When Mo Fei walked out of the supermarket entrance, she looked around and saw that nearly hundreds, if not thousands, of people were still lingering outside.
Now that the emergency power supply had come on, they all wanted to go back into the mall to enjoy the cool air. After all, the temperature outside was well over 40 degrees Celsius.
However, the emergency power would not last very long. No matter how the staff tried to persuade them, many people still insisted on forcing their way back inside.
Someone like Mo Fei, who was actually willing to leave the mall, looked like a complete oddity.
Mo Fei had no intention of wasting time with them. She squeezed through the crowded throng, wanting only to reunite with her family as quickly as possible. But as she scanned her surroundings, her ears suddenly twitched. She keenly picked up a series of low growls coming from somewhere within the crowd.
Those were not sounds a normal human could make. They were more like the growls of beasts trapped in confusion, on the verge of going berserk.
Unfortunately, she had recently seen news reports describing people exactly like this.
They lost all self-awareness, pounced on and bit anyone they saw, and grew razor-sharp claws… The news referred to them as people suffering from pica. However, countless people online had speculated whether they were actually the legendary zombies.
According to the warning Mo Fei had heard, during the evolution phase of the natural disasters, some humans would die after contracting various diseases, some would evolve new abilities to adapt to the environment, while others would fall somewhere in between. They had already appeared countless times in novels, movies, and television dramas under names such as zombies, lickers, infected, and the living dead…
Following the direction of those growls, Mo Fei searched the crowd but saw nothing.
There were simply too many people. She had no way of distinguishing ordinary people from zombies lying in wait.
Without hesitation, Mo Fei added another protective mask over the one she was already wearing, zipped up her sun-protective jacket completely, and wrapped wrist guards and bandages around her wrists and ankles. Dressed like that in such scorching weather, she looked incredibly strange.
Ignoring the disgusted looks from the people around her, Mo Fei shouted loudly, “Leave now! It isn’t safe here! Something’s going to happen! Go home!”
She shouted several times in a row until her voice was almost hoarse.
It was far too noisy. Very few people could hear her, and the mall and supermarket staff had already repeated the same warnings countless times. No one was willing to listen.
At that moment, the staff wanted to go home even more than the residents did. Even if electricity was being rationed at home, at least they could spend time with their families.
Instead, they still had to suffer here for a few pieces of silver.
Seeing that no one reacted, Mo Fei did nothing more and quickly headed away from the mall.
“Maybe we should leave too,” said a young woman who looked to be in her early twenties.
They were students from nearby Run’an University. Elementary and secondary schools across the country had already suspended in-person classes and switched to online learning.
Only the universities had not yet announced any holiday.
There were four girls in their dormitory, and they had arranged to come to this supermarket together today to buy supplies.
The four of them had originally been quite lucky. Each had managed to grab a case of instant noodles, along with Lao Gan Ma chili sauce and sparkling water.
Who would have thought that the power would go out just as they were about to check out?
Only the dorm leader, Chi Hui, had managed to pay first. She was holding several bottles of ice water and a bag of shriveled grapes that had practically turned into raisins.
Now the supermarket had power again, but they still were not allowed back inside.
Looking across the entrance to the mall, all they could see was a sea of heads. Every single person seemed to have a hundred curse words ready to spill out. They jostled and shoved each other in the oppressive heat, making everyone increasingly irritable. The tiny bit of cool air drifting out from inside the mall was practically nonexistent.
Besides, those few warnings Mo Fei had shouted just now left Chi Hui with an uneasy feeling.
She decided to take her roommates back to the dormitory first and try their luck again a few hours later.
Their dorm had always been united. The other three girls nodded and followed Chi Hui in the same direction Mo Fei had gone.
The girls had only walked a little over a hundred meters when terrified screams erupted from the place where they had been standing moments ago.
“Why are you biting people?!”
“Ah! There’s blood! Murder!”
“It’s zombies! Zombies! I’ve seen the movies! Run!”
“Stop stepping on my foot!!!”
The tightly packed crowd, compressed together like sardines in a can, instantly exploded into chaos.
Everyone screamed. No one cared about the heat anymore. Their only thought was escaping this place as fast as possible.
Among the crowd, several people with skin as pale as plaster walls raised their hands.
Their fingernails and teeth were as sharp as blades, and they moved with the speed and agility of leopards, completely unlike the slow, clumsy zombies portrayed in movies and television.
