Hearing the description of his colleagues, Hayes imagined a fortress with a towering wall and a towering fortress full of shooting holes and shooting towers in his mind.
"Tsk tsk tsk, it's really an old fox, what about the farmers in his territory?"
The company commander spat on the ground and whispered:
"Do you think these old dogs will care? He took some in, but they were all skilled, and those ordinary farmers... When we arrived, there were corpses everywhere outside the manor, and the river was filled with floating corpses. It's so miserable."
After hearing this, Hayes sighed lightly, but he had never seen such things before. The essence of the empire is no different, whether it is a dark and cramped nest or a pleasant pastoral countryside.
When he was silent, the company commander sighed:
"My father said that when fighting, human life is worse than a bug."
At this time, the convoy gradually approached the safety zone. It was originally a town with a permanent population of more than 3,000, but now it was completely impossible to see its original form. The farmland and forests around the town disappeared, replaced by a large number of pickets, barbed wire and trenches. Only four main roads could enter the town. The temporary bunkers piled up with sandbags, wooden stakes and stones formed a solid line of defense. On dozens of towering watchtowers, sentries were always monitoring. The searchlights were turned off but at night, all night would illuminate the various places. There were servos skulls patrolling in the sky, and on the ground, you could also see hunting soldiers like large beasts patrolling among the trenches like hunting dogs.
Only such a strictly guarded strategy can ensure that gene stealers cannot penetrate into the town.
The center of the town is now a temporary airport, and all buildings have been pushed down for transport ships to take off and land. The continuous roar in the sky proves the busyness here. The 73rd Regiment of the 13th Division of Kermansha is located on the east side of the town.
However, when the convoy entered the main road leading to the town, the road became crowded. The temporary road with a width of 15 meters was already crowded by various vehicles and personnel, and even more than that. It was also mixed with a large number of livestock and animals that Hays had never seen before. The soldiers responsible for road order shouted at the top of their lungs on the side of the road, shaking the baton in their hands, trying to move the road a little.
“What’s the situation…”
Hayes stretched out his head and looked out for a while, but he couldn't see clearly what was going on. He only knew that the crowds were crowded. Although many civilians who helped the elderly and the young on both sides of the road were lucky enough to survive the poison of gene stealers, they were not so lucky to wait for their fate. After all, they lost their homes and most of their property. Many people could be said to be running around day and night in order to arrive at the safe area, and they had to avoid gene stealers. They had not eaten for several days and could only sit in the curb and mud in despair. Some people fell to the ground and did not look even with a trace of sympathy.
During the war, no one cares about anyone.
Although this kind of civilians who spontaneously rushed from dangerous areas to safe areas are not many in terms of proportion, the absolute number is extremely large. It is not that the commanders of the auxiliary army are cold-blooded, but that there are too many people. The limited vehicles cannot attract many people at all. They can only focus on saving key figures. The only support for civilians is to establish temporary positions at key points in traffic to block the large-scale pursuit of gene thieves for them, and use landmines and incendiary bombs to build isolation belts to increase their chances of survival. But even so, many civilians died in the wilderness, or were caught or even killed by infiltrated gene thieves.
There are even many gene stealers hidden among the civilians who fled, so that the most dangerous thing in the world is the bald head. As long as you see the bald head, both civilians and soldiers will attack immediately.
However, the combat effectiveness and discipline shown by the auxiliary army still gave local civilians a lot of confidence, allowing them to take risks to rush to the safe zone.
But escaping, no matter where you are placed on any planet, is a cruel topic.
Not to mention those serfs who are hungry and full on weekdays, or the few self-cultivators and small handicraftsmen who can only barely afford food and clothing, the pastoral scenery is indeed more beautiful than the steel nest, but it also means that its risk resistance is worse than that of the nest.
Hayes glanced around and saw many dry and thin figures wearing only a piece of rag on their bodies kneeling on the ground, their heads lowered to the point of touching the ground, and their hands made a gesture of holding hands. This is the most common "prayer" gesture in the state religion. When the priests see this posture, they will symbolically distribute a piece of dry and hard holy cake.
But at this time, let alone the Holy Bread, even the priests were nervous and hurried, carrying large and small bags and trying hard to move forward.
Some people also had no strength to kneel, so they simply lay on the ground, raised their hands weakly, their cracked lips trembled and mechanically repeated the words...
"Give me some stutter... dear kind people..."
Of course, there were also people trying to maintain a difficult survival. Hayes saw the family carefully surrounding them. They poured water into the dust on the ground. Then the man with a bandage on his head carefully took out a fist-sized bag with his trembling hands and poured half of the precious powder into the mud and water to stir. Hayes knew what it was and mixed it with the soil and food.
He has eaten this kind of thing and is called mud cake.
Suddenly he saw a staggering figure.
It was a woman, covered in muddy body, her hair was scattered, she only had a coarse cloth dress on her body, her face was thin, yellow and black, as if it was woodcut, only the eyes or a round, which could also indicate that she was a living creature. She was holding a swaddle in her arms, and kept murmuring to the passing people:
"Save my son...please...save my son...please..."
But Hayes could see that the baby inside the arm that had been dry like a string exposed in the cradle was probably dead for a long time, and those passing by were also avoiding this crazy woman.
Hayes felt uncomfortable when he saw it, but he didn't know what he should do or what he could do, so he could only withdraw his gaze and close his eyes and lean on the seat.
"It's so sad that I don't know how to place these people from above."
Just as these questions kept circling in his mind
"uncle."
Suddenly, he heard Xiao Feidun pat his shoulder behind him, opened his eyes and said:
"What's wrong."
"What are you doing over there?"
Hayes looked in the direction that Xiao Feidun pointed, and found a small shed built up on the barbed wire on the left side of the road. A man in a clean robe stood beside him and shouted loudly. There were two strong bodyguards beside him. There were a group of boys and girls kneeling in the shed, ranging from 4 to 13 years old, and there were more than a dozen people, all covered in dirty bodies, with marks of whipping on their skin, shackles on their feet, and a straw stuck in their heads.
Chapter completed!