Eagle Sauce: The 055 destroyer was launched into the sea just after the founding of the country?

Chapter 935 Not Retreating

[Time]: Autumn 1956, the afternoon of the day after the full-scale outbreak of the mutation.

Location: Santa Maria, Cuba

Sunlight filters through the dense rainforest canopy, dappling the damp ground.

Occasionally, a few calls from unknown birds broke the silence, sounding no different from any other afternoon.

"Click."

Castro is cleaning his beloved M1911 pistol.

Although the battle that night proved that the old gun was no match for the monster's keratinous layer, the sound of mechanical disassembly and assembly seemed to relax his tense nerves a little.

He was shirtless, with thick white bandages wrapped around his shoulders and waist, some of which were oozing blood.

On the cot beside him, Che Guevara was fast asleep. His breathing was heavy, a lingering effect of the damage to his lungs.

His left arm was in a cast and hung from his neck.

Even in his sleep, his brows remained furrowed, and his right hand would occasionally make a grasping motion in the air, as if he were still holding the control stick of the "Broken Army".

"Commander... we don't have many of those high-explosive armor-piercing rounds left."

Logistics supervisor Jose was squatting on the ground, counting the few green ammunition boxes, his voice very low.

"If that kind of monster comes again, even if it's just three or five of them... our meager possessions won't last more than two minutes."

Castro held the barrel up to the light to check the rifling.

“Then we’ll bury the booby traps even more densely. Don’t we still have two boxes of those Claymore mines that the Dragon Kingdom gave us? We’ll put them all in the mountain pass.”

"It's already been laid out. But..."

"Ah!!! No way! This can't be real!!"

A terrified scream, broken by excessive force, suddenly erupted from outside the cave entrance.

The sound didn't sound like an alarm; it sounded more like someone suddenly seeing some kind of hallucination that was driving them to a mental breakdown.

Che Guevara suddenly opened his eyes. The instincts honed by years of guerrilla warfare instantly sobered him up, and his right hand reached directly for the dagger under his pillow, but he almost fell off the bed due to his physical weakness.

"what happened?!"

Castro didn't even bother to put on his clothes, and before he had even assembled the gun, he rushed out carrying only the lower receiver with the grip.

Outside the cave.

The two guards who were originally standing at the door were now standing there blankly, their guns lowered and their eyes vacant.

The young messenger who had screamed—the boy from the village next to Castro's hometown, usually the most clever and composed—was kneeling on the ground, holding the tablet computer that had been provided as aid from China, his whole body trembling violently as if he had a seizure.

A puddle of vomit had formed at his feet, but he seemed completely unaware of it.

"Antonio! Stand up! Like a soldier!"

Castro strode over, grabbed him by the collar and tried to lift him up, but found that the boy's legs were completely limp, like a lump of mud.

"have a look……"

The messenger's throat was making a bellows-like panting sound; he didn't even dare to look at the screen again, but just desperately shoved it into Castro's hands.

"That's not a human...that's a demon...it's a demon..."

Castro frowned. He took the screen with some suspicion.

Che Guevara, also wearing a coat and with a pale face, walked over and joined them.

On the screen is a clear aerial view from the drone.

The GPS location in the upper right corner shows that this is "Santa Maria Town".

That quiet little town, less than five kilometers from the U.S. military beach camp, is famous for its rum production and fishing industry.

Castro remembered this place.

Three months ago, he had taken people to the church there to distribute flyers, and the old priest in town had even treated him to some homemade wine.

but now.

The streets in the picture turned red.

It wasn't the kind of red that's dyed by the sunset, but a dazzling, flowing crimson.

Countless... grayish-white figures, either naked or wearing only a few tattered rags, were running through the streets.

Their posture was extremely strange, with all four limbs on the ground and their spines bent, like a group of giant hairless rats crawling out of the sewers.

But the speed at which it ran was so fast that even the camera couldn't quite capture it clearly.

“Enlarge.” Castro’s voice was somewhat shaky.

The camera zooms in. We've arrived at the town's market square.

A group of grayish-white monsters were surrounding the fruit stand that hadn't yet closed up.

The person surrounded there was a woman wearing a floral dress, who was holding a child who looked to be less than three years old tightly in her arms.

