When An Ning woke up, she felt exhausted all over, even a little dizzy. She rubbed her aching head and looked up at the window.
It was still pitch black outside. The electronic clock hanging on the wall showed it was two in the morning. Feeling an urgent need to use the bathroom, she lifted the blanket and got out of bed. Beside her, her mother was still snoring soundly, clearly fast asleep.
An Ning had a habit—she could only sleep soundly if she shared a bed with her mother. She was clingy, always liking the sound of her mother’s snoring to lull her to sleep. She knew it was a little abnormal, but so what? She had lived this way for twenty-two years.
As she walked into the living room, everything was shrouded in darkness. Still half-asleep, she turned on the bathroom light, but strange noises reached her ears.
When the dim yellow light flickered on, An Ning froze in shock.
“Dad!” she screamed.
Why was her father eating feces?
At that moment, her father was crouched beside the toilet, his face full of enjoyment as he scooped out a lump of excrement and, without hesitation, stuffed it into his mouth. An Ning could only see his side profile, but she could feel it—her father thought it tasted good.
Terror shot through her.
But before her scream had even faded, she was stunned all over again.
Her father slowly lifted his head and stared at her blankly. Though the lighting was dim, An Ning could see clearly—his left cheek was pitch black, swollen, and the skin hung loose as if it were rotting. His eye bulged unnaturally, making him look horrifying.
“Ahhh!” An Ning let out the first terrified scream of her life.
Her mind completely shut down.
This wasn’t the father who had always doted on her.
This was a ghost straight out of a horror show.
The blankness in his eyes gradually twisted into something savage and vicious. His breathing became heavier, rougher, as if An Ning’s scream had agitated him.
He bared a mouth full of feces, the brownish-yellow muck packed between his teeth.
An Ning suddenly felt nauseated.
“Huh… huhhh…”
Her father snarled, baring his teeth, his protruding eyeballs locked onto her as if he wanted to devour her alive.
Suddenly, he moved.
The moment An Ning screamed, he sprang up and lunged at her, the loose skin on his face swaying grotesquely.
Terrified, An Ning slammed the bathroom door shut. It was a thick glass sliding door without a lock, so she could only brace herself against it with all her strength, keeping her father from breaking through.
“Mom! Mom! Mom!” she cried out desperately.
She knew her mother was a heavy sleeper—nothing short of thunder could wake her. Otherwise, that scream should have already roused her.
“Mom! Ah! Mom!”
Her desperate cries echoed through the entire apartment building.
At last, her mother stirred groggily. She rubbed her sore eyes, her mind still foggy. But when she heard An Ning’s panicked cries again, her consciousness snapped back.
Fear gripped her heart.
“Xiao Ning, what’s wrong?” her mother asked as she hurried out of bed, grabbing the bedside lamp as a weapon.
The moment she stepped out of the bedroom, she saw An Ning pressing desperately against the bathroom’s frosted glass door. Behind it, a blurry figure slammed against the door violently, clearly in a frenzy.
“Ah! There’s… a thief inside?”
The bathroom door was made of patterned frosted glass, so she could only make out a vague silhouette. She had no idea it was her own husband.
“No! It’s Dad! What do we do? Dad’s gone crazy! No—he’s like a ghost!” An Ning sobbed, her mind in complete chaos, unable to explain clearly.
“What?” her mother froze in shock.
She had been rushing toward the telephone, but now stopped dead in her tracks.
“Your father?”
“Yes! Wuwu… Dad… Dad was eating shit, and his eyes were practically popping out… What do we do? Ahhh!”
The person inside seemed on the verge of breaking through. An Ning screamed in terror, her words incoherent.
“Mom! Open the front door first! We need to run! Hurry! I can’t hold on much longer!”
Hearing An Ning’s words and the animal-like growls coming from inside, her mother was trembling with fear. She hurried over and helped press against the bathroom door.
But An Ning shouted at her, “Go open the door! If not, how are we supposed to escape?!”
“Oh—right! Right! I’ll open it first. Be careful!”
Still half-awake and completely overwhelmed, her mother rushed to the entrance and unlocked the front door. Then she ran back and said, “Let’s go to the police station! Whatever it is, the police can handle it!”
“Mom, run!”
An Ning released the bathroom door and grabbed her mother’s hand, pulling her toward the exit.
But her mother couldn’t resist glancing back.
That one glance nearly scared her soul out of her body.
The lamp in her hand crashed to the floor.
The man inside still had feces smeared around his mouth. The flesh on the left side of his face had torn apart, the outer skin hanging loosely from exposed muscle, swaying grotesquely. His pupils had shrunk to pinpoints, and anyone could tell from his wide, vicious eyes—
he wanted to kill.
He paused for a second at the bathroom doorway, then charged at the mother and daughter.
“Ahhh!”
Her mother nearly lost her mind.
How could this still be human?
“Run!”
An Ning yanked hard, snapping her mother back to her senses. The two bolted out of the apartment.
Neither of them even realized they were still in pajamas and slippers. But at this moment, none of that mattered.
They were terrified.
Outside the apartment, the elevator was right beside them. The display showed it was on the eleventh floor. An Ning hurriedly pressed the button, dragged her mother inside, and repeatedly jabbed at the button for the first floor—
but nothing happened.
“Mom…” An Ning asked, trembling, “Did you bring the elevator keycard?”
“What?” Her mother was still dazed.
“The stairs! Run for the stairs!”
An Ning cried out, dragging her mother back out of the elevator.
At that moment, her father had just burst out of the apartment.
The distance between them was only three meters.
The sight made both women feel as though their souls were leaving their bodies.
Not only because of the unbearable stench—
but because her father now looked like a rotting corpse.
The two of them screamed as they ran for their lives, rushing down the stairwell.
At every turn, An Ning and her mother were nearly caught by her father’s filthy hands, still smeared with feces. It was a close call every time—so close it was terrifying.
Neither of them dared to look back. They could only keep charging downward with all their strength, not daring to waste even a single second.
“Roar!”
Behind them came animal-like growls, along with the sickening splatter of rotting flesh falling onto the ground.
But neither An Ning nor her mother felt disgusted in the slightest.
Because there was only one thought in their minds:
Run!
Run, run, run!
Only by escaping could they survive.
That was the only thing in An Ning’s heart at that moment.
As a young woman of the modern age, seeing her father in that condition, she had immediately thought of the zombies from movies.
She was terrified.
Could zombies really exist?