The sky was choked with dark clouds, and a salty, fishy sea wind came whipping straight into people’s faces, carrying the stench of blood.
The starship touched down in Zone 64 of District 20.
Zone 64 was also called Sea City. Its ocean area far outstripped its land, the entire city was built atop seawater.
The starship landed at a harbor near the coastline, and Bai Long, using the densely packed shipping containers along the docks, successfully slipped out of the armed forces’ line of sight.
The footsteps of the apocalypse had already reached District 20.
This was the hour when the harbor would normally be teeming with people, and the workers hauling and unloading cargo hadn’t escaped the disaster.
Bai Long slammed to a halt just in time to avoid the tragedy of coming face-to-face with a zombie around the corner.
New coworker No. N, this is our first meeting, getting this up close is a little forward of you.
Even turned into a zombie, the worker’s muscles were still knotted and his body still powerful.
A wave of foul, reeking breath hit her face. Bai Long bent low and lunged backward, barely dodging the savage fangs that still had bits of flesh stuck to them.
Ugh, halitosis.
Bai Long raised a hand, and a jet of water shot straight into the zombie’s rancid mouth.
A free mouthwash, on the house.
The zombie, with water splashed into both eyes, couldn’t brake in time and chomped straight down on the sheet-metal shipping container at an angle ahead of it.
It bit a whole row of holes clean through the metal.
The metal box clamped around its teeth, trapping it so it couldn’t pull free for the moment.
Bai Long seized the chance to ram her elbow viciously into the back of the zombie’s skull, embedding it, fangs, corpse, and all, into the container.
Then she simply turned and walked off, leaving the zombie to thrash inside the container.
Having gone so long without food or water, Bai Long’s stomach let out a mournful wail.
Fortunately the harbor’s infrastructure was a good deal better than Zone 130’s, and Bai Long hadn’t walked far before she spotted a small supermarket.
Calling it a supermarket was a stretch, it was really just a shop that sold food and odds and ends to the workers.
With the apocalypse here, the whole concept of paying money for goods was long gone.
Food had become the hard currency.
The tiny storefront looked as if a gale had swept through and stripped it bare, leaving only torn packaging on the shelves and floor, and filthy spoiled food scattered everywhere.
There was also rotting flesh and white bone mixed with mud and blood on the ground.
Sprawled across the doorway were two corpses, their flesh torn open.
In an instant, the situation changed, a wave of foul stench came rushing at her from behind and off to one side.
Bai Long twisted out of the way just in time and instinctively grabbed something within reach to use as a weapon.
The zombie gave her no room to breathe, baring its claws and fangs as it lunged at her.
Its ashen-black claws gave off a vicious, cold gleam in the dark.
“Pop!”
A muffled sound.
A brownish disc-shaped object had latched firmly onto the zombie’s face. The other end of the disc was a snow-white plastic stick, and one end of that stick was in Bai Long’s hand.
It was a toilet plunger.
In her panic she’d grabbed a plunger that had fallen to the floor and turned it into a weapon.
“Hello. I didn’t mean to.”
Bai Long and the zombie stared at each other across the plunger, and for a moment it was honestly a little awkward.
The plunger was suctioned over the zombie’s gaping mouth, and Bai Long took the opening to back up a few steps and rise to her feet.
But the plunger clearly couldn’t withstand the zombie’s sharp claws, in two or three swipes it was shredded and mangled, drifting pitifully to the floor.
Bai Long shoved over a nearby shelf to block the zombie’s renewed assault, then scooped up a broom from the ground and smashed it hard against the zombie’s head.
The zombie’s head was evidently harder than the broom.
The broom bent into a clean ninety-degree angle, its bristle end sagging loosely downward.
Bai Long took the gap while the zombie’s head was bowed to pull out her dagger, meaning to stab it through the skull, but a sudden wrenching pain seized her heart, and her face contorted for an instant.
That familiar stabbing pain flared up again in her joints.
Of all the times to have an attack.
Cold sweat seeped from Bai Long’s brow, and her face went a shade or two paler.
It was only a momentary pause, but the zombie had already lifted its head again and snapped its jaws at her.
Its dense, serried fangs clamped down hard on the broom handle, and the grinding of teeth against metal made a screech that set teeth on edge and rang in the ears.
Bai Long, weakened by the sudden heart pain, was pinned flat to the ground by the zombie.
Sticky saliva dripped before her eyes, accompanied by a nauseating, fishy stench.
