dognovel Chapter 11 The Battle of New York
Chapter 11 The Battle of New York
Data saving: Not given
…………
When Leon saw Claire.
She stood atop a pile of monster corpses, her police uniform, hands, and even her pretty face stained with thick, black blood.
The monster's corpse didn't actually smell very bad, but the stench emanating from the pile of corpses on the street was enough to make Li Ang frown just by standing on the street corner.
Li Ang and Ye Ziqing fought their way here; that woman really does know magic.
When she encountered a monster, she would quietly recite a long string of classical Chinese, and then a layer of golden light would appear and disappear around her body.
In actual combat, she relies more on physical skills, especially leg techniques, which can send monsters flying and shatter their skulls with a single kick.
When Li Ang asked her how she did it, she only said it was a unique skill from Maoshan, which she did not pass on to outsiders.
Li Ang, on the other hand, was unassuming and had sharp eyes. After all, Ye Ziqing had already seen him. Although he was very powerful and could easily kill some "beef cattle" several times the size of ordinary cattle, Li Ang still longed for close-quarters combat with fists hitting flesh.
As he swept through the area, Li Ang stopped intervening when he encountered injured civilians, police officers, soldiers, or dispatched troops from the affairs center, leaving Ye Ziqing to handle the situation alone.
We walked all the way here.
I came here specifically because I heard from the army I encountered earlier that there were many monsters here, but I only saw the beginning, the scene of Claire standing on a pile of corpses.
The deaths of those "beef cattle" were gruesome, many with lacerations. Although he didn't see Claire do it herself, Li Ang could already imagine the scene of her grabbing a beef cattle the size of a car that was charging at her, her fingernails digging into the flesh, tearing it apart and leaving it covered in blood.
Suddenly, she remembered that Li Ang had sent her a bunch of voice messages cursing her because she had left her on the highway. Li Ang silently took out her phone. The messages showed that they had been read and could not be recalled.
Smelling the strong stench of blood and stench, Li Ang approached Claire, stepping over fragments of cattle carcasses and black blood sticking to the soles of his shoes.
"Hey, you've worked hard."
"Um."
Claire remained standing guard atop the monster's corpse, her breathing calm, feeling that killing so many cattle hadn't taken much to her liking.
She didn't seem to be in the mood for conversation and didn't even glance at Li Ang.
Li Ang and Ye Ziqing found themselves standing awkwardly on the street.
Li Ang turned around and saw that the building behind Claire was a kindergarten.
On the second floor, behind the polka-dot cartoon curtains were little faces. A group of children waved and greeted Li Ang through the glass after he spotted them.
So that's why Claire was watching over these children along the way.
Li Ang still admired her somewhat; she was indeed a veteran of World War II.
and then.
No more monsters appeared on the road, and the three of them continued to stand there. Li Ang originally wanted to talk about what he had seen on the road and introduce the young Chinese girl next to him, but Claire didn't seem to react much. However, she seemed to exude a feeling of "get away from me" from her aura, which made him really hesitant to speak.
In the end, Ye Ziqing introduced herself.
Her English wasn't very good, and she spoke with a distinctive Chinese accent, "Sir, hello, I'm Ye Ziqing, Crisis Agent 11 from the Mutant Affairs Center."
"Um."
Claire finished speaking in a perfunctory manner, and Ye Ziqing glanced at Li Ang, trying to get him to say a few words.
He had already mentioned Claire beforehand; Ye Ziqing knew that she was his boss and partner.
Li Ang waved his hand. Why is the atmosphere so awkward? It's like taking a girlfriend to meet the parents, it shouldn't be like this.
"What do we do now?"
Ye Ziqing asked, and before he finished speaking, several beef cattle came running from the street corner, drawn by the smell of the corpses on the street.
When they can't find anyone, they start eating the corpses of their companions.
Li Ang understood. Claire couldn't move so many children, so she had to keep them here. Killing one monster would only attract more monsters, creating a vicious cycle.
Claire walked toward the monsters without hesitation, while Ye Ziqing began chanting her incantation.
Li Ang hesitated for a moment, but decided to remain silent and watch the show rather than reveal his abilities.
The battle on this street has begun again.
…………
Brooklyn. Green Dot District.
The Ice Man knelt on one knee in front of an apartment building that had caught fire due to a gas explosion, his hands pressed to the ground. Thin ice extending from his palms spread across the entire ruins at a visible speed.
