Fu Erdie was lying on the board, painting. It was only when the details of the final draft were finally settled that she realized the whole day had passed.
Her white T-shirt was already soaked through with sweat, clinging unpleasantly to her back. As this realization hit her, she rushed to the bathroom to take a shower.
It was only the beginning of June; it shouldn’t have been this hot. Working while a fan blew on her would normally be quite comfortable.
But she had been painting all afternoon, and after snapping out of her focused state, she noticed the heat was unusually intense. Checking the temperature display on the purifier, she saw it had already reached 30 degrees, five degrees higher than it had been at noon.
Without giving it much thought, Fu Erdie showered, cooked dinner, ate, reheated the leftover chicken breast from yesterday for her dog, and then took the dog out for a walk.
City C was a second-tier city with a fairly relaxed pace of life.
Supported by her parents and grandmother, Fu Erdie owned a small two-bedroom, one-living-room apartment. Although it was about an hour or two away from the city center by bus, it was only a half-hour taxi ride, so it wasn’t considered remote. When she usually took the dog out, the neighborhood was lively.
However, the weather was hot today, so there weren’t many people out for an after-dinner stroll.
Fu Erdie walked her dog at a leisurely pace, but after less than ten minutes, she found the heat quite unbearable.
She checked the weather app; the outdoor temperature was 32 degrees. Despite the heat, strangely, it had also started drizzling.
Once her dog had taken care of its business, Fu Erdie led it back home. As soon as she entered, she turned on the air conditioner, which provided some relief.
A notification for a group chat popped up; her friends were complaining about the temperature.
Zhao Xiaolu: I wore long sleeves this morning, and I almost passed out from the heat after work!
Cen Xiyang: 【Smile】 I’m still at work. By the time I’m off, it’ll be dark, and the temperature will have dropped.
Zhao Xiaolu: Hahaha.jpg
Cen Xiyang: 【Smile】【Smile】【Smile】
Seeing this, Fu Erdie laughed along with them.
The three of them had grown up together, going through elementary and middle school side by side.
In the blink of an eye, over a decade had passed, and they had become best friends.
Fu Erdie mixed the reheated chicken breast with rice and fed it to her dog. She then went to take another shower herself.
She liked listening to music while showering. She connected to the bathroom speaker, and with the sound of the water, it was quite loud.
Vaguely, she heard her dog outside letting out a low, threatening growl. Fu Erdie didn’t think much of it and continued humming along with the speaker.
But suddenly, she heard a commotion from the road outside, a screeching sound, like the sharp squeal of tires from a car braking hard.
Fu Erdie paused her singing for a moment, then went back to working the shampoo into a lather.
Thud!
The shampoo bottle slipped from her hand. The 1000ml container hit the floor with a startling crash. The dog outside began barking frantically.
Wiping the water and soap bubbles from her eyes, Fu Erdie picked up the bottle while trying to calm the dog down. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I just dropped something. Stop barking, alright?”
Although nothing serious had happened, Fu Erdie felt an inexplicable unease. She quickly rinsed the shampoo from her hair, put on her nightgown, wrapped her hair in a towel, and stepped out of the bathroom.
The dog had stopped barking.
But it was still growling low in its throat, pacing anxiously around the house, as if threatening something unseen.
Fu Erdie stroked the dog’s head. “What’s wrong?”
The dog stopped its low growl and rubbed its head against Fu Erdie’s hand somewhat plaintively, then let out a few soft whines at the air.
Fu Erdie said, “It’s okay, it’s okay. Good boy.”
Even as she said this, Fu Erdie felt a strange unease in her heart.
She had picked up the dog two years ago, right after graduating from university. It was a very ordinary stray mutt, abandoned by the roadside, completely black and skin and bones.
A nearby shopkeeper had told her the little dog had been left there for a few days.
Its original owner had tricked it, telling it to wait there: “I’m just going to the supermarket to buy something, then I’ll come back for you.”
The dog was very obedient, as if it understood its owner’s words, and sat in place without moving.
But that person hadn’t gone to the supermarket. Instead, they had turned a corner nearby and run off where the dog couldn’t see them.
“The dog must have noticed,” the shopkeeper had said with a sigh. “It stood up and ran a few steps in its owner’s direction, but when it saw them running away, it didn’t chase after. I don’t know if it was waiting for its owner to come back, or if it knew it had been abandoned and was just watching them leave from a distance.”
She sighed again. “Poor thing. It hasn’t gone anywhere these past few days, just keeps waiting here, occasionally scavenging for scraps.”
Fu Erdie couldn’t bear to hear such things and took the dog home right away.
That was two years ago.
During those two years, Fu Erdie had been working from home as a freelance illustrator, and the dog had stayed by her side the whole time.
It was very well-behaved and never barked excessively except when strangers approached the door. It had never barked at thin air like this before.
After thinking for a moment, Fu Erdie began walking around the house, checking everything.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. There were no mice or cockroaches either.
“Maybe the shampoo bottle startled him?” Fu Erdie thought, not entirely sure.
Her phone suddenly rang. It was a call from Zhao Xiaolu.
“Hello?” Before Fu Erdie could say anything else, she heard a commotion on the other end, followed by Zhao Xiaolu’s heavy, panicked breathing.
“Zombies! There are zombies outside!!!”
Fu Erdie instinctively told her to calm down, but she also found herself rushing to the balcony to look outside.
Fu Erdie lived on the 16th floor. Below her balcony was a road. This road was a side street, not a main thoroughfare, so there wasn’t usually much traffic. But now, for some reason, many cars were heading up the slope of this side road, moving extremely fast, as if fleeing from something.
