Meng Shiwan spotted a man pushing two shopping carts crammed full of snacks.
She took one glance, all things she loved.
Bagged luosifen, instant noodles, potato chips, French fries, chocolate, dried mango, little sodas…
Meng Shiwan reached over, took hold of one cart, and breezily wheeled it away.
The man watched the cart in his hands roll off into Meng Shiwan’s, and stood there dumbstruck.
There’s a phrase, daring to be angry but not to speak. He didn’t even dare be angry, he even had to ask ingratiatingly, “Sis, is that enough? Want this cart of snacks too?”
Meng Shiwan waved a hand, no need.
She set the snacks by the RV and walked into the supermarket.
In the open area, a lot of supplies were heaped up, presumably just carried in from outside.
Some timid women were busy sorting them, category by category.
Meng Shiwan came to the seafood section and saw several women hauling a stack of buckets, filling them with water.
Seeing her approach, they looked at her with a stiff, fearful wariness.
Meng Shiwan took the hose, stood well away from the water buckets, and rinsed the blood off herself.
One girl looked at her, looked again, and finally couldn’t help asking, “Sis, why are you so amazing? You killed off all the zombies in the whole mall.”
They feared Meng Shiwan, and equally admired her strength.
In an environment like this, strength meant a better chance of living well.
Meng Shiwan glanced at them and said mildly, “If you want to survive, stop seeing yourself as a woman. Study what needs studying, train what needs training, hold yourself to a higher standard than the men, only then do you have a chance of surviving in this man-eating apocalypse. Being precious and fussy will only get you killed faster.”
The zombies outside were all cleared, yet here they were, hiding in the supermarket, not daring to go out and gather supplies.
If that wasn’t being fussy, what was?
In the apocalypse, fussiness bought no one’s sympathy, only endless abuse.
The girls were all taken aback. They didn’t expect the brute of few words but hard actions to say so much to them.
Meng Shiwan carried a few buckets of mineral water back to the RV, took off her poncho, and stuffed it into the storage locker by the chassis.
Then she took out the small water pump and filled the two water tanks.
The snacks from the cart she dumped onto the sofa, and mounted the cart itself on the rack at the RV’s rear.
There was a big steel rack at the back, originally for holding e-bikes and bicycles, now it held the shopping cart just as well.
She loaded the hand cart and plank beside it up there too, lashing everything tight with rope.
When she went to haul supplies elsewhere later, these two little carts would be a great convenience.
Back on the RV, she checked the time, already past one in the afternoon.
Meng Shiwan poured out some cat food for Taxue and set about making lunch for herself.
Her mind fixed on finding another crystal core to expand the flowerpot space, she made lunch simple.
She cooked luosifen, adding egg, sausage, and braised pig’s trotter, a deluxe bowl of luosifen, fragrant enough to make a person melt.
It nearly made Taxue gag on the stink.
Its pupils dilated, and it stared at Meng Shiwan in shock, full of disbelief.
It had said the poop-scooper liked eating poop, and she’d argued it wasn’t poop.
This was clearly stinkier than poop.
Seeing its expression, Meng Shiwan hurried to clarify, “Don’t look at me like that. What I’m eating isn’t poop.”
Taxue blinked, plainly unconvinced, still certain the poop-scooper was making excuses.
Meng Shiwan took a chilled cola from the fridge, opened half a durian, and dug in.
Taxue stood on the sofa and stuck its head out the window for air.
Stinky. So stinky.
It felt the whole RV was being cured through with the smell, and had a sudden urge to run away from home.
Meng Shiwan finished eating, washed the wok, and hung it back on the wall.
Seeing Taxue with its head poked out the window for air, she found it hilarious.
She hauled Taxue back in, closed the window. “Xiaozhi, turn on air circulation and ventilation.”
“Yes, Master. Air circulation is on.”
Meng Shiwan shut all the windows and put away or secured everything on the counter that might fall.
Carrying the leftover half-bottle of cola, she went through the opening behind the display to the driver’s cabin.
“Taxue, let’s set off.”
She started the vehicle and slowly drove away from the mall.
Zhang Qiang, returning with supplies, saw the pink RV parked at the passage mouth pulling away.
He hurried to shout, “Sis, where are you going? Are you coming back? Sis…”
The only answer was a puff of exhaust.
There weren’t many cars on the road. Where vehicles stopped at red lights blocked the intersection, Meng Shiwan simply gunned the engine and shoved through, forcing open a path.
An RV immune to all harm was simply a road tyrant.
Ram what could be rammed, shove what could be shoved, a rather brutal spectacle.
Taxue, sprawled on the center console, clung with all its might to anything it could grab, nearly flung off several times.
Zombies wandering the road heard the engine and gave chase with stiff bodies.
Meng Shiwan couldn’t be bothered to clear these scattered zombies and simply drove them off.
When she met a blind one, she cleanly crushed it under the wheels.
Her destination was the farmers’ market, not too far off.
If the flowerpot really did expand into a farm, she could conveniently stock up on more seeds at the market’s seed shop.
Meng Shiwan had found the farmers’ market on the map, but as she neared it, she vaguely sensed something was wrong.
There were far too many cars parked by the roadside.
Dense rows of e-bikes lined the sidewalk, and cars and tricycles sat bumper to bumper along the road.
Packed so tight they’d nearly spilled into the middle of the street.
“The farmers’ market has a market day!”
The moment she realized it, she moved to turn around and leave at once.
A seed shop could be found anywhere, but a farmers’ market on market day would surely be swamped with zombies right now.
She wanted crystal cores, but she didn’t want to fight zombies to the death.
Yet it was already too late.
The road ahead was jammed with traffic. There must have been chaos when the outbreak hit, cars were stopped every which way across the road, crashed into one another, sealing the way completely.
She could only reverse and turn around.
And in exactly that brief window, zombies poured out from every corner, densely gathering around the RV, several hundred at the least.
Meng Shiwan reversed the RV a few meters, crushed dozens of zombies, and then couldn’t back up at all.
The RV was immune to all harm, but its power was limited. Faced with a dense mass of zombies, there was no plowing through them like earth.
Even if it could crush them underneath, against a huge, uneven pile of zombies, the RV could easily lose its center of gravity and roll over.
That would be too dangerous.
Meng Shiwan brought the RV to a steady stop and looked up, zombies were coming toward the sound.
Crawling out of cars, squeezing out of shopfronts, running in from the streets, converging into a dense, seamless press with no gaps at all.
The nearest ones pounded frantically on the RV’s outer walls and windows, baring their teeth, their eyes gone gray, a horrifying sight.
She felt her scalp prickle. “We’re done for, we’re done for. I miscalculated.”
Who could have imagined the farmers’ market would have a market day.
And such a bustling one at that?