After Sun Jie and Bai Long struck their deal, Sun Jie had a good amount of weaponry sent over to her.
“You sure you don’t want to bring people along?”
Sun Jie watched Bai Long fit the iron rod into the fixed strap at her side.
The rod was about half an arm long, and it circled all the way around Bai Long’s waist.
Bai Long didn’t say anything, she just glanced at the crowd standing far, far away from her.
Silence said more than words.
Sun Jie understood what she was getting at. “I’m truly sorry about that. When you get back, on top of the three months of supplies we agreed on, I’ll add a weapon, anything I’ve got, take your pick.”
Sun Jie’s sincerity was more than evident.
Even though it was only three months of supplies for one person, to a shipyard that had just been torn apart by zombies, that already amounted to nearly two-thirds of their stockpile.
And with that weapon on top of it…
Bai Long’s gaze swept past behind Sun Jie, and an idea took shape in her mind.
“The hospital is Ren’ai Hospital, in the downtown district.”
Worried Bai Long wouldn’t know the way, Sun Jie had specifically had someone draw her a map.
The shipyard had a dedicated design department, so sketching out a rough route was no trouble for them.
“If you can bring back antibiotics, that would be best.”
Sun Jie knew full well that sending Bai Long alone into a downtown hospital packed with zombies, and asking her to haul back medical supplies on top of it, was extremely difficult.
But right now there was no better candidate than her.
Most of the shipyard’s workers had family and weren’t willing to risk their lives like this.
After Wu Hao turned, the survival pressure on the shipyard had shot up all at once, and Sun Jie couldn’t leave for any length of time.
A lone wolf with no ties, Bai Long was the ideal pick.
What’s more, those supplies hadn’t reached her hands yet, so even if she died out there, it was no loss to them.
Sun Jie ran the numbers in her head several times over and concluded the deal was a sure profit, no downside.
“Give me half the supplies you promised, up front.”
Bai Long held out a hand to Sun Jie.
Sun Jie was taken aback for a moment.
She looked at Bai Long’s still-young face, about the same age as those college students, even smaller and thinner.
Bai Long’s outstretched hand gave a little wave. “I’m worried you’ll stiff me. I can’t go risk my neck for you with nothing in hand.”
Sun Jie’s smile dimmed a touch, but she still had someone bring over half the agreed supplies.
Unbothered by Sun Jie’s suddenly cooler attitude, Bai Long shouldered the supply pack and left the shipyard.
A briny sea breeze drifted through the air, carrying a faint smell of blood.
Bai Long felt unexpectedly at peace inside.
This deal, in a sense, had played right into her hands.
That fight back in the urban village had drained a huge amount of her esper power, and the pain of an overtaxed body slammed against her nerves in wave after wave.
On top of that, that one clash with Wu Hao just now…
Bai Long leaned against a wall and took a few ragged breaths, for a moment the scene before her blurred.
She needed medicine.
The medicine she’d gotten from Old Tower had gone missing somewhere, dropped who knows where, and she’d already meant to make a trip to the hospital sometime anyway.
Now she could find medicine for herself and get supplies and weapons at the same time.
Two birds with one stone.
Sun Jie might be a merchant, but from how cleanly she’d handed over half the supplies, she probably wouldn’t break the agreement.
This half alone already matched the batch she’d hauled back with An Ran and the others.
Even if she didn’t find any medicine, she wouldn’t come out behind.
…
Ren’ai Hospital sat in the center of Shuicheng, once the most crowded spot in the city.
Now the most zombie-packed spot in the city.
Bai Long hid in a narrow alley between two buildings, and as far as her eyes could see, zombies churned in dense, teeming masses.
Only a few pitiful emergency lights still glowed at the hospital entrance, flickering with a ghostly green in the night.
Echoing eerily with those green-faced zombies.
As Shuicheng’s largest hospital, Ren’ai was laid out as ten numbered buildings.
The shortest was three stories, the tallest, eleven.
Bai Long’s target, first of all, was the outpatient and emergency pharmacies.
A few dozen zombies roamed the hospital’s main entrance, breaking through wouldn’t be easy.
On the building directly facing the hospital’s nameplate, the red characters for “Emergency” had gone a dim, dark red with the power out.
The interior beyond the glass doors was impossible to make out clearly.
All she could see were faint white figures swaying back and forth.
