WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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Chapter 156: A Bridge Too Far (4)

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Time passed. The situation remained the same. 「Survival Instinct」 offered no 「Insight」 at all, despite both being on the threshold of the realm of genius. Gyeoul considered raising the grade, but he remembered this had happened before. He decided to hold off for now. It seemed better to leave some room to spare. He might end up having to break through head-on. If that happened, he would regret lacking even a single grade in a combat skill.

"We're out of water too."

The voice was still gloomy. Tan Guosheng turned his canteen upside down and shook it. Only a few drops came out. They had been consuming a lot up to now, so apparently even a full canteen had not been enough. All the crying probably made it worse. He had cried until his tear ducts ran dry.

They happened to be sitting on a water tower. After looking around, he spotted a hatch. It was not locked. He approached and opened it. After shining his flashlight inside, he grimaced.

"Fuck..."

A foul odor drifted out. The water had not been changed in a long time. If it had been sealed shut, it might still have been all right. The water supplied to cities contained trace amounts of chlorine. But the tank had a ventilation system. As the chlorine dissipated, the remaining water became ideal for rotting.

Gyeoul stepped closer and held out his canteen to the officer. Tan Guosheng shook his head with a sigh.

"Keep that for your share. It's my fault for gulping mine down."

Gyeoul did not press him a second time. He only regretted that they had no purification tablets. He examined the inside of the tank. It was filled to just below the full line. Under the insufficient light, the black water looked like a stagnant abyss.

Could they break the tank and create confusion? The thought was crude, but another followed right after it. With this much water, it would be enough to shallowly flood the entire rooftop and still have some left over. Only briefly, but still.

"Lieutenant Colonel. I have a plan."

"A plan? What kind?"

"Look."

Gyeoul pointed to the row of solar panels lined up in the distance. More precisely, to the equipment room among them.

"All the wiring is concentrated there. There should be transformers and storage batteries inside. If we can somehow break the tank here and pour the water out..."

"Ah! You mean to electrocute those plague ghosts to death?"

A ground-fault circuit interrupter was often useless against discharge caused by flooding. And batteries usually did not even have that much protection.

At the shout, raised in sudden realization, the hungry things below stirred for a moment. Tan Guosheng flinched and watched the direction of the ladder. There was no sign of anything climbing up. If it were a Beta Ghoul, the height was low enough for it to leap up and hang on in an instant, but the attack would surely wait for darkness. They understood humans.

Gyeoul and the officer exchanged their thoughts in low voices. The officer raised an objection.

"But equipment installed in a place like this usually has its core functions raised off the ground, doesn't it? Even our base had minimum standards. Things built to withstand the wind and rain outdoors. Just look at that equipment room. They didn't raise the foundation. Assuming my guess is correct, if we want a short circuit to happen, the water level would need to reach at least a handspan for it to be certain. Americans sue over trivial things. Even if we dump all the water in here, I don't think it'll be enough..."

"If flooding isn't enough, then in the end I'll have to go over there myself and cut the wires."

"No, that's too reckless..."

"I don't think there's a better way. Lieutenant Colonel Tan, all you have to do is cover me. I can't put the person I'm escorting in danger. If you have another suggestion, I'll follow it."

After a single sigh, the officer slowly gave in.

First they had to confirm how durable the tank was. How thick was it? Gyeoul gripped the crowbar tightly. He lifted it high and brought it down with all his strength. It struck with a crack, sending plastic fragments flying. The blade of the pry bar sank all the way in. When he twisted the handle, cracks spread through the insulation to both sides.

After pulling it out, he struck again. This time it rang against metal. Once the plastic and insulation were peeled away, the inside proved to be stainless steel. Tan Guosheng put his hand into the torn gap and looked flustered. All of his spread fingers fit inside. Even without counting the steel plate, it was thick enough to stop most gunfire.

"Five millimeters of stainless steel and half a handspan of plastic. How are we supposed to break this?"