In her desperation, Bai Long somehow gathered a flow of water between her fingers.
At a single thought from her, the water condensed into a straight, slender water-arrow.
This was already the most she could manage in shaping and controlling water.
The pain in her body was growing more and more severe, to the point where she could barely control her fingers.
Now was no time to slowly research her powers.
The water-arrow drove straight through the zombie’s brow, leaving a hollow hole. The zombie froze in midair and went completely still.
Clutching her chest, Bai Long used the last of her strength to shove the zombie off, gasping silently in great gulps.
The medicine she’d kept in her pocket earlier had fallen out at some point. She’d had attacks before with no medicine on hand, eating something to recover her strength would ease a good deal of the pain.
Bai Long couldn’t afford to be picky, she just grabbed a carton of milk that had been left on the ground, tipped her head back, and drank it down.
With the milk in her stomach, her body’s pain slowly eased, and she had the energy to size up her situation.
The little shop was dead silent, and in the dim space there was no sign of anyone.
The corpses on the ground by the door were two middle-aged people, a man and a woman. They had zombie bite wounds but hadn’t turned, they’d died before being torn apart.
A noise came from a dark corner of the shop, as though something had been knocked over.
The water from her power had already dried on her fingers. Bai Long gripped her dagger tightly, not intending to reveal her ability.
Her understanding of her powers still wasn’t deep enough, and rashly exposing them in the apocalypse wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
There was someone else’s presence here.
With some of her strength back, Bai Long didn’t dare relax completely. Gripping her dagger, she walked slowly toward the source of the sound.
She stood before a hidden door, the noise was coming from in there.
Bai Long kicked the door open, dagger leveled at whatever was behind it.
“Don’t… don’t kill me…” A girl who looked about her own age was slumped on the floor, her tear-streaked face trembling, her voice shaking.
Bai Long was quiet for a moment. Her hand on the dagger didn’t loosen, and her gaze swept the girl up and down without leaving a trace.
The girl looked like she’d been rolled through a mud pit, with scrapes in several places.
The girl huddled in the dim corner, shaking, not daring even to meet Bai Long’s eyes, trembling and nearly in tears: “I’ll give you food, please don’t kill me…”
There was no telling what she’d been through, right now she was in a state of extreme wariness and unease toward the outside world.
Bai Long said nothing.
The girl mustered all the courage in her body to peek cautiously in her direction.
Half of Bai Long’s body was hidden in the shadow of a cabinet, but those eyes were unusually bright and sharp in the dark.
In that instant the girl felt herself being fixed by a beast’s stare, and she didn’t dare hesitate any longer. She set all the food and drinking water she’d hidden earlier on the floor between the two of them.
She didn’t dare get too close to Bai Long, this was her limit.
Earlier a band of knife-wielding bandits had come, killed her parents without a word of explanation, and carried off everything in the shop.
If she hadn’t happened to be hiding in the back room and escaped, she’d probably be just another corpse on the floor by now.
A moment ago, through the little window in the door, she’d seen Bai Long swing her dagger and run the uncle next door clean through.
The girl’s already fragile psyche had been frightened into an even more precarious state.
She figured Bai Long was a killing maniac just like those people.
The girl could only pin her hopes on the possibility that this young woman was merely hungry, and would let her go once she’d found something to eat.
Bai Long was quiet for a while. She took only a few pieces of bread, leaving the bulk of the food for the girl.
Before leaving the shop, she said without turning back: “Get out of here, fast. The apocalypse is here, this place won’t be safe for long.”
There was the smell of blood from those two fresh corpses at the door, and for miles around there was only this one little shop, so other people or zombies would be coming soon.
The girl had clearly been hiding here for a while.
She huddled in the corner of the room, showing no sign of moving even after Bai Long left.
The girl didn’t believe a word Bai Long had said. She shut the door again and curled back up inside.
She muttered under her breath: “Who knows if what she said is true or not. What apocalypse, it’s all a lie…”
As long as she stayed quiet this time and didn’t make a sound, no one would find her!
And she still had food, she wasn’t leaving! It was too terrifying out there, only in here was the safest!
…
Outside, the streetlights had become mere ornamental frames, the road shrouded in dimness.
Bai Long made her way forward along the streetlamps.
To the sound of the sea waves roaring against the shore in her ears, she ate two bags of bread back to back.
The cloying, sickly-sweet cream mixed with stiff bread went down, and her strength recovered a good deal.
Just as she tore open the third bag of bread, a shrill female scream suddenly rang out in her ears.
