An Ran had been sure she was as good as dead, until a stranger’s black silhouette came “committing violence” with a rod.
One swing flicked the old-man zombie that had been about to eat its dinner flying.
That person swept the iron rod across two or three times, knocking flying the zombies surrounding the lanky man and the cap-wearing man.
With the pressure from the zombies’ resistance lessened, the cap-wearing man quickly dispatched the one in front of him too, then turned and pulled the lanky man out of danger.
An Ran straightened the sunglasses sitting half-crooked on her face, her gaze fixed on that black figure.
The person was dressed bizarrely: a pair of loose, cuff-cinched cargo pants with every pocket stuffed full, an entire body wrapped tightly in a black cloth cloak, plus an old pair of sunglasses, like a black ghost.
She held the iron rod reverse-gripped behind her back, standing there in silence.
“Brother, we really owe you, we almost bought it back there.” The lanky man, still shaken, looked at Bai Long with gratitude in his eyes.
Tch, this brother makes one cool entrance!
Look at that cold, aloof bearing, clearly a powerhouse type.
The cap-wearing man nodded too: “Thank you.”
In reality, however, powerhouse-type Bai Long was holding the iron rod and thinking about how to lay legitimate claim to it.
Hearing the lanky man’s words, she only shot them a glance and said nothing more.
Little did she expect this only made the lanky man and the others all the more certain of their guess.
Look at that glance, brimming with presence!
She must be seriously strong.
But actually it was because Bai Long had social anxiety and didn’t know how to respond.
“This iron rod…” Bai Long had just begun, choosing her words carefully, when she heard An Ran say, rather red-faced: “I’m really sorry, it seems my arm got dislocated during the fight just now.”
“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to team up with us for the time being? We’ll split the supplies evenly once we get out.” An Ran ventured cautiously, afraid the other party would think she lacked sincerity.
They’d come out this time with the task of bringing supplies back, too, and if they returned with too little it would be hard to explain.
But the way things looked now, with just the three of them it would be very difficult to retreat safely from this building.
With Bai Long around, the pressure on the three of them to complete their task would be greatly reduced.
Seeing that Bai Long said nothing, just as An Ran was agonizing over whether she thought the offer too small and preparing to sweeten the deal, she saw Bai Long nod.
“Sure.” Bai Long gripped the iron rod tightly, satisfied inside but expressionless on the outside.
Oho, found myself a sucker.
The dagger was sharp but only suited for dealing with one or two zombies. Her command of her powers still wasn’t fluent, and once she ran into a large batch of zombies it would be hard to get away.
The iron rod was just right for handling that.
With these three around, if she happened to run into armed espers she’d have a cover story too.
Getting supplies was an unexpected bonus.
Beneath her sunglasses, Bai Long’s eyes curved into a smile.
Now wasn’t the time to let them relax and exchange pleasantries. Bai Long didn’t waste words, she walked in front and swept aside most of the zombies to clear a path.
Fortunately the zombies here were all frail, elderly folks, even turned into zombies, their combat power hadn’t gone up by much.
One swing of Bai Long’s rod, without much effort, broke the arms of two or three zombies outright.
Even as zombies, the osteoporosis was still there.
Along the way An Ran explained to Bai Long why the three of them had come.
“We saw the fire over here, and sensed an abnormally high heat source somewhere on this floor.”
Bai Long’s hands didn’t stop moving as she glanced at An Ran: “A high heat source?”
An Ran, assuming she was unclear on the term, explained: “My power lets me see things within fifty meters of my field of vision whose temperature is too high or too low, displayed in highlight in my eyes.”
Her power had no offensive use, it was an information-gathering support ability.
It was precisely because of this power that she’d dodged danger several times when the zombies first broke out.
But her power had its flaws, too.
In any one scene it could only display the existence with the greatest temperature differential, that is, either the highest temperature or the lowest.
“That high-heat thing is at too high a temperature, it’s even higher than the zombies’ cold-temperature differential…” An Ran was a little shaken in retrospect.
She didn’t expect the zombies to be hiding exactly where the flames hadn’t reached, the presence of that thing had made it impossible for her power to detect the zombies.
“These flames seem to have a mind of their own.” Bai Long said only that one sentence.
The fire inside the building burned only along the windows and the outer edge of the suspended corridor, never penetrating into the interior of each household.
It was like vines coiled around the walls.
It was precisely because of this that most of the supplies inside the homes had been preserved.
A normal fire should have long since burned the building, inside and out, to ash.
It was so that she could keep normal vision amid the flames that Bai Long had gone out of her way to find a pair of sunglasses.
“It’s right in here.” An Ran pointed at the last household.
