“Who else would it be? You expect yesterday’s bedridden, feverish you to drag your sick body to get food?”
Xia Ao glanced at him, voice dripping with sarcasm.
Shi Zuo An quickly waved his hands to clarify: “I didn’t say that! In my plan, it has to be me personally going!”
“However…” Xia Ao deliberately paused for two seconds, teasing, “this extremely manly job being handed to you isn’t entirely impossible either.”
“Speaking of which, Jiang Si is such a capable and decisive girl, maybe she actually wants to try it herself. How about we ask her?”
With that, Shi Zuo An made a move to get up and go to the living room to discuss it with Jiang Si.
“No, no, no!” Song Zi Qiao immediately blocked him with his body. “It’s decided, Xia Ge and I will go. You stay home with Ah Si and get some rest!”
As soon as he suggested letting Jiang Si go, Shi Zuo An’s dissatisfaction was obvious.
Watching him fidget anxiously, a smile tugged at Shi Zuo An’s lips.
He knew it, this guy was a purebred, love-obsessed fool.
Song Zi Qiao hurried to the kitchen doorway, just about to leave, when suddenly a shadow appeared in the doorway. He braked sharply, almost falling flat on his rear.
Speak of the devil, and he shall appear, Jiang Si, unable to wait any longer for Song Zi Qiao, had come over as well.
“What are you all talking about? Why is so many of you crammed into the kitchen having a meeting?”
“Nothing!” Song Zi Qiao, feeling guilty as a thief, was startled by her voice and shivered. He quickly steadied himself against the doorframe, forcing a laugh.
Xia Ao glanced at Shi Zuo An beside him, who was clutching his stomach, about to laugh himself into a fit, and sighed helplessly.
“Stop chatting here. The noodles are ready, let’s eat at the table and talk there.”
Finally, the kitchen returned to peace.
At the dining table, Jiang Si listened to the group’s plan to go to the supermarket tonight for food and was visibly thrilled.
“Song Zi Qiao can’t handle anything important, let me go!”
“No, it’s too dangerous! Ah Si, you stay home and rest. I promise I’ll bring back all your favorite snacks!”
Jiang Si ignored him and flicked his leaning head away, then suddenly realized something: “But why aren’t the four of us going together?”
“That’s Xia Ao’s fault,” Shi Zuo An quickly answered.
“His car is a pink little Mini, only two seats, hahaha, ow! Xia Ao, why did you hit me?”
He had been gloating, only to get a hard smack on the back of his head.
“The Mini is your life-saving car. Show it some respect,” Xia Ao said, hands on hips, expression cold.
“Just because of that? We could have gone in my car,” Jiang Si chuckled. She had expected some special personnel arrangement, but it was really just because of the car seats.
“Your keys aren’t all locked inside the house?” Song Zi Qiao rubbed his forehead, red from the smack.
“Keys are locked inside, but my car can connect to the phone via Bluetooth, and Bluetooth can unlock it.”
That’s incredibly high-tech!
“Tsk, look at his car, now look at yours,” Shi Zuo An said pointedly.
“I said respect the Mini,” Xia Ao muttered, suspecting that if this continued, his palms would develop calluses shaped perfectly for smacking Shi Zuo An’s head. “A bigger car doesn’t mean all four of us need to go. Song Zi Qiao and I will go, try to bring back as much food as possible.”
He was still opposed.
Shi Zuo An wasn’t happy. “Fine, then let’s vote. Raise your hand if you agree all four of us should go—”
“OK, 3 to 1. Xia Ao loses!”
In the end, the conservatives lost to the radicals.
At ten o’clock that night, the corridor was pitch black.
Yet outside, the sky was filled with stars, brighter than any night they had ever seen.
To be safe, they still carried the most important things with them, phones, power banks, and so on.
After their meeting that morning, they unanimously decided that from now on, all the power bank’s charge would be reserved for Jiang Si’s phone first.
After all, that was their only way to access a four‑seat ride.
