Meng Shiwan lifted Taxue down from the toilet, unpacked a fresh set of toiletries, and washed her face and brushed her teeth.
She tossed yesterday’s dirty clothes into the washing machine, then dug out a new sportswear set and changed into it.
Finally, she raised the lift-up bed all the way to the top and tidied everything away.
“Let’s go find some breakfast.”
Taxue obediently hopped onto Meng Shiwan’s shoulder and headed out the door with her.
Meng Shiwan had a strong suspicion that Taxue’s failure to understand was purely selective.
When it felt like listening, it understood perfectly, like right now, going out.
When it didn’t feel like it, it played dumb, like a moment ago, when she’d tried to teach it to use the toilet.
One little cat could hold eight hundred schemes. [1] be endlessly crafty jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2841311_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2841311_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });
The snacks and fruit in the passage were all gone, someone must have carried them off.
Anyone with half a brain knew this disaster wouldn’t end easily. With the whole country’s production halted, food would become the most precious resource of all.
Walking deeper into the passage, Meng Shiwan found that the entrance into the supermarket had been sealed off with shelving, planks, and the like.
She laughed in sheer disbelief.
She had cleared out every zombie inside and outside the supermarket, and now that these people were free of the zombie threat, they turned around and barricaded her out instead.
What a fine little plan this bunch had cooked up.
If she hadn’t cleared the zombies, those things would still be roaming every aisle, and this lot would be cowering in some corner, too scared to even move.
They might have been seized and bitten to death at any moment.
Now that the zombies were gone and everything was safe, suddenly they knew how to come out and block the door.
So were they barricading against the zombies, or against her?
If it were the zombies, a few rows of steel racks would have done the job, and they’d have left a small gap to get in and out.
But this, layer upon layer, walled up tight, was plainly meant for her.
She turned and went back to the RV, set Taxue down inside. “Watch how I deal with them. Stay home and be good, so you don’t get caught in the crossfire.”
Taxue jumped onto the shoe cabinet, eyes darting about, ready to watch the show through the window.
Meng Shiwan found an iron bucket and a length of hose in the shop across the way, walked over to a delivery truck, and opened its fuel tank.
She siphoned a full bucket of gasoline out of the tank with the hose, carried it over, and splashed it straight onto the pile of shelving and planks blocking the passage mouth.
She backed well away and flung her windproof lighter at it. Flames roared up inside the passage in an instant.
Meng Shiwan quickly withdrew, watching the fire spread and engulf the passage, a cold smirk at the corner of her mouth.
It was the apocalypse, and they still wanted to play these tedious little games with her.
The supermarket was the place they depended on to survive, but it was no such thing to her.
Inside, the survivors froze at the sight of the flames.
“What are you standing there for? Put it out! There’s liquor stacked by the passage, if that catches, none of us live!”
Someone snapped out of it and shouted.
The supermarket’s other exits were all sealed just as tightly, even if they wanted to flee, they might not make it out.
The few dozen survivors inside panicked at once and scrambled for firefighting gear.
Fire hoses, extinguishers, they hauled it all out and put it to use.
The floor at the passage mouth was already littered with the liquor bottles Meng Shiwan had smashed earlier, as the fire reached them, it billowed up into rolling black smoke.
Lin Qian stood in a corner at the edge of the supermarket, watching the crowd scramble to fight the fire, cursing them inwardly.
‘A pack of fools. They knew that woman wasn’t to be trifled with, and they still went and crossed her, what for? She’s got only one RV, so how much could she possibly haul away? Truly asking for trouble where there was none.’
She was very glad now that she’d never harbored any crooked thoughts toward Meng Shiwan, otherwise she’d have died without even knowing how.
That woman was genuinely ruthless. A supermarket this size, this much stock, she’d set it ablaze without a second thought.
Fortunately the supermarket’s fire-safety measures were thorough, and many of the survivors were its former employees who knew how to use the equipment.