The orange-red light in her eyes took up nearly her whole field of vision.
Bai Long gripped the iron rod tightly and pried open the not-very-secure door lock, while in her other hand a water-ball condensed.
An Ran and the other two had most of their attention on the door and didn’t notice the water-ball of Bai Long’s power in her hand.
The door opened inward.
“Roar!”
A zombie in a big floral-patterned red nightgown suddenly shot out of the shadows, howling as it charged at Bai Long, who was in the lead.
At the same moment, a great mass of zombies came surging in from the stairwell at the other end, dense rows of livid purple heads bobbing up and down.
Damn!
Bai Long cursed inwardly.
Is this floral-nightgown zombie a neighborhood-committee auntie or something?
This kind of one-call-and-all-answer rallying power is way too absurd!
The cap-wearing man, forcing himself to stay calm, hefted his iron rod and struck at the few zombie grannies charging in front.
Gritting her teeth, Bai Long rammed the iron rod head-on into the zombie’s gaping, lunging mouth, and drove zombie and rod together into the room.
The three behind her could have sworn they heard the zombie make a retching, gagging sound.
“Get in and shut the door!” She charged in first, leading the way.
The three of them snapped to and gritted their teeth as they followed right behind.
There was no way the zombies inside the room could outnumber the zombie army surging up the stairs!
A zombie’s fingers came within a hair’s breadth of the lanky man’s back before the iron door cut them off.
The iron door rang with thunderous booms as the zombies outside pounded on it, feeling like it would be slammed right through the next second.
Once inside, Bai Long swept her gaze around, grabbed a bucket off the floor reverse-handed and clapped it upside-down over the zombie’s head, then yanked out her iron rod and gave the bucket a frenzied battering.
Hesitation means defeat!
The zombie toppled over backward, dizzy and reeling. Bai Long threw open the window and shoved it straight out from the upper floor.
The whole sequence flowed like clouds and running water, leaving An Ran and the others dumbstruck.
This new teammate has extraordinary nerves!
“To save time, let’s split into two pairs and work separately.”
Bai, everyone’s-my-coworker—Long said calmly.
The home wasn’t big, and Bai Long meant to settle things fast.
Her body couldn’t sustain a long fight, and besides, the iron door wouldn’t hold that horde of zombies back for long.
Bai Long paired with An Ran, the other two men together.
The lanky man wanted to pair with An Ran, who was an esper, but he was mercilessly dragged off by the baseball-cap man.
“We’re too close to the target here, the energy’s too strong to pin down exactly which room it’s in.”
An Ran put her sunglasses on, and the great swath of orange-red vanished, the scene in her eyes returning to normal.
Bai Long went to the kitchen first and, with clear purpose, packed the kitchen cleavers, protective sheaths and all, into the pockets on either side.
Only then did An Ran notice she had several cleavers stuffed in her pockets, and asked hesitantly: “What are you…?”
“They’re handy.” Bai Long didn’t elaborate.
A well-thrown cleaver took out one zombie head per hit.
On the kitchen counter, the homeowner’s food still remained in good quantity.
Quick-frozen dumplings, eggs, tomatoes…
Bai Long took a bag from An Ran and packed food together with her.
The eggs she swept up by the bagful.
In the apocalypse, eggs barely counted as a meat dish.
Whether it was because of being near the fire or not, those eggs were hot to the touch.
Like they were about to cook.
Time was tight, Bai Long couldn’t be bothered with that and just cinched the bag tight and headed out.
Apart from the floral-nightgown zombie at the start, no other zombies were to be seen inside the home.
Although puzzled, right up until they were ready to retreat, not a single second zombie appeared inside.
The tip of Bai Long’s ear twitched faintly, a strange, fine scuttling sound came through.
“Move, fast, the door’s about to break.” She shoved the window open with one hand.
Outside, a waterway wound past, but it was still a fair distance from the window’s edge.
“What do we do? Without a boat, even if we jump across it’s useless!” The lanky man’s composure crumbled all at once.
“And besides, this distance is way too far!”
Bai Long said nothing, silently calculating the distance.
At the same moment, an even more pronounced creaking came from the doorway, clearly the old neighborhood’s iron door was about to give out under the strain.
The cap-wearing man swung the room door shut behind him, his voice taking on urgency too: “Our boat’s in the waterway on the first floor. Could we climb down to it?”
This was the third floor, not all that high.
Bai Long said nothing, only pointed downward.
An Ran took one look, several zombies were standing there, mouths gaping, “welcoming” them between the floors.
Clearly they had neither the skill to scale walls nor the strength to take on a whole horde of zombies single-handedly.
