“Chengcheng!” Ling Qingyun jumped up from the bed and saw that it was a large room. He was lying on a coat, and many others lay around him as well. A strong smell of disinfectant filled the air. Although it didn’t look like a hospital at all, this place was probably a makeshift medical facility.
He was still alive. Had he reached the safe zone? But what about Zhuang Cheng?
Scenes from before flashed before his eyes: those sluggish monsters with outstretched hands, Zhuang Cheng’s last smile, and the face clawed by the zombies…
The images played like slow motion. That final, forceful push… If Zhuang Cheng had pushed him into the zombie horde, maybe he would have felt better—at least he wouldn’t owe him anything. But instead, Zhuang Cheng pushed him toward the rescue truck!
The putrid stench of the zombies seemed to still fill his nose, but the dirty clothes he had worn had long been changed.
The sharp, bloodstained teeth of the flesh-eating zombies seemed ready to bite him, yet now he was safe.
Zhuang Cheng’s face had been clawed by the zombies that were trying to grab him, blood splattered everywhere. The zombies became even more frenzied as they swarmed him… Covering his face with his hands as if countless insects were gnawing at his insides, Ling Qingyun felt too distressed to speak. When he finally lowered his hands, his eyes were bloodshot, and his mouth tasted of blood.
At that time, he had just graduated from middle school. His grandmother had fallen ill due to complications from diabetes. He had cared for her for a month but could only watch helplessly as she passed away. That was bad enough, but his father, who wanted to buy a car, was reluctant to properly arrange the funeral. His half-siblings, a sister and a brother, laughed and played during the funeral, even commenting disrespectfully on their grandmother’s emaciated body. Furious, he hit them and stormed out.
His grandmother was dead, he didn’t really care about the funeral itself. But the fact that the man hadn’t come home while she was alive, and was so neglectful after her death, made him angry.
After leaving the funeral, he went to find Zhuang Cheng, who took him in. But back then, he was proud and arrogant. After staying at Zhuang Cheng’s place for two days, he learned that his father had already left the area after the funeral, so he returned to his grandmother’s old house.
Since his grandmother’s passing, he had no intention of continuing school, and his father wouldn’t have cared about his education anyway. He knew that from now on, he would have to rely on himself to survive.
At first, he planned to find a proper job, but good jobs were hard to come by. After working six months as a laborer and earning little because he had no ID card, he simply ended up joining a group of small-time thugs he knew from before.
Anyway, his grandmother was already dead, and his parents didn’t care about him. At that time, he thought even if he died, probably no one would care, so when he got into fights, he wasn’t afraid of anything.
The place he hung around was just a small town, without any bigshots. Because he feared nothing, he gradually became a well-known figure in town, and he even took pride in that. But one day, a man from out of town showed up with a batch of goods and sought him out.
Drugs.
Ling Qingyun had done plenty of extortion and intimidation, but drugs… when he thought about how his grandmother had hoped on her deathbed that he would make something of himself, he turned them down.
The very next day after he refused, he was arrested.
For someone like him, it was easy for the authorities to dig up several charges, or even pin someone else’s crimes on him. In a small town, justice was hard to come by, and besides, he was already a notorious troublemaker.
The charges included stealing bicycles, motorcycles, and cellphones… Ling Qingyun looked at the list of accusations and felt like he was being totally screwed over. Sure, he’d extorted protection fees, threatened people he didn’t like, and even forced others to pay for his stuff, but he was a gang leader—not a petty thief! He had never stolen anything.
He nearly got stuck in there. After being locked up for a full day and night, they told him the next morning to contact his family. He called his father, whom he hadn’t seen since his grandmother’s funeral and who had since moved to the city to run a small restaurant. His father scolded him viciously over the phone and only said he’d be free the following morning.
After hanging up, almost involuntarily, he dialed Zhuang Cheng’s number.
By then, it had been over a year since he graduated middle school, and he had basically lost touch with all his old classmates. Even Zhuang Cheng, who used to cling to him, seemed to be avoiding him lately. When they ran into each other on the street, Zhuang Cheng actually panicked and ran away.
But after being locked up alone for a day without food, Ling Qingyun desperately wanted someone to talk to. He called Zhuang Cheng, who didn’t answer at first, so he kept calling…
Eventually, Zhuang Cheng picked up. That same afternoon, he showed up at the town police station. Later, Ling Qingyun learned that Zhuang Cheng had answered the call during class, insisted on taking a leave of absence, and got publicly scolded by the teacher, probably the worst reprimand that good student had ever received.
Ling Qingyun didn’t expect anything to come of calling Zhuang Cheng, but the first thing Zhuang Cheng asked him was a question that suddenly made everything click: “Did you ever get your ID card?”
He was tall and looked much older, so he had never thought about the issue of being a minor. But Zhuang Cheng’s question reminded him, he was still not yet seventeen, and some of the bikes he was accused of stealing had been reported missing a year earlier, when he wasn’t even sixteen.
In the end, Zhuang Cheng used the 2,000 yuan he had saved up to get Ling Qingyun out of the police station. After that, Ling Qingyun followed him to the city.
He became a loader for a transportation company, but once you’ve been involved in that life, it’s hard to get out. Later, someone he knew from the underworld found him, and he ended up working under a local gang leader.
Beating people and getting beaten, it became his routine. The only enjoyment he found was wandering around nearby high schools and vocational schools to teach the local punks a lesson… It was strange how the city planners had set it up: the best high school in town was right across from the vocational technical school. Before he started recruiting followers in the vocational school, people from the tech school often extorted students from the high school. But after he took charge, that stopped completely.
After two years living that life in the city, he truly understood what the underworld was. Then, a major incident happened.