A frontal breakthrough would be far too hard, she’d have to find another way in.
Bai Long scanned her surroundings.
A short distance behind her and off to the side, a loud crash suddenly rang out, drawing the bulk of the nearby zombies rushing toward it.
Bai Long seized the chance, flicked a zombie flying with one swing of her rod, and ducked into the hover-car it had been standing by.
In front of her was a data console she’d never seen before, aside from a single square screen, the car was completely bare.
“…” Bai Long fell silent.
There was a huge commotion not far off, yet the zombies, as if fitted with radar, had pinpointed Bai Long’s location with perfect accuracy.
In the blink of an eye, dense swarms of zombies came charging straight at her.
With no time to overthink it, Bai Long just mashed the biggest button in the center of the screen.
A soft glow circled the cabin in a single flickering ring, and then the hover-car surged forward, smashing through the emergency doors and shooting straight into the emergency building like an arrow loosed from a bowstring.
…
Inside the shipyard.
Sun Jie was leading the workers in restoring the equipment the zombies had thrown into disarray.
“Ms. Sun, long time no see.”
Cheng Qian walked up beside Sun Jie, a familiar smile on his face.
“Professor Cheng, I didn’t expect to run into you here.” Sun Jie snatched a moment to turn around and clasp Cheng Qian’s hand for a brief shake.
“I didn’t see you earlier, I was starting to think something had happened to you.” Cheng Qian made polite small talk, his gaze sweeping across the shipyard.
Sun Jie was right in the thick of things and had no patience to humor this famous Ocean University professor.
“Professor Cheng, I’m rather in the middle of—” She’d barely gotten the words out when Cheng Qian, half a beat behind, cut her off.
“Ms. Sun, I may be imposing on your shipyard for a while these next three days. I’ll have to trouble you to look after us.” Cheng Qian’s eyes crinkled with a smile, the very picture of gentle refinement.
With that said, he returned to the corner where his class of students was, looking for all the world like he’d really just come over to say hello.
But after hearing him out, the smile on Sun Jie’s face pulled tight and disappeared.
“Sister Sun, is something wrong?”
An Ran, passing by, noticed Sun Jie’s odd expression and stopped.
“No, it’s nothing.” Sun Jie shook her head, though there was no telling what was going through her mind.
Cheng Qian rejoined the students, the faint smile on his face unchanged, if anything, it deepened a bit.
He knew Sun Jie was a clever person, and that she understood exactly what he meant.
“Teacher, did something… happen to Xu Yunyi and the others?”
Spotting Cheng Qian coming back, one of the girls scrambled up from the ground at once and asked in a trembling voice.
“Will they still be able to come back?”
Cheng Qian’s smile reined itself in, he said gravely, “I’m very worried about them too. I hope they’re all right. Don’t fret too much, go call Yue Li and the others over, I have something to tell you all.”
The girl, Xie Yinyin, nodded back tears and went to fetch the students Cheng Qian had named.
“Wang Yi, Teacher Cheng wants us to come over.”
Eyes rimmed red, Xie Yinyin passed the word to Wang Yi and the others.
“Sorry, but that fall just now…” Wang Yi pressed her lips together, her face pale as if she’d been badly frightened. “I twisted my ankle, and it hurts too much to move now. Could I trouble you to explain it to Teacher Cheng for me?”
She pressed her palms together, begging Xie Yinyin.
“…Fine.” Xie Yinyin fell silent for a moment, she wasn’t thrilled about it, but in the end she said nothing.
“They’re not coming?”
Yue Li noticed Xie Yinyin had come back alone and gave a cold snort of understanding. “So they really did find themselves an excuse.”
“You don’t even need your brain to guess what Cheng Qian’s calling us over for, those few are quick to do the math, aren’t they.”
Another girl rolled her eyes.
“Boo-hoo… Yunyi and the others said they were going to Kangya Compound to look for supplies… are they even still alive…?”
The ponytailed girl trailing along in the group couldn’t hold back her sobs.
“We’ve got to go either way, if we’re lucky we might even run into Yunyi and the rest.” Xie Yinyin soothed her gently.
“Right. Sticking around here, we’ll get shoved out to feed the zombies sooner or later anyway. Maybe we’ll even run into that Boss from earlier and latch onto her [1]抱大腿, lit. ‘hug a big thigh’, to cling to a powerful patron for protection jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2611447_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2611447_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });.”