“Cough… cough…”
A faint coughing sound came from deep within the ruins.
Iceman listened intently, trying to pinpoint the location. His hearing wasn't as exceptional as Homelander's, but ice—he could sense all vibrations within the ice's coverage area.
"There are people down there," he told the rescue team behind him. "There's a cavity in the northwest corner, about three meters deep."
The rescue team leader was a white man in his fifties, his uniform so stained with cigarette ash that its original color was unrecognizable. The old man looked at the man in ice and hesitated for a moment: "Sir, the load-bearing wall at that location is completely collapsed. If we act rashly..."
"I will hold on."
The ice man stood up, looked at that spot, opened his mouth wide, and sprayed cold air into the cracks in the wall, fixing them with thick, high-purity, transparent blue crystalline ice.
As long as he doesn't relinquish his power, even if another earthquake strikes, this pile of ruins won't collapse again.
Fifteen minutes later, the rescue team pulled six people out of the cavity.
An elderly man, two middle-aged men, and three children.
The youngest child looked to be less than two years old, and her mother had a steel bar piercing her back, from which she was bleeding profusely.
The man with the ice embraced his mother and touched her back with his fingertips, causing the woman to scream in pain.
But the wound had already frosted over and stopped bleeding.
.........
Manhattan. Hell's Kitchen.
The female warrior looked up and closed her eyes, and the area around her was exceptionally bright.
A ray of light cast upon her from the sky transformed into a transparent blade under her control.
She fired with pinpoint accuracy at the horde of monsters surrounding her.
First, several beams of light were used to firmly pin the monster's limbs to the ground to prevent the attack from missing.
After all, materializing "light" is an ability that consumes a great deal of the heroine's physical strength.
The cattle that were "nailed" struggled frantically, but the light blades holding them in place remained unmoved.
Then more light blades fell, and dozens of cattle died in an instant.
The light blades that cut and killed them shattered and scattered into specks of light in the air.
She turned to look at the National Guard officer who had just arrived. This veteran, who had spent his life firing rifles, was speechless with shock at the beautiful and brilliant kill.
"I am a heroine," said the woman of the Light, her voice calm.
"Where else around here are there lots of monsters?"
The officer quickly replied that he was originally going to the volunteer side, as his squad was blocked inside the building by seven or eight monsters, but now it seemed that with the Light Maiden, they were all superfluous.
"Come with me, it's over there."
.........
Queens.
Supernova gently lifted a wrecked MTA bus with both hands and placed it on the side of the road. The bus's body had been completely deformed by the impact of the beef cattle.
However, the area from the rear door to the rear of the vehicle remained relatively intact, where twelve passengers were huddled together, their legs trapped by the deformed seats.
"Don't move." Supernova crouched down, pinched the twisted car door frame with his fingers, and easily tore it open like paper. "Come out one by one, no rush."
The passengers filed out.
The last one to emerge was an elderly woman with white hair. Her leg was the most severely injured, with the flesh turned inside out, revealing the pale bones.
Supernova looked at the leg and frowned: "You need to... immediately."
"I know, young man," the old woman's voice was unexpectedly calm. "I'm seventy-three, I've lived long enough. Just get me out of here, don't worry about my legs."
Supernova paused for a second, then bent down and gently picked up the old lady.
His movements were very gentle, but the old lady still gasped in pain.
Supernova pushed off with his feet, and his whole body soared into the air.
He flew at top speed.
Collapsed buildings, overturned vehicles, and the remains of monsters swarmed beneath him.
He continued flying.
Upon arriving at the medical station, the medical staff took her and pushed her into the tent. Supernova stood outside the tent, watching the busy figures inside, and suddenly felt utterly useless.
He is a member of The Seven and one of the most powerful superheroes in the United States. He can punch through a tank, fly at supersonic speeds, and traverse the entire city of New York in minutes.
But he can't save everyone.
It can never be saved.
…………
Lower Manhattan.
Fifty-seven meters underground at Hudson Yards.
This is one of the largest civilian air-raid shelters in New York City, built during the Cold War. After all, New York is the largest city in the United States, and Manhattan is the central area of New York.
Even after the Soviet Union took over, this place was renovated and reinforced multiple times, and it can protect tens of thousands of people to survive safely for three months under nuclear attack.
At this moment, twelve thousand people are crammed into the air-raid shelter.
