Jiang Shian closed his eyes briefly. “Use my car instead.”
Song Jinhe paused. “Aren’t you going to find a place to stay?”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s delayed by a couple of days.” He didn’t really have anything urgent to do anyway.
“We should still change it. Next time we need to ram someone, this one would actually be perfect.”
Before the apocalypse, she used to drive cautiously, afraid of getting points deducted, afraid of accidents, afraid her heart couldn’t take it. Now that the apocalypse had come, she had no problem ramming people, or zombies.
“Give it to me.” Jiang Shian rolled up his sleeves, revealing a section of his pale forearm. He took the tools from her. “Your hand is almost healed, don’t move it.”
Song Jinhe left the bloodstained clothes in the car. If Cheng Yan and the others arrived here, they would know she had been nearby just by seeing the car and the clothes.
She left no other markings, afraid they might be used by someone else.
By noon, dark clouds gathered again and light rain began to fall. This kind of cold, damp weather at just a few degrees above freezing was the most uncomfortable.
It was mid-May, yet Wucheng usually reached around thirty degrees this time of year.
Song Jinhe wore a thick insulated jacket with an old coat scavenged on top. Holding a thermal cup she had “zero-cost acquired” from the supermarket, filled with red dates and goji berries, she sat comfortably in the car.
They had found a hardware store, and its stock was fairly complete.
Hammers, saws, nails, crowbars, everything was there. Song Jinhe stocked up on five crowbars at once.
They could smash, stab, and withstand heavy use. Perfect for breaking windows or prying doors. The only downside was their weight.
She also took hatchets, axes, and woodworking tools in duplicate sets.
Jiang Shian noticed that she selected items in a very orderly, planned way, not just grabbing everything indiscriminately.
It looked like her storage space had limited capacity.
Even with space reserved for these tools, she still carried a small shovel and a fishing spear, enough to take all the anti-inflammatory drugs from the dental clinic if she wanted to, but she deliberately didn’t, leaving survival resources for others.
The water in the city had receded, leaving behind corpses, debris, and a thick layer of sludge.
Residential areas were no longer livable. Water had previously risen up to the fourth floor, and zombies had floated in it and climbed up.
The cold air was filled with a foul stench. The supermarkets and pharmacies that had once been submerged were now exposed, but even if the goods inside looked intact, they were no longer edible.
Some people took the risk of going out to pick up fish and snails stuck in corners. They brought them back and cooked them, but that very night the entire family died, and a few more zombies appeared in the building.
The observing survivors completely abandoned the idea of scavenging food from the water, and began packing up to leave, either heading to shelters or going to relatives and friends.
“The Old Li family really had foresight. They left two days ago, before the water had fully receded, making a boat out of tires and basins and paddled out. If only we had gone with them. Outside roads like this… what if we step on something and get infected?”
“What’s the point of saying that now? Tomorrow, everyone wear thicker clothes and bring out all the rubber boots.” A man with glasses opened a city map.
He no longer paid attention to the neighbors who had been taken in by his parents half a month ago and were now staying in his home.
Song Jinhe still hadn’t found Cheng Yan and the others. The weather kept getting colder; in the mornings it even dropped below zero, and a thin layer of ice formed on the leaves.
Over the past few days, two groups had come to scavenge supplies, one of them included the same people they had encountered at the bar before.
To keep warm, they wore multiple ill-fitting layers of clothing. Their hair was greasy and matted, and among them Song Jinhe spotted a familiar face.
Cai Zheng. He recognized her, and he was mixed in with the group from the hospital. It seemed they were indeed targeting her in the Nanhe District.
Song Jinhe pulled up her mask and crouched behind a trash bin, watching as they hijacked a car. Without caring that the owner was kneeling and begging, they drew their blades and killed him.
She was planning to finish them off right then and there. She took out a Molotov cocktail, but before she could even light it, something suddenly smashed down from above her head.
Fortunately, Song Jinhe reacted quickly, she ducked under the eaves while shielding her head, and at the same time pulled Jiang Shian, who had just arrived, back with her.
Hailstones the size of ostrich eggs pounded down. A plastic trash bin was instantly knocked over, and chunks of ice shattered across the ground.
Bang, bang—
The hail kept falling. One short, stocky man among Cai Zheng’s group had his head split open by a direct hit and died on the spot.
“Fuck! Run, leave them!” someone shouted.
Panic-stricken, they rushed back to their car and floored the accelerator, speeding away one after another. The car in front had a sunroof, and a large hailstone smashed straight through it.
A chorus of shrill screams erupted from inside. No one knew exactly what happened, but the driver lost control and crashed into the roadside guardrail, the vehicle flipping sideways into the air.
“Help me… help—” the driver struggled to reach out to the people in the other car.
But the people in the other car didn’t even look at him. They accelerated past, afraid that if they slowed down, they wouldn’t make it back either.
The nearby buildings were all in ruins with nowhere to take shelter for the night. With hail falling this violently, no one dared stop to rescue anyone.
In a short time, a layer of ice fragments of varying sizes had accumulated on the ground. The longer it went on, the denser the hail became, and the temperature dropped rapidly.
The already damaged roof above Song Jinhe was even more riddled with holes, and shards of ice splashed onto her face.
The zombie outside had been ready for a “meal,” but before it could even move closer, it was crushed to death by the falling hail.
The skin exposed around her eyes was stinging from the cold wind. Song Jinhe tucked her hands into her pockets and shifted closer to Jiang Shian. His height made a pretty good windbreak.
Jiang Shian lowered his gaze at her small movements and her eyelashes damp with moisture, then silently turned his shoulder to block the cold wind from outside.
The hail lasted for nearly half an hour before finally stopping.
When Song Jinhe walked out, the person who had just been robbed was already dead. There was still a survivor in the overturned car. The vehicle had shielded him from the hail, but he was trapped in the driver’s seat and couldn’t move.
Seeing someone approach, he quickly called out for help.
“Help… help me…”
“Answer a few of my questions first.” Song Jinhe squatted down, her gaze gentle. “Where are you from? How many of you are there?”
“Not far ahead… there’s a hotel,” the young man replied anxiously. “More than a dozen people.”
“That’s not what I asked.” Song Jinhe pretended to leave.
“Don’t go! We’re from the main city area. The robbery wasn’t my idea, it was those people. They abandoned me. I’m not like them. I just wanted to survive.” He spoke with tears and mucus running down his face, his eyes full of sincerity.
“What are you doing here?” Song Jinhe asked again.
The young man looked outward, only able to see a pair of long legs standing beside Song Jinhe. His voice trembled as he asked uncertainly, “You… you’ll save me, right?”
“Of course, as long as you answer honestly.”
“I couldn’t stay in the city anymore, so I followed them here. Do you have a place to stay? I can join you,” he said earnestly.
“That’s not right, though. Didn’t you come out here to find someone?”
Under the young man’s shocked gaze, Song Jinhe smiled faintly.
“Did you find them? This is your last chance.”