June 26, 2027, 3:00 PM.
The highway lay sprawled across the wilderness like a dead snake with its spine ripped out. The guardrails were long since twisted, a scrap of clothing hanging from a break, bleached colorless by the wind like a shriveled flag. The asphalt was covered in spiderweb cracks. Black water had seeped up from below, filling every fissure. Stepping on the road felt soft, like treading on rotten flesh.
Yu Molan walked on the outermost edge. The straps of his hiking pack had gouged two purplish-red bruises into his shoulders. With every step, the straps sawed into his flesh. He didn't bother to adjust them. The numb pain kept him sharp. He made himself a moving human shield, keeping Lin Zhixi and Xiaoyu on the inside.
The shoulder of the road was all gravel and a sticky black mud.
A wet, sucking sound.
Xiaoyu's footsteps became heavy and sodden. Her pink sneakers were no longer recognizable, their soles caked in a thick layer of clay-like mud. Every time she lifted her leg, it was like prying her foot from the earth's maw. She didn't complain of being tired, but her breathing had grown heavy.
Lin Zhixi gripped the child's hand tightly. Her other hand periodically tugged at a slipping backpack strap, her eyes fixed on the palm-sized patches of dry ground at her feet.
The temperature was dropping. The air was thick with moisture, and their clothes clung to their backs, making it impossible to tell if it was from sweat or the misty rain.
Cars began to appear more frequently along the roadside.
Most were mangled wrecks with smashed-in fronts. Their doors hung open, the seat cushions inside swollen with rainwater. The foam had expanded, covered in a layer of green fuzz.
Yu Molan tried not to look inside the cars, but his peripheral vision caught something. In a black SUV, a small, dark shape was slumped in a child's safety seat in the back. It wasn't the posture of sleep. The head was bowed too low, the neck bent as if broken, resting on the chest. A few flies buzzed, bumping against the shattered window.
Lin Zhixi's steps faltered. She suddenly yanked Xiaoyu toward her with such force that the child stumbled.
"Mom?" Xiaoyu called out softly.
"Don't look." Lin Zhixi's voice trembled slightly. "Watch the road."
Further on, the smell of the air changed.
The simple, earthy scent was now mixed with a cloyingly sweet smell of rot. It was as if someone had poured an entire can of syrup into a septic tank and let it ferment for a long time.
Ahead was a service area.
The roof of the gas station had half-collapsed. Rebar dangled down like torn blood vessels, holding a few teetering sheets of metal. The standing water on the ground shimmered with an oily, rainbow sheen. Beneath it, something bloated and lumpy was vaguely visible.
Yu Molan stopped and raised a hand in a downward motion. He could feel the cold sweat on his palm, making his grip on the fire axe handle feel slick and unpleasant. The rust on the axe blade was a dark, dull red.
"Don't make a sound," he whispered, his voice just a breath.
There were "things" in the service area.
Not the screeching, clawing monsters from the movies, but people. Or rather, broken people and dead people.
There were three or four of them, scattered around the parking lot and the entrance to the convenience store. They were still wearing clothes, but the fabric hung on them like stiff shells. The woman closest to them wore a floral dress, its damp hem clinging to her bare calves.
Her skin was an eerie grayish-brown, covered in coin-sized black spots.
She was leaning over the hood of a sedan, her movements extremely slow, as if she were polishing the car, or perhaps caressing it. Her fingernails scraped against the paint. *Scraape... scraape...* The source of this chapter is novelping(.)com.
Yu Molan led his wife and daughter, moving like thieves, inching their way behind a scorched bus.
The body of the bus was cold, giving off a smell of burnt rubber. The scent helped to dilute the nauseating stench.
Through the gap between the wheels, Yu Molan saw the woman lift her head.
And what a face it was.
The features were still there, but they looked as if they had been melted. Her eye sockets were sunken, and inside, there were no clear whites or pupils, only a murky, gray film. The corners of her mouth were split, and black saliva dribbled down her neck.
Yu Molan could feel Lin Zhixi trembling behind him, the fine shudders traveling through her clothes. Xiaoyu had buried her face in his backpack, not daring to move a muscle.