Bai Long instantly realized it was that girl from before.
The harbor area was full of zombies, that one scream would draw every zombie within ten miles straight toward it.
And if the girl had been harmed by living people, those people probably wouldn’t be getting out alive either.
Bai Long didn’t break stride, she kept walking forward.
With the apocalypse here, all she could do was her best. That one warning had been her thanks for the girl’s bread.
As for whether the girl would believe her…
She couldn’t save everyone.
The harbor sat on the outer suburban fringe of Sea City, its shops and food had long since been picked clean.
After entering a fourth small shop and finding no food, Bai Long decided to head toward the city center.
That girl’s scream a moment ago had likely drawn all the nearby zombies away, on the suburban roads there were only a few stray ones, which Bai Long had no trouble dealing with.
Zone 64 was different from Zone 130: inside the city there weren’t just large supermarkets but also a great many shops.
The amount of supplies in the city far exceeded that around the suburban harbor.
The decorative shrubs lining both sides of the road gradually thinned out, and the road grew narrower.
When a great sprawl of buildings of varying heights appeared in her view, Bai Long knew she’d entered the inner ring of the city.
With the apocalypse’s arrival, the whole city’s electrical grid had been knocked out entirely. Her view was washed in grey, with only a few scattered emergency lights left flickering their feeble, dying glow.
Before she could even decide which way to go next, a great dazzling blaze suddenly lit up at the edge of her vision.
Crimson-red flames shot up toward the sky, and amid the thunderous crash of collapse, rolling black smoke drifted high into the air.
A five-story building had abruptly burst into roaring flames, becoming the brightest source of light in the dark night.
Zombies, which only knew how to eat human flesh, couldn’t possibly start a fire this large. And under these conditions ordinary people wouldn’t dare act so rashly, to ignite an entire building in an instant like this, even strapping bombs to it and blowing it up would be hard-pressed to cause this level of destruction in such a short time.
Because Zone 64 was ringed by seawater on all sides, people had channeled the seawater into the city to serve as part of the transportation network.
Waterways were one of Sea City’s great signature features.
To cause a blaze of such scale even when surrounded by water on all four sides…
Perhaps it had something to do with an esper power.
But if the armed forces were still in District 20, they might well send people over to investigate…
Bai Long mulled it over and decided to go take a look near the burning building.
There were a lot of buildings around, plenty of zombies too, and even if armed espers showed up there was no telling who they’d be, and whether that bunch of stuck-up, nose-in-the-air armed espers would even remember her was another matter.
The fiercely burning building had clearly caught the attention of others as well.
After conferring, quite a few people decided to go investigate the situation.
Whether this fire was a natural disaster or a man-made one, having more known information always set the mind more at ease.
…
Bai Long didn’t go charging straight in out in the open.
Among the buildings, looping waterways could be seen everywhere, rising and falling at staggered heights, and quite a few of them still held Sea City’s distinctive mode of transport—
—Moon-boats.
Small boats with both ends tapered into a sleek, streamlined crescent shape were moored in the waterways, and the boats were stained crimson-brown with bloodstains.
Bai Long used her dagger to stab to death the two or three zombies wandering nearby, then wound through the alleys between buildings onto a moon-boat in the nearest waterway.
In a sense, Sea City’s water-rich terrain was actually quite favorable for her powers.
The moon-boat’s passengers were nowhere to be found, they’d probably already become part of the crowd shambling along the streets.
So far Bai Long knew that, from nothing, her power could fire water-bullets freely from her five fingers, and she could control the speed and shape of the water-bullets as they left her fingertips.
Simply put, her fingers were like a squirt gun, except, more advanced than an ordinary squirt gun, she could freely change the shape of the water-bullets she fired.
But the drawback, she’d discovered after testing, was that after firing at most three water-bullets each time, her physical stamina would plummet drastically.
For a short while afterward she’d be unable to move normally at all.
In other words, if she fired three shots and still hadn’t dealt with the trouble, all that was left for her was to wait on the spot to die.
Bai Long dipped her hand into the waterway and calmed herself to feel the sensation of her power activating.
At a flicker of thought, the once-calm water’s surface rippled outward in concentric rings.
Where her hand touched it, the still water flowed in one direction according to her will.
Half a minute later, the once-motionless waterway was all set surging, pushed into motion.
Bai Long’s eyes brightened, and she felt a measure of confidence in her heart.
The one thing to be thankful for was that her power placed no limits on the range or setting in which it could be used.