There was no point tearing at it from above. They had to break the side, lower down. It would also be difficult to climb into the tank and use force there. Even for Gyeoul, punching through steel plate by brute strength underwater was no easy matter.

"For now, I think we'd better try shooting the drainpipe on the outside."

At Gyeoul's suggestion, the officer reacted negatively.

"If it's a pipe built to withstand this much water pressure, they probably used cast iron with high tensile strength..."

Then he shook his head hard.

"No, damn it. We have to try it first and decide after. Which side is the drainpipe on?"

Approaching the edge was dangerous. Setting thrown objects aside, a ghoul might leap up and grab an ankle. Once again Gyeoul stepped forward. Tan Guosheng did not apologize.

The things below raised a clamor at the sight of the boy. The drainpipe was easy to find. Dodging the projectiles they hurled, he lined up his sights. Near the place he was aiming, the mutants raised their arms to protect their vital points and scattered. One of them even used a door dragged from somewhere as a shield.

He fired in short three-round bursts. The shots hammered against the metal, throwing off sparks. Ricocheting bullets struck a nearby mutant. The creature coughed up blood and collapsed, staring as if it could not understand its own death. It fell and gasped with a wronged look on its face. Blood spurted from the hole in its chest. The stream was longer than a human's because its blood pressure was higher.

The thick pipe itself was left with only shallow scratches.

Gyeoul withdrew for the moment. The watching officer pressed him.

"How did it go?"

"It failed. If we had more ammunition, I'd try shooting it a while longer, but..."

It was hard to judge how much more it would take. The magazine in place was already feeling light. After counting the ammunition he had left, Tan Guosheng muttered a curse under his breath.

"I'm not confident, but I suppose I have to calculate it. How wide did the pipe look?"

"It seemed to be at least ten centimeters across. About twelve, I think."

"Twelve centimeters? That's thick. Then how large do you think this water tank we're standing on is?"

He seemed to be trying to calculate the pressure applied to the drainpipe, then use that to work backward and estimate the thickness and strength the pipe would require. There was a water-depth gauge inside the hatch. If they estimated the width and length of the tank by eye, then multiplied those by the gauge reading, they could get the volume of water. It would not take long to derive mass from volume.

The mental arithmetic that followed must have been complicated, because the Lieutenant Colonel drew his bayonet. He carved numbers into the outer surface of the tank beneath his feet. The scraping grew more and more complex. Watching him, Gyeoul felt that he truly was an officer from a technical branch. As a navy man, it was hardly strange that he would know a great deal about steel built to endure water pressure.

The calculation ended. The Lieutenant Colonel stabbed the blade into the answer to the equation. He sounded irritable.

"No good. It's probably almost two centimeters thick. We can't punch through this with rifle fire."

Rifle was the Chinese-style term Tan Guosheng used for this kind of gun.

Gyeoul asked a question.

"Would it still be difficult even if we put several shots into the same spot?"

"To begin with, the surface is curved, and the water and pressure inside will absorb the impact. We should think of it as being about as tough as a decent armored vehicle. It might be different if we had armor-piercing rounds. As it stands, even if we poured every bullet we have left into it, it still might not work."

Bullets were divided by purpose. Armor-piercing rounds had high penetration. They were avoided when dealing with mutants, because they tended to punch clean through. Or even when they did not pass through, the wound was small. That was why ordinary rounds, which broke apart or started to flatten as soon as they hit, were better for killing mutants.

That was also why Gyeoul and Tan Guosheng had only ordinary rounds with them right now.

There was one more problem. The distance was much too short. In Gyeoul's experience, a bullet needed considerable distance for its penetration power to peak. At least a hundred meters. At shorter distances, too much force remained in the projectile, making it easier to break apart.

"Li, how many grenades do you have?"

"Only one. What about you, Lieutenant Colonel Tan?"

"Only one for me too. Damn it, nothing's working."

A grenade's killing power came from its fragments. That made it hard to destroy a pipe or a water tank with one.

"No, an underwater explosion might have a chance. If we tie the two together and detonate them inside..."

