"Who will wake up first?" Bai Mu quickly checked the car's contents. He couldn't find powerful equipment like rocket launchers in the trunk, only some ammunition, not much.
Therefore, the best course of action at this point was to simply drive away, regardless of whether it was the sewer corpses or Matt and the others.
Bai Mu confirmed that there were fewer than ten distorted silhouettes, meaning that not all of the Sewer Eleven 'Silly Birds' could return, and those who didn't return were most likely dead in the alternate dream.
His absence seemed to be fine, but was it really safe to wander aimlessly through the sewers of this world?
There were tentacle monsters here; if he went elsewhere, he'd likely encounter other monsters. Bai Mu didn't know where the exit was.
Like a hamster, he packed up everything he thought was valuable from the car. Before leaving the alternate dream, Bai Mu had already searched some hidden compartments in the car along the way, saving a lot of time now.
He also gathered some grenades from the car and quickly went to the sewer corpses, strapping them to the monstrous-looking body.
Touching the black mist, Bai Mu felt as if he had touched boiling water, and fine blood spots appeared on his skin.
Without wasting time, he quickly completed the binding, wrapping the wire connected to the pull ring around the sewer corpse's arm. If this thing remained in the corpse's state, it could be used to disarm the grenades if discovered later.
If this thing really came back to life, any sudden movement of the arm would pull off the grenade pull ring, thus sending this suspected zombie-like monster to its end.
"What happens if a zombie gets vaccinated?" Bai Mu thought of Wilford, who had been vaccinated beforehand. It seemed that even without infection, vaccination wouldn't cause any problems and could even prevent infection.
So… Bai Mu pushed a vial of vaccine into the sewer corpse. Although the enhancement potion required vaccine preparation, that was only Wilford's side of the story; whether it was true or not wasn't certain.
He already had a box that could potentially change the world; using a vial of vaccine was fine.
The corpses in the sewers were still twitching slightly. Bai Mu glanced at the car, placed a flashlight on the ground, and the beam from the flashlight, combined with the car headlights, revealed most of the information, with the sewer corpses being the most conspicuous.
A few minutes later, the distorted humanoid outlines took shape first, and screams echoed through the sewers.
"Damn it—what's going on!?" Matt convulsed, his clothes tattered as if burned, his skin covered in dark red scars.
Not only him, but all the scavengers who had returned from the dream were in the same boat; they didn't have a single intact piece of clothing. And unlike in movies, where the few pieces of clothing were there only to avoid censorship…
their clothes were randomly torn, more like performance art than anything else. However, the areas without clothing were covered in scars and blisters, and even though they were muscular men, even a gay man would find them unappealing.
The scars on their skin were relatively minor. Bai Mu, observing from the shadows, noticed that Matt and the others' hands were more severely damaged, as if soaked in sulfuric acid. Even so, they could still move normally; the virus enhancement seemed to be working well?
Five members of the seven-man group returned. The three, including the gambler, had more severe corrosion marks on their backs, exposing the bone. Their hand injuries were similar to Matt's.
The remaining two were zombies. Zombies also had similar corrosion marks, but these only affected the surface skin, and their hands were intact, not appearing as severely damaged.
Bai Mu observed the wounds and made a guess: the skin corrosion was likely caused by their clothing. Areas not covered by clothing were normal skin.
Bai Mu looked at himself; his clothes were intact, and he even had his car from the alternate dream. He had returned more than ten minutes earlier than Matt and the others.
His guess stemmed from the fact that while Matt and the others had large areas of corrosion, many things had also exploded around them.
These were like items formed from the mist that couldn't integrate into his body after he left the alternate dream.
Matt and the others didn't see the fog condensing around him, but items still appeared, though most of them were broken. Even so, Bai Mu saw incomplete gold nuggets, jewelry, severely damaged gun parts, bullets, snacks, and other items around the gamblers.
Matt and Buddy had some, but not as many as the gamblers.
There were also some black fragments on the ground near them, similar to the grayish-white fragments in Bai Mu's hand.
The most noteworthy items were those belonging to Gunner Eller; Bai Mu saw a complete handgun, his hand holding it intact, and a vial of vaccine lying on the ground—probably the 'breakup fee' from Thorn.
Finally, there were the two zombies. There was almost nothing around them, except for rags; Bai Mu didn't see any black fragments, perhaps because they weren't there, or perhaps the light was too dim for him to see them.
The zombies ignored pain and death; the screams of the others became their lure. Two zombies lunged at the nearest person.
The two people next to the gamblers, still in agony, were tackled to the ground. Their back wounds were the most severe, rendering them almost immobile. As they were pinned down by the zombies, their backs hitting the sewer floor, they let out even more agonizing screams.
Bang! Bang!
Two gunshots rang out, and the heads of two zombies were smashed open, collapsing limply to the ground.
The two men, torn apart by the zombies, convulsed. More unbearable than the pain of being bitten was the agony of their backs being rubbed raw against the ground as if they had been splashed with sulfuric acid.
"Kill, kill me!" the scavenger cried out, looking pleadingly at the staggering Eller.
Eller, using the beam of his flashlight to assess the surroundings, his pupils contracted sharply. Without hesitation, he fired, ending the two scavengers' suffering.
Then, he warily eyed the corpse in the sewer; its eyes were open.
"That corpse is turning into a zombie too!?" the gambler's voice was hoarse, as if the pain of being skinned alive was driving him mad. The only consolation was the scattered pieces of broken jewelry and gold around him…
What drove him even more insane was the excruciating pain in his testicles, a pain that even surpassed the agony in his back.
They were riding their bicycles perfectly fine and had even spotted other survivors, so why did they suddenly end up back in this damned sewer?
They'd collected a mountain of valuables, so why were they reduced to these mere fragments? The scattered pieces of valuables weren't even worth as much as a single backpack from their Seven Rich Men.
"Maybe the Dream has gone out of control?" Eller wasn't sure. He didn't know much about Dreams, but the risk of them going out of control wasn't a secret.
"Then we'd better run! That car..." The gambler saw the car still running in the sewer and showed a hint of surprise. How could there be such a thing?
"Too late." Eller shook his head, enduring the pain, and cautiously retreated.
Matt, no longer able to curse, quickly ran over.
The sewer zombie 'Torn' opened its eyes, its body convulsing as if electrocuted, its flesh slowly rotting away.
Matt and the others were panicked, but not desperate. Through the light, they saw the grenades strapped to the bodies in the sewers!
Some of them had returned earlier and were prepared.
(End of Chapter)