War Truck in the Apocalypse

Chapter 9: A Swaying Submarine

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation

Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

The wind howled, and Titan swayed. 

The winds of the thunderstorm that came suddenly were even more powerful than the ones with the thunderstorm during the apocalypse. They swept up the shattered stones and sent them against the truck, which created neverending rattling. 

No rain poured, but the power of the raging winds was already strong enough that Titan started showing signs of being on the verge of swaying. 

Shen Cong’s mind was wandering about Titan, and he could sense that whenever the shattered stones struck the external armor, a small amount of Activity would be depleted. Once there was no longer any Activity to resist the wind, the shattered stones that traveled at dozens of kilometers per hour would be able to destroy Titan’s 16 mm steel armor. 

Fortunately, the storm also brought a large amount of wandering Activity. Since Shen Cong’s mind was wandering inside Titan, he could sense that the incredibly thick Activity was swallowed by Titan so that it could replenish the depletion of it in the armor. 

He guided Titan in the process of absorbing the Activity so that it could compensate for the depleted one. 

As Shen Cong’s mind moved to and fro, it got more adept at it, and he could sense that as his mind led the Activity around, his willpower also became stronger. 

Activity did not have any sort of chemical reaction with his willpower, but it could improve his physical constitution, and he could become stronger, which would in turn provide support for a stronger mind, and it could stabilize the depletion of his willpower. 

Of course, Shen Cong could not constantly have his mind guide Titan in absorbing Activity. 

Three hours later, he had to move out of Titan and have his mind relax for a moment. 

Without Shen Cong’s mind guiding it, Titan could still maintain the process of absorbing and replenishing his Activity, but its speed was much slower than before. 

However, with the amount of Activity stored in Titan, it could last through ten hours of depletion. 

Shen Cong shut his eyes to rest. 

At some unknown point in time, the rattling sounds stopped, but the sky outside was still dark, and not a single bit of light could be seen. Shen Cong opened his eyes and brought out the Geiger counter to make a reading. The radiation levels had reached the levels of radiation during the apocalyptic storm. 

‘It seems like Activity has some form of connection with radiation? When radiation is high, the levels of Activity are also high.’

This was yet another guess that he could not verify. 

When he saw that the wind had already stopped raging, Shen Cong left the driver cab with the intention of going to the truck compartment to get some fanged wolf meat to eat. To preserve electricity, he only had one small car fridge in the truck, and it could not store a lot of items inside. 

That was why he always ate his food according to their expiration dates (by eating the ones with shorter shelf lives). He did not use salt to treat the fanged wolf meat or large-toothed rat meat, which meant that there was a limit to how long he could keep them before they went bad, and Shen Cong had been eating them as much as possible during this period of time. 

After all, he could quickly strengthen his Activity by eating their flesh. The amazing properties of Activity might serve as a protection that was second only to Titan when it came to helping him survive in the post-apocalyptic world. 

Just when he turned on the induction cooker, the clouds in the dark sky outside finally reached the point where they were about to pour.

Rain came down like a flood. There were no raindrops whatsoever. All that could be seen was a water curtain that rammed against the ground, and the loud splashes made it sound like waves hitting the shore. 

Shen Cong slid open the armor covering the window to the side and used his flashlight to illuminate the world outside.

Only the water curtain near him reflected the light in the dark world. 

This caused Shen Cong to feel incredibly speechless. A few hours ago, he had been searching for a water source with great risk for himself because he felt that the sand-covered world was severely lacking in a water source. He had never expected that an unexpected storm would suddenly overturn all that he had thought. 

There was no way he was lacking in water now. There was a flood outside. 

‘But I can’t guarantee that I can drink this water. The radiation level is too high, and it might be contaminated.’ After remembering the skyrocketing figures on the Geiger counter, Shen Cong shook his head. 

He cooked up a fanged wolf steak until it was medium raw, brought out a Minute Maid Orange which was close to its expiration date, and opened up half a bottle of chili sauce before he leaned against the compartment and slowly began to eat. 

Fanged wolf meat tasted like dog meat, but it was a little astringent. Even so, Shen Cong had been cooking for himself for six to seven years, so his cooking skills were really good. Hence, his meal was tasty. 

‘It’d be nice if I had a dog.’ 

While eating the fanged wolf meat, Shen Cong made the connection that fanged wolves might be the mutated form of mutts, and he immediately thought of the movie “I Am Legend”. 

He had rewatched it just yesterday night. 

Will Smith and his German Shepherd lived in the apocalypse together and faced loneliness as well as various mutated lifeforms together. Their situation was pretty similar to Shen Cong’s, but he did not have a dog. He only had Titan. 