Jiang Si’s car was parked in the underground garage, while Xia Ao’s car was casually left by the entrance of their building.
After discussing the plan, they decided Xia Ao would drive the little Mini with Jiang Si down to her parking spot, then the two would switch to the larger car and drive it back up.
Shi Zuo An and Song Zi Qiao, meanwhile, needed to lure away as many zombies in the underground garage as possible and protect the two who were switching cars.
The only issue was that although four human legs could outrun nighttime zombies at first, zombie stamina was bottomless, while theirs wasn’t.
Xia Ao thought for a moment and remembered there was still a way.
The underground garage was a bit far from the residential building, but the electric scooter parking was right downstairs.
For convenience, many people never removed the key from the scooter after parking it.
Shi Zuo An questioned, “Won’t the scooter get stolen like that?”
“There are always some kids who just left school and still think nobody steals bikes anymore,” Xia Ao said as he led them down to the scooter area. “Plus there are security cameras above each spot, so they think everything’s perfectly safe.”
True enough.
Shi Zuo An shrugged.
If it were him fresh out of school, he’d probably have done the same, taking the easy route until life taught him otherwise.
The two chose a suitable scooter. A quick test ride showed it was very responsive.
“Alright, you guys wait here. Move only when you get my signal.”
“Okay.”
“Be careful, Ah Si!” Song Zi Qiao said, reluctant to part.
Jiang Si gave him a hug.
Even Shi Zuo An, for once, softened his tone. “You be careful too.”
“Mm.”
Operation Car Swap, start!
Shi Zuo An sat in front, Song Zi Qiao behind him, the little scooter wobbling as it exited the garage.
The moment the two osmanthus trees behind them blurred into the distance, the nearest zombies immediately swarmed over.
But just as Shi Zuo An had predicted, nighttime zombies moved and reacted much slower than during the day.
He intentionally kept the speed slow, planning not to disturb the zombies on the road yet. He would first enter the underground garage to draw out the ones inside, then circle around the neighborhood, leading all the zombies behind them like a tail.
“Damn, there are way too many zombies!” Song Zi Qiao couldn’t ride the little electric scooter himself, so he had to sit on the back seat, gripping tightly onto Shi Zuo An’s waist.
“Two days have passed, and the number of zombies has gone up again.”
A rough glance with the naked eye suggested the zombies were now two or three times as many as when they first returned to the neighborhood.
It was Song Zi Qiao’s first time facing zombies, and riding on the scooter’s back seat gave him the freedom to observe them without fear.
“Feels like playing a VR game,” he murmured, still in a daze. “Look at the entrance of Unit 7… there’s a baby zombie there.”
Shi Zuo An followed his finger and saw it: a child only a few months old, barely able to walk, now turned into a zombie.
Driven purely by instinct, it crawled along the ground.
Song Zi Qiao sighed: “Now like this… I guess its parents have also become zombies. Ah, life is so unpredictable—”
“Alright, great philosopher, enough with the musings. Let’s focus on the task.”
The little scooter soon reached the parking garage entrance. The gate had already been smashed open, and a few zombies wandered aimlessly along the ramp.
Their primary goal this trip was to attract the zombies, so there was no need to worry about making too much noise by charging straight in.
In fact, they wanted a big ruckus.
As the scooter sped down the ramp, a strong moldy stench hit their noses. The light grew dimmer and dimmer.
“Ahhhh—”
Song Zi Qiao’s scream echoed through the empty underground structure, amplified several times over.
The zombies in the garage were immediately drawn to the sound, turning toward it, locating its source, and rushing over.
“Ahhh I’m going I’m going! Run, Shi Ge—”
Shi Zuo An’s ears throbbed from the noise, and he snapped, “Can you not scream so terrifyingly?”
Still, he pushed the scooter to top speed. The electric motor’s hum was piercingly loud in the nearly silent underground garage.
The little scooter weaved skillfully through gaps between vehicles. More and more zombies began trailing them.