Water could overcome fire.
She was confident that no matter the situation, she could retreat safely from the burning building.
Water’s forms were endlessly mutable, it could attack and it could defend.
No matter the era, the old-school natural-element powers of metal, wood, water, fire, and earth were never weak abilities.
…
Meanwhile, a moon-boat glided along a waterway up to the small building that was burning.
Three people stepped lightly off the boat onto the ground. The woman in the middle was wrapped head to toe in a long shirt and long trousers. The two men flanking her each held a steel rod.
The woman lifted the sunglasses on her face to reveal her eyes, then a moment later set them back in place to cover them again.
“There’s a reading on the third floor.”
“Why’s it right in the dead center…” The lean, lanky man on the left grimaced in misery, both hands gripping his long rod.
“Let’s hurry up. If the fire goes out and the zombies come over, we’re done for.” The woman entered the building first.
The man on the right, wearing a baseball cap, followed close behind.
Flames coiled within the window frames and door frames of the entire building, burning from the inside out.
The moment they entered, they felt a rolling wave of heat surge into their faces.
The extreme temperature had temporarily turned the area around the building into a dead zone, the zombies barred outside by the heat.
The three of them advanced inward slowly and cautiously, long rods in hand.
“Check around for anything usable. We can’t come all this way for nothing.” The woman walked in front, not the least bit afraid of zombies that might come rushing out.
She loosened her collar a little, sweat winding down her skin.
“Does this woman not even know how to be afraid?” The lanky man nudged the cap-wearing man and muttered under his breath: “She’s younger than the two of us, right?”
Before the cap-wearing man could answer, the woman said evenly upon hearing him: “It’s the apocalypse. Fear is the most useless thing. I just want to survive.”
The lanky man’s face went sheepish, he’d been overheard talking behind someone’s back, and he couldn’t argue with it either, so he could only awkwardly change the subject: “It’s way too hot in here. A person could get roasted alive.”
“If only we had a water esper, at least they could put out the fire and cool things down.”
The little building sat in an urban village, the old structure shed flecks of powder downward as the flames scorched it.
The original residents had all been elderly people. With four households per floor, there was pitifully little in the way of supplies to scavenge.
“Why is there no one in this building?” The cap-wearing man frowned. “Not even zombies.”
He remembered the urban village should have plenty of retired old folks living in it, there shouldn’t be neither people nor zombies right now.
“Everyone stay careful.” The woman, too, felt something was off.
The three could only continue upward.
Between the staircases of each floor was an iron door, all of them rusted and worn with age.
The cap-wearing man knocked the iron door open with one swing of his rod.
Thick smoke had spread across the entire third floor, the view a smear of black and red.
The woman was just about to lift off her sunglasses when the flames suddenly leapt several meters high.
At the same time, for some reason, the horde of zombies that had been hidden and gathered in the shadows burst out with a roar and rushed straight at the three of them.
It happened so suddenly that even though the cap-wearing man snapped back to his senses first and swung his rod to block, the thick smoke couldn’t block the zombies’ assault.
The lanky man was so frightened by a zombie shoving its face at him that he flailed his rod about wildly with no method at all, to little effect.
The woman was forced back onto the terrace by the zombies, the small of her back pressed against the scalding railing, her upper body completely suspended over the edge.
The cap-wearing man and the lanky man had their hands full and could barely save themselves.
Sharp, vicious fangs opened and closed before her face, grazing past the side of her ear as they snapped down, the bloody stench shooting straight into her nerves.
The rod in her hand had been knocked away at some point.
The woman didn’t give up resisting, facing the savage, horrifying zombie she clenched her fists and held it back with all her might.
Time trickled by, and the strength of her resistance grew weaker and weaker.
I’m finished…
The woman shut her eyes in despair. She didn’t want to die…
The next second a cold gust of wind brushed past over her head, and immediately after, sticky blood splattered over half her face.
The woman’s eyes flew open, a gleaming kitchen cleaver was right before her eyes.
The cleaver had been driven straight into the zombie’s brain, with a notch chipped into the blade still visible.
“Duck down.” A slightly husky voice sounded above her head.
The woman reacted instantly, obediently lowering her head.
The whistle of cleaving air rang out abruptly as a flying rod swept clean across the zombie pinning her.
On the terrace, a figure hung one-handed from the railing, the iron rod in their hand giving off a stern, cold gleam in the moonlight.
Faintly, there even seemed to be a layer of clear, translucent water-sheen over it.