The apartment next door was a rental. The tenant had moved out last month, and no new tenant had been found yet, it was currently unoccupied.
It was a relatively spacious three-bedroom, one-living-room unit. Although it only had one more room than her own place, each room was much larger, totaling about a hundred square meters, twice the size of Fu Erdie’s small apartment.
Every room had a door and a lock. Fu Erdie tested them, they opened and closed properly.
Moving quietly, she opened each drawer to look for the keys and successfully found the keys to every room, even a spare key to the main entrance.
She wrapped the keys in a piece of cloth she had prepared, placed them in her arm pouch, ensuring they made no sound.
She quietly opened the front door, leaving an inconspicuous crack. A string was tied to the door handle, running all the way to the bedroom where Fu Erdie was hiding.
Her own home surveillance could be viewed in real-time on her phone via Bluetooth. Watching the screen, she waited for about twenty minutes until the young zombie was alone at the doorway.
She gently tugged the string, producing a faint creak.
The young zombie was drawn to the sound and looked up toward the interior of the apartment.
From her position, Fu Erdie could see the young zombie’s face clearly.
It was a boy she used to see frequently, slim and delicate-featured, always polite, never running up and down the hallway disturbing anyone.
Fu Erdie’s hand, gripping the bedroom door, tightened slightly.
The commotion caught the attention of the elderly and middle-aged zombies outside. They glanced over, but seeing no one and smelling no human scent, they wandered off again.
Only the young zombie stumbled inside, following the path Fu Erdie had set up with the sofa, heading toward the balcony.
Once he had gone further in, Fu Erdie immediately darted out, closed and locked the front door, deliberately made some noise to attract the young zombie, then fled quickly in the opposite direction.
As expected, the young zombie was drawn by the sound and came running with his jerky gait.
Fu Erdie entered the kitchen and slipped into the crawl space in the ceiling through a pre-made opening. After waiting a moment, she saw the young zombie come in after her.
“Five seconds.”
She counted silently.
That was much slower than the elderly zombie from yesterday.
If it had been that one, it would have closed the distance in two seconds.
That meant different zombies really did have different physical capabilities.
The zombies outside, and those in the hallway, were indeed as she had observed, