Chapter 219: By the Sea (1)
In the 1970s, the golden age of infrastructure in the United States came to an end. Since then, the country’s construction speed had declined year by year, and in many cases, it had simply been relying on the legacy of the past.
As a result, even the city of Radyard—which had suffered a zombie outbreak—had already been bombed two years ago, yet there were still only two flight routes from Dwight State to New Osebuch State: “Sunken → Gilosha → Concord” and “Sunken → Gegha → Concord.”
Two months earlier, when Everly returned home from school, she had taken the latter route.
At that time, Gegha City was still in a relatively stable period after the end of the so-called “Ten Plagues,” with no major incidents occurring. While waiting for her connecting flight, Everly had even taken the opportunity to visit an art exhibition in the city and seen the famous painting ‘Sea Demon Under the Moon’.
But just one summer later, the situation in Gegha City had taken a sharp turn for the worse—there had been a series of murders.
The first case occurred in mid-July in the suburbs of Gegha City. A resident out for morning exercise accidentally discovered the body of a young girl who had been brutally murdered, lying in the roadside grass.
The girl had gone missing three days earlier. Based on traces in her apartment, the police concluded that she had likely been abducted after a forced break-in. The kidnapper never contacted her family to demand ransom, and there was no evidence of any enemies in her social networks.
While the police were still investigating the disappearance, the girl had already turned up as a corpse.
When she was discovered, her body was covered in severe injuries. According to the forensic report, the killer had s*xually ass**lted her while she was still alive, then brutally mutilated her by removing her left breast and stabbing her repeatedly dozens of times with a dagger, causing her to bleed to death.