The wind changed direction.
A gust of oily wind blew past, scattering the scent of the living that clung to them.
The woman seemed confused. She tilted her head, and her neck made a sharp *crack*. Losing interest, she dragged her sore-covered feet, shuffling and sliding toward the convenience store. Her soles slapped against the standing water with a thick, wet *pat, pat*.
It was the sound of loose flesh slapping against the ground.
In the distance, there was another man. He was wearing a suit jacket, but no pants. He faced a concrete pillar, repeating a single action in the dead silence of the afternoon.
Banging his head against it.
*Thud.*
Muffled, dull.
Three seconds passed.
*Thud.*
Like a zombie from a movie, but not quite.
A dark red stain was left on the concrete pillar. He wasn't trying to kill himself. It was more like a broken machine, caught in a dead-end loop of necrotic nerves.
"Go," Yu Molan mouthed, making no sound.
They pressed themselves against the side of the bus, moving on the balls of their feet, avoiding the shards of broken glass. Every step took all their strength just to stay balanced.
Lin Zhixi had been holding her breath for so long her face was flushed red. She carefully skirted a puddle of some unknown liquid, in which half of a broken high-heeled shoe was soaking.
It took them a full ten minutes to cover those twenty meters.
Only when they had bypassed the service area and were back on the desolate highway did the feeling of being watched, sharp as a needle in the back, begin to recede.
The scenery on both sides of the road grew even more grotesque.
What should have been lush green wheat fields was now a black swamp. The stalks had all collapsed into the mud, rotting into a black sludge. Occasionally, a huge bubble would rise from the mire, bursting with a *gloop* and releasing a rotten egg smell.
A few lonely poplar trees stood there, large chunks of their bark peeled away, revealing blackened wood underneath. Their branches reached for the sky like skeletal claws, snagged with plastic bags that rustled loudly in the wind.
No birdsong, no chirping insects. Only the mournful cry of the wind as it passed through the holes in the highway guardrails.
"Dad, I'm thirsty." Xiaoyu's voice was as faint as a mosquito's buzz, tinged with tears.
Yu Molan stopped, glancing warily in front of and behind them. The gray fog had already swallowed the service area, hiding the moldering figures from view.
He shrugged off his pack, took out a bottle of water, unscrewed the cap, and handed it to her.
"Small sips," he said. "Hold it in your mouth. Don't swallow right away."
Xiaoyu cupped the bottle in her hands, her lips dry and peeling. She obediently took a small sip, her cheeks puffed out, and held it for a long time before swallowing.
Lin Zhixi slumped against the guardrail, no longer caring if it was dirty. She undid the top button of her collar, revealing the hollow of her collarbone, slick with sweat. She stared at the black fields in the distance, her eyes vacant.
"Molan," she said suddenly, her voice soft. "That woman in the floral dress just now..."
Yu Molan looked at her.
"That was the old music teacher." Lin Zhixi lowered her head, staring at her mud-caked pant legs. "The bow on her dress... I saw it when I went to a parent-teacher conference."
Yu Molan said nothing. He screwed the cap back on the water bottle and stuffed it back into his pack.
She had once been a woman who could play the piano, who would smile as she tied red scarves for the children. Now she was a walking petri dish for mold, with only a few biological instincts left in her brain.
"Rest for two minutes," Yu Molan said, laying the axe across his lap. "Then we keep moving."
The wind grew stronger. Black threads of rain began to fall more densely, making a fine, rustling sound against their jackets. The rain was acidic, causing a slight sting on exposed skin—or maybe that was just his imagination.
Yu Molan wiped his face with his hand, which came away coated in a greasy black soot.
*This is life now,* he told himself.
No rescue, no miracles. Just an endless, ruined road and ruined people.
No wonder the world fell apart so quickly.
"Let's go." He stood up and held out his hand to Xiaoyu.
A large hand grasped a small one. The small hand was cold and still trembling slightly. Yu Molan squeezed it tighter, trying to transfer what little warmth he had left.
The three of them set off again.
Beneath the gray sky, their figures shrank into three small black dots, slowly, inch by inch, moving toward an unknown abyss.