Hearing the scream, Song Jinhe immediately turned and ran back. Together with Cheng Yan, who had also rushed over, they each grabbed one side of the zombie and pulled it away. Then, with Cheng Yan helping to hold it down, Song Jinhe raised the pry bar and killed the zombie.
This time, her space seemed to have grown slightly.
Truly only slightly, so little that she wouldn’t have noticed it without carefully sensing it. Still, it was enough to fit two more sets of thick clothing.
Tears hung on Zhang Yi’s face as her chest heaved violently. Looking at the corpse beside her, she dry-heaved several times and sat on the floor for quite a while before finally calming down enough to accept the mint candy Song Jinhe handed her.
After telling them where she was going, Song Jinhe went alone to a luxury watch store, freely picking out several watches she liked. She wore one to keep track of time and stored the rest away as backups.
Along the way, whenever she saw a corpse, she first poked it with the pry bar. Once it stopped playing dead and moved to get up, she killed it immediately.
In a world overrun by zombies, neither people nor corpses could be trusted easily.
Song Jinhe leaned against a display shelf to rest for a while. These zombies were far harder to kill than the ones in TV dramas, where smashing their heads looked easier than cracking walnuts.
The facts proved that expanding her space required killing zombies in exponentially increasing numbers. And based on her observations, zombies missing half their bodies seemed to count for less. Going after those kinds wasn’t really meaningful.
When she returned, Song Jinhe carried two travel bags taken from a luggage store and pointed out the location of the store to the other three.
Her efficient, practiced bandit-style looting operation shocked them once again. Aside from not knowing how to quickly fold and organize clothes, there was nothing wrong with it.
Which made sense. Who cared about organization during a smash-and-grab? People doing zero-dollar shopping usually just stormed into stores with sacks, swept goods up with a clatter, threw everything over their shoulders, and vanished in a hundred-meter sprint.
For a moment, Cheng Yan was stunned. This girl, who looked like she couldn’t even twist open a bottle cap, had adapted to the apocalypse incredibly quickly.
Meanwhile, he still hadn’t fully accepted this world. Deep down, he still held onto a faint and unrealistic hope that things could someday return to normal.
Back at the parking area, the group packed some supplies into backpacks and put the rest back into the cars. Most of Song Jinhe’s supplies were stored in her space, so she cleared out half the trunk to let the others store their things.
She found keys from an office and locked the door leading to the unloading warehouse.
By the time they finished everything, it was almost dark. The four of them followed the emergency stairwell into the neighboring eight-story bathhouse, where they encountered other survivors, more than a dozen people of all ages and genders.
Song Jinhe and the others’ arrival also made the survivors realize the weakness in that emergency passageway. Several young men immediately brought over chains, tables, and chairs to barricade it shut.
Lightning flashed and thunder roared outside as zombie howls echoed through the city.
All the curtains in the bathhouse were drawn shut, with only faint candlelight illuminating the interior.
The people there looked at Song Jinhe’s group with varying degrees of wariness and rejection, but when they noticed the backpacks on them, their expressions also gained a trace of anticipation and eagerness.
“Where did you come from?” The man speaking looked to be in his thirties, with scruffy stubble. His eyes kept drifting toward the backpacks on their shoulders. “The outside’s full of zombies. You drove here, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.” Song Jinhe lowered her eyes slightly, looking shaken from the experience. “We ran into a zombie horde.”
“Judging by the look of you, you’re planning to stay here?” The pot-bellied man beside him clicked his tongue. “We were here first, you know.”
“Everyone’s here to take shelter. This place shouldn’t belong to whoever arrived first, right?”
As soon as Song Jinhe finished speaking, the man glanced at the woven bamboo lantern in her hand and inwardly thought she looked like she had just come back from fishing. In a rough voice, he barked, “Who asked a woman like you to speak? Get your leader over here to talk to me—”
The next second, his voice cut off abruptly.
His eyes widened in panic as his gaze lowered to the pry bar that had nearly stabbed into his throat. He froze on the spot, too scared to move.
“I just used this on zombies. The blood on it hasn’t even been cleaned off yet, so you’d better be careful.” Song Jinhe tilted her head slightly. “I tried talking to you nicely, but you just wouldn’t listen. Can you speak like a human being now?”
The man’s eye twitched. The moment he met Song Jinhe’s gaze, all his arrogance instantly deflated.
Not only did no one around step in to help, many were openly watching the show with amusement. Wu Dayong was the type who bullied the weak and feared the strong, and he constantly beat and cursed his wife. Seeing Song Jinhe’s slender frame and young age, he assumed she’d be easy to intimidate. Now that he had run into a wall, everyone was delighted.
In the end, it was Wu Dayong’s wife who looked apologetically at Song Jinhe and pulled him back.
“What’s all this for? It’s just a misunderstanding. It’s the middle of the night, if those things outside notice us, won’t we all die?”
The bearded man stepped in to smooth things over, introducing himself as Yang Minghao. He kindly said that in difficult times, everyone should help each other. There were plenty of empty rooms here, and once the floodwaters receded and they headed to the shelter, they could look out for one another along the way.
It sounded very nice.
But where no one could see, the kindness in his eyes faded immediately.
If they wanted to safely reach a shelter, they needed more people willing to stand in front and fight.
These four people had cars, supplies on their backs, and had come from outside. They could provide plenty of useful information, and later he could think of ways to make them hand over their supplies. He had nothing to lose.
The bathhouse occupied two floors. Song Jinhe’s group of four chose connected VIP suites on the eighth floor to rest.
The moment they entered, Song Jinhe locked the door behind them. Looking at the tidy environment and comfortable resting beds, she couldn’t help sighing inwardly. Whether before or after the apocalypse, bathhouses and massage centers were still great places.
She took out two wooden boards from her space, heated some water, and gave herself a quick wipe-down and wash. Then she stood before the mirror and cut her waist-length hair short.
Afterward, she began organizing supplies. Good storage management could free up a surprising amount of space.
There were still seven or eight days before the floodwaters would recede. During that time, people from outside couldn’t enter the western district, making it the perfect opportunity to loot supplies.
Suppressing her exhaustion, Song Jinhe finished organizing everything. Wrapped beneath two blankets from the bathhouse, she quickly fell asleep.
Heavy raindrops formed continuous lines as violent winds raged through the clouds. The temperature dropped silently by more than ten degrees during the night.
Inside a residential house, a young man holding a walkie-talkie was trembling like a leaf.
“What the hell kind of weather is this? It suddenly got so cold. We still haven’t found them, maybe they’ve already been eaten by zombies.”
The man with a cigarette between his fingers analyzed calmly, “If they’re dead, the car shouldn’t just disappear. We didn’t even see a trace of the wheels. They’re pretty good at hiding. No need to waste time in this cold weather. Another team is already on the way.”
The next morning, the heavy rain had turned into a light drizzle.
Song Jinhe got up and ate some toast and milk. The bathhouse’s food had definitely already been looted clean, so today she planned to search the surrounding area and other floors to expand her storage space as quickly as possible.
Although she had water and food in her space, it was all bread, biscuits, and instant noodles, only enough to avoid starvation. Long-term consumption like that wasn’t good for the body.
When Song Jinhe came out with her backpack, she heard that something had happened in the rest area.
“My child can’t breathe anymore. Does anyone have medicine? Please help us…”
A young couple was holding a boy about nine years old in their arms, desperately asking the people around them for help.