Finally, Some Meat to Eat
In the residential complex, Jiang Ziyao spotted the house with yellow-and-white striped walls at a glance. In that stretch of the old, gray alley, it looked like a little fairy-tale cottage.
It had also been Jiang Ziyao’s suggestion that they come to Nanpu District. In the original timeline, he and Huo Chi had spent the night here. He guessed the area wasn’t too dangerous, and luckily, they had ended up right where the text had described.
[Text: We planned to leave this city, so we needed to be prepared. There was an unspoken rule among survivors: people tended to leave supplies at transit points throughout the city. Huo Chi and I decided to take a chance.
Two nights before we left, we found plenty of supplies in a residential area along Nanpu Street. The walls still had a strong smell of fresh paint. I guessed that was why this was the only clean house.
The rooms inside felt like a cozy little home. The only thing out of place was the skeleton on the sofa. We guessed the owner had chosen to end his own life. After the apocalypse began, plenty of people had their will to live broken.
It wasn’t hard to imagine what the owner had gone through. He’d hidden alone in the house, unable to light a fire or make a sound. Outside, walkers and mutants must have crowded the streets. Some of those monsters might even have been his friends or family.
Setting aside the sobering thoughts, Huo Chi was thrilled to find several intact cans of meat in a cupboard. We could rest here for a while, even if it was only for a short time.]
The houses in the residential area stood close together, and some were old. Black shapes swayed along the abandoned, desolate lanes. With no prey to chase, the walkers were like rotting dolls left wherever they happened to stop.
Jiang Ziyao let out a breath of relief and pointed to the house. “Let’s go in there.”
Huo Chi answered at once. “Sure. I’ll do whatever you say, Brother Jiang.”
Liu Dong didn’t object. He knew how to read the situation, and after Jiang Ziyao had saved his life, he trusted his decisions even more.
The three climbed down from the wall and crouched as they crept to the door. It was an ordinary wooden door and didn’t look sturdy.
Huo Chi used his axe to smash a hole near the lock. After cautiously peering inside, they reached through, turned the lock, and opened the door.
They went in and shut the door behind them. The living room was right ahead. A human skeleton sat plainly on the sofa, its clothes not yet rotted away. The bones were intact and looked almost clean.
Huo Chi moved stiffly as he passed the skeleton. The place gave him the creeps, like a haunted house. “I feel like something’s watching me.”
Liu Dong laughed. He said the owner of the house had been luckier than most. Only people who died naturally were left as skeletons. Anyone infected by the virus never got the chance to rest in peace. They turned into rotting lumps of flesh and kept shambling through the world.
First, the three of them searched the entire first floor. Once they’d confirmed there was no danger, they started looking for supplies. The house was well stocked with food, including bottled water, self-heating hot pot meals, and instant noodles. The power was out, so the fruit in the fridge had rotted.
Jiang Ziyao was determined to find the canned meat mentioned in the text. Sure enough, he found it in the cabinet beneath the TV. There were four cans in all. He picked one up and made a point of waving it in front of Huo Chi.
“Damn, meat!” Huo Chi was both surprised and delighted. “I thought I’d never taste meat again!”
“Go ahead.” Jiang Ziyao tossed him a can, then handed one to Liu Dong. “Let’s eat here before we head back. Canned meat’s hard to come by, so we should make the most of it. We’ll save one for the kid to try.”
Huo Chi chimed in, “Perfect, I’m hungry. Let’s eat it while we can.”
Liu Dong looked at the pile of supplies, puzzled. “Did you know about this place?”
“Not really,” Jiang Ziyao replied. “My instincts just tend to be right. You saw that for yourself.”
Liu Dong didn’t ask any more questions. He went on packing food and other useful things into his bag. He’d also found a barrel of gasoline in the kitchen. That was a real treasure.
Jiang Ziyao and Huo Chi sat in the living room and called Liu Dong over. They opened a few bottles of water and some self-heating hot pot meals, and finally got to have a proper meal. It was much better than compressed biscuits.
There was a family photo on the table, showing a family of four. The owner’s skull faced the picture, as if he could still see the people he missed. Huo Chi made a point of thanking the skeleton, even though they were acting like bandits.
Once they’d all eaten their fill, Huo Chi leaned back, picking his teeth and looking relaxed enough to hum a tune. Jiang Ziyao picked up a bottle of water and was just about to drink when a piece of wood appeared on the mouth of the bottle. A little dust shook loose, all of it coming from the same direction.
Jiang Ziyao paused. His expression turned wary, and he quickly set the bottle down.
“Huo Chi.”
“We haven’t checked the second floor, have we?”
He deliberately kept his voice low. Liu Dong and Huo Chi immediately stopped what they were doing, their hands quietly moving toward their weapons.