As he spoke, Tan Guosheng's voice gradually turned into a monologue. How much TNT was there in a grenade again? One hundred ten grams? Or was it less in the newer models? Muttering to himself, he drew his bayonet and added several more lines of calculation.

Gyeoul knew the principle he was considering as well. An explosion underwater was different from one in the air. In a medium with greater density, the blast radius shrank and the force increased. In addition, the repeated expansion and contraction produced multiple shocks within a narrow range.

The calculation did not take long.

Gyeoul handed Tan Guosheng his grenade. He untied the restraining cord and bound the two different grenades together into one. Then he pulled a little of the remaining cord free and looked around for something to use as a weight. Fortunately, the mutants had helped. Among the junk they had thrown earlier was a broken chunk of brick.

That completed the preparations. But Tan Guosheng only grew less confident.

"Hey, Li. Are we really doing the right thing?"

"We don't have another way."

"Sorry, but I'm not sure my calculations are right. They were sloppy in all kinds of ways! Two might not be enough, or this might just be a waste! The crack might be too small! It almost seems like it would be better to blow them up over those bastards' heads and fight with the bullets we have left..."

The hesitation born of fear did not end there.

"And even if it works, what comes after is the problem. Will the storage batteries even be working? And if they are, will they have enough charge? What about the transformers? No one has touched any of this for more than a year."

"It'll be fine. The emergency power was running indoors."

America had cut off electricity and gas to the contaminated zone long ago, out of concern for accidents. That meant the emergency power would be connected to the building's own power system. As far as Gyeoul could tell, there was no power source here other than the solar panels.

There might be a separate emergency generator, but by this point there was no way it still had fuel left.

Gyeoul held out his hand.

"Give it to me."

With a sigh, Tan Guosheng handed over the brick and grenades. Gyeoul asked the officer to keep watch for a moment, then knelt beside the hatch. He pulled the pins from both grenades. He had to release the pair at the same time. Three, two, one. The levers snapped free. With his enhanced hearing, he could hear the fuses burning down.

Then he hurled the weighted grenades toward the water's surface near the inner wall. Hard. Dirty water splashed all the way to the ceiling. Gyeoul quickly withdrew. Then again. Three, two, one.

The blast boomed like thunder.

At the moment of the explosion, the corner of the water tower blurred, like a photograph shaken out of focus. The vibration was that strong. The naval officer nearly lost his footing. After the roar died away, the furious sound of rushing water followed.

Standing at the edge, Gyeoul checked the flow.

It worked.

"We succeeded!"

"Really?"

Tan Guosheng brightened.

Gyeoul had worried that if the water only trickled out, it would all drain away through the outlets. But this would do. One of the panels forming the tank wall had been torn away completely. The edge of the dangling reinforcement was rusted through. It had not been visible at first.

The torrent swept the mutants away. One of them happened to be floundering near the eastern drain. Gyeoul aimed at its head and fired a short burst. Its forehead shattered, and it convulsed. One of the paths for the water to drain away was blocked.

The flooding was instantaneous. The mutants were like a startled herd of beasts.

But there was still no sign of electrocution.

There was more than one drain, and before long all the water would be gone.

"Lieutenant Colonel Tan! Please provide suppressive fire to the front!"

"What? You're going now?! It might only be delayed!"

"It's a risk we have to take! As soon as the firing ends, I'll jump down!"

Gyeoul sprayed bullets as well. Rather than killing them one by one with precision, his aim was to spread a curtain of fire over a wide area and force them to keep their heads down. The monsters shaped like humans scattered away from the line of fire. They crouched, hid, and took cover. There was no fear in them. According to what 「Insight」 conveyed, the beasts were waiting for the humans to run out of ammunition.

Good. Including the area the torrent had scattered them across, there was now a gap worth trying to run through.

Gyeoul tossed away the empty magazine and jumped down.

"I'm going! Cover me!"

---

Author’s Note

#157

The next part will be up within 10 minutes...

Footnotes:

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