The woman was screaming and waving a papaya knife in her hand.

The leading monster straightened up.

Its face... Castro stared intently at that face.

The monster had half a metal tag hanging around its neck, like a dog tag.

Although the face was somewhat deformed, with grayish skin and large patches of peeling, the vague outline... was clearly that of the U.S. Army lieutenant who had been patrolling the area, whom he had observed through binoculars five days ago!

But next second.

That "second lieutenant," or rather, something that used to be a second lieutenant, opened its large mouth, which was split to the ear and had no lips.

It did not try to steal the knife.

It directly...

Castro snapped his eyes shut, and the veins on his neck throbbed with extreme force.

On the screen, the monster's claws pierced through the woman's chest without any resistance, lifting her up like a rag doll.

Then, amidst the child's heart-wrenching cries—

It bit down on the woman's neck.

That tearing motion, that writhing of the neck muscles when tilting the head back to swallow.

And...the scene of those "people" around him, who were originally privates, privates first class, sergeants in the U.S. military, rushing forward to share the food.

"Snapped."

Che Guevara dropped the half-smoked cigar in his hand to the ground.

He didn't bend down to pick it up.

His eyes were fixed on the edge of the screen, where more and more of these monsters were coming from the direction of the beach, crossing the wall and spreading across the fields, like an unstoppable gray-white tsunami, swallowing up all living things in its path.

Cows, sheep, dogs... and people.

There is no difference.

In the eyes of these mutants, everything is simply labeled as "flesh".

"Those are... Americans?" Che's voice was terribly hoarse, an instinctive reaction from his vocal cords trembling violently. "What they're wearing is... a fragment of their training uniform?"

"Yes."

The messenger raised his face, which was covered in tears, and cried out.

"Half an hour ago... a drone was scouting the beach camp. The camp was empty. Inside... inside there were human skins everywhere. You know, those... those whole skins that have been shed."

"Then these things came out. They...they didn't even take weapons, they just ate people!"

"brute……"

Castro forced out those two words through gritted teeth. He wasn't cursing the monsters.

Instead, they were cursing the person who created this hellish scene.

He whirled around and slammed his fist into the rock wall beside him. The hard edge of the stone reopened the wound on his hand, and blood instantly seeped through the bandage, but he seemed not to feel any pain.

"How dare they..."

Castro's chest heaved violently, like a lion that had been thoroughly enraged.

"It's one thing to attack civilians. These Onsa gangs have never had any bottom line. But..."

"Thirty thousand men!" he roared. "Thirty thousand of their own soldiers! Living people! They actually... turned their own soldiers into cannibalistic zombies just to win?!"

“This is not a war.”

Che Guevara took a deep breath, forcing himself to look away from the hellish screen. His face was ashen, but his eyes were growing colder than ice.

“Fidel. From the moment they threw that thing called Atlas down, it was an operation of extermination.”

“Those American politicians had no intention of leaving any survivors, neither us nor the soldiers.”

Che leaned against the rock wall and pointed to the rapidly spreading red pollution zone on the map.

"Look at that speed."

“Santa Maria is just the beginning. According to the running speed calculated by the drones… within two hours, this horde of zombies will reach the nearest industrial town—Bayamo.”

There are 80,000 people there.

He turned his head and looked at Castro.

"If we let those 30,000 tireless monsters, who won't stop even if they're shot, into the city."

"The entire eastern part of Cuba... will become a dead zone within three days."

The mountain wind suddenly became very strong, making the camouflage nets hanging at the cave entrance rustle loudly.

The entire camp was now in complete chaos. More guerrillas saw the devastating broadcast, and panic was spreading like a plague among the crowd.

"We have to go."

An aide ran over, his face completely pale.

"Commander! We can't hold this place! We still have mechs; we can take the elite troops and retreat deeper into the mountains via the secret path to the south. Those monsters aren't brainless; they shouldn't chase us that far. We can—"

"boom!"

There was a gunshot.

The staff officer's voice abruptly stopped.

It wasn't that someone shot him.

Instead, Castro faced the sky and emptied the magazine from his unloaded pistol—the only loaded bullet.

