June 27, 2027, 9:00 AM.
The sky was its usual dead self. The clouds were a bruised, dark color, pressing down from overhead. The Black Rain hadn't stopped. It was fine and silent, like countless invisible hands sifting coal ash from the clouds.
Yu Molan woke early. He didn't move, first scanning the car's interior from the corner of his eye.
They had spent the night in a Land Rover Range Rover. The car was parked on the inner edge of the emergency lane, wedged between two large trucks that acted like iron walls, blocking most of the wind. Its condition was surprisingly good. Aside from a crack running through the right rear window, even the weather stripping was intact.
But it wouldn't start. No matter how good a car was, after sitting idle for over ten days, it was just a tin coffin. There were plenty of abandoned cars along the way, and it wasn't for lack of trying on Yu Molan's part. The ones he checked were either wrecked or had no keys. Electric cars were basically all useless. Occasionally, an older car with fewer electronics might start, but the road ahead would be blocked by accidents or damage, making it impossible to drive far.
Yu Molan had thought about finding bicycles, but no one was a fool. The share bikes had long since been pried open and pushed away—he'd seen several groups pushing them on his way out of the city. The ones left were all broken. Moving things around was a hassle; their own two legs were more reliable.
A thick layer of condensation coated the inside of the windows, gathering into droplets that trickled down the glass and pooled in the crevices of the weather stripping. The smell inside the car was foul—a mix of damp, musty leather, the sour tang of evaporated cheap car air freshener, and the fermented stench of three people's sour sweat.
Lin Zhixi was curled up in the back seat, holding Xiaoyu. The mother and daughter were huddled together, covered by the still-damp windbreaker. Xiaoyu's sleep was restless. A murky, whistling sound was caught in her throat, and her leg would twitch occasionally, as if she were still slogging through mud in her dreams.
Yu Molan slowly straightened up. His left hip and the outside of his thigh were numb from holding the same position for so long. He rubbed his face hard with his hands, the calluses on his palms scraping against his stubble with a rasping sound.
"You're awake?"
Lin Zhixi's voice came from behind.
"Yeah," Yu Molan grunted, reaching for the half-eaten pack of crackers he'd left on the passenger seat last night.
Breakfast was two crackers each, a dry, choking affair.
The crackers were a bit damp and had lost their crispness. Biting into one was like chewing a lump of astringent, hard clay. He couldn't produce enough saliva, and the powder got stuck in his throat, refusing to go up or down. Yu Molan twisted open his water bottle and took a careful sip. He held the water in his mouth until it warmed, then used it to wash down the cracker paste.
For a moment, he felt a rough, scraping sensation in his esophagus.
He pushed the car door open. The air outside smothered his face like a cold, wet rag. A chill carrying the scent of metallic rust and rotting plants instantly pierced through his thin clothes.
The three of them got out of the car and stepped back into the black world.
They were off the expressway now, on an old national highway.
The road surface was in worse shape than the expressway's. The asphalt was old and peeling, revealing a layer of grayish-white gravel underneath. Potholes were filled with black water, a rainbow-colored oil slick floating on the surface, shattering and reforming with each falling raindrop.
"Lift your feet," Yu Molan reminded them in a low voice, his hand gripping the fire axe.
The handle was wrapped in a layer of tape, now greasy and slick with sweat.
The farmland on both sides of the road was completely ruined. This should have been the season of rolling wheat fields, but now it was a black swamp stretching as far as the eye could see.
All the crops had collapsed into the mud, the stalks rotting into pools of viscous black sludge. A few cornstalks that hadn't fully rotted stood stubbornly, their leaves long gone. They were just bare stalks dotted with black mold, like fingers covered in pustules, pointing at the gloomy sky.
The sweet, cloying smell in the air grew stronger here. It was the smell of plant proteins and cellulose decomposing in an anaerobic environment, mixed with the raw scent of the earth. Breathing it in for too long made one's stomach turn.
The water in the roadside ditch was stagnant, gleaming black. A few bloated corpses were stuck at the mouth of a culvert. Some were human, some were pigs.
The bodies were swollen, their skin a translucent, grayish-white, covered in a black, web-like network of fungal hyphae. One dead pig's belly was stretched taut and round, its four legs stiffly jutting out. Its mouth was wide open, a black tongue lolling out, with a few oblivious flies resting on it.
Lin Zhixi instinctively turned to block Xiaoyu's view.
But she couldn't block the smell.
The stench felt corporeal, boring straight into their nostrils. Xiaoyu buried her face in her mother's side, her shoulders hunched.
"Faster," Yu Molan said.
They picked up their pace, their shoes making squelching sounds on the muddy road. The mud clung to their soles like long, viscous strands of snot.
It was deathly still. Most of the gray-tiled roofs had collapsed, exposing the blackened beams within. Plaster had peeled from the walls, revealing red bricks covered in dark green moss and black mold.
