Luke ignited the oil trail with a lighter. As the bright fire rose, the black widows stepped back in fear.
They were scared of both fire and light. Luke then broke the window of the van next to him with a punch and poured the remaining oil from the barrel into the van.
After that, he released the van’s emergency brake and jammed the wheel in place with a club. Finally, he threw the lighter into the driver’s seat.
Very soon, the van was consumed by fire.
Luke walked to the back of the van. He reloaded the M4A1, and holding the gun in his right hand, he suddenly lifted the back of the van with his left hand and turned it by thirty degrees.
He craned his head to make sure that he was aiming in the right direction, and with a low yell, he unleashed all his strength.
The van was immediately pushed forward, and started moving at a regular speed.
Luke gradually exerted more strength to increase its speed.
Pushed forward by Luke’s brute force, the burning van accelerated and crashed into the broken entrance of the parking lot at around twenty kilometers per hour.
After an explosion, half the van was stuck in the entrance.
In the meantime, Luke opened fire with his M4A1 to eliminate the giant black widows nearby.
After Luke cleared the area earlier, and now that the gap was blocked, the number of black widows plummeted.
In the next few minutes, Luke blew up the remaining dozens of black widows in the parking lot with his M4A1, Glock and M500 in
turns.
Luke reloaded the three guns and found a car. He broke its window, hot wired the car, then drove the car to the van and stopped behind
it.
He pulled up the brake, got out, and pushed the car so that it was pressed up to the back of the van, before he was satisfied.
He packed up the flammable junk in the car and tossed them to the front of the van to keep the fire going.
After that, Luke took out his fake phone and checked the time. Fifty minutes had passed since he contacted Captain Wales. The reinforcements from the FBI’s 17th Division should be arriving soon.
At that point, Selina said over the walkie-talkie, “Luke, I think I hear a helicopter.”
He was delighted. “I’m coming. I’ve settled things down here for now.”
After setting up a camera to monitor the entrance to the parking lot, Luke quickly went upstairs. When he got to the stairs, he told Chris to stay on guard.
On the second floor, he eliminated some of the spiders at the entrance with the remaining bullets in his M4A1, before he said, “Everybody, stop shooting for thirty seconds.”
Ten seconds later, all the defenders stopped shooting.
Luke took out his earpiece and listened carefully at an open window, and finally sighed in relief.
It really was a helicopter! It couldn’t be a random helicopter passing by such a remote town in the middle of the night.
Luke raised his head to scan the dark sky where the sound of the helicopter had come from.
A moment later, two flashing red spots emerged.
At that point, Luke’s phone rang as well.
He left his post and had the defenders resume shooting. He then quickly ran to the first floor and picked up the call. “This is Luke.”
The guy on the other end of the phone said, “It’s Charles, Luke. I’ve been ordered to back you up. We’re close to Boom Town now. Hang in there…”
Luke interrupted him. “Okay, thank you very much, Charles. We’re at the shopping center, the place with the most intense gunfire right now. I need to remind you that those spiders are very tricky. They’re great jumpers and can ambush you from dark corners.”
Agent Charles (whose real name was Cheney Spike) said on the other end, “Captain Wales already reminded us, so we won’t land for now. We’ll provide firepower support from the air until most of the spiders are eliminated.”
Luke was greatly relieved.
Captain Wales was indeed a leader familiar with field missions, unlike Dewey Robinson, who was more used to office work and would put his men in danger.
The greatest advantage of a helicopter was that it could attack the spiders without being attacked itself.
A moment later, Luke was impressed by the professionalism of their reinforcements.
He thought that they would shoot from the helicopters with rifles, like police officers did most of the time.
But unexpectedly, chains of fire were launched from both helicopters with a dull and intense boom to create furrows in the dirt in front of the shopping center.
Luke was lost for words; they weren’t using rifles at all, but aircraft artillery!
The helicopters hovered above the shopping center, and very soon, almost all the spiders nearby were exterminated.
They all burst like cockroaches that had been swatted with a flip-flop, when they had seemed invincible a moment earlier.
After a brief silence, the townsfolk in the shopping center all cheered wildly with joy.
Luke said to Samantha via the walkie-talkie, “Keep the residents under control, and don’t let them run off. Although reinforcements are here, it’ll still be dangerous if the people run into spiders that are still alive. Have them stay there until the agents have eliminated all the spiders.”
Samantha had been cheering too, but she calmed down at Luke’s words.
She then realized some of her crazy compatriots were already yelling about charging out and getting revenge on the spiders.
She immediately sweated. “I’ll try to, but they seem too excited at this point.”
After a brief silence, Luke said, “Got it. You hold them back for now. I’ll convince the overexcited ones later.”
It was easy for people to act irrationally when their emotions were running high.
The townsfolk were all ordinary people. It wasn’t unusual at all that they would lose control of themselves.
Ending the communication, Luke took out his M500 and fired.
Practically all the residents were cheering. They had stopped shooting when the spiders outside fell.
They were all shocked by the sudden burst of loud gunfire from the M500.
They turned back, only to see Luke standing calmly with the revolver in his hand. They almost subconsciously stopped cheering.
They all remembered Luke’s valiance in the battle just now very well!
Human beings tended to respect those who were strong, particularly when their lives depended on those people. When everybody fell quiet, Luke said indifferently, “Everybody, I need to remind you that you were crying for help and could barely stand an hour ago because of those giant spiders.”