Fu Erdie’s eyes grew moist. After a long standoff, seeing a zombie approaching outside, she finally closed the door again.
She couldn’t bear to part with her dog. If they were to stay together at home, so be it. Maybe they would both turn into a mutant dog and a superhuman.
Let it be.
As she closed the door, Fu Erdie heard a crunching sound, like stone breaking.
She looked down but didn’t notice anything unusual.
“It must be leftover remains from outside that haven’t been cleaned up,” Fu Erdie thought. She poured a bit of water near the crack of the door, more as a symbolic gesture of cleaning than anything else.
Fu Erdie’s balcony was an interior balcony of about eight or nine square meters, with walls on three sides and a window on the fourth.
She lay down on the floor, letting the heat wash over her. She turned off the lights, turned off the air conditioner, and kept her phone plugged in with a long extension cord beside her so she could make or receive calls at any time and keep it fully charged.
In a state of tension and drowsiness, she waited until nine in the evening.
The indoor temperature had reached 35 degrees. Mozhi was panting heavily from the heat but remained silent.
Fu Erdie got up from the floor.
She hadn’t mutated, she just felt hot. Slowly, she emerged from her state of stifling irritability and the aftermath of having just killed someone.
She was at home, which seemed very safe.
She had stored plenty of buckets of water at home and had a habit of stocking instant noodles when living alone. Rationing carefully, she could survive for a month.
If the zombies outside couldn’t get in, she could live at home for at least a month and wait for rescue.
But the mutation situation was still unknown. The zombie virus wouldn’t spare anyone based on identity. Ordinary people could turn into zombies, and so could police officers…
Moreover, many people would seek refuge at police stations if something happened. If someone carried the virus and went berserk there, infecting a large group, the situation would become even more dire, and rescue efforts wouldn’t go smoothly.
If she chose to stay home and wait for help, she might miss the initial wave of escape. Later, if the entire city was overrun with zombies, she would be trapped with no way out.
Looking at her now-chaotic apartment, Fu Erdie hesitated, then gritted her teeth. She decided to take her bicycle and go find her family, and, if possible, Zhao Xiaolu.
Her parents were in another city, over a thousand kilometers away from City C, too far to consider.
Her grandmother was the person she was closest to, but getting there would take one to two hours by bus. She couldn’t drive, and biking would take who knows how long.
The closest relative was her eldest uncle. Normally, it was a forty-minute walk to his place; biking faster, she might make it in twenty minutes if she was lucky. Her uncle’s family had a car, maybe they could take her along to escape.
Her youngest uncle’s family was actually even closer, but their relationship wasn’t as close as with her eldest uncle, so she preferred to seek help from her eldest uncle’s family.
She packed a bag, grabbed her hammer, and, with a surge of determination, opened the door and charged out.
The moment she stepped out, she came face-to-face with the wandering eyes of a neighbor from down the hallway…!
In that instant, the neighbor’s murky eyes seemed to gleam, like a lion spotting fresh meat, and it lunged at her.
She slammed the door, locked it, fastened the chain, and pushed a table against it, all in one fluid motion. The zombie pounded against the door, making a loud clatter, but it couldn’t get in.
After five minutes, the zombie lost interest and wandered away, its footsteps uneven.
Fu Erdie let out a sigh of relief, but then she suddenly realized something.
Her door opened outward.
What was the point of her bracing it from the inside?!
She was both scared and irritated, but in the end, she couldn’t help but laugh at herself.
Slowly, she dragged the sofa and dining table back into place. Meanwhile, she kept calling her family and close friends.
Maybe it was an incredible stroke of luck, after repeatedly trying, her phone, which had no signal earlier, finally connected with her eldest uncle.
Her eyes lit up. “Uncle, are you okay?!”
The background noise on her uncle’s end wasn’t too chaotic. She could hear her aunt and cousin talking nervously nearby, along with the sound of car horns, but nothing more.
Her uncle’s voice was a bit strained. “We’re fine. We’ve already left Dongye District through the Jiuhui Tunnel.”
In that moment, her uncle’s surroundings fell silent, and so did Fu Erdie.
After a brief pause, her uncle explained, “This tunnel we took, it’s not on the way to your place, so we didn’t come to get you. Go to your youngest uncle and see if he can take you out. If not, just stay home and wait for rescue.”
Her cousin spoke on the other end, her voice tinged with guilt: “I’m sorry. But the traffic situation is complicated. We were close to the Jiuhui Tunnel, and if we had taken a detour to your place, we would have lost our advantage in getting through. I’m really sorry. Go to your youngest uncle, his route is more direct.”
Fu Erdie opened her mouth to speak and heard herself say, “It’s okay. Take care of yourselves. Safe travels.”
The air conditioner hummed softly, the 26-degree breeze not particularly cold.
She rubbed her arms and raised the temperature by one degree.
Actually, it was fine.
Her uncle was right, coming to her place would have been more of a detour compared to her youngest uncle’s route.
She scrolled through her call history on her phone and saw that she still hadn’t been able to reach her youngest uncle. Her finger paused.
She understood.
Whether it was a detour or not didn’t really affect their decision.
If picking her up were as simple as parking the car downstairs and waiting for her to go down, then everything would be fine.
