand the reasons behind each decision, and thus better comprehend his governing principles and direction. In short, after the brief joke, Gavin continued to peer through his binoculars at the road ahead.

The time came to 5:02.

After observing for a while, Gavin put down the binoculars with satisfaction.

The 108 highway beneath our feet, connecting Stephenville to the 20 freeway, is in terrible condition—only a four-lane road. But it's extremely empty; there aren't many cars stopped in the middle of the road.

As for the distribution of zombies, well, in today's world, only large-scale activities by living people could possibly lead to such chaos in zombie distribution. As for Stephenville, at least in terms of zombies, the city seems to have never been disturbed.

Of course, this assertion is not absolute, after all, the existence of aggregates has always worried Gavin.

He worried that the ghostly entities existing in many large cities might suddenly gain the ability to freely mobilize hordes of zombies at a certain time! Gavin had discussed this conjecture several times with the astronauts, and Kobayashi Shinya, along with Richard, who was recovering from his injuries, also talked a lot with Gavin about the aggregates. They both felt that Gavin's conjecture wasn't entirely impossible; after all, the existence of ambushers, resident zombies, and howlers among the zombie hordes had already proven the existence of a unified fungal network. They had discussed this with Gavin before the astronauts even returned from space—that fungal hyphae could transmit electrical signals. While each horde was also under the unified control of the fungal network, the electrical signals constantly propagating within the hordes were closer to information sharing, such as reporting the location of living beings or informing each other which houses were uninhabited, thus alerting lone zombies to ambush them.

In short, such electrical signals are mostly shared signals.

In most of the hordes of corpses and their associated underground fungal networks, there are no manipulative electrical signals.

However, the sudden appearance of a small aggregate in Richard Town that attracted stray hunters from dozens or even hundreds of kilometers away after its death foreshadowed the manipulative fungal electrical signals that Gavin and the astronauts were worried about. Therefore, both Kobayashi and Richard felt that perhaps at some point, after the fungus within the aggregate continued to grow and strengthen, these manipulative electrical signals would appear. It seemed that such an aggregate might truly possess the ability to perfectly control stray zombies within a region!

This damn conjecture gave Gavin a headache for a long time. Fortunately, based on the zombies' habits that are close to biological instincts, Kobayashi judged that even if the aggregate really had the ability to manipulate the zombie horde, such manipulation would only be concentrated on the biological instinct of self-preservation!

This highlights the difference between Gavin and Kobayashi.

Upon learning that the aggregates could potentially control zombies, Gavin's first reaction was...

The zombies are about to start hunting down the last remaining survivors!

But in the eyes of a professional botany PhD like Xiaolin, a single zombie and a zombie fungal community are two completely different concepts.

For a single zombie, encountering a living person or hearing a sound will naturally trigger a chase—it's their biological instinct to pursue and attack sounds. But for the zombie fungus…

The zombie fungus doesn't actually need to hunt down any living people, because its spread has been completely successful.

After all, every living person, and indeed every creature still living on this planet, has some form of zombie fungus within them! In terms of fungal reproduction, zombie fungus has long been unrivaled!

Every dead person in the world helps fungi reproduce and evolve in a symbiotic way.

Every living person in the world is also a carrier of fungi, living in symbiosis with them. Essentially, there's no difference between them. Therefore, individual zombies hunting humans are simply driven by the biological instincts of the fungal symbiont.

Even if the fungi parasitizing the organisms themselves, through colony reproduction, develop the ability to release manipulative bioelectric currents to control hordes of zombies, at that point, the fungi will more likely manipulate the zombie hordes, carrying the fungi within them, to find a more suitable way for them to survive!

So what is this way out?

There's nothing to it but the climate.

Kobayashi deduced that perhaps after a significant seasonal change, the aggregates would take over the zombie horde's movements, guiding and controlling their continuous large-scale migrations to avoid the extreme climates that were relatively unfavorable for the growth of zombie fungi. The weather was too cold, and the fungi were feeling slightly uncomfortable, so everyone moved.