An Ran turned back to see Bai Long rolling the curtain into a long strip, with a cleaver tied to one end.
Bai Long put strength into her wrist and flung out the curtain, cleaver and all.
Once the cleaver dropped into the waterway, Bai Long pulled back to confirm it had wedged itself fast in the channel.
“Damn!” The cap-wearing man cursed under his breath.
The door behind him suddenly shook violently, nearly knocking him flying.
“What are you standing there for, give me a hand!” he roared at the lanky man, who was off to the side in a daze.
The lanky man snapped to and hurriedly, tremblingly helped him press against the door, putting his whole body into it.
If the door opened, they were done for!
“What are you trying to do here?” The lanky man fretted, his mind a chaotic mess. “A cleaver can’t hold all four of our weight!”
An Ran was watching Bai Long too.
The strange thing was, with the situation this dire, seeing Bai Long’s silent composure inexplicably calmed her heart too.
It was as if… with her here, nothing would happen to them.
Even though they’d only just met for the first time, An Ran was startled at her own reaction.
Bai Long had no time to mind what they were thinking.
She was feeling the water seeping through the fabric and spreading into her palm.
The flowing water of the channel had soaked the curtain tied to the cleaver, and the water wound its way along the curtain all the way into her palm.
Bai Long mobilized her power to the utmost, and the water in her palm trembled faintly.
It was like gripping a massive blood vessel, the flowing water being the blood surging within it.
The rushing sound of water sliding past at high speed came to her ears.
In the blink of an eye, before An Ran’s very eyes, a moon-boat came charging down the waterway from above, rushing right up to their window.
She almost thought she was dreaming, blinking furiously, only to find the moon-boat really had stopped there in the waterway.
Where had this boat come from?
Before she could make sense of it, Bai Long had already braced herself reverse-handed on the windowsill, leapt out in a single bound to grab the prow of the moon-boat, and nimbly dropped into the boat.
A beastman’s physical attributes were strong, a jump across this little distance was nothing for her.
An Ran watched her clear the five-meter-plus gap with ease and was struck dumb on the spot.
“Still standing there for what?” Bai Long scooped up the curtain with the cleaver tied to it, undid the cleaver, and gripped the curtain with both hands.
“Climb.”
The other end of the curtain dangled right by An Ran’s feet.
“Th-th-this… sh-sh-she…” The lanky man stammered incoherently against the door.
The cap-wearing man looked at Bai Long, who stood more than a head shorter than him, and suspected she was joking.
If she couldn’t hold on, the three of them were dead for sure.
An Ran, however, didn’t hesitate. She tied the other end of the curtain tightly around the leg of a cabinet in the room, then swung herself over and climbed forward along the curtain.
She trusted her!
The coarse curtain cloth rubbed her palms red, hot, swollen and raw, but An Ran didn’t dare loosen her grip in the slightest.
A thin line of blood printed itself onto the curtain.
The zombies, smelling the blood, grew all the more frenzied, roaring as they reached up to hook and claw at An Ran’s dangling feet.
“Aah!”
An Ran suddenly dropped.
A zombie had seized her ankle and was forcibly dragging her down.
Her strength gave out, An Ran’s ten fingers clutched the curtain in a death-grip, feeling as if she were about to be torn apart down the middle.
Suddenly, a wave of icy cold met her already-numb-with-pain hands.
“Don’t let go.”
Bai Long had tied one end of the curtain around her own waist. With one foot stepping out over the side of the boat onto the edge of the waterway for leverage, her other hand caught An Ran’s hand in a firm grip.
The coarse hemp cloth wound tightly around Bai Long’s waist with only a thin layer of clothing in between.
She’s about to squeeze last night’s dinner right out of me!
Is this zombie coworker working too hard for a meal?
“Duck!” Bai Long tensed her core and whipped out a cleaver, hurling it at the zombie behind An Ran.
The cleaver spun through the air and lodged dead-center in the zombie’s skull.
That zombie’s eyes rolled up white and it toppled over.
Screw you, you grind-obsessed try-hard coworker!
The force pulling at her foot eased, and Bai Long hauled An Ran up onto the boat in one pull.
An Ran gulped down air in great gasps and looked up to see Bai Long already getting ready to receive the lanky man.
She hurried forward to lend Bai Long a hand.
Two people had more strength.
The cap-wearing man jammed the iron rod against the door to hold it fast, and made it onto the boat at the very last moment before the door was breached.
Having survived a brush with death, the three of them couldn’t quite recover their wits for a while.
It was An Ran who came around first, saying to Bai Long in earnest: “Thank you for saving us.”
Without Bai Long, the three of them could never have escaped the building.
“The three of us are from a refuge zone. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to come with us?”