“No! Don’t leave! Please! Save me! Don’t abandon me!”
As the black minivan slowly started up in front of him, the thin man slammed his hands against the window in terror, begging for help. Several times, he tried to open the door and rush out, but he could never quite gather the courage to do it. Instead, his panic attracted several zombies that had been chasing after the black minivan.
“ROAR!!!”
The thin man immediately curled up, shrinking into himself in fear as he trembled violently.
Why won’t they save me…
Why won’t they save me…
They could save me as long as they just ran over here…
What the thin man clearly failed to understand was that he actually could have gotten out of the car and followed them himself. Since they were all humans, even if they were strangers, the others probably wouldn’t have minded giving him a ride.
Unfortunately, he had placed all his hope for survival in other people.
And that was the least reliable choice of all.
The black minivan was a seven-seater with sleek body lines and a spacious interior. The interior design was simple and modern, and the leather seats felt soft and extremely comfortable.
Jiang Qi had never ridden in a car like this in the real world before, but the moment she sat down, she instinctively felt that this black minivan was probably expensive.
“We got lucky.”
Ye Ling stepped on the accelerator, speeding up to shake off the zombies chasing behind them. Following the arrows painted on the parking garage walls, he drove out of Xingguang Commercial Center through Exit C.
“A minivan is more stable than a regular car. Even if a small number of zombies surround it, it’s less likely to get trapped. But we still need to avoid large zombie hordes.”
If the number of zombies surrounding the vehicle exceeded a hundred, Ye Ling felt that even a seven-seater minivan would end up pinned in place.
“Do we have enough gas?”
Jiang Qi asked as she took her phone out of the spatial ring.
“We do,” Ye Ling replied. “This minivan was probably refueled recently. Only about twenty percent of the tank has been used, so we have more than enough to reach the Rong Mountain Scenic Area.”
“That’s good.”
Looks like their luck, even if not god-tier, was at least above average.
But the moment Jiang Qi finished that thought, the scene outside the car window stunned her speechless.
In just two short hours, the once-bustling streets had already turned into hell.
Everywhere, there were blood-covered, grotesque zombies. Burning and smoking cars littered the roads, some overturned at odd angles, others smashed into twisted wreckage.
Boom—
A massive explosion echoed in the distance. Jiang Qi turned her head and saw several high-rise buildings engulfed in flames. The blaze burned so fiercely that the towers had almost been reduced to blackened skeletal frames.
The sudden appearance of the van immediately attracted numerous zombies nearby, whether they had been wandering aimlessly or feeding. In barely ten seconds, the number chasing them grew from a dozen to over a hundred.
Ye Ling didn’t dare stop for even a moment and immediately drove away from the area surrounding Xingguang Commercial Center.
Jiang Qi also felt that the situation was bad. With the roads in this condition, flooring the accelerator and speeding away simply wasn’t possible. Nearly every twenty seconds, they had to steer around overturned cars or ram through zombies lunging at them.
Why were there so many cars and zombies…?
The tension Jiang Qi had just begun to shake off returned at once. She opened the navigation app on her phone, searched for Rong Mountain Scenic Area, and held the screen toward Ye Ling.
“According to the plan we made earlier, we should avoid places where large groups of people might gather whenever possible. Even if it means wasting time taking a longer route, it’s fine.”
Ye Ling rammed another zombie blocking the road and frowned deeply.
“I know. But that’s not what I’m worried about.”
“I’m worried the plan we came up with earlier still isn’t safe enough.”
Hearing that, Jiang Qi recalled the chain collision she had encountered when she first entered the instance.
The roads had been completely blocked by vehicles of every size, forcing her to enter the shopping mall for shelter.
“Let me think… let me think…”
Jiang Qi felt that she had never used her brain so desperately to think of a solution before, not even during the math section of the college entrance exam.
Then inspiration struck.
“Drone shows!”
She had once seen videos of drone performances while scrolling through short videos online.
Ye Ling quickly understood what she meant.
“You mean… we can use drones to lure the zombies away?”
“Yes! Do you know how to operate a drone?”
Jiang Qi looked at him expectantly.
After thinking for a moment, Ye Ling nodded.
“Yeah. I played around with them a few times in college. Simple operation shouldn’t be a problem. But the issue is… we don’t have a drone right now.”
“If we don’t have one, we can just ‘borrow’ one from a store for free. Compared to getting stuck near the university, it’s better to spend some extra time preparing.”
They only needed to leave Rong City within seven days. Right now, it was still only the first day. They still had time to spare.
Jiang Qi picked up her phone and searched for authorized drone stores. Very quickly, she found one about ten kilometers away, the closest one to them.
“Look, there’s one right here.”
Ye Ling’s expression didn’t relax even after finding the store.
“Miss Jiang, have you considered how dangerous it would be for us to get those drones?”
Jiang Qi paused while checking the route.
“…”
Drone stores were usually located inside commercial districts. They had only just escaped one shopping center, and now they were planning to head straight into another.
Ye Ling carefully analyzed the situation.
“This drone store is located on the first floor of a commercial shopping area. Getting in might be easy, but getting out may not be.”