The weather was too hot and the moisture too scarce, making the fungi extremely uncomfortable. So, they continued to move, seeking places with abundant water resources to thrive. In short, in the eyes of Kobayashi, that fanatical academic madman, the zombie fungi were like newborn babies, utterly adorable. Moreover, Kobayashi sometimes genuinely treated the zombie fungi he observed like precious little babies, even staying by their side to carefully tend to them after drinking too much. However, while Gavin was somewhat worried, fortunately, Kobayashi wasn't interested in becoming a zombie, and his and Richard's main research focus wasn't on controlling zombie evolution. To be precise, the Umbrella Corporation's mindset was unacceptable.

In games like Resident Evil, there is never a shortage of mad scientists who are pushing the zombie evolution process to the extreme.

But in the real world, no scientist would want to look like a zombie.

What Kobayashi and Richard hoped to do was to thoroughly understand the relationship between living people and zombie fungus.

Since zombie fungi can bring about significant changes to zombies, taking root within them to provide nutrition and protection, and incidentally even contributing to their evolution, is it possible that these fungi could also offer some positive benefits to the living?

Kobayashi and Richard studied this for over a month and finally made some progress.

When this result was put on paper, it looked ridiculous, but Gavin couldn't laugh.

Because this result shows that... the zombie fungus has actually brought many benefits to the living without their knowledge! What benefits?

That is... living people infected with zombie fungus... are less likely to get sick!

Gavin's expression turned genuinely serious when he recalled how, a week earlier, Kobayashi, Richard, and Li Qing had come to him together and presented him with this absurd result.

Without the statistics and surveys conducted by these three scholars, Gavin would not have noticed.

Surprisingly, very few people in his camp contracted new diseases after the apocalypse!

Even Nancy, an asthma patient, came to the camp with the giant Tara, who was over 2.1 meters tall.

As the apocalypse dragged on, her asthma symptoms began to lessen.

Even Nancy, that pretty but silly girl, was able to join the former "high grass party" and have some fun!

Aside from Nancy, who was the patient, those who contracted syphilis recovered very quickly, though no one noticed at the time. Furthermore, in the three months since the apocalypse, even with the camp expanding to several hundred people, almost no one has contracted any serious illnesses. At most, someone might occasionally have a fever for a while.

Kobayashi and Richard's investigation revealed that while the zombie fungus has become one of the most terrifying diseases in human history, it has also dealt a devastating blow to other bacteria and fungi. When living people infected with the zombie fungus encounter other potential infections, the fungus instantly becomes active, eliminating most of the pathogens… The process of the zombie fungus battling other pathogens within the body manifests as a brief fever.

In response, Kobayashi hopes to obtain Gavin's consent, requesting that Gavin allow him to inject more dangerous viruses, such as meningitis viruses, into individual test subjects in order to test the limits of how zombie fungi can help the human body resist various viruses.

However, Richard rejected the suggestion because Richard and Lee Qing were worried that allowing the zombie fungus in their bodies to come into contact with too many other pathogens and viruses could prematurely activate the zombie fungus and cause living people to turn directly into zombies.

Even if it weren't that extreme, such actions could still accelerate the evolution of the zombie fungus, making it even more difficult to deal with. In short, Kobayashi was reprimanded by Gavin and Richard for half an hour before he finally put aside his plan to experiment on living people. Upon learning this result, Gavin was truly at a loss for words.

If every guy in the camp knew that the zombie fungus inside them was actually secretly protecting them, it probably wouldn't be long before more than one madman in the camp started worshipping the zombie fungus as God.

Don't think they wouldn't do such a thing, and don't think no one would be that crazy.

Having lived in America for so long, Gavin's only lesson is that you should never underestimate the sheer madness in every American's bones. These people, who pride themselves on extreme sports and rely on drugs and high-energy drinks, have a bottom line that's practically nonexistent!

As Gavin reflected on his conversation with Kobayashi and the others a while ago, time was also silently slipping away.

