In the early hours of June 26th, when the signal was briefly restored, the survivors in hiding understood the message: rescue was unlikely. They had to save themselves.
For some, this was the push they needed to grab weapons and set out in search of hope. Their goal: to reach one of the bases.
But for others, this was the final blow, a deeper level of despair.
Or perhaps, a deeper level of indulgence.
Those with power began looting without restraint. With no one to hold them accountable, they killed as many as they pleased.
Everything in a room had to be theirs alone. If someone tried to fight for it, they disposed of them.
When a room’s supplies ran out, they moved on to the next.
Any survivors they fancied were taken as subordinates, or as bed warmers. When zombies appeared, these weaker survivors served as nothing more than cannon fodder to lead the zombies away.
The world’s order began to crumble.
Fu Erdie drifted in and out of consciousness, brief moments of clarity, then sinking back into sleep.
When the scratching at her door finally woke her, she had no idea what day or time it was.
Dazed, she crawled up from the floor and stumbled over to check the surveillance feed.
At some point, the hallway outside had filled with a dense mass of zombies.
Her body was weak. Her mind couldn’t process anything. She leaned against the wall, gasping for breath, coughing weakly.
Eventually, she couldn’t hold herself up anymore. She stumbled to the sofa and collapsed onto it.
Two more hours passed before she opened her eyes again. Her mind was clearer now. The memories came flooding back.
A ability user had targeted her… the window… she had fought him, and they had killed each other.
She turned her head toward the balcony. The Eco-Friendly Greens were lush and thriving. The fruits and potatoes she had casually planted seemed to have sprouted. The kumquats and scallions she had planted before the apocalypse were growing well.
But the intruder, he was gone.
She was shocked. Pushing herself up with her weak, limp body, she rushed to the balcony to check.
It was really gone!
Even the blood on the floor had vanished!
She ran back to the bedroom. In the full-length mirror, she saw herself from head to toe, no blood, no wounds. The arm that had been practically ruined was now completely healed.
If it weren’t for the torn sleeve and the bloodstains on her clothes, she would have thought it was all an illusion.
Her dog had lost a lot of weight but was now wagging her tail excitedly, circling around her.
Fu Erdie’s heart ached as she stroked the dog’s head. Then, belatedly, she went to the surveillance panel to check the date.
It was already June 30th. She had been unconscious for four full days.
During those days, she had somehow recovered miraculously. And her dog hadn’t starved.
Mozhi had found her bag of dog food, torn it open, and eaten from the hole whenever she was hungry.
“My Mozhi is so smart,” Fu Erdie murmured, looking at the happy, healthy dog. A smile crept onto her face.
But why? How?
Had she awakened some kind of healing ability? And in her daze, had she somehow cleaned up and disposed of the body?
That didn’t seem likely.
She looked toward the Eco-Friendly Greens, suspicion growing.
She returned to the balcony and examined the scene from every angle.
That’s when she noticed something else.
The claw marks the ability user had left on the window, the ones etched deep into the glass, were gone.
The memory was crystal clear. The fear of being threatened was still seared into her mind.
Yet those long, deep scratches had vanished without a trace.
She went back to check the hallway surveillance.
On the high-definition footage, her own door was covered in scratches of varying depths from the dense crowd of zombies, smeared with blood, it looked rough.
But the other units in the hallway were in even worse shape. The sturdiest among them had fist-sized dents. The two with cheaper doors had been completely smashed through.
So here was the question: how had her own, fairly average security door held up for so long?
Fu Erdie sank onto the sofa, letting the air conditioner wash over her as she breathed in the fresh air.
She had a suspicion: she hadn’t mutated.
But her apartment had.
That theory was confirmed after she spent the afternoon watching the surveillance footage.
Her front door, her walls, they were slowly repairing the scratches and dents in real time. Even the grime and bloodstains left by the zombies were being cleaned away on their own.
Fu Erdie was stunned. She grabbed a stool and went to the kitchen, turning on the light to inspect the vents for the range hood and water heater.
Four days ago, the apartment had smelled bad. Mosquitoes and flies had been getting in through those ducts. Now, there was no smell, no bugs. Maybe the house had done something.
As she watched, she witnessed it firsthand.
A stray fly slipped in through the range hood vent. A green branch shot after it, faster than the fly, and wrapped around it, pulling it back into the duct.
Fu Erdie was amazed.
Barefoot, she climbed onto the stovetop and peered through the vent.
The duct, once thick with grease, was now clean as new. At the far end, green branches and plant roots had woven a net, sealing off the passage.
She blinked, reattached part of the duct, turned on the range hood, and continued watching through the other side.
The barrier that had been blocking the exit loosened, the branches dancing freely in the airflow.
She thought she understood.
She turned off the range hood, climbed back down, and took out her small electric pot to fry an egg.
Smoke rose from the pan, filling the kitchen. But from the cracks in the walls and the ceiling, branches and leaves slowly emerged. They stirred the air, drawing the smoke toward them, absorbing it completely.
