The Death Knell

"The war continues to ravage Europe, but reinforcements have already departed from the United States! Every able-bodied young man is ready to protect his motherland!"

An impassioned voice came from the speakers next to the big screen, and the scene changed to the process of soldiers joining the army.

Steve returned to New York and Brooklyn. The depression in his heart made it hard for him to breathe. He walked into a movie theater and wanted to relax. The new zombie movie made by Wilson Enterprises was being shown here.

He still remembered that this was a term he and Bucky came up with when they were children, and Mr. Wilson put it on the big screen.

The flesh-eating zombies were exactly like the people he saw in the subway station when he was a child, only dirtier.

The film perfectly recreated the fear they felt back then. Logically speaking, a heart patient like him shouldn't watch this kind of movie, but in order to miss his childhood, he bought a ticket anyway.

In addition to women, there were more elderly people in the cinema. There were only a few middle-aged men. They were all on the battlefield.

Nowadays, society is in a wartime economic system, and watching movies is one of the cheaper forms of entertainment.

Therefore, there are a lot of people in the theater during the day, but this year it is stipulated that recruitment advertisements need to be inserted at the beginning, middle and end of the movie to promote the US military recruitment policy and expand people's patriotic enthusiasm.

So one second the beautiful heroine and the zombie dog met in the corridor, and the next second the scene changed directly to the scene of American soldiers walking into the military camp.

There was a sound of frustrated snorts all around.

Just at the critical moment, a recruitment advertisement came, and the atmosphere was gone. The audience sighed to themselves, I have already taken off my necklace and you are showing me this?

Steve, on the other hand, looked at the soldiers with longing. He envied them for being able to join the army and for their ability to contribute to the country.

He stared at the screen with bright eyes, imagining himself walking in the procession.

However, the picture on the screen changed and turned into a little boy of about six or seven years old. He was wearing a Boy Scout boat-shaped hat and picking scrap steel from a pile of garbage. This steel can be re-smelted and turned into weapons or tanks. .

The impassioned narration sounded again, praising the little boy on the screen: "Even little Timmy is working for the country, collecting scrap metal, well done, Timmy!"

Steve instantly felt countless eyes falling on him, and the women around him looked at him secretly from the corners of their eyes, as if their eyes were saying something.

"Why are you watching a movie here?"

"Go to the battlefield, man! Tsk tsk!"

"Why don't you learn from little Timmy and pick up trash? Oh, you're probably just trash!"

"Shame, shush!"

But these eyes quickly moved away, because the women finally saw clearly in the darkness that this man was even thinner than themselves, his face was as pale as a skeleton, and he might not live long. They really couldn't ask a patient to die.

Their eyes turned to sympathy and apology. Although their thoughts were similar, their meanings were the same - 'You are so pitiful. ’

Steve lightly shrugged. Over the years, he has become accustomed to such eyes. The kind people around him always take care of him in life. When he goes shopping for groceries, even the most fussy grocer’s aunt will give him more, and will also Told him to see a doctor early, some diseases cannot be delayed, etc.

It is because of the existence of these good people that Steve cannot let the war burn on their heads. He wants to join the army even more to stop the war.

Some thoughts flashed through his mind, but they were all castles in the air. He smiled bitterly and focused his attention on the 'iron wall' tank on the screen again.

This is also the work of Wilson Enterprises, but this huge steel monster does not look like the style of American industry at all. The two huge and ferocious gun barrels, flat body and thick armor are more like the product of a country across the Pacific. .

He remembered that Mr. Wilson had talked about this tank when they were chatting with them. It had an internal development codename of ‘Apocalypse’, but he didn’t know why it didn’t use its previous name after it was put into service.

Maybe they want to form a series with other military products, Steve thought.

However, this is not actually the reason. This tank actually only has the appearance of the Apocalypse tank. At its core, it is actually the M3 Grant with a changed shell. It has been replaced with a larger caliber gun, a twin turret, and a thicker one. Armor and a few more engines.

It's like a toy made from scratch. Except for its defense, it's not good at any other level. It loads as slowly as a self-propelled artillery and travels as slowly as a turtle. The experts at the military factory have tried their best to make this thing move.

At first, all the bricklayers had their eyes set on the top. Su Ming drew the appearance of T34 and IS for their reference. They thought they looked down upon it. Su Ming directly drew the appearance of Apocalypse. They swore that they could definitely build it. fierce.

During the internal acceptance inspection, Su Ming wanted to kill these wastes. After giving them so much research and development funding, he just came up with a turret combination of a self-propelled artillery and a T95?

But he thought about it and endured it. After all, the money was spent, and the turret was justice, so just use it.

If this kind of junk is still called the Apocalypse Tank, it will simply ruin its reputation. After Su Ming kicked these 'experts' away to study walking tractors, he simply renamed this metal monster the Iron Wall Assault Gun, focusing on its only advantage of defense.

It's very vivid. This damn thing is just a moving iron block, but it also has a thick enough front armor and a large slope of iron block. Now no matter how much anti-armor firepower we or the enemy have, it can't penetrate its front armor.

Su Ming sent a lot of lobbyists, but in the end the military, perhaps out of shame, purchased a batch and used them as infantry support weapons. At least other anti-tank guns had to be towed, but the iron wall assault gun could move on its own, right?

On the contrary, the rifles, pistols, grenades and other individual weapons produced by Wilson Enterprises all passed the test smoothly. After all, Su Ming could draw complete drawings, and every component was exactly the same as the future classic, and could be made by just workers. .

Before the United States entered the war, the number of troops was very small. There were only about 8 regular divisions, plus 14 National Guard divisions, about less than 600,000 people. After entering the war, the number of troops was rapidly expanded to 2 million, and later to 4 million. These people all need standard weapons.

