Less than five minutes after the pickup left Kingsland, Luke Li pulled over to the side of the road.
He had rushed out to buy supplies without even knowing how much money he had.
What if he got to the store and could not find a single penny on him?
Was he supposed to go on a “zero-dollar shopping spree”?
“Attribute Panel,” he silently called in his mind.
The blue panel switched at once, and a complete stat sheet unfolded.
[Host: Luke Li]
[Age: 24 | Status: Chinese-American, graduate student in mechanical engineering]
[Base Attributes]
Strength: 5 | Agility: 5 | Constitution: 5 | Perception: 5 | Intelligence: 7 | Spirit: 6
Charisma: 5 | Luck: 3 | Stamina: 5 | Willpower: 6
[Attribute Cap: 20 (Luck Cap: 15) Allocatable Points: 0]
Almost every attribute was sitting at 5.
In “Project Zomboid,” a character with straight 5s would not last a week in the game.
Of course, that was already a generous estimate.
When he first started playing “Project Zomboid,” he could not even survive the first day.
The only bright spots on the panel were his Intelligence of 7 and Spirit of 6.
His graduate-level knowledge and his own mental fortitude put him above most ordinary.
As for Luck being only 3, that meant he would probably pull junk whenever he opened a treasure chest.
The Skill Panel was even worse.
Passive, Weapons, Survival, and Crafting, dozens of skills across four categories, all of them were Lv.0.
Low EQ: a useless good-for-nothing who couldn’t do anything.
High EQ: a blank slate with a promising future.
His only starting advantage came from his initial profession.
[Current Class: Firefighter (Starting Class)]
[Bonuses: Stamina +3, Bladed Weapons +1]
[Talent: Will of Fire: Fire damage reduced by half; immune to Fire Panic]
On the actual panel, that translated to Stamina Lv.3 and Bladed Weapons Lv.1.
Still better than nothing.
Finally, there was the system backpack.
On the right side of his vision, a semi-transparent grid spread open.
[Grid Backpack: 0/20]
[Backpack Trait: Time-Stop Storage (Food Does Not Spoil) Note: Cannot store living things; operation takes approximately 1 second]
Twenty slots was not much, but the fact that food would not spoil was crucial.
In the middle and late stages of the apocalypse, food would be hard currency.
As long as he stockpiled enough food in advance, he would have more supplies than he could eat once the apocalypse arrived.
Luke Li closed the panel.
Good news: he had just started out, so there was plenty of room to grow.
Bad news: he had to survive as an ordinary person first.
Luke Li searched the original body’s wallet and found $1,430 in cash, plus two credit cards with an $8,000 limit each.
In Georgia in 2010, that was enough to buy quite a lot.
As for whether spending every cent he had would push him past the death line…
Luke Li gave a cold laugh.
Money was worthless, especially in the apocalypse.
A sack full of bills might not be worth a single bottle of mineral water.
The pickup returned to the road.
…
First stop: Walmart in Brunswick.
In forty minutes, Luke Li cleared out three shopping carts’ worth of supplies.
Food: canned goods, peanut butter, beef jerky, energy bars, protein powder…
Luke Li had standards when choosing food.
He only wanted high-calorie items with long shelf lives.
Bottled water filled four large shopping carts.
Medicine: ibuprofen, fish antibiotics, whose ingredients were equivalent to amoxicillin and required no prescription, povidone-iodine, gauze, hemostatic powder, and three first-aid kits.
Miscellaneous items: flashlights, batteries, lighters, paracord, duct tape, sleeping bags, and hand-crank radios.
The cashier’s eyes went wide.
“Oh, my dear child!
Are you planning to open a grocery store?”
“Just a family camping trip.
The whole family’s coming along!”
Total cost: $687, paid in cash.
While loading the truck, he used his body to block the view and stored the supplies in batches inside the system backpack.
As he transferred items into the grid backpack, Luke Li discovered something that almost made him ecstatic.
Backpack items stacked automatically by type.
Theoretically, he could stack 999 bottles of water in one slot.
It was not that he had turned cheats on.
He had never turned them off in the first place.
[System Backpack: 14/20]
Six slots left.
He had to save them for more important things.
…
Second stop: Dick’s Gun Shop.
Luke Li pushed open the door.
The place smelled of gun oil and leather.
Long guns hung across the walls, while handguns were neatly arranged inside glass display cases.
Boxes of ammunition were stacked beneath the glass counters, laid out like some damn art exhibition.
In America, guns really were just another kind of merchandise.
No wonder people joked about freedom and firearms going hand in hand.
Behind the counter stood a white man of about sixty, with a gray crew cut, bronze skin, and a Marine Corps tattoo on his right arm.
In America, any veteran with a little spare cash and connections seemed bound to open a weapon shop.
Luke Li looked above his head.
