The neighbor’s door was shut tight. The dark-brown wood was covered in scratches, like nail-marks gouged into it, and in the splintered grain clung something black and fleshy, like chunks of meat. Lin Qiu nearly lost her footing, something was snarling, its mouth working away, like a wild beast feeding.
Through the half-open window, all she could see was someone on the building across from her, climbing the wall. Maybe it wasn’t a person, because a person wouldn’t fall, then pick themselves up and keep climbing.
A dream, this had to be a dream. Impossible. Who would scale a building bare-handed with no safety gear at all? No matter how advanced technology got, people still feared death.
The next second, a cough rang out. Her hands and feet, clinging to the door, went limp and slid down, pressing right onto the man on the floor, who broke into a fit of coughing he couldn’t hold back. She jolted in shock, scrambled backward, and fell flat on the floor, her last remaining slipper went flying too.
There was no time to overthink it. None of her calls would go through, and her neighbors had vanished without a trace, something she didn’t know about must have happened. She flipped the robot over and pulled her food out of the cargo compartment. Good thing, good thing not a single one of her items was missing.
Only, the huge robot was now battered beyond recognition, and she had no idea whether she’d be billed for it later. Her head was a mess.
Apologizing to the robot while her thoughts ran wild, she felt like crying. What on earth had happened?
The man on the floor was clearly still breathing. Save him or not? She couldn’t quite make up her mind.
In the end her conscience gave a twinge. With great effort she dragged the man into the apartment, then fetched water and rinsed the floor, washing the bloodstains away. She shook the whole time, gritting her teeth until it was finally done.
The man was in a black shell jacket, black from head to toe. A large hood covered half his face, leaving only the lower half exposed, she couldn’t tell where he was hurt.
His breathing was faint, and the air he exhaled was scalding. He had a fever.
“I’ve already saved him, throwing him back out now would just weigh on my conscience.” Lin Qiu took an ice pack from the fridge and dug fever medicine out of a drawer. Holding the supplies, she looked down at him on the floor, what a long stretch of a man. Just dragging him into the living room had cost her everything she had.
Someone who never left the house, she got winded from the slightest exertion, her brain was still oxygen-starved as it was.
“The floor’s cool anyway, good for bringing your temperature down.” With that she crouched and set the medicine aside. She realized she could never get a pill into an unconscious man, better to dissolve it in water and pour it down later.
“Sorry, I don’t know how to do anything else, cooling you down is all I can manage.” She gave him a tentative poke, still burning hot. With thumb and forefinger she pinched the hood and tugged it back, revealing his messy hair and the high bridge of his nose.
Once the hood and hair were pushed aside and his features came clearly into view, Lin Qiu froze for a moment where she stood.
A peerlessly handsome face, an air as cold as frost, brows knitted, thin lips slightly pressed together. Even unconscious, none of it dimmed his looks, he could have stepped straight out of a comic.
In real life Lin Qiu had never seen anyone this good-looking. She’d only ever described faces like this while writing, with no concrete image to work from, and today she’d finally found one she could base a whole description on.
She set the ice pack on his forehead. His fever looked serious, just leaning a little closer, she felt the heat pouring off him, as if it were steaming the sweat right out of her.
She filled a cup with water and mixed the medicine in. Into his mouth, which wouldn’t open, she stuck a fat milk-tea straw, and the medicine slid right down, kindly, she lifted his head a little.
By the time she was done, she was drenched in sweat. Finally she found a blanket and draped it over him, Lin Qiu had no strength left to move him onto the sofa.
She tapped her smartwatch, and a virtual screen opened in front of her eyes. She reached out and swiped through the air, within moments, hundreds of news items came tumbling out, each one trailed by three exclamation marks to drive home how serious things had gotten.
【Rabies or Some Other Illness, Still Being Confirmed!!!】
【Has the Apocalypse Arrived? Terrifying Virus Strikes!!!】
【Fever Cases Surging, Mutated Humans Attacking Indiscriminately!!!】
【The Apocalypse Is Here, Zombies Walk Among Us!!!】
The further down Lin Qiu read, the more her face tightened, until the newest bulletin popped up and she went still: 【Citizens, the entire world has now entered a state of crisis. An unidentified virus is mutating people and stripping them of their sanity. Anyone who is attacked mutates almost at once, marked by blood-red eyes, a web of purple-black veins across the face, a bruise-dark body, and sharp claws and teeth.
The mutated attack others indiscriminately. Because these traits resemble the zombies of the movies, we are provisionally calling the mutated “zombies.”
Humanity now faces the gravest crisis in its history. Beyond Light City too, disasters of every kind are breaking out, floods, earthquakes, plagues of rats, and more. This is a trial of survival.】
【Next, an important notice: to protect our homeland, global shelters are being activated, five in all. Any humans still alive may make their way to the nearest shelter, undergo screening, and then be admitted.】
The reports were short and chaotic, as if fired off in a hurry with no thought for anything else. Lin Qiu swallowed. Zombies, mutations, things that only existed in movies, were now happening in real life.
Online, all hell had broken loose, wailing, panic, faced with survival, everyone had lost their reason, and the ugly posts grew more vicious one after another. That rainstorm, five days and five nights of it, had shoved humanity headlong into this.