A small-time thug started dating a sixteen-year-old girl who had graduated middle school but didn’t continue her studies. One night, a group of men drinking together spouted the twisted idea that “women are like clothes,” and ended up abusing the girl, who was quite pretty.
The sixteen-year-old girl lost her ability to have children, and the case blew up.
Because many criminal records surfaced, even the gang leader he followed wasn’t spared. Someone close to that leader was sentenced to death with reprieve, and the gang’s second-in-command got a death sentence.
Everyone involved in abusing the girl was sentenced. Suddenly, the underworld’s activities went underground, and he got arrested too. But since he hadn’t done anything seriously wrong, he was detained for a few days and then released.
When he got out, Zhuang Cheng was waiting outside: “Find a decent job from now on. Be careful or you won’t be able to get a wife!”
Whether it was those words or realizing that brotherhood and loyalty were all just lies, he quit smoking, changed his phone, and never stepped back into the underworld. Later, when Zhuang Cheng got accepted to a university in S City, he followed him there.
Scenes from the past flooded his mind: his grandmother was already dead, and now, even Zhuang Cheng, who had always been by his side, had been killed by those monsters!
Ling Qingyun suddenly sat up from the ground, dizzy and nauseous, then he saw a man in camouflage.
“You’re okay now, right? You fainted because of dehydration and hunger,” Zhang Yi said as he came over to dress his wounds, just as the person he had saved woke up.
“What happened afterwards?” Ling Qingyun asked expressionlessly. He had cried bitterly when his grandmother died, but now, he couldn’t even cry anymore.
Just a month ago, Zhuang Cheng had congratulated him on getting a raise, saying that the two of them would buy a place together in S City… And now? The world had turned into this.
“You mean the guy who escaped with you? There’s no way he survived. I saw with my own eyes that he was bitten,” Zhang Yi said. The scene had been brutal, he couldn’t bear to watch after a quick glance—but he was certain that man had no chance of making it.
“What’s the situation in the safe zone now? Can I join the army? Say what you will, I’m really good at fighting—I’ve already killed a bunch of those zombies!” Ling Qingyun said immediately.
“You want to join the army? No problem!” Zhang Yi agreed without hesitation. Right now, what they lacked most was soldiers. They were practically accepting anyone—as long as they were alive!
“Do I need to register? I’ll do it right now!” Ling Qingyun stood up. Although he still felt a bit unwell, he was desperate to get out and start killing zombies.
Every one he killed made a difference. He had nothing left to lose!
“Of course you have to register. But I’ll take you to eat something first. Just so you know, if you’re following me, you’ll be going on missions and killing zombies,” Zhang Yi added.
“Following you?” Ling Qingyun asked.
“Yeah. I had a few guys under me before, three of them have already turned into zombies. I’m short on teammates now. A quick registration is all it takes. These days… sigh…” Zhang Yi’s tone grew heavy. The army still had a lot of people, but there were far too many things needing manpower. The survivors who had made it this far were often unwilling to risk their lives again.
None of them had been sleeping well these past few days. But they were already short-staffed. There were still many people trapped in the city who needed rescuing, and the safe zone was critically short on supplies… Zhang Yi couldn’t help but start venting his frustrations.
Ling Qingyun didn’t pay much attention to Zhang Yi’s concerns for the nation. All he cared about was getting out there and killing zombies. As long as he could kill enough of them, he’d die with no regrets.
With those thoughts swirling in his head, he didn’t even notice the surroundings. The safe zone, just a few days ago, it had been the place he dreamed of reaching with Zhuang Cheng. But now? To him, it was no different from any of the rooms he used to rent. Just another place to crash.
Braised potatoes with white rice, Ling Qingyun ate enough for three people by himself. He could believe this was the worst braised potatoes he had ever tasted. The skins weren’t even peeled, it was probably just boiled potatoes mixed with soy sauce. The flavor was hardly something to praise, yet with an empty stomach, he ate quite a bit.
People need to eat well to have strength! Now, whenever he thought of Zhuang Cheng, his heart ached, and he hated himself for not rushing out to fight the zombies head-on.
Just after finishing the meal, Zhang Yi got a phone call. After hanging up, he patted Ling Qingyun on the shoulder. “Brother, don’t rush to register yet. The safe zone’s walls aren’t finished, and zombies have broken in. Come with me!”
“Okay!” Ling Qingyun agreed immediately.
The outer perimeter of the safe zone was under construction for a wall, but it wasn’t going to be finished anytime soon. Some spots were guarded by soldiers, and now, at one of those places, soldiers were fiercely battling a horde of zombies.
There were roughly several thousand zombies. Mixed in with the horde were two cars—maybe the zombies were following these vehicles. Actually, there might have been more than just those two cars. As Ling Qingyun got closer, he saw there were also humans resisting within the zombie swarm.
Because of these survivors, the soldiers rarely fired their guns. Ling Qingyun assessed the situation, gripped the military bayonet Zhang Yi had just given him, and charged in.
He held back a surge of anger inside. He hated himself for not protecting Zhuang Cheng and getting them both out. He regretted being reckless, riding a motorcycle and daring to escape with Zhuang Cheng! If only he had stayed near Zhuang Cheng’s school entrance a bit longer, maybe a military vehicle could have picked him up!
Ling Qingyun wielded the bayonet like a machete. Zombies, if they sensed fear, would hesitate to attack. But if you showed no fear, you realized they were nothing special. Apart from carrying some kind of poison that made them dangerous to approach, zombies were no match for a living person.
Clenching his teeth, Ling Qingyun charged toward the survivors. There were quite a few, but they were all terrified and couldn’t resist the zombie assault well. His arrival lifted their spirits, after shouting a few rallying cries, their resistance grew stronger!