The boy had his mouth open, his face pale, and a continuous wheezing sound came from his throat as he struggled to breathe.
Most of the private rooms in the bathhouse had no windows and poor ventilation. Days of heavy rain had left the blankets inside damp and cold. Combined with the lingering foul odor that couldn’t dissipate throughout the city and the temperature drop last night, people with weaker constitutions were suffering even more.
“Ms. Zhou, where would we even find asthma medicine right now?” someone wearing an ill-fitting old coat said. “The nearest pharmacy is still a street away. There are so many zombies downstairs. It’s not that we don’t want to help, you’d just be sending us to our deaths if we go out.”
Some people began to grow uneasy. “I heard that once people die, they turn into zombies… Ms. Zhou, how about this, you take the child to the fire escape first. If there’s anything we can help with…”
Ms. Zhou interrupted him emotionally. “My child is already like this, how can you say something like that? That’s too much!”
“It’s harsh, but if there’s no medicine, even doctors can’t help. This is only going to end one way. You can’t be so selfish and put all of us in danger.”
“That makes sense. My neighbor was fine at first too. He even went out in the rain to buy medicine himself. That same night he died and came back to life, then bit his whole family to death! We understand how you feel, but you need to consider everyone else too.”
The couple’s eyes turned redder and redder as they listened. They wanted to argue back, but looking at their child struggling for breath, they couldn’t say anything. Even the people who normally got along well with them remained silent.
At that moment, Cheng Yan pushed through the crowd to check on the boy. He quickly supported the child’s upper body and adjusted him into a position that made breathing easier.
Seeing his professional manner, hope reignited in the couple’s eyes.
Ms. Zhou hurriedly asked, “Are you a doctor? Please save my Xiao Yang!”
Cheng Yan paused, his expression grave. “In this condition, without a nebulizer, it could be fatal.”
Ms. Zhou collapsed to the ground, the light in her eyes dimming as tears kept streaming down her face.
“I have one dose of medicine, but you’ll need to trade something for it, rice, flour, or other food,” Song Jinhe said as she walked in, looking at Ms. Zhou.
Medicines like this were limited in her possession, mainly kept for emergencies.
“Is a bag of noodles enough?” Ms. Zhou asked anxiously.
“Yes.”
Song Jinhe pretended to reach into her pocket and took the nebulizer from her space, lightly squeezing the packaging before handing it over.
Ms. Zhou hurriedly took the medicine and administered it to the child. As the boy’s breathing gradually stabilized, the couple repeatedly thanked her while handing over the noodles.
Song Jinhe put the noodles into her bag and turned to leave. Behind her, discussion quickly broke out.
“How can she have the nerve to demand something in exchange for a life-saving medicine? Isn’t that just profiteering off someone’s misfortune? If I had medicine, I would’ve given it to Ms. Zhou without asking for anything,” said a woman who was close to Ms. Zhou.
Someone nearby chimed in, “Carrying such a big backpack around like we’re all thieves, there’s no way she’d be short on even this little stuff.”
“Keep your voice down. That girl yesterday used that stick to kill zombies and scared Wu Dayong so badly he didn’t even dare speak. She’s ruthless.”
Yang Minghao pulled Cheng Yan aside to ask about the zombie virus.
Cheng Yan didn’t say they had come from the hospital; he only shared what he knew.
Even so, he didn’t know much, he had only personally witnessed the process of humans going from high fever to turning into zombies.
Most infected people couldn’t survive more than 16 hours after developing a fever, and even the longer cases didn’t exceed 48 hours. After death, they would “revive” within 30 seconds to 5 minutes.
“Does anyone in your group have asthma?” Yang Minghao asked casually, pretending it was out of curiosity.
“A family member. But it’s no longer useful now,” Song Jinhe said, lowering her head to hide the completely untroubled look in her eyes.
Yang Minghao didn’t press further. After hearing they were planning to go collect rainwater in buckets, he said a few polite words and left.
The four of them carried eight marked plastic buckets up to the terrace. Looking at the dark, overcast sky, the zombie-infested streets, and the flooded areas in the distance where various objects floated, even breathing felt oppressive.
After learning that Song Jinhe planned to go out to search for supplies, the other three insisted on going with her. After some consideration, they decided someone needed to stay behind at the bathhouse to prevent the entrance from being sealed off, so in the end Peng Zhixue stayed.
Before leaving, while no one was paying attention, Song Jinhe picked up a few empty soda bottles from the floor of the buffet restaurant.
The shopping mall area had many places that hadn’t been searched yet. Their first stop was the 10th-floor restaurant, where they split up, kept a safe distance, and maintained the ability to support each other at any time.
By the end of half a day, Song Jinhe’s space had gained quite a lot, enough to be considered a small fortune.
Two barrels of unopened cooking oil, three crates of beer, half a crate of empty bottles, five crates of bottled water, and one barrel of purified water.
Fifteen 10-kilogram bags each of rice and flour, plus pasta, sweet potato starch, buckwheat noodles, and various dried goods, along with pre-made hot pot soup bases, milk, tea leaves, mud-covered sweet potatoes and potatoes, and various seasonings.
Clean pots, a small kitchen knife with a blade about 16 cm long, a toolbox, and two fully charged flashlights, plus some other useful items.
She also took some disposable meal boxes, convenient for storing cooked food in her space later.
Once she really couldn’t fit anything else, she would follow the smell of decay to find lone zombies.
A dull impact sounded, another zombie fell.
“What are you planning to do?” Cheng Yan finally couldn’t hold back after holding it in all morning.
Other people would run the moment they saw zombies, but she was actively going to look for them. And earlier, the expression on her face had been clearly off, it almost looked… excited?
“Training,” Song Jinhe replied without hesitation.
Cheng Yan: “……”
That actually sounded weirdly reasonable.
But when he made a move, why did she look like someone had stolen her kills? She definitely just wanted to kill zombies, didn’t she?
Song Jinhe took a pot and bowls and chopsticks from the hotpot restaurant. Cheng Yan and Zhang Yi dismantled a wooden chair, took off their blood-stained outer clothes, and started boiling water.
They broke half a hotpot base into the pot. Ham, sausages, instant noodles, and vermicelli they found in the shop all went in at once, and the aroma instantly became overwhelming.
“It’d be better with meat. Hotpot just feels like it’s missing its soul without tripe and sliced lamb rolls,” Song Jinhe said lightly as she poured herself some orange juice.
After the power outage for so long, all the meat had already spoiled. When they opened the walk-in freezer in the back kitchen earlier, the stench had driven them straight out. There were still about half a box of eggs in the storage room, though, so Song Jinhe took a few to boil in the hotpot and stored the rest in her space.
“Ham and sausages are meat too,” Zhang Yi said, rolling up her sleeves. She first scooped two full ladles of food for Song Jinhe. “I didn’t expect we’d still be able to eat hotpot in the apocalypse. This time I’m going to make up for all the meals I missed!”
After finishing the hotpot and juice, the three of them made a few Molotov cocktails and headed to the next floor.
Cheng Yan realized that Song Jinhe really seemed to be getting more and more “into” killing zombies, it was like she had become some kind of physics sword saint. He simply stayed behind to collect corpses and teach Zhang Yi how to deal with zombies efficiently.
By 6 p.m., it was already dark. Since they couldn’t make it back to the bathhouse in time, they decided to spend the night in the executive office on the top floor.