Yue Li folded her arms across her chest. Thinking back to the figure of that girl in the black cloak, she couldn’t help but sigh in admiration. “That was just way too cool.”
“…But she’s a beastwoman.” Wen Li sniffled, resistant.
The group fell silent for a moment.
“Whatever the case, let’s first think about how we’re going to handle the task coming up.” Yue Li drew in a deep breath.
“We have to go find Yunyi and the others,” Xie Yinyin said softly.
Hearing that, the others glanced toward Cheng Qian’s direction and clustered in around Xie Yinyin.
“What is it?” Yue Li asked in a low voice.
Xie Yinyin rubbed her fingers together and swallowed, her voice gone hoarse. “Yunyi and the others have a way to leave this place…”
…
Ren’ai Hospital.
Bai Long, head spinning from the hover-car’s impact, forced down a steadying breath and clambered out the top of the car, clutching her now-worse-aching stomach.
The car’s nose had rammed straight into the emergency triage desk, leaving only half the body sticking out.
A zombie nurse inside the triage desk was pinned by the car’s nose, clawing and snapping between the desk and the hood, unable to break free.
Although most of the zombies had been drawn off by that loud crash earlier, the ones left were already more than enough to keep Bai Long busy.
A gurney was parked beside the triage desk, someone must have been transferring an emergency patient when the zombie outbreak hit.
Now the bed was empty.
Bai Long gauged the distance and leapt across in a single bound.
While she was in midair, the zombies below jumped and lunged, reaching up with open mouths to grab her.
The soles of her shoes scraped against sharp fingernails with a grating, teeth-clenching screech.
Bai Long just barely landed dead-center on the gurney and, without pausing a second, yanked up the rails on both sides.
The instant the rails came up, they smashed straight into the jaw of a zombie that had been lunging onto the bed.
Bone met metal.
Bai Long clearly heard the sound of bone splintering.
With the rails as a barrier, Bai Long wrapped the thick blanket around herself and took an iron rod in each hand.
The rods whirled in her grip with ferocious force.
Both hands swinging back and forth in crisscrossing arcs, one rod, one downed little zombie.
With the rails to buffer them, the moment a zombie got near Bai Long’s body it was caught in midair, right in time to take a rod to the face.
Knocked clean away.
Bracing against the head of the bed, Bai Long sent the zombies lunging from the front and sides flying.
The zombies charging the headboard from behind toppled onto it one after another, each falling on top of the last, conveniently giving her a forward push.
The gurney rolled on across the smooth tile floor, sliding crookedly off in some direction.
If anyone had been looking down from upstairs, they’d have seen the dim emergency hall, a single hover-car embedded in the triage desk.
And beside it, a whole pile of zombies in white coats.
The white-coated zombies pressed forward one after another, escorting a gurney along with their bodies.
It was the spitting image of one of those touching scenes you’d see at a hospital during an emergency rescue, back before the apocalypse.
If only it weren’t for the fact that the person on the gurney, who was supposed to be the patient, was beating the “doctors” over the head with an iron rod in each hand.
Under the “doctors'” frantic escort, Bai Long successfully steered the bed all the way to the first-floor emergency pharmacy.
“You’re all just too warm and welcoming.”
Bai Long decisively kicked away a “doctor” whose every thought was fixed on her life, flipped nimbly to her feet with the blanket over her shoulder, and used the gurney’s blind angle to slip past the zombies into the pharmacy.
These zombies were like they’d been juiced up on adrenaline [2]打了雞血, lit. “injected with chicken blood”, hyped up, manically energized jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2611447_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2611447_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, throwing themselves at her bed one after another.
They’d shoved her right up to the pharmacy door.
A hospital pharmacy usually had no one but a few pharmacists inside, making it far safer than the main hall.
Draped in the cotton blanket and gripping her iron rod, Bai Long edged forward, probing cautiously.
As she passed the corner of a medicine cabinet, a whistling sound suddenly split the air, slicing straight down toward her head.
“AAAAHHH, taste old Sun’s staff!” [3]吃俺老孫一棒—Sun Wukong’s signature battle cry from Journey to the West, “old Sun” is the Monkey King referring to himself, “staff” being his golden cudgel jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2611447_1_3').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2611447_1_3', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });
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