They were the half-successful, half-failed products of humanity’s evolution, possessing destructive power far beyond that of ordinary people, who were still completely bewildered.
A one-sided massacre began.
Many people were not killed by the zombies at all, but instead died in the stampede caused by the panic.
Cries, screams, and wails filled the air. Tears, blood, and urine covered the ground. Wherever there were natural disasters, human disasters were sure to follow.
Standing beneath a large tree outside with her roommates, Chi Hui covered her chest, her heart still pounding like a drum.
She could not help thinking of the strangely dressed woman.
If that woman’s warning had not frightened her, if they had run just a few minutes later… then the ones who died there would have been them!
Chi Hui instinctively searched the nearby plaza for Mo Fei.
A seven-seater drove past Chi Hui, and sitting in the driver’s seat was that very strange woman.
Before leaving the mall, Mo Fei had already called her parents and told them to get into the car and wait for her.
The vehicle’s fuel tank had already been filled. It was enough to drive several hundred kilometers.
“Replace Jianian’s ice pack with this one, then you can all have some chilled watermelon.”
Mo Fei handed the ice pack and the chilled watermelon to the back seat.
Song Yi quickly replaced Jianian’s ice pack.
Mo Zhicheng, however, looked puzzled. “When you came over just now, I didn’t see you buy any watermelon.”
“You remembered wrong, Dad.” Mo Fei smiled.
Mo Zhicheng scratched the back of his head, but his attention was soon drawn to the crowd rushing out in the distance.
Countless people poured out of the main entrance of Yuanda Shopping Mall. Police vehicles from the local station had already arrived, and in the distance there seemed to be the sounds of ambulances, police cars, and fire trucks.
“What happened over there?” Mo Zhicheng’s lips trembled as his mouth slowly fell open.
He had seen it clearly. A man about 1.7 meters tall had rushed out moments ago and thrust one hand straight into a woman’s neck. Blood sprayed high into the air.
“Ah!” Hearing her husband’s words, Song Yi also looked out the window. She screamed and quickly covered Jiayue’s eyes.
“Dad, Mom, hold on to the two of them and stay seated.”
After saying that, Mo Fei put every bit of her superb driving skill to use and sped away from the area.
Only heaven knew that although Mo Fei’s hands remained steady on the steering wheel, she was panicking like crazy inside.
Maintaining the highest possible speed without flipping the vehicle or sending it into a skid was a true test of driving skill.
She feared that if they did not leave immediately, her entire family would never make it out.
Chi Hui withdrew her gaze from Mo Fei. She watched as numerous uniformed police officers surrounded the murderous monsters, then looked at the bloodstains and filth on the ground, glistening under the blazing sun.
Besides being a student, she was also a contracted web novelist. She had recently been gathering material about apocalyptic worlds and natural disasters, hoping to write a novel on that theme. Because of that, she understood all too well what a scene like this signified.
One of her roommates glanced at their class group chat and shouted, “Holy crap! Xia Zhiming said the stray dogs and cats on campus started fighting. The security guards tried to break it up… and they got eaten.”
Xia Zhiming was their class representative. He was always the best informed, and ninety-nine percent of the information he shared turned out to be true.
However, that message was quickly withdrawn. Xia Zhiming only sent a few short words:
[Students, please return to your dormitories immediately. Do not remain outside.]
His vague message instantly brought the usually quiet class group chat to life.
College students were quick thinkers, full of energy, and often at the forefront of online discussions. Quite a few of them had already become firmly convinced that the apocalypse was real.
Chi Hui broke into a run. “Move!”
“Back to the dorm?” her three roommates asked as they ran after her.
“To hell with the dorm. Pack your things and go home!”
“But the school hasn’t announced a break yet!”
Chi Hui said nothing more. If the apocalypse had truly arrived, then no matter what happened to anyone else, she was definitely going home, back to her parents’ side.
At 7:00 p.m., the sun still hung high in the sky.
Completely drained, Mo Fei finally parked the car in front of the villa.
She weakly turned off the engine and got out of the car. First, she carried Jiayue out and helped her stand steadily on the ground. Then she picked up Jianian, who was still unconscious, into her arms.
A villa that looked little different from a bunker, lacking in beauty but unquestionably reliable, appeared before her family’s eyes.