“Cheng Yan, look… is that a person?”
Cheng Yan looked in the direction she was pointing. On the second floor of the dormitory building opposite them, a humanoid figure was crawling along the wall. It moved in a clumsy, eerie manner that made his skin crawl.
“No, it’s a zombie!” Cheng Yan took a sharp breath.
They had encountered special zombies before, so it stood to reason that other variants existed.
“Get inside, be careful. The cries for help are coming from the fourth floor across from us. There might be something else out there.”
The commotion from the other building was like a beacon that would attract all the nearby zombies. While the undead couldn’t climb high-rise buildings easily for the moment, they could certainly enter their current location.
Zhang Yi nodded. Holding a flashlight, she followed closely behind Cheng Yan as they hid in the innermost storage room, which had no windows.
She and Cheng Yan had arrived the previous evening. They had driven onto a nearby highway only to find that a massive pile-up had blocked the road completely.
As darkness fell, the zombies inside the wrecked cars caught the scent of humans and began crawling out.
Left with no choice, they shouldered their packs and abandoned the highway to find a place to spend the night, planning to return once it was light.
They had trekked through the night, the wet mud clinging heavier to their boots with every step. They had passed a row of old houses ravaged by the storm but couldn’t find a single safe shelter. Instead, they heard the sounds of many zombies trapped beneath the ruins—people who had been crushed and never received rescue.
They had finally reached the factory area. Finding the iron gates of the dormitory building locked, they took shelter in the vacant infirmary.
To their horror, dawn never came. The temperature dropped to roughly five or six degrees Celsius. They couldn’t start a fire, and the empty, drafty room let the wind howl in from all sides.
Surviving like this until dawn would have been fine, but it wasn’t long before chaos erupted outside.
Listening to the terrified screams from the other building, Zhang Yi sat in the corner, trembling as she pulled her two outer coats tightly around her.
The next day, 8:00 AM.
The sun still hadn’t risen. Song Jinhe was experiencing a physical demonstration of “bad luck.” Before the wound on her hand could heal, her lower abdomen began to ache dully—an unavoidable physiological issue.
She had daily necessities, fortunately, and she even burned some mugwort in the bathroom to mask the scent, nearly choking herself with the smoke in the process.
The constitution of a Talent showed itself clearly in this regard. Physiological issues that affected survival would gradually resolve themselves. In her case, it took less than a day for her to feel normal again, her body feeling as light as a swallow—ready to go out and kill a few zombies.
“Here.” Jiang Shian handed her a cup of hot water. “The milk here has expired. There’s only water.”
“Thank you.” Song Jinhe held the glass with one hand and looked at him.
In this environment, they could only see each other’s dark silhouettes and the swaying shadows of trees outside the window. Wrapped in a blanket, Song Jinhe lay on the sofa and drifted off to sleep without realizing it.
The following day, the sky finally brightened. The passing horde of zombies had moved on, though the temperature showed no sign of rising. Song Jinhe found a thermometer in a coffee shop and decisively put it into her space.
She also took some coffee beans, tea bags, and sugar packets. She left the fresh milk behind, as it was twenty days past its expiration date and had already separated.
While she did this, Jiang Shian stood nearby, sipping coffee brewed over a fire made from burning books.
He had seen the Molotov cocktails appear out of nowhere during the fight with the zombies yesterday, so Song Jinhe didn’t bother hiding her abilities anymore.
They made a trip back to the tavern. A few “living” zombies remained inside, their skin charred black, emitting a nauseating smell of cooked meat from the cracks in their flesh. They lay on the ground, their bodies stuck together. As the humans passed, their withered fingers still scratched at the air toward them.
These zombies, unable to stand, posed little threat and were easy to clear out. The ones to watch out for were the “lurkers”—zombies that looked dead but were actually waiting for someone to get close so they could grab and bite them.
One could never be too careful with a finishing blow; Song Jinhe had just dispatched one such lurker a moment ago.
She cleared out a fair amount of unburned spirits from the warehouse and intact beer bottles from the front. Jiang Shian, wearing gloves, went to the second floor and retrieved the corpses of the mutated bat and the Screaming Zombie from the night before.
“Did you find anything?” Song Jinhe asked curiously, looking up.
“The bat is a new mutated species. As for the Screaming Zombie you mentioned, its appearance is no different from an ordinary zombie. However, there are differences in the muscular tissue near its vocal cords that allow it to make those sounds.”
Jiang Shian spoke slowly. “Without testing equipment, I can’t determine much else.”
The two entered the only small supermarket in the area. Dispatching a few ordinary zombies was easy; Song Jinhe barely had to lift a finger due to her injury, as Jiang Shian handled them all.
The smell inside the supermarket was foul. The frozen meat had spoiled, and human remains were scattered on the floor.
Song Jinhe went inside and found two hoses; she would need these to siphon gasoline from abandoned cars later.
Items like biscuits, instant noodles, canned goods, and Band-Aids were long gone. After searching for a while, she managed to find half a crate of near-expiry canned luncheon meat from the very back.
Next, she went to another shelf and found a barbecue grill and smokeless charcoal. Song Jinhe took two crates of charcoal, weighing about twenty pounds in total. Holding her breath, she walked through the fresh produce section. Seeing the fish floating belly-up in the tanks due to a lack of oxygen, she let out several sighs of pity.
Such good meat, all rotten now.
Jiang Shian looked at her grief-stricken face, which looked as if she had lost something precious. He placed his basket in front of her. “In this environment, even if there were live fish, you wouldn’t dare eat them.”
Song Jinhe took a large, indignant bite of a biscuit and followed him out of the supermarket. “We’ll split the food we found in the supermarket once we get back.”
“You keep it,” Jiang Shian said calmly. “Can’t you just carry it with you?”
“What are your plans after this? Are you still going back into the city?” Song Jinhe was wondering where her other two companions were.
“Find a place to live first. There’s a villa area forty-six kilometers away.” Jiang Shian turned his head. “The Lozhou Shelter hasn’t fallen yet, but it’s too far from Wucheng. The road won’t be easy, and there’s no guarantee it will still exist by the time we arrive.”
Song Jinhe knew he was warning her. Only after the Lozhou Shelter fell did the Lozhou Base emerge. At this stage, many people who struggled to reach Lozhou wouldn’t even be allowed in.
“After I find a replacement tire and gasoline, I’m going to search the surrounding areas for my lost companions.”
“And if you can’t find them?” Jiang Shian asked softly. “Will you still refuse to come with me?”
“If I can’t find them… I’ll keep looking. The water in the city has mostly receded, and I still haven’t gathered all the supplies I need.” Song Jinhe didn’t hesitate.
“When I was half-dead with a high fever, they didn’t know anything about Talent awakening, yet they didn’t abandon me. I have to at least try to find them before I can move on.”
She might be able to survive the apocalypse alone, but she wouldn’t live well. A team was the core of survival; no matter how strong an individual was, they couldn’t defeat a coordinated group or a massive horde of corpses.
Over the next few days, Song Jinhe found many useful items and plenty of gasoline. After the stitches were removed from her right hand, she felt a sense of total relief, though the wound hadn’t fully healed, so she still had to be careful.
“Your car is so battered. Is it even worth changing the tire?” Jiang Shian looked at the vehicle, which looked as if it had been through a bombardment, with an expression of genuine surprise.
“You seem to have forgotten that you blew up Brother Scar’s car. Zombie parts were raining down on me like a storm. Look—this head is still hanging up there.”