*****

After eating the fanged wolf steak, it was still pouring outside. The water had already accumulated to the point that it submerged half of Titan’s tyres, but it was showing no sign of stopping. 

But since there was no wind and shattered stones around, Shen Cong did not need to continue maintaining Titan’s act of absorbing Activity. 

He opened his laptop, but did not choose to play a game. Instead, he inserted a USB and opened up the folder inside. Then, he chose a word document named Complete Information Regarding Radios and started reading it. 

Shen Cong was not the only one who thought about how he should face the apocalypse and how he should make preparations for it. Some governments had also thought about how they should face it. For example, Norway had built an apocalypse granary to store a large number of seeds. Shen Cong did not have the ability to store seeds, but aside from accumulating a large number of necessary living supplies, he also accumulated a large amount of knowledge. 

The knowledge about various professions was categorized and stored into more than three hundred USB drives and more than fifty harddisks. He had downloaded all of it from e-libraries. 

And along with them were a large amount of movies, novels, games, songs, and even some action romance films. 

Only people who suffered from mental illnesses like him would do something as boring as store information regarding the apocalypse while the world was at peace. 

In truth, Shen Cong had done something even more stupid, and that was storing dozens of s*x dolls of different sizes and models. He had even used one of them a few times…

The information in the document was written in great detail, and all the literary works regarding radios were fully typed out in it. 

Shen Cong intended to read about radios once more. 

First, he wanted to modify his 15A radar and change it into a living object that could scan the underground. Second, he wanted to upgrade the radio installed in the truck to increase its search power. He wanted to see whether he could discover any signals sent out by survivors. 

If he were to compare contacting survivors face to face and using a radio, Shen Cong would prefer using a radio. 

It was less dangerous.

*****

Pitter patter. 

The mechanical watch showed that the time was 23:46, and the date was the 9th of July, 2022. It was now night time. 

Shen Cong rubbed his dry eyes and got up to open a sunroof. Then, he used a flashlight to shine a light at the world through the glass so that he could learn about what was going on outside. 

The storm had not weakened in the slightest. 

The water had already submerged half of the tyres, and it was now about 1 m deep. Titan’s undercarriage was in the water. Fortunately, the truck had been modified into an airtight space, and the air vents to the side and the top would not leak for the time being. 

‘I wonder how long this rain will last.’

Once Shen Cong checked the situation of the truck, he used a wet cloth to wipe his face, laid down on the bed in a small cubicle, and slept. 

That night, he had a dream. He was a baby, and he lay in a cradle. His mother sat beside him and rocked the cradle gently. An emotion known as happiness filled his heart, and it was something he had not experienced for seven or eight years. 

BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!

Shen Cong was woken up from his dream by the alarm clock. Then, he came to a swift realization that he was trapped in a post-apocalyptic world. 

He rubbed his smooth head. ‘My head’s a little dizzy. It feels as if the world is spinning…

‘No! That’s wrong!’ Fear quickly filled Shen Cong’s heart. He noticed that he was not feeling dizzy, but Titan was swaying.

‘Something happened!’

He sat up to get down from bed. When he went to place his feet on the floor to put on his shoes, he found himself stepping on water. 

Titan was leaking!

And the water was already 10 cm deep!

‘Why is it leaking?!’

Shen Cong could no longer care about finding out where exactly his shoes had floated. He lowered his feet into the water, got up, left the cubicle, and looked around the truck compartment. He quickly noticed that water was flowing in from the air vent on the side. 

In a panic, he slid open the armor covering the window to the side. Then, he saw that at some unknown point in time, water had reached the height of his window, and if he were to make calculations based on that, only Titan’s roof had yet to be submerged. 

Slap!

Shen Cong opened the sunroof above him. He could no longer be bothered about the rain pouring on his head. He bit down on the flashlight and climbed to the roof. 

Rain struck his face, and in an instant, he was drenched. The cold penetrated his skin, but what caused an even greater chill was that wherever he directed his flashlight, all he could see was an ocean. It was as if the entire world had been submerged by rainwater, and it was reduced to only darkness. 

At that moment, it was already six, almost seven in the morning, but the sky was still dark. The earth and sky were one and could not be separated from each other. 

The raging rain whirled about and knocked Titan so fiercely that it swayed. 

The heavy truck that weighed thirty tons might not have started floating yet, but it was like a toy that could be flushed away by a current.

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‘How could this be?!’

For a moment, Shen Cong did not know what he should do. Titan was not a submarine. It could not survive underwater. 

At that moment…

“Roar!”

At a spot in the distance too far away to see, a creature Shen Cong could not name growled in a deep voice. The sound was so ghastly that it was terrifying.