Emotional states appeared in separate labels, each with its own color marker.
[Calm].
Light green.
[Friendly].
Warm yellow.
[Old Injury.
Lumbar Spine].
Light red.
Friendly.
Luke Li relaxed slightly.
Good thing he was not the kind of PTSD veteran with antisocial tendencies.
“Good afternoon, sir!
I’d like to look at handguns and rifles, and I need a large amount of ammunition.”
After checking his driver’s license, the veteran Jim Hurst spent twenty minutes helping him choose a Glock 17 and 19, same caliber with interchangeable magazines, a Remington 870 shotgun, and a Ruger 10/22 rifle.
Ammunition: 1,000 rounds of 9mm, 300 rounds of 12-gauge shells, and 2,000 rounds of .22 LR.
Luke Li bought everything in one go like money was no object.
A [Curiosity] icon flashed above Jim’s head, but he did not ask anything.
In Georgia, owning guns was completely legal.
With enough money, you could buy out the entire weapon shop.
No one cared what you planned to do with the weapons, as long as you paid enough tax.
Before checkout, Jim took him to the small shooting range behind the shop to test the guns.
“A gun you don’t know how to use is just scrap metal.
Come on, I’ll teach you.”
The veteran taught Luke Li the Weaver stance, a two-handed grip, focusing on the front sight, and breath control.
The first shot landed in the lower-left corner of the target paper, six inches off.
[Handgun Skill Experience +5]
The second shot was four inches off.
By the third and fourth shots, the impacts had started to tighten.
Luke Li had once heard a friend say that when it came to shooting, you should not overthink your aim.
Bring the gun up, let it happen, and the shot would come.
By the time he emptied the first magazine, 11 out of 17 shots had hit.
[Handgun Skill: Lv.0 → Lv.1]
[Effect: Base Accuracy +10%, Reload Speed +5%]
Luke Li felt a subtle change in his fingers.
It was not that firing a few shots had turned him into a sharpshooter, but his muscle memory was being rewritten.
The awkwardness of holding a gun was being stripped away little by little.
Grip angle, trigger pressure, recoil control…
instincts that usually took thousands of rounds to develop had been compressed by the system into seventeen shots.
On the second magazine, all 17 rounds hit the target, with 6 striking the bullseye.
Jim whistled.
“Not bad, kid.
If you joined the military, your drill instructor would definitely like you.”
Beside the [Friendly] icon above the veteran’s head, another label appeared: [Admiration].
The firearms and ammunition came to $2,228 in total.
Jim threw in two extra magazines and a firearm maintenance manual.
Before leaving, Luke Li hesitated, then turned back and said,
“Mr.
Jim, about those reports on the news of unknown illnesses.
If the situation changes, you’d better close the shop early, seal the doors and windows, and prepare enough water and food.”
[Confusion] flashed above Jim’s head before returning to [Calm].
“…The flu?”
“It may be much worse than the flu.
There’s no harm in preparing early.”
The veteran was silent for a few seconds, then slowly nodded.
“All right.
I’ll remember that.”
Jim was a man with a decent personality and no sign of prejudice, so Luke Li did not mind giving him a warning.
He locked the weapons and ammunition in the pickup’s toolbox and moved part of them into the backpack.
[System Backpack: 18/20]
Only two slots remained.
He needed some axes and crowbars.
Cold weapons would be just as important in the apocalypse.
Luke Li started the pickup and turned toward the hardware store across the street.
Just then, a man got out of a beat-up Dodge sedan.
He looked to be in his thirties, wearing jeans, a gray T-shirt, and a baseball cap.
He seemed perfectly normal.
But above his head…
Luke Li’s hands tightened around the steering wheel.
A faint icon hovered above the man’s head.
Its color marker was pale orange, and most importantly, the status text read:
[Fever.
Unknown Cause]
A fever was one thing, but what the hell did “unknown cause” mean?
The man rubbed his temples, sneezed, pulled out a tissue to wipe his nose, then slowly pushed a shopping cart toward the entrance of Walmart.
He acted like it was just a normal cold, but Luke Li saw the sunken eye sockets and the sickly pallor of his skin.
If he still could not tell what was going on, then he had watched The Walking Dead for nothing.
Infected.
The zombie virus had already begun spreading on a large scale.
[Apocalypse Countdown: 68:41:17]
“…Looks like the system’s countdown means the apocalypse will erupt all at once when the timer hits zero, not that the attacks will only start then.”
Luke Li’s heart tightened, and his foot pressed down harder on the gas without him realizing it.
In the rearview mirror, people were still coming and going beneath Walmart’s bright sign.
That was the hardest part to guard against.
The apocalypse would not begin from the outside.
Humanity would collapse from within.
[Apocalypse Countdown: 68:39:05]
The pickup quickly stopped in front of the hardware store.