But the problem was that parking posed a risk, and so did her going downstairs. She couldn’t even make it down the stairs, so she would have needed her eldest uncle or her youngest uncle’s family to come up and get her. Was it necessary for them to take that risk?
Put another way, if her parents were home right now and had to take a detour to pick up her cousin, would she be willing to let her dad risk being scratched by zombies to go upstairs and save them?
Deep down, she wasn’t. Her father was already in his fifties, not a young, strong man anymore. He couldn’t handle such danger.
Although, knowing her dad, he would definitely go save his niece or nephew. But as his daughter, she naturally sided with her father and selfishly didn’t want him to take that risk.
So, should she still ask her youngest uncle for help?
After a brief pause, Fu Erdie dialed the number anyway.
It took five minutes of trying, but finally, the call went through.
Her cousin answered: “We’ve already left. Don’t blame us for not coming to get you, we really didn’t dare wait around near your apartment complex!”
In the background, she could vaguely hear her youngest uncle scolding him.
Her cousin shouted back, “What else could we do? We didn’t even have time to pack our things, let alone go find someone and save them!”
“You say that again!”
“That’s just how it is!”
Her aunt, who was driving, couldn’t help but shout, “Stop arguing! If you want to fight, get out of the car!”
Her youngest uncle took the opportunity to snatch the phone away and said apologetically, “Don’t panic, child. Just stay at home and wait for the national rescue, alright?”
Fu Erdie remained silent, letting out a quiet sigh. “Actually, I was calling to say you don’t need to come for me. I have food and water at home, I can hold out. Just take care of yourselves. Goodbye.”
The call ended.
Even though she had expected this, and she had truly called to say goodbye to her youngest uncle, a tiny part of her had still clung to a sliver of hope.
She smiled bitterly and slumped weakly against the sofa.
In fact, if she had been able to make a run for it and find her uncles right away, she might have had a chance.
But what had she done? First, she had been driven back by a single zombie, then she had lingered at home, waiting for some vague, elusive ability. She hadn’t helped Zhao Xiaolu, who was still somewhere out there, and she hadn’t dared to go out and fight zombies to look for her family.
Fu Erdie lowered her gaze, her thoughts scattered, as she continued calling others.
Her grandmother was living with her aunt and younger cousin. Her aunt had a car, if they could leave, they should.
She would be fine here on her own.
Her dog whimpered and licked her hand.
Fu Erdie smiled.
“And I have my little Mozhi~”
The call to her grandmother wouldn’t go through, and there was no news from her aunt or cousin either.
She didn’t know how Cen Xiyang, who was on the night shift, was doing.
And most importantly, Zhao Xiaolu might already be dead.
She glanced at the hallway surveillance footage. The number of zombies hadn’t decreased, in fact, it had grown as more people came and went.
She took stock of her supplies.
First, instant noodles. She had two cartons, each containing 24 bags, 48 bags in total. Just the noodles alone would last her a month.
There were also some vegetables and fruits in the fridge; she would need to eat them first in the next few days before they spoiled.
Earlier, when she paid the property management fee, the neighborhood had given her a 10-pound bag of rice. Adding that to the 5 pounds she still had left, she could eat for another two months.
But that was only in theory.
She only knew that rice needed to be cooked before eating, and cooking required a rice cooker or gas. But in the future, water, electricity, and gas would inevitably be cut off. What could she do with uncooked rice?
Fu Erdie had no idea.
So, the rice would also need to be eaten early.
There were also a few jars of pickled vegetables her mother had made during the Spring Festival; with those, eating rice wouldn’t be too unbearable.
As for the dog, there were 20 pounds of dog food, which would last two months given how much Mozhi ate.
Fu Erdie stroked her well-behaved dog. “Looks like we’ll live and die together.”
Mozhi whimpered softly, rubbing its head against her hand.
Having roughly calculated how much time she had left, Fu Erdie felt somewhat at peace.
But as she looked at the remaining fruits, sweet potatoes, and the potatoes that had been sitting for so long they were just about to sprout, she couldn’t resist. She got up, turned on the balcony light, pried up the ornamental plants in the planter, and planted the food instead.
Although she might be dead in a month or two.
But what if.
What if she could grow a small vegetable patch?
She knew nothing about watering or fertilizing, she didn’t even know whether these things were supposed to be planted in soil. And now, she couldn’t look it up online. But what if, by some stroke of luck, something actually grew?
Take the small kumquats, chili peppers, and scallions on the balcony, she had planted them for fun before, and they were growing pretty well, weren’t they?
Logically, she knew these small planters on the balcony wouldn’t sustain her.
But emotionally, that tiny will to survive drove her to do it anyway.
As for the ornamental plants she had dug up, she didn’t throw them away. Instead, she found a delivery box, put a thin layer of soil inside, more as a symbolic gesture, watered it a little, and placed the plants on top.
She planned to lower them down to the ground floor when it got light, letting them fend for themselves.
Having made her plans, Fu Erdie slept soundly.
The air conditioner hummed dutifully, and she slept through the night without any dreams.
The next day, she woke up before dawn, at just five in the morning.
She opened the balcony window to check the situation outside.
The chaos that had started the night before still hadn’t subsided.
She could already see three car accidents within view. Vehicles were stuck on the roads, making the already blocked streets even more gridlocked.