The elderly, children, pregnant women, people with disabilities… and tourists and commuters who couldn’t escape Manhattan in time. Some lay on the ground on cardboard, some sat against the walls, and many more were crammed into the aisles, with no room to even sit down.
The air was terrible. The stench of human sweat, blood, and excrement mingled together, creating an indescribable stench. But no one complained that it was a miracle they were even alive.
"Mom, I'm hungry."
A little girl tugged at her mother's clothes, her voice as weak as a kitten's meow.
The mother did not answer. It wasn't that she didn't want to answer, but that she didn't have the strength—a section of her left arm had been bitten off by the monster, and she had only received basic first aid and bandaging. Excessive blood loss had left her barely able to open her eyes.
A middle-aged man who didn't know her took out half a compressed biscuit, broke off a small piece, and handed it to the little girl: "Eat it, chew slowly."
The little girl took the cookie, but instead of eating it herself, she first brought it to her mother's mouth: "Mommy, eat."
Tears welled up in her mother's eyes.
Over the loudspeaker in the air-raid shelter, a National Guard liaison officer was reporting the situation outside in as steady a voice as possible:
"Citizens, please do not panic. Homelander and the other heroes of The Seven are clearing monsters from all districts. The Prometheus has entered the skies above Manhattan, and more support is on its way. Please remain calm, stay where you are, and await rescue."
The ground tremors became increasingly violent.
At first, people thought it was an illusion, but later the tremors became more and more frequent and obvious, and even the dust on the top of the air-raid shelter was shaken down.
"What's going on?" The crowd began to stir.
"Could it be an earthquake?"
"Where did the earthquake come from in New York? It's those monsters!"
"How could a monster cause such a huge tremor?"
Before he could finish speaking...
A loud bang.
The ceiling of the air-raid shelter collapsed.
No, it wasn't completely collapsed. Something smashed through the top of a section, creating a huge hole about ten meters in diameter. Concrete fragments, steel bars, and soundproofing material poured down from the hole like a waterfall. Dust filled the air.
Screams erupted.
People scattered and fled, but there was simply no room to run in the crowded air-raid shelter. Children were trampled, the elderly were shoved, and the entire air-raid shelter became a living hell.
Some of the dust has settled.
Someone looked up and saw that "thing".
That was a face.
No, that's not a face, that's a "mouth".
A gigantic maw, taking up half the size of a head and covered with spirally arranged barbs, was peering into the hole. The edges of the maw were dark gray skin, hairless, with visible black blood vessels writhing beneath.
It is in the "smell".
Its mouthparts, that spiral-shaped muscular esophagus, were contracting and expanding, as if savoring the taste of the air.
The smell of human flesh.
There are 12,000 people in the air-raid shelter.
This monster was originally just an ordinary beef cow in Lower Manhattan. But in the past few hours, because most of the people in Manhattan had taken refuge in this huge bomb shelter, there was almost no "food" left on the ground, and all the remaining monsters began to devour each other.
One eats ten, ten eat one hundred, one hundred eat one thousand.
Evolve. Devour. Evolve again. Devour again.
Ultimately, this "King of Monsters" was born.
Each time it devours something, its size, strength, sense of smell, and agility evolve in tandem, and after countless devours...
Its sense of smell.
Its nose, if those two rows of cracks can be called a nose, has evolved to the point that it can detect down to 57 meters underground. Before it, no beef cattle could do that.
It smelled it.
The taste of twelve thousand living people.
It started digging.
Because it had no hands, it used its enormous mouth to gnaw at the ground. Reinforced concrete was as fragile as biscuits in its mouth, each bite penetrating several meters deep. A few dozen seconds later, its maw had pierced the ceiling of the air-raid shelter.
Then, it started to "eat".
It's not cannibalism.
It is "inhale".
Its mouthparts resembled a giant industrial vacuum cleaner, taking a sharp breath into the air-raid shelter—air, along with the person standing directly below the entrance, was sucked into its spiral-shaped esophagus.
A dozen or so people.
The elderly, young people, and children.
The scream echoed in the esophagus for a few seconds before abruptly stopping.
The people in the air-raid shelter were completely devastated.
…………
Prometheus, command center.
On a giant holographic projection screen, a real-time battle map of the entire Manhattan area was displayed. Red dots represented monsters, while blue dots represented friendly units, including the National Guard, police, the Seven, and other superheroes.
In the center of the screen, a huge red dot was flashing wildly.