Zombie Apocalypse: Creation-Chapter 758: Autumn Draft and Promises
"Why is it so cold all of a sudden?"
Xiaoyun murmured as a breeze blew right over him. Looking up in the sky, the sun was completely blocked by the clouds.
Back inside the car, he immediately changed the temperature as he inserted the key and drove out of the parking lot.
"I guess it is fall already... Just a few days before the mid-autumn festival."
After driving for a few minutes, he was back in the logistics office, with Houqin sitting alone in her seat.
"Morning."
"Morning... You came here so early today."
"I just wanted to see you."
The attempt at romance fails completely as Houqin didn’t look back at him a single time, her eyes stared towards a piece of paper with an uneasy face.
"Ahem, Houqin, I need you to help me with something."
"Commander, you need to take a look at this first."
As Houqin handed the paper over to Xiaoyun, he was a little intrigued by what was inside that was causing her to interrupt him.
The first thing he saw was the word classified, written at the very top, with Yezi’s name right at the very bottom.
"When did he send a letter back?"
"It just arrived this morning."
Reading the letter that Yezi had written, Xiaoyun’s eyes soon widened in shock as he couldn’t believe the request he had made.
It was a request asking for permission to draft people forcefully. Not just any people, but the people they rescued along their way towards Yanfu city.
"What is he thinking? Forced enlistment? There’s no way I’m permitting him to do this."
After reading the entire thing, Xiaoyun still rejected the reasoning that Yezi had provided as he handed the paper back over to Houqin.
"Are you sure, commander? I think General Yezi’s request is somewhat reasonable..."
"Reasonable? How would you feel if you had been barely surviving in a city full of zombies and then were forced to turn around to fight them?"
"But it has been two years at this point. Anyone who’s still out there is more than equipped to know how to fight the zombies."
Houqin’s reasoning caught Xiaoyun a little offguard as it wasn’t a part of the reasoning Yezi had provided.
Still, he wasn’t about to change his mind.
"If they wanted to join, they could volunteer for the army. The fact that he’s requesting a forced enlistment implies those people don’t want to join."
This time, Houqin didn’t speak back as Xiaoyun continued with his rambling against Yezi’s reasoning.
"Even if those survivors can provide critical info about the area that Yezi managed to rescue them out of, there’s still no need to put them into a combat role.
Yezi could have just requested those survivors to tell them or act as a guide. I ain’t about to ruin our reputation over such a small thing."
Seeing Houqin choosing to stay silent, Xiaoyun quickly created a piece of paper before writing down a rejection letter to shut down Yezi’s idea.
"There’s no emergency or dire challenges we are facing, which makes him think I’m giving him the ability to draft civilians out of their consent?
Houqin, if we accept this, it would be a disaster. I really hope you can understand we’re literally giving away our power to enlist soldiers over to the Generals."
"Okay..."
The serious look on his face made Houqin quickly nod her head in agreement, as she began to realize the drawback to Yezi’s idea.
"Make sure you always think with your head, okay? Don’t just accept whatever request they throw at you."
As Houqin nodded her head again, Xiaoyun finally handed her the rejection letter for her to deliver.
"Send this back over to Yezi."
"Yes, sir!"
Watching her leave the office with the letter, Xiaoyun froze as his brain seemed to have forgotten something.
"Why did I come here early today... Oh, right, the Hunan issue. Dang it, I just sent her out of the room."
After waiting in the room for five minutes, Houqin finally came back as she took a seat at her usual spot.
"Ahem, Houqin. I need you to help me with something."
"What is it, commander?"
"Do you remember I made a promise to bring those civilians living in Hunan back over here at all costs?"
"Um... I think I do. You said that like last month, right? To those soldiers under General Yiming?"
"Yep. And Yuqi just reminded me about it this morning... I was wondering if you could come up with a plan for me." 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺
"Me?"
Houqin’s face looked a little surprised, as she couldn’t tell why Xiaoyun would request her help when he could very well do a better job than she.
"Yes, you. I trust you can do a much better job than whatever I can come up with. I can’t manage hundreds of thousands of people moving over."
As she sat there in silence, Xiaoyun spoke up again to attempt to persuade her to take up the job offering.
"You have the entire reserve and all the other units that aren’t busy to assist you. You don’t need to go out of the city by yourself."
"I guess I can do it. But wouldn’t it be better for Miss Yuqi do this? She had managed moving people over in the past."
"Well... Hunan is still a combat zone. It would be pretty dangerous to have unarmed civil workers to facilitate moving them over here."
Seeing her starting to be convinced to take the job, Xiaoyun added one last reason to push her over the edge.
"Here, if you do need to go outside of the cities to examine the situation on the ground more closely, I’ll go with you."
"You sure? Aren’t you busy most of the time?" Houqin questioned.
"Yuqi can deal with most of the administrative stuff. We just need to get them over to here first before those men in Jiangxi decide to do something."
"Okay... I’ll start preparing a plan for this."
"Let me help you as well. I’ve got nothing else better to do right now. I’m free for the entire day."
---
After working through the entire morning with Houqin, the two of them had a rough draft of how to move the Hunan population over.
The plan was surprisingly simple.
They were just going to disguise soldiers as traders and ’security’ guards and send them across the border in small batches.
The job of the traders was to ’buy’ as many people out as possible without alarming the soldiers who were most likely stationed in Changsha.
"Commander, you sure this is a good idea?" Houqin questioned, her face filled with doubt as she barely had the chance to give input.
"The simpler the plan, the better. We can change along the way if there’s any problem with it."
Xiaoyun paused for a second, then instinctively patted her on the shoulder.
"For now, just get the initial stage up and running first. The longer we take, the more likely the Jiangxi soldiers are to change the status quo."
"I’ll start calling up the reservists."
Just as Houqin was about to use her desk phone, Xiaoyun’s brain suddenly remembered something.
"Oh, one last thing. You don’t have to worry about funding. I’ll go convince Yuqi to agree to the project expenditure."
"Okay..."
---
Back out in the hallway...
"Hello?"
"Yuqi, I already finished making the plan to evacuate the civilians out of Hunan. But there’s one last thing I need to ask you about."
"What is it?"
"I need you to approve... around fifty million credits on this project. And you’ll need to allocate more to settle them after we move those people."
"That’s fine. We have plenty of room over in Dongguan and Shenzhen... Is there anything else I need to know about?"
Hearing Yuqi’s calm sound, Xiaoyun was taken aback a little. Still, he continued with the conversation.
"Houqin will print over the copy of the plan to you later, and we’re going to do a test run before we do it in mass."
"You aren’t going to test it out yourself, right?" Yuqi questioned as her voice finally changed a little.
"Of course not. The soldiers are going to be the ones doing it. I’m not going anywhere out of Guangdong."
"You better."
As Xiaoyun hung up the phone on his side, he let out a small sigh of relief, as the biggest worry was now out of the way.
He was really afraid that Yuqi was going to reject the budget needed for the plan, forcing him to somehow make up for the shortfall himself.
"Thank god she’s being a reasonable woman for once..."
"What woman?"
As Yueyue’s voice suddenly appeared behind Xiaoyun, he quickly turned around to see her standing right around the hallway corner.
"I’m just talking about Yuqi... Ahem, why are you here today? You’re going to see Houqin?" Xiaoyun asked.
"Yeah. I’m coming over to talk about her phone... Several of my aids noticed the calls within the logistics office aren’t encrypted."