After a mere thirty kilometers, the convoy dodged two relatively quiet traffic jams and ran over a dozen or so zombies blocking its path. Highway 20 finally came into view of Gavin.

Even luckier, there happened to be a small motel at the intersection connecting Highway 108 and Interstate 20! Gavin finally couldn't help but smile when he saw the motel ahead.

There was no village in sight, no shop in sight, and beyond that, only mountains, mountains and more mountains!

This crossroads is surrounded by three mountains, all small hills, not steep, and offering a fairly open view. The nearest village is at least three kilometers away, so theoretically, there's no need to worry about hordes of zombies while staying here. Of course, the motel itself might still harbor a few zombies.

But... it's been months since the apocalypse, do you think Gavin's medium-sized team of thirty would be afraid of zombies in a mere motel? Thinking this, Gavin pursed his lips in satisfaction, then turned on the walkie-talkie and spoke.

"Guys, wake up! This is the end of our journey for today. Our next rest stop is just about 800 meters ahead... the Longhorn Motel!" Gavin said, using his binoculars to pinpoint the sign for the Longhorn Motel.

After reading out the name of the inn, he continued speaking to the staff:

"This motel doesn't look very big, but it can definitely accommodate thirty of us."

"Later, Edward will lead the team to clean up the motel, Eugene will lead the team to move supplies, arm the motel, and set up temporary machine gun outposts." "As for my squad, guys, today we'll cook and keep watch. None of us will be idle."

"Also, haha, I fucking love longhorn cattle, what about you guys!"

"Haha, boss, I absolutely love longhorn bulls! I hope the hotel still has some unopened condoms!"

"That's right, we need condoms, haha!"

"There's also a small amount of beer and drinks, especially in the fridge!"

As Gavin spoke, cheers came through the walkie-talkie from Eugene Martin and Edward.

Of course, the other guys would chime in from time to time.

Today's journey was generally peaceful, but to put it bluntly, in this perilous post-apocalyptic world, travel itself is a highly stressful activity. Even though most of the crew rested in the vehicle, they were mentally exhausted and desperately needed beds more conducive to rest to rejuvenate. The Longhorn Cow Inn appeared at just the right time, and the crew's excitement was just right as well.

Amidst the cheerful responses of his men, the convoy, which had been lined up in a row, quickly split into two groups. Edward's squad overtook Gavin's lead vehicle and pulled up in front of the Longhorn Inn. Apart from Steve, who was driving, Edward led his three-man squad out of the armored vehicle.

Edward waved his hand emphatically.

"Don't forget the indoor tactics I taught you. Cover yourselves, advance quickly, let's go!"

As soon as he finished speaking, Edward led his team straight into the Longhorn Bull enclosure, taking down the first zombie host who was roaring beside the bar. Edward didn't try to conceal the noise of their actions; they fired directly, letting the sound of shattering glass echo through the air.

The layout of the Longhorn Cow Inn is very simple, just a row of rectangular two-story buildings. There is no environment that could surround Edward and his group. Edward also wants to use the gunshots and the sound of breaking glass to attract all the scattered zombies within hundreds or thousands of meters around the motel and kill them!

Once the hotel is cleared and it's confirmed that no more zombies are coming to the open area outside, everyone can rest easy.

After all, real-life zombies don't spawn randomly like in games; their locations are based on logic. Once you understand that logic, there's basically nothing to worry about. And so, gunshots rang out from the first floor of the hotel to the second, and the entire team searched the area.

Less than three minutes later, Edward led his team out of the hotel and saluted Gavin's passenger seat.

"Boss, the operation was a complete success!"

"Well done."

Gavin returned Edward's greeting, then swiftly stepped out of the car.

After he got out of the car, the other dozens of men followed suit. Eugene's team immediately began moving things and doing a quick clean-up of the Longhorn Inn. Gavin, meanwhile, turned his attention to all directions.

In the light of the setting sun, he did not see any zombies attacking.

The surrounding open space was very clean, and this temporary encampment was now completely safe.