“Nooo, ahhh I’m freaking out!!! QAQ”
Shi Zuo An was so exasperated by his uselessness he was speechless, he was definitely going to complain to Jiang Si later!
“Even if you have to scream, could you scream something else?” he muttered, the tiniest hope pinned on Song Zi Qiao.
What else could he possibly scream?
In this situation, Song Zi Qiao’s brain was almost shutting down.
He thought great responsibilities were about to be placed on him, but how could such a huge task come with zero mental preparation?!
“Then… one times one is one, one times two is two, one times three is three—”
“National middle school broadcast calisthenics… starting now—”
“For all the pain clung to by love, for all the wounds clung to by hate, ah, ah, aaah—”
A zombie’s claw nearly snagged Song Zi Qiao’s hoodie hood. Shi Zuo An gripped the handlebars tight, leaning his upper body forward as far as possible, almost scraping the ground, and swerved around a black car to make a U-turn.
The sense of weightlessness was intense. Song Zi Qiao clung to Shi Zuo An’s waist, holding on for dear life, tracing the smooth lines of his lean waist.
“Damn, Song Zi Qiao, can you lighten up a bit? I can’t breathe!”
“No, I’m scared!!!”
In the dim underground parking lot, there weren’t as many zombies as outside. Most were trapped here when the zombie outbreak first started or were people who had tried to drive out and failed.
The scooter zipped through Zone A. Just as its front wheel entered Zone B, two zombies standing near the entrance noticed them.
They turned and ran toward them.
“Quick, quick, turn!”
Shi Zuo An drifted around the corner again. Song Zi Qiao’s head nearly grazed the car’s rearview mirror.
The wind whipped his hair upward.
The zombies that had been in front of them were instantly flung behind.
“Why is this parking lot so damn big?!” All the twists and turns were starting to make Shi Zuo An dizzy.
“How would I know? I don’t even live here!”
Before they got on, they had deliberately chosen two scooters with full batteries.
But barely a kilometer in, the top bar of the battery display started flashing.
The little scooter slowed slightly.
Still, because there was plenty of charge left, Shi Zuo An didn’t worry.
Zone B was smaller than Zone A. After a series of twists, the scooter was about to hit a wall.
“Hold on tight!”
As he spoke, Shi Zuo An made another sharp turn, and they ended up at the back of a row of cars.
Fortunately, they hadn’t encountered any of the “advanced zombies” he and Xia Ao had defined earlier. These zombies simply followed their path, turning corners as they did.
None realized that slipping through the gap between two cars would allow them to catch these two speed demons racing through the underground garage.
About thirty or forty zombies obediently trailed the scooter.
Seeing Shi Zuo An’s driving skills in action, failing by mere inches each time, Song Zi Qiao relaxed a bit.
He even had time to twist his waist and flip the zombies the middle finger.
“Hehe, can’t catch us, right~”
“Stop joking, we need to get out of here.”
Shi Zuo An reminded him to focus. Once the zombies in the underground garage were all trailing behind the scooter, their part of the mission was complete.
Now it was time to ride up, leading the zombie horde around the neighborhood like a drill.
The scooter reached the bottom of the slope at the exit. The light at the end was blinding, but at least it wasn’t pitch black anymore.
Once they reached the top, their task would be done!
Shi Zuo An twisted the handlebars and surged forward, the little scooter climbed three meters, then suddenly stopped!
“W, W, What the hell is going on? Shi Ge, go! The zombies are coming!!!”
It had stopped halfway up the slope, with the zombies still closing in step by step.
Song Zi Qiao panicked, constantly glancing behind him.
The zombies were moving too fast, they were estimated to be less than ten meters away!
“Go, go, go!!!” Song Zi Qiao kept shouting, and the scooter wobbled from his frantic movements.
“Do you think I don’t want to? This bike isn’t moving!” Shi Zuo An yelled, twisting the handlebars as far as they would go, but the scooter’s wheels refused to cooperate.
Song Zi Qiao turned his head in terror, the zombie’s claw was less than five centimeters from his face!