No dogs barking, no roosters crowing. In the dead silence, there was only the rustle of raindrops on leaves.
Yu Molan didn't enter the village. He was still assessing the situation on the road. Enclosed spaces often meant unknown dangers and pathogens. He led his wife and daughter along the dirt path bordering the village fields.
The path was narrow, the earth soft and slippery.
"Wait."
Yu Molan stopped abruptly, his body instantly tensing.
In the wild field to their left front, by a dead old locust tree, stood a person.
It was an old man. He wore an old-fashioned blue tunic suit, buttoned up tight, but the fabric was soaked black and stiff from the rain, like a carapace. His trouser legs were rolled up to his knees, revealing calves covered in coin-sized black spots.
His back was to the road, and he seemed to be holding something, mechanically moving it in one direction.
The movement was exceedingly strange. A pause, a stutter. Like the rusted pendulum of an old grandfather clock, each swing having to overcome immense resistance.
Seemingly having heard their footsteps, the old man stopped.
He slowly turned around. His neck twisted at a wide angle, making a sickening, grinding crack.
That face could no longer be called human.
His features had collapsed inward. His eye sockets were filled with a murky, grayish-white, devoid of pupils. Black saliva trickled from the corner of his mouth down to his collar. It too was covered in that grayish-white fuzz.
He was looking at them.
Or rather, was he sensing them?
Yu Molan's scalp tingled, the numbness shooting down his spine and through his entire body in an instant. He yanked Lin Zhixi and Xiaoyu behind a roadside bush, the three of them crouching in the waist-deep rotten grass.
The blades of grass were cold and wet, their sharp edges stinging his face. Muddy water instantly soaked through their pants, bone-chillingly cold.
The old man moved.
He took a step. His leg lifted high, as if the joint was fused and couldn't bend, then slammed down into the mud.
*Splat.*
Black mud flew.
He took another step.
It was an instinctual pursuit of the scent of the living.
Yu Molan drew the axe, gripping it with both hands. He held his breath, not daring to make a sound. Lin Zhixi clamped a hand tightly over Xiaoyu's mouth, her other hand clutching her backpack strap.
The distance was about thirty meters.
If the old man charged, Yu Molan planned to rush forward and finish him.
Time stretched to infinity.
The rain kept falling, cold as ice against their skin.
He tilted his head, seemingly bewildered, his grayish-white eyes rolling aimlessly in their sockets. After a long moment, he seemed to have lost his target. He slowly got back up and, dragging his heavy legs, shuffled off in the opposite direction, toward a patch of unmarked graves.
Only when the gray-black figure had completely vanished into the rainy mist did Yu Molan feel the air begin to flow back into his lungs.
Yu Molan relaxed slightly. These living dead were much weaker than the zombies in movies, and there were fewer of them; this wasn't some global mutation scenario. Most of the human figures they'd seen along the way were just corpses. Still, the fear was like a heavy stone on his chest, making it hard to breathe.
"Let's go," he said in a low voice, as soft as the wind.
They crawled out of the bushes, covered in bits of grass and mud.
It was just after four in the afternoon, but the sky was already as dark as dusk. An abandoned bus shelter appeared on the side of the highway. Its fiberglass roof was dirty but intact. The concrete floor was raised above the road, making it relatively dry.
"We'll stay here tonight," Yu Molan said.
He shrugged off his backpack first, feeling as if a mountain had been lifted from his shoulders. Only then did the aching soreness flood in.
The three of them squeezed onto the only bench.
Dinner was a can of luncheon meat.
The tin can opened with a soft hiss. The meat was cold, congealed with white fat, and had a gamy smell.
Yu Molan used his Swiss Army knife to dig out a piece and handed it to Xiaoyu.
Xiaoyu took it and began to eat in small, careful bites. She ate with great concentration, her cheeks puffing out, trying not to let any crumbs fall.
Lin Zhixi ate very little, leaving most of the meat for her husband and child. She stared out at the rain, her gaze distant.
"Molan," she said suddenly.
"Hm?"
"How much longer do we have to walk?"
Yu Molan swallowed the piece of meat in his mouth, the greasy feeling coating his throat. He was silent for a moment, his gaze piercing the curtain of rain to the pitch-black wilderness beyond.
"Until..." he said, "until we find a place where we can live."
He pulled the last bar of chocolate from his pocket and peeled back the foil. It was something he'd found, and it had melted and re-solidified, its surface bloomed with a white frost—the sign of separated cocoa butter.
He broke it into three pieces.
"Eat."
The moment the sweetness melted on their tongues, it was an extravagant comfort. For a brief instant, it overpowered the earthy taste in their mouths, the musty smell on their clothes, and the despair in their hearts.
Night fell.
Darkness surged in from all directions like a tide, swallowing the highway, the fields, and the three tiny black specks that were them.
Only the sound of the rain still echoed between heaven and earth.
*Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.*
As if someone were knocking on the lid of this coffin called the world.