Fu Erdie’s eyes lit up.
Just as she thought, the plants could purify the air!
If she wasn’t mistaken, after the Eco-Friendly Greens mutated, they had somehow protected the apartment. During the days she was unconscious, their branches and roots had sealed the room tight. Any insect or odor was treated as waste and absorbed.
The apartment itself had gained the ability to self-repair. Fu Erdie didn’t know the limits of this ability, but one thing was clear: the apartment had mutated just like the plants, and both had changed for the better.
Her severe injuries must have been healed by either the apartment or the plants.
The smell of the fried egg reminded her she was hungry.
She opened a carton of milk she had been saving and fried a second egg. As the simple, delicious food settled in her stomach, a wave of contentment made her throat tighten.
Meeting that ability user had been terrible luck.
But to be so favored in this hopeless, isolated situation, that was an incredible stroke of fortune.
She was content. Truly content.
Tears dripped onto the fried egg as she ate it, crisp and warm.
With the plants handling the cleaning, Fu Erdie no longer needed to tidy the apartment or clean up after her dog.
The plants were surprisingly clever, they could tell what was useful to Fu Erdie and what wasn’t. She didn’t have to worry about chores anymore. All she had to do was eat and drink on time, making sure she didn’t starve or get too thirsty.
Life was easy. She spent her days listening to music, scanning the radio, loosening the soil in the planters, and petting her dog. The hours passed quickly.
No other ability users came to bother her, only that one with the claws.
Fu Erdie hoped this peace would last until her supplies ran out and her time came. The nightmares that visited her at night were nothing compared to the comfort of her air-conditioned room.
But human emotions, like the weather, can change in an instant.
In early July, a heavy rainstorm hit City C.
The sky turned dark, thick with clouds.
The gale raged wildly, sending debris flying everywhere and crashing down with loud banging noises.
Lightning split the sky, as if a giant sword had pierced the heavens, tearing them apart. The wound closed slowly, only to be ripped open again.
Fu Erdie felt her arm, her shoulder blade, her chest, they ached again.
The wounds had healed. She could move freely, no internal injuries remained. And yet, she found herself slipping back to that early morning, a man leaning in through her window, staring at her with a twisted, menacing grin.
Reality and nightmare blurred. Fu Erdie couldn’t shake the feeling that another ability user was lurking just outside her door, beyond her window.
She could see them grinning, their yellowed, rotting teeth bared. They wore human forms, possessed human minds, yet they were more terrifying than any zombie, demons lying in wait, ready to strike at any moment.
And she, she was helpless, defenseless against them, nothing but a target for their violence.
Growing up, she had only ever been hit once, a playful swat on the back from her family. Even that one time, she held a grudge for so long that her family had to coax her with candy to make peace.
But now, she faced the constant risk of being broken into and killed by ability users.
Arms wrapped around herself, Fu Erdie leaned against the sofa. In the pitch-black night, she stared toward the window, afraid to look, afraid to confirm whether the imagined stalkers were real or just a hallucination.
Silently, she turned off the air conditioner, switched off the lights, and stood there through the raging storm.
By the next day, the rain had subsided. Fu Erdie slid open the balcony window.
The air that rushed in was thick with humidity, heat, and the stench of decay, the unmistakable breath of the apocalypse.
Gathering her courage, Fu Erdie leaned out and looked around.
There was no one else. Only her.
She didn’t move back inside. Instead, she deliberately stood in the open, letting the rain soak her.
She wanted to become stronger.
She wanted to become a ability user.
Raindrops, radiation, virus, whatever it was that triggered mutations, could it please give her a chance?
A chance to tear the nightmares apart.
Raindrops splashed against her pale face, like tears scattering in the wind.
July 10th, more than a month had passed since the apocalypse began.
Fu Erdie had lost any sense of a normal routine.
She couldn’t sleep at night, lying awake until dawn. During the day, she drifted in and out of a drowsy haze, catching what rest she could. But when night came again, she was wide awake, staring into the darkness until morning.
Every day, she stood in the rain, hoping for mutation.
But the rain kept falling, and her little fruit and vegetable seedlings were starting to suffer from too much exposure. Still, no change came.
Finally, she closed the window and sat on the floor, drenched.
The plant roots swept across the balcony, absorbing rainwater, dust, and dirt. Within fifteen minutes, the messy balcony was clean again.
The sliding door opened on its own. The air conditioner clicked back on. The room returned to its comfortable state.
But Fu Erdie still felt cold.
She went to the bathroom and took a hot shower. When she came out, she raised the temperature on the air conditioner. The display read 30 degrees, unusually high.
She felt slightly less cold now. She lay back down on the sofa, wrapped herself in the blanket, and curled into a ball.
The tenth of every month was when utilities were due in her district.
Seeing the date, Fu Erdie instinctively opened the payment app, then slowly closed it.