When dawn broke, most of the zombies had dispersed outside.
The last wave of banging on the door stopped at three o’clock in the morning.
Lu Chen repaired the wall again at the time when dawn was approaching, using shelves to prop up the collapsed door that was half a foot lower.
There were still a dozen zombies wandering on the street outside.
Two emergency lights were on in the supermarket.
Three people, one corpse.
Su Wan didn’t sit down all night.
She wrapped Akai’s body in waterproof cloth and placed it in the innermost freezer – it was cooler there.
As soon as dawn came, she got to work.
“Help me carry him to the back alley,” she said, “There’s soil behind the flower bed.”
Lu Chen didn’t ask any more questions.
Two people carried him, Shen Wanqing followed behind, holding a shovel – this was the shovel that Su Wan took out from the trunk of the SUV.
The soil in the back alley was frozen hard, and when she scooped it with one shovel, there was only a white mark.
Lu Chen took the shovel and dug alone.
Su Wan originally wanted to stop him, but after looking at it for a while, she didn’t – his one shovel’s depth was equivalent to her two shovels’.
When the pit reached knee height, Su Wan placed Akai down.
She crouched beside the pit, took out a copper plate from the inner pocket of her combat suit, dusted it off, and stuffed it into the waterproof cloth.
“Police number,” she said, “Can’t be taken away.”
No one spoke while filling the soil.
After filling it, Su Wan stood in front of the mound for half a minute, raised her hand to salute, and her movement was very standard and slow.
“He also has a sister, in the west of the city,” she said, “I don’t know if she’s still there.”
Back at the supermarket, Su Wan unloaded two boxes from the car: a box of compressed biscuits, half a box of ammunition clips, and a bucket of used gasoline.
She placed them on the ground, stepped back a step, as if delivering goods.
“I owe you,” she said, “The gun has no bullets left, and he’s dead.
This is one part, and these are all I have.”
“Your car can still run,” Lu Chen said.
“Can it?
How dare you drive it?” Su Wan sneered.
“The noise from that car yesterday almost buried us.
Four days ago, we left from the west of the city, with six people, and we were being ‘herded’ east – they didn’t attack us, but they were chasing the corpses behind us.
Whoever fell behind, whoever stayed behind.
Here, it was just me and Akai.”
“What do they want?”
“They want people,” Su Wan stared at him, “They want water, they want living people, they want images like you – someone who topples the tyrant.
They find good candidates, and once they find them, they take them.”
Shen Wanqing leaned against the water bucket and suddenly spoke: “That big thing last night, was it sent over by someone?”
“I don’t know,” Su Wan said, “But they have a car, a radio, clean clothes, and haven’t been dirty for four days.
Such things don’t come from one or two people.”
A moment of silence.
“Three days,” Lu Chen said, “Guard together for three days.
Your shooting skills are worth this price.
After three days, it’s up to you to decide to stay or leave.”
Su Wan looked at him and nodded.
“Okay.”
She pressed the empty ammunition clips full and stacked them on the shelves.
Halfway through, she suddenly stopped.
“There’s one more thing.
When those people were sewing the wolves, I saw one of them wasn’t wearing black clothes.” She said, “A white coat, carrying a medicine box, walking at the front – those wolves listened to him.”