Fu Erdie leaned out and looked toward the direction the traffic was coming from.
That’s when she saw a car that had been in an accident, smoke rising from it by the roadside.
Her heart skipped a beat. She suddenly realized that the sound of the shampoo bottle falling couldn’t possibly have been that loud.
It was the noise from the car accident outside!
Fu Erdie’s apartment had good soundproofing, and she had closed the doors and windows to run the air conditioner. But now, as she opened the window, a flood of screams, shouts, car horns, and all sorts of chaotic noises rushed in, making her head buzz.
A single car accident couldn’t cause this much noise.
So, were there really zombies?
No, that couldn’t be… right?
“Zhao Xiaolu, where are you right now!”
Listening to the frantic sounds of escape on the other end, Fu Erdie knew Zhao Xiaolu didn’t have time to explain much. She had called in a hurry, which meant she must need help.
Thinking about where Zhao Xiaolu worked, it was the industrial park located three stops away from Fu Erdie’s place. She must have gotten off midway and was now heading to her apartment.
Zhao Xiaolu: “I’m… huff…” She was a bit out of breath, struggling to speak. “Half an hour from your place. I’ll run as fast as I can!”
Fu Erdie immediately said, “I’ll come meet you!”
“Meet me, my ass! You’re a total weakling, and you want to come meet me?!” Zhao Xiaolu cursed. “I’ll call out your name when I get to your place. Don’t open the door for anyone else, got it?”
With that, she hung up.
Fu Erdie stared at the phone, the dial tone buzzing in her ear, her heart racing with panic.
Her neighborhood was fully occupied. Right now, many people were still on their way home from work, so there weren’t as many people around as in the evening. However, there were a lot of elderly residents. Fewer people had come out for an after-dinner stroll today, but that didn’t mean fewer would come out to see what was happening after the incident.
Old folks tended to worry. They might have come out after hearing the car accident. There were definitely more people outside now than before!
If there really were zombies, an outbreak among such a crowd would spread quickly. Could Zhao Xiaolu make it through all those people and get to her apartment safely?
Fu Erdie couldn’t tell what was happening from the balcony. After thinking for a long while, she grabbed a hammer used for loosening soil by the flower bed in one hand and her phone in the other, then rushed downstairs.
As she ran, she frantically called her grandmother, who lived in the city center.
Busy signal.
She couldn’t get through.
She then sent texts and WeChat messages to her parents, who were out of town.
Gray circles spun and spun, eventually turning into exclamation marks indicating the messages hadn’t gone through.
She tried calling Cen Xiyang, as well as her aunt, her eldest uncle, and her youngest uncle’s family.
She lived on the 16th floor. Afraid the elevator might malfunction, she didn’t dare take it and headed straight for the stairs.
But just two floors down, she came face to face with an elderly man whose complexion was pale and bluish.
His pupils were murky, the boundary between the whites and pupils indistinct. His gait was very strange, a jerky, disjointed motion, as if his joints were misaligned. Yet the moment he spotted her, the old man lunged forward with that same awkward posture, moving with astonishing speed, more like a robust young person than an elderly man.
Fu Erdie spun around and fled desperately up the stairs.
The building had two stairwells. Realizing she couldn’t outrun the old man, Fu Erdie zigzagged, going up one stairwell, turning sharply when the old man lunged, then darting into the other stairwell to continue climbing. Using the confusing layout to her advantage, she barely managed to put some distance between them and finally made it back to her apartment, Unit 16-1.
She fumbled for her keys, but in her panic, she couldn’t get the key into the lock no matter how she tried.
When she finally managed to insert it, the slightly rusted lock cylinder chose that moment to seize up, it wouldn’t turn!
The zombified old man had reached the sixteenth floor. The thudding sound of his running echoed through the stairwell, each footfall like a death knell.
Fu Erdie twisted the key with all her might, veins bulging on her wrist, the keys jingling as she struggled.
The old man zombie rounded the corner, finally spotting Fu Erdie, and lunged at her instantly.
Click.
The lock opened.
Fu Erdie yanked the door open. The heavy security door swung between her and the old man, and when he collided with it, a dull thud echoed.
Fu Erdie was now behind the door, still in the hallway. Her back was against a fire hydrant, and her waist slammed painfully against its lower edge, nearly jarring it out of place.
Her dog, who had been barking incessantly inside, finally seized the opportunity to dash out and lunged to bite the old man zombie’s ankle.
Just as it was about to sink its teeth in, the old man kicked it away. The dog flew across the hallway, slammed into the security door diagonally across from Unit 16-1 with a bang, and fell to the ground with a whimper.
The dog’s whimper made Fu Erdie’s eyes burn red. Gritting her teeth, she gripped the doorknob and, in the brief moment while the old man gathered himself for another charge, slammed the security door against him, pinning him against the doorframe with all her weight.
Whether by luck or misfortune, the doorframe pressed directly against the old man zombie’s head. His skull gave a sickening, muffled crack, and blood and brain matter spilled onto the floor.
Fu Erdie was overwhelmed with horror and revulsion. She wanted to let go.
But she was terrified that if she did, the old man zombie wouldn’t be fully dead and would lunge at her again.
Yet an even greater fear gnawed at her: what if he wasn’t a zombie, what if things weren’t as dire as she imagined, and she had inadvertently killed a person?
Her hand holding the phone trembled slightly. Finally, steeling herself, she let the motionless old man zombie collapse to the floor. Then she scooped up her dog, rushed inside, slammed the door shut, and secured the chain lock in one swift motion.