Noise attracted zombies. As long as they kept moving, the zombies wouldn’t be able to catch them. But if they stayed inside the store for one to five minutes, then by the time they loaded the drones and got back into the car, they could easily find themselves completely surrounded by a zombie horde.
Jiang Qi was also conflicted about whether taking such a risk for extra security was worth it.
“How about…”
“We go check near the university first? Then decide after we see the actual situation?”
Ye Ling thought for a moment before nodding.
“That works.”
If the roads near the university were passable enough for them to get through quickly, then there would be no need to risk getting drones.
But if the roads there were impossible to pass, they would have to come back and find a way to obtain drones after all.
In truth, Ye Ling supported the idea of using drones.
But the prerequisite for using them was that there had to be no better alternative.
Otherwise, risking their lives to get drones would become completely unnecessary.
***
On the devastated streets, only a single black minivan drove steadily forward, neither too fast nor too slow. From time to time, it would attract a dozen zombies in pursuit, only to leave them behind moments later.
What should have been a forty-minute drive ended up taking them seventy minutes before they finally arrived near the university district.
“Oh my god…”
Jiang Qi stared ahead with her mouth hanging open, completely dumbfounded.
The second Ye Ling saw the road conditions ahead, he immediately started turning the car around.
“Sorry. Your idea was right.”
Their original plan really had been far too naive.
As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but a sea of densely packed heads. The gathered zombies completely clogged the roads like a massive tide, the sight horrifying enough to make anyone break out in goosebumps after a single glance.
Forget cars—even an agile cat probably wouldn’t be able to make it through alive.
“How are there this many zombies on the streets?!”
Even after the van turned around, Jiang Qi kept looking back. The zombies seemed to be drawn toward something, endlessly surging forward without pause. They were so focused that they hadn’t even noticed the van arriving or leaving.
Could there still be survivors in the middle of the road?
Jiang Qi was deeply skeptical.
Once they had driven away from the area around the three universities, Ye Ling headed toward the drone store. Whenever they encountered blocked roads along the way, they made a wide detour instead of forcing their way through.
“Miss Jiang, do you have any thoughts about our ‘zero-cost drone shopping’ plan?”
Jiang Qi had just opened her mouth to answer when two loud, unmistakable gurgles echoed through the car.
Uh… that wasn’t my stomach…
The always calm and composed Ye Ling stiffened slightly. He coughed awkwardly twice.
“Sorry… I’m a little hungry…”
Two seconds later, he added, “I hadn’t eaten dinner before entering the instance!”
Before being pulled into the Survival Apartment, Ye Ling had been on his way to dinner. Because of work, he had only managed to deal with lunch by casually eating two slices of bread.
Jiang Qi tried hard to suppress her laughter. “It’s fine. I’m hungry too, actually.”
As she took food out of her spatial ring, she thought for a moment before suggesting, “Actually, we could find a safe place near the drone store and rest for two hours before taking action.”
The zombie outbreak had started at 10 a.m. They left Xingguang Commercial Center at noon, and it was now 1:30 p.m. They still had enough time to get the drone before dark, then spend the night resting and continue toward Rong Mountain Scenic Area after sunrise.
Ye Ling nodded. “Sounds good.”
Half an hour later—
Ye Ling parked the van near a developing construction zone.
The place was only 2 kilometers away from the drone store.
They decided to rest there for two hours, basically treating it as a short nap and forcing themselves to relax a little.
Inside the van, the only sounds were Jiang Qi and Ye Ling eating intently.
It couldn’t be helped. Both of them were starving, and staying in a constant state of high alert on the road consumed a huge amount of energy.
Ye Ling only finally recovered after finishing an entire bag of ten small bread rolls. Once he was done eating, he said somewhat embarrassedly, “Miss Jiang, thank you very much…”
“Oh, come on. No need to be so polite. Just call me Jiang Qi. Where are you from? How old are you?”
Jiang Qi cut him off directly. It was already the apocalypse—there was no point in caring too much about little formalities like that anymore.
Ye Ling smiled and answered, “I’m from Xinhai, twenty-seven years old. What about you?”
Older than me…
Jiang Qi had thought Ye Ling only seemed mature because of his temperament and was probably younger than her. It turned out he simply looked young.
“I’m twenty-two, a fresh graduate. I’m currently working in Yujiang City.”
Twenty-two? That young?!
Ye Ling was a little surprised. Watching Jiang Qi act decisively and efficiently the whole way, he had assumed she was at least twenty-five. He never expected her to have just graduated from university.
Looks really could be deceiving.
The two of them exchanged information about what they had been doing before entering the Survival Apartment. One had been on the way home from work, the other on the way to a restaurant. Aside from being in different locations when the accident occurred, everything else had basically been the same.
After hearing this, Jiang Qi said with a sigh, “If I’d known the apocalypse was coming, I wouldn’t have worked so hard…”
She hadn’t enjoyed any of the things she should have during university.
If she’d known things would turn out like this, she might as well have gone to graduate school instead. She had worked at the company for twenty-eight days for nothing and hadn’t even received her first month’s internship salary yet!
Just thinking about all the suffering and overtime during her internship made her want to cry.
Rest time always passed quickly. After Jiang Qi and Ye Ling took turns closing their eyes and resting for an hour each—though neither could actually fall asleep—they prepared to start the van again and head toward the drone store.