Wilson Enterprise has accumulated enough weapons over the years. It can be said that it has been preparing since 29 years. It was originally intended to support the Chinese Empire, but now there are more weapons.

While other military-industrial companies were still promising their production capacity to the military, and how many guns they could produce each month, Wilson Enterprises directly crushed them with its millions of ready-made guns.

At first, the British were quite resistant to the replacement of troops with American weapons because their ammunition calibers were different from those of various countries. Using foreign weapons was tantamount to giving up its own military industry.

But after the Dunkirk evacuation, they had no choice. In order to consider the load of the ship, the 330,000 people who retreated basically lost their light and heavy weapons.

It takes about half a month to replenish domestically produced weapons, and there is a lack of steel and coal, so the production capacity cannot keep up. The policy is tilted towards the navy, and resources are prioritized for construction. This means that the mainland is almost undefended for more than half a month.

The British organized local legions. Many elderly gentlemen took out their ancestral weapons. Their average age was over fifty. They used swords, sabers, bows and arrows to guard their homes. They were called "Daddy". force'.

So the question is, either let the soldiers use cold weapons from the War of the Roses hundreds of years ago, or immediately replace them with weapons sold by the Americans. Wilson Enterprises also supports installment payments and physical mortgages.

Although these weapons are not familiar at all, and there will be a lot of trouble in the future, there is no choice. If you don't want to go to other countries to form a government in exile like the French, then you must accept the 'help' of the Americans.

Politicians consider what they are used for during a war, equipment replacement, training issues, and chain reactions. Soldiers have to fight others on the battlefield. The most important thing is that they have weapons and that they are easy to use. .

This is not a normal conscription in later generations. Now the British grab a person on the road, tell him that the Queen needs you, and then put any weapon into his hand, and then go to the battlefield. In short, if you kill one ***, you won't lose, if you kill two, you will gain. The British are already losing.

After a while, the situation in Mao Xiong will become similar. The quality of soldiers and officers has been too seriously affected by the Great Purge, otherwise they would not be pushed to Moscow by Mustache.

Not to mention the French guerrillas. Now it was De Gaulle who begged others to give him weapons on credit, but only Su Ming 'kindly' gave him some.

Britain now lacks weapons, energy, food, everything.

Even Prime Minister Fatty Qiu could only eat one sandwich a day and relied on cigars and absinthe to satisfy his hunger. He was so hungry that he couldn't sleep every night. He claimed to work twenty-three and a half hours a day.

But Steve didn't know these behind-the-scenes tidbits. He still looked at the huge tanks with envy. From the perspective of a military novice like him, larger war weapons are naturally more powerful, and the Iron Wall self-propelled anti-tank gun is indeed very powerful. It was so big that there were twenty or thirty soldiers on the screen sitting on it, dozing off as the chariot moved forward.

A farmer appeared out of nowhere on the roadside, flashed across the screen, and actually passed them in a donkey cart.

Steve frowned. This donkey cart was going too fast. He really didn't pay attention to traffic safety...

But the soldiers on the tank didn't even open their eyes, they were used to it. Steve was very happy. This shows that the US military has strict military discipline and has done no harm to the common people. Didn't you see that the tanks were making way for donkey carts?

These soldiers also held a new carbonated drink, orange juice flavored, which was said to be more nutritious and called Big Energy.

Mr. Wilson likes to call it "Dali" in Chinese, and always says strange things like "Dali can produce miracles". It is also a new product of the company, and is distributed to the front line as military supplies along with compressed biscuits.

Steve once ate a piece of compressed biscuit according to the standard eating method painted on the military ration package, and then drank a bottle of Dali. After a while, his stomach was so bloated that he vomited it out, which made Bucky laugh.

Although the business of Wilson Enterprises is getting bigger and bigger, and the relationship with the military is now even more intimate, he has never thought of going to the battlefield through Mr. Wilson's relationship.

Even strange doctors stopped him from joining the army, let alone Mr. Wilson who was familiar with his physical condition. According to his character, if he told him that he must join the army, he would probably be very generous and ask an acquaintance to stuff him. Go to the General Logistics Department or some other office in Washington, where there is plenty of money but no need for a gun.

He didn't want that. If he couldn't go to the battlefield and defend his family and country, then there was no point in joining the army.

Just as he was thinking about these things, a discordant scene appeared in the cinema.

A few rows ahead of him there was a man yelling.

"Boring! Let's put on a movie quickly!"

The people around him expressed their dissatisfaction with him, but they only looked at him with contempt, because it is very impolite to speak loudly in the cinema.

But Steve doesn't think so. In his opinion, it is an honor to serve the country. Now they can watch movies here because the soldiers on the front line have fought for it with their lives.

So he immediately stopped him.

"Hey, can you be respectful?"

The people in front did not respond to him, and the scene changed from tanks to infantry. Some injured soldiers were carried on stretchers to a simple hospital.

"Our boys are on the front lines giving the Axis powers some color, but freedom never comes without a price..."

But the voice of the narration was muffled by the loud voices of the audience in the front row. He came to see the zombies. What kind of commercials are you watching? They are all about tricking people into dying.

"Hurry up! Keep showing the movie!" The man yelled brazenly, attracting side glances from the people around him: "I want to watch Alice fight zombies! Hurry up and show the main movie!"

Steve couldn't stand this attitude anymore. He leaned forward and turned up his volume.

"Hey! Can you shut up?!"

The man in the front row shut up. Not only that, he stood up and turned to look at Steve.

A huge black shadow completely blocked the thin man, and the shadow pressed Steve tightly against the back of the seat.

The man jumped over several seats, grabbed Steve like a chicken, and carried him to the back door of the cinema.