Lin Qiu rushed to the door and dragged the shoe cabinet over from the entryway to block it. Deciding that wasn’t enough, she heaped every other table and chair against it too, eyes locked on the door, terrified that the next second a zombie would smash its way in.
“Food, food.” She hurried to open the supplies she’d forgotten about, frozen dumplings, instant noodles, milk, potato chips, and all kinds of little snacks, plus vegetables. This was over half a month’s worth of food for her.
A year-round shut-in, she ordered everything she needed online ahead of time each month, and the next morning a robot would deliver it to her door.
Now this was her only food. Outside was utter chaos, she couldn’t get out, and no one could get in. She gazed forlornly at the man on the floor, how nice it would be to pass out like him and not have to deal with any of this.
She had no idea how the robot had even made it here. These goods must have been stocked and ready when she placed the order, and the robot, following its instructions, had set out to deliver them as usual, only to run into an attack on the way, from other people or from zombies.
“Haah.” Lin Qiu gnawed at her fingernails, anxious and helpless. Had her neighbors gotten word and moved away, or had something happened to them? How far had the zombies spread by now? How many humans were even still alive…?
“Cough, cough, cough.” The man on the floor started coughing. Lin Qiu turned to look, a broad flush had spread from his neck up to his face, and the ice pack was dripping, drip drip, she’d forgotten to flip it over.
“Water… water,” came a faint, hoarse voice. Lin Qiu had to bend low to catch what he was saying. She brought the cup of water from the table to his lips, his mouth barely opened, so she parted it a little with her hand and poured some in.
Perhaps because he’d gotten some water, his brow eased a little. The medicine had been down for an hour, but his temperature still hadn’t budged. Lin Qiu took a thermometer gun and measured it.
The gun beeped and beeped and beeped, displaying a sky-high 50 degrees. She gave it a shake and measured again, 51.
“Is he even still human?” She pointed it at herself, a normal thirty-six degrees. The thermometer was working perfectly fine. So how was he running 51?!
Lin Qiu grabbed several more ice packs from the fridge and piled them on him, then took out every medicine in the drawer, anything that brought down a fever and wouldn’t clash, she crushed, dissolved in water, and poured into him.
When in doubt, ask the internet, but online it was every person for themselves, and no one had any attention to spare for Lin Qiu’s question.
In the cracks, one person did reply: “High fever can trigger the mutation. If a family member runs a fever, isolate them if you can, so they don’t turn into a zombie once infected.”
The reply was quickly buried under newer posts, Lin Qiu didn’t even get to see it.
The man on the floor wore a strained, enduring look, as if bearing some enormous pain.
“Cold… so cold.” He began to shiver and shake, curling in on himself, a long stretch of a man balling up with the blanket into one big lump, crying that he was cold.
A little sheepish, Lin Qiu took all the ice packs away. He was running a fever of fifty-one degrees and still complaining of cold. With no other option, she tied a rope around his waist and hauled him toward the guest room.
He had to be at least one meter ninety, and he wasn’t the scrawny type either, clearly the muscular sort.
Tugging the rope like an old ox dragging a plow, huffing and gasping, she got the man onto the guest-room bed.
The air in the room was a little stuffy. Lin Qiu shut every door and window and drew all the curtains, afraid of seeing something she shouldn’t.
Whether this man lived or died, as long as he still had breath in him Lin Qiu felt a little more at ease. She needed to know she wasn’t entirely alone, that she still had a companion.
She pulled the winter quilts out of the closet and piled them all on him, three of them, enough to roast a person no matter how you arranged them. Whenever she got nervous she wanted to chew her fingers. She wished for a little noise in the room, yet feared noise would draw zombies, but in the silence her mind ran wild.
Just yesterday she had started a novel set in the apocalypse, after gathering three whole months of research, and now real life had delivered the subject matter right to her door. It was a hellish joke.
Hungry and sleepy, her mind still drifting, Lin Qiu abruptly zoned out. She went back to her own room. She’d renovated this place when she first moved in, perhaps because she never stirred outside, the apartment held not the faintest trace of human life, and so had slipped past the zombies entirely.
She flipped through the whole apocalypse survival guide she’d put together. Step one: stockpile supplies. She had none, the robot delivering hers had been wrecked. Step two: choose a base and grow vegetables and fruit. She had neither land nor soil.
No need to read on. A survival guide was written for the capable, in the eyes of a useless good-for-nothing, it was just paper for starting fires. She didn’t even have the nerve to step out of this apartment.
“Haah.” She heaved a deep sigh. Zombies… maybe she should just turn into one. Better than being human.
Before the apocalypse, Lin Qiu had been a socially anxious shut-in girl. She’d left the house only five times in a year, and even booked a robot online to take out her trash for her.
She’d built herself an absolutely comfortable, security-maxed little room, complete with a fridge, her desk and bookshelf, a bathroom, a big bed, and a wardrobe. Every day she nested in her computer chair to eat and write, and when she got sleepy she lay down on the bed.
The walls were lined with extra-thick soundproofing foam and the sturdiest materials money could buy, which was exactly why, lost in her own little world, she’d failed to notice the earth-shattering changes outside.