They put the fire out in time, before it could spread across the entire liquor section.
The whole crowd slumped to the floor, gasping for breath, faces smudged black, the tiles everywhere streaked with the dark, filthy water from the firefighting.
Someone grumbled resentfully, “I said it last night, don’t go provoking that woman. She’s a killer who doesn’t blink. A supermarket this big, so what if she takes some of it? It’s no skin off our backs.”
“She even cleared the zombies out of the area for us. Without her, would we be living this easy? You lot insisted on walling her out, does she look like the kind of person who’d just let it go?”
Yesterday, when they’d barricaded the passage, everyone had pitched in, now that it had failed and only enraged her, they started shirking the blame.
The middle-aged man leading them barked, “Shut up. You know she’s a killer, she dared to kill Old Wang, so she’d dare to kill us. If she snaps and hacks us all down, you’ll have plenty to regret.”
“Agreed. This woman’s impossible to deal with, cruel and merciless. Best we drive her off, only then will we be safer.”
Little had they imagined that once the zombie apocalypse arrived, what would frighten them most wouldn’t be the zombies.
It would be a young woman.
They seemed to have forgotten that the very reason no zombies were left to threaten their lives was also that same young woman.
The fire died out, the thick smoke cleared.
The junk heaped at the passage mouth was mostly burned away, and through the gaps between the charred planks and steel racks, a figure could be seen standing on the other side.
She was wrapped in a black one-piece rain poncho, sealed up tight, even her head tucked into the poncho’s hood, her features hidden in shadow beneath the brim.
A big fat cat crouched on her shoulder, and in her hand she gripped an outdoor camping trowel.
They knew that trowel well. It had split zombie skulls, and it had cut Old Wang’s throat all the same.
“We’re done for, we’re done for. We’ve really gone and enraged this brutal woman.”
“What’s there to be scared of? There are so many of us, can’t we take down one girl?”
For all their bluster, every one of them kept a wary eye fixed on Meng Shiwan’s figure.
She slowly lifted her head. Her eyes were terrifyingly cold, like a beast without feeling, poised to hunt down its prey.
A cleaning lady was so frightened her voice trembled. “Horror films on TV are nothing. This is a real horror film, it’s terrifying.”
“Are those, are those really feelings a human eye can give off? Even a man-eating beast’s gaze isn’t this cold.”
While their hearts hammered with dread, Meng Shiwan raised the trowel and brought it down hard on the charred debris.
The planks and shelving, weakened by the intense heat, split apart effortlessly under her blow, opening a large hole.
Zhang Qiang, unnerved by the aura Meng Shiwan gave off, cried out, “Rush her together, grab that woman!”
“Grab her!”
Dozens of survivors surged forward at once.
“Rrrraowww!”
Taxue tore into the crowd baring its teeth, a claw to the left, a bite to the right, cutting a swath through them all.
In a blink, bloody scratch-marks bloomed on several heads and faces.
Meng Shiwan charged in, blindingly fast, the trowel whipping through the air.
The survivors couldn’t even see her strike, the sharpened trowel was already upon them, cracking down on their heads and bodies.
Screams erupted all around.
In mere moments, all several dozen of them had been beaten to the ground by Meng Shiwan, howling everywhere.
Not one could get back on his feet to fight.
Meng Shiwan crouched beside Zhang Qiang, the trowel propped against the floor, a smile that never reached her eyes. “You said just now you wanted to grab me? Grab me and do what? Lock me up? Or beat me to death?”
Her gaze was withering, looking at him as nothing more than a fool.
Years of fitness training had packed explosive muscle beneath her slender frame.
On top of that, in her three years surviving the apocalypse, she had used crystal cores she’d risked her life to gather to study killing techniques for two months under a discharged soldier.
Time and again she’d fought on the razor’s edge between life and death, honing those moves with her very life, what could these people possibly do against her?
References[+]