He tossed the scalding hot gun to the guard.

Then, slowly, he straightened his back, which had been slightly hunched due to the injury.

Even though it was still bandaged, even though it was still bleeding.

But at that moment, the Cuban lion that had captivated the entire Americas atop the Sierra Maestra mountains returned.

"Retreat? Where to retreat?"

His voice wasn't loud, but it had a metallic quality.

He looked around at the terrified faces.

"We retreated to the mountains. We watched the Bayamo people below be devoured? We watched our parents, our sisters, become meat in those creatures' mouths?!"

"And then what? Wait until they've eaten all the people in the city, evolved to be stronger, and then come back and pluck us out like rats?!"

"Don't forget! What we're called!"

"We are guerrillas. But first and foremost, we are sons of Cuba!"

Castro walked over, ripped the belt off the trembling messenger's neck, and quickly strapped a bayonet he'd picked up from the ground onto the receiver of his own malfunctioning pistol.

"Sound the assembly call!"

"Bring out those two boxes of our treasured Chinese Claymore landmines! And all those Molotov cocktails! Take as many as you can!"

"On the Bayamo Bridge—that road that must be crossed."

Castro's eyes burned with a fierce fire.

"I'm right there. I won't back down an inch."

Che Guevara looked at his old friend, who had become somewhat fanatical in his efforts to protect the people. He knew very well that this was suicide.

With only fewer than 800 light infantrymen and three mechs that were out of ammunition and severely damaged, they faced 30,000 biological weapons that couldn't even feel pain.

This doesn't even qualify as a battle.

It could only be considered a slightly hard "afternoon tea snack".

But he also knew that if Fidel Castro chose to retreat, then he wouldn't be the Fidel he knew.

“Fidel”.

He interrupted his roar. He walked up to Castro and pressed down hard on his shoulder with his only functional right hand.

"I know what you want to do."

"I want to be a hero. I want to shed my last drop of blood for Cuba."

“Okay.” Che’s deep eyes showed no emotion at this moment, only the absolute rationality and calmness of a doctor facing a terminally ill patient. “It’s easy for me to die with you on that bridge.”

"But this won't save Bayamo. Nor will it save Cuba."

"How many minutes? Five minutes? Ten minutes can your corpse hold off those tens of thousands of monsters?"

Castro paused for a moment, his hot-blooded mind cooling down slightly: "Then what do you suggest?!"

“'Xingtian' is useless. The numbers are too scattered, and it's urban warfare; we can't bomb civilians along with it.”

He turned around and looked northeast—the direction of a distant, powerful Eastern nation.

"The only thing that can deal with this 'scientifically created demon' is an even more irrational science."

He grabbed the cigar that had just fallen to the ground. Although it was covered in mud, he didn't care and stuffed it into his mouth, chewing it up.

The bitter taste brought a little color back to his pale face.

“Go to Bayamo. Blow up the bridge. Even if you have to bite it, drag it across the river for 24 hours.”

You need to give me twenty-four hours.

"Twenty-four hours?" Castro asked.

"Correct."

"I'm going to the main communications station in the north."

"The backup longwave radio station is still operational."

Che's eyes became unusually determined, a desperate gamble after betting his life on the gambling table.

"I need to make a phone call to that Fang Yu... no, to that big boss."

"I remember Fang Yu saying something when he left. This lighter can summon more than just divine punishment..."

He pulled the still-cold silver device from his inner pocket.

He said, "When conventional methods fail to deal with this inhumane filth, don't force it. We specialize in handling this kind of waste sorting."

Cut the handle onto Castro's hand and grip it tightly.

"I believe in the Dragon Kingdom."

"If they can create the sharpest sword in the world, then I don't believe... they don't have a cleaning agent to deal with this kind of biochemical waste."

Castro glanced at Che's arm in a cast, then at the sickly face with burning eyes.

After a long pause, he nodded and gripped the handle tightly with his other hand.

"it is good."

"round-the-clock."

"Even if I only have one tooth left, I will bite those monsters to the other side of that bridge."

"Go and find someone! Find the real big shot!"

Tell them! If they're late!

Castro grinned, though it looked more like a grimace.

"Then who will help them grow these top-quality cigars!"