There was movement upstairs. The stairs and floorboards were wooden, too. Jiang Ziyao looked up, fixing his eyes on the gaps between the boards. Soon, he saw his own face.
More precisely, he saw three faces. He watched his own face twist out of shape. The mirror shifted in an instant. Those eyes were like glass!
[Text: We wanted to enjoy ourselves properly at least once, even if only for an hour.
Huo Chi and I both hated bugs, especially bugs dozens of times larger than they used to be. When we were in Nanping City, we’d had the bad luck to run into a centipede, a mid-tier mutant. It was bigger than a person, and each of its legs was as sharp as a saw. It even had deadly venom.
Even a whole army would have struggled to deal with it. Bullets couldn’t pierce its shell, and it nearly wiped out all the survivors in the city. That was also when we first encountered the awakened.
They were a team made up of awakened, from the legendary Utopia.
The creature hiding upstairs now was a low-tier insect mutant. It was a superb predator, skilled at hiding its presence and waiting for the right moment. To it, awakened were a delicacy. After a struggle, Huo Chi and I barely managed to handle it. But it made far too much noise. That couldn’t be a good sign.]
Jiang Ziyao hadn’t even finished reading all the text when the floorboards creaked. He could see them splitting apart.
Crash!
The three of them rolled away in different directions as the second-floor living room collapsed.
He was tired of this. Another bug.
These tiny creatures were everywhere. The virus had affected the whole food chain. Even the lowest creatures, insects and the like, had come out on top.
This one was even bigger than he’d imagined.
[Text: Robber fly, an arthropod.]
[Low-tier mutant.]
Its thorax was small, and its shell looked hard. A pair of wings grew from its back. When it dropped down, it kicked up a cloud of dust. Then it lunged at them like a spear. Unfortunately, Jiang Ziyao was one of the unlucky targets.
Jiang Ziyao was more agile than he’d expected. He twisted around and took cover behind the sofa. The insect’s mouthparts pierced through the sofa’s upholstery but missed his body. The force of the impact still drove him against the wall.
The owner’s remains on the sofa were caught in the attack, and the skull rolled onto Jiang Ziyao’s shoulder. He didn’t have time to apologize. His back had already slammed into the wall, and the insect kept ramming him with its head. Its wings beat behind it, as if it meant to crush Jiang Ziyao outright.
“Brother Jiang!” Huo Chi tried to help.
“Stay back!” Jiang Ziyao gritted his teeth. “You’ll be done for if you come over.”
A skilled hunter never let prey escape. Liu Dong’s gun fired first. He must have been aiming for its head, but the insect was far harder to deal with than they’d imagined. It had too many eyes and too wide a field of vision. The bullet only hit its back.
The shot left a dent, but no blood.
The insect’s simple eyes alone numbered three. It pulled its mouthparts from the sofa and let out a beastlike roar. Its shrill buzzing, amplified a hundredfold, made their ears hurt.
Then it swept a wing at Liu Dong. He froze for a split second, and in the next instant he and his gun were flung into the wall. The table and TV went with him, and he tumbled to the floor.
Liu Dong quickly got back to his feet. The bullet seemed to have enraged the insect. It turned its attention to him and charged at full speed.
The sofa was pressing down on Jiang Ziyao’s lungs. He took the chance to squeeze free through a gap in the corner. As soon as he got up, he heard Liu Dong scream. When he looked over, the insect had already clamped its jaws around Liu Dong’s left hand.
Huo Chi swiftly leaped forward and swung his axe. Knowing the insect’s shell was hard, he deliberately struck the end of its body, hidden beneath its wings.
It might have been something like a tiger’s tail. The axe left a gash on the insect’s rear end. Apparently, that enraged it. It whipped its hindquarters around, nearly launching Huo Chi through the air.
One man and one insect seemed evenly matched in strength, but Liu Dong was in no position to wait. At this rate, he was likely to lose an arm.
“Huo Chi! Move!” Jiang Ziyao shouted. He pulled out his pistol and fired twice, the shots slamming into the insect’s side.
Huo Chi swung his axe at the insect’s jaws. At last, it let go.
Jiang Ziyao fired again. The insect’s meal had been interrupted, and the vibrations of its back grew much faster. He watched its every move. In its eyes, he could see thousands of reflections of himself.
As he fired, he backed away. “Get Liu Dong to safety! I’ll handle it.”
A bloodied finger fell to the floor. The insect had chewed up Liu Dong’s whole hand. Jiang Ziyao had to draw it away.
He wasn’t worried that the insect would lose interest in him. He was more tempting prey, after all. It would be happy to focus on the main course.
Huo Chi hurried over to check on Liu Dong.
Liu Dong held himself up, sweat pouring down his face and all color drained from it. He struggled to raise his injured arm. His wrist was completely mangled, a bone protruding through the skin. It was a serious injury.
Huo Chi swallowed nervously. The wound was clearly starting to rot. The blood vessels bulging across the muscles in Liu Dong’s forearm had begun to turn black. It didn’t look good.
Huo Chi tore his shirt apart. He was about to bandage the wound and stop the bleeding when Liu Dong shouted with all the strength he had left, “Cut off my arm! Now!”
Huo Chi froze. “Are you serious?”
Liu Dong tipped his head back, veins bulging across his face as he convulsed. “Do it! I don’t want to turn… turn into a monster.”
“You…” Huo Chi immediately understood what he was afraid of. The rot was the poison of infection spreading!
Hell! What a mess! Why had they been so unlucky lately?
Liu Dong couldn’t wait any longer. “Do it!”
“Okay, okay…” Huo Chi wiped the blood off his axe, then raised it toward Liu Dong. He aimed at the body of a living man, trying to figure out where to draw the line. “But where am I supposed to cut?”
Liu Dong could barely keep his eyes open from the pain. “Why are you… wasting time? Just cut!”
“Cut!”
Bang!
A gunshot rang out again, making Huo Chi’s hand jerk.
Jiang Ziyao was facing off against the insect. He caught sight of Liu Dong and Huo Chi from the corner of his eye and immediately called out, “Huo Chi, do it!”
At the sound of Jiang Ziyao’s voice, Huo Chi hesitated no longer. He swung the axe down, putting all his strength into giving Liu Dong as clean a cut as possible.
But one swing wasn’t enough to sever Liu Dong’s forearm. Liu Dong bit down on his lip and twisted in pain, pressing his other hand hard over his mouth. He swallowed the agonized scream, and Huo Chi panicked with him, staring at the wound in numb horror.
Huo Chi had no choice but to lift the axe and swing again, cutting through the bone at last.
This time, the cut was clean, and the blood that came out was red, as it should be.
“Don’t you dare die!” Huo Chi was drenched in sweat. This was worse than chopping meat. The arm, hand and all, was now separated from Liu Dong’s body. He hurriedly pressed cloth against the wound. Blood had already soaked the floor. He could only hope it stopped soon, or Liu Dong would die from blood loss.
“Th… thanks.”
A little while later, Huo Chi heard Liu Dong’s weak voice. His lips were covered in blood, his lower lip nearly bitten through.
Huo Chi had thought the pain would knock him out, but he was surprised Liu Dong was still conscious.
“Hang on. We’ll get you cleaned up when we get back.”
Huo Chi couldn’t watch both sides at once. He hurriedly looked toward Jiang Ziyao. “Brother Jiang! You okay over there?”
Jiang Ziyao let out a soft breath. “When have I ever not been okay? Keep it down. Don’t draw the bug over here again.”
He fired five shots at the insect. It dodged the bullets. Once he’d used them all, he tossed the gun aside and held both hands out, palms empty, as if opening his arms to the insect.
The insect had been itching to attack. It bent its six legs and lowered its body into a hunting stance.
Jiang Ziyao stared straight at it, with even a trace of excitement in his eyes. “Time to feed you. Come here, sweetheart.”
Jiang Ziyao and the insect had reached a stalemate. The insect seemed to understand human weapons to some degree. Once the gun was gone from his hand, it visibly sprang into action. Its wings vibrated so fast they looked like a white streak. It let out a shriek, and Jiang Ziyao watched its meat-grinder mouth lunge at him.
He’d been waiting for this moment for a long time. A shovel appeared out of thin air in his hand. He raised his arm even faster than the insect could leap. Like the wind, he swung the shovel just like a golf club.
The shovel felt natural in his hands. He used it like a bat, waited for the right moment, and struck the insect squarely in the head. The impact sounded like a truck hitting a steel pillar.
His strength had increased after his awakening, and the shovel was even more powerful than he’d expected. The insect’s whole body rocked with the blow.
Before it could recover, he swung again!
His fingers clamped tightly around the handle. He pounded the insect’s head without pause, leaving it no room to escape. Walkers and mutants alike were most vulnerable in the head.
Jiang Ziyao struck with ruthless simplicity. The strength in his arm seemed almost tangible. He didn’t stop until the insect’s head was reduced to mush.
The insect’s headless body collapsed, its hind legs twitching faintly. He glanced coldly at the carcass, tossed the shovel aside, and stepped over it.
Jiang Ziyao was breathing hard after the exertion, his chest rising and falling. Sweat dampened the wisps of black hair on his forehead. He straightened up, grabbed a tissue, and wiped the blood from his hands.
His dark eyes were calm as he looked at the other two. “Are you both still alive?”
Huo Chi was still holding down Liu Dong’s wound, his hand soaked in blood. His voice was weak. “He’s breathing. He’s awake.”