On February 22, the team of the umbrella company completed the assembly outside the small town of Roberta.

Colonel William's squad of soldiers, Glenn, Darryl, Moore, Aggie, T-Tsai, and the latest addition to the Woodbury militia, the 7 squads combined with more than 200 combatants, plus the support staff in charge of logistics, this time Lyon mobilized a total of more than 350 people to come here.

At their current size, that's pretty much all the forces that the Umbrella Corporation is able to mobilize at the moment.

As a former executive, Leon had never commanded a battle of this level, and there was no choice but to pull the various squad leaders under him together to form a temporary staff department, appoint Colonel William, the only one with experience in large-scale operations, as chief of staff, and convene an operational meeting on the first day of arriving at his destination.

After the meeting began, Leon made an official statement on the role and significance of the war before he spoke:

"Our goal this time is to wipe out the mutant corpses near the nuclear power plant, but not to destroy the nuclear power plant itself."

"Around these two points, people can speak freely."

Colonel William was still the same serious and conservative officer, and after the battle meeting began, he waited for Leon to finish speaking, and without politeness, he immediately stood up and said in a loud voice:

"Ladies and gentlemen, after the detailed investigation of our scouts, the number of corpses near the nuclear power plant is about 42,000, and the number of our fighters is about 200, which means that this time, we will face more than 200 times the enemy."

"It's going to be a tough war."

Colonel William's voice was very calm, he paused, turned on the projector on the side, and projected a video on the screen in front of the crowd, and explained as he played:

"Before this battle began, my soldiers and I had tried several methods with the corpses, trying to deplete their numbers, but none of them worked well."

"Although these mutant zombies will return to the corpse group after losing their target, once they confirm the target, they will track them for more than 3 kilometers endlessly."

"Of all our fighters, there are no more than 5 snipers who can hit the head of a zombie at a distance of 1 kilometer."

"But even with a sniper rifle, after killing a certain number of zombies, the sniper will be detected by the rest of the zombies and slowly fall into the encirclement."

Colonel William looked around at the people who were lost in thought, and said:

"The only way I can think of at the moment is to strike at them with air units, or to bombard them with long-range artillery."

"I don't recommend fighting these mutant zombies in short and medium distances, they are not afraid of death, their speed has also increased a lot, and the number is hundreds of times that of us, except for covering blows, it is difficult for ordinary soldiers to use firearms to effectively kill them."

"Once they are close to these monsters, under the threat of death, our warriors will collapse at an extremely fast speed, and it is impossible to carry a large wave of corpses."

Colonel William sat back in his seat, and the captains of the other squads began to talk to each other, discussing their ideas.

Seeing this scene, Leon coughed lightly and said to everyone:

"Although we have a lot of drones, there are very few people who can skillfully control them, and in the face of such a number of zombies, they are basically unable to form combat effectiveness."

"Similarly, there is only one person in the base who can skillfully control the helicopter, and it is impossible to form an organized attack, so our air force is currently only suitable for reconnaissance, and cannot be used as a combat squad."

Seeing that everyone was a little depressed, he added with a smile:

"It's not like we're not without weapons against them, though."

"In order to cope with this situation, our engineering department worked overtime and finally completed the manufacture of new weapons before the big war."

Leon gave the crowd some photos and related data parameters, and although most of them, like him, couldn't understand them, he still based on the data given to him by the researchers in the engineering department, and said:

"The engineering department named it the X1 mortar, with a caliber of 82 mm and a maximum range of 2 kilometers, which is modeled after the most common mortars of the Second World War era."

"It uses a common blasting projectile, which can effectively cause great damage to flesh life, which is very suitable for use against corpses."

The others looked at the picture and discussed it softly, but Colonel William frowned, and said with a hint of dissatisfaction in his voice:

"Inferior imitations, both in range and power compared to the original, are greatly reduced, but they should still be barely usable to deal with these zombies."

Leon explained to William with some helplessness:

"They can't be blamed for that, Colonel."

"Most of us in the engineering department are repairmen and mechanical engineers, and the only one who knows about bombs is a high school chemistry teacher named Walter White."

"This mortar was studied for a long time before they finally came up with a finished product."

He explained a few words, and then began to say to the crowd again:

"After the engineering department worked overtime, we produced a total of 30 mortars and 5,000 shells."

"We have to find a suitable battlefield near the nuclear power plant, build a strong fortification there, use these X1 mortars to form an artillery position, dig trenches, set traps, increase our defense and attack power at any cost, and hope to defeat an enemy hundreds of times our size."

He propped his palms on the table, looked around at everyone, and said with a serious expression:

"In this battle, we have pressed the full strength of the umbrella company, no matter how difficult the enemy is, we can only win, not lose."

After speaking, Leon retracted his expression again, patted William's shoulder beside him, and said:

"Colonel, the task of establishing artillery positions and fortifications is entrusted to you, this is the most critical part of this mission, I hope you will not let me down."

The middle-aged officer gave Leon a military salute and replied in a loud voice:

"Guaranteed mission, General."

Time turned, and it was February 25th.

All the members of the Umbrella Company team dug trenches, laid traps, and built fortifications here, and worked hard for three days to finally build a fairly strong fortification on a flat plateau 2 kilometers away from the nuclear power plant.

The high ground is steep on three sides, and only the front can be climbed up by a long ramp, which greatly reduces the area that Lyon and others need to defend, from four walls to one.

Referring to the structure of some of the survivors' walls and gates, they used large vehicles to connect with each other, welded many steel plates and pipes, and soon completed a tall iron wall that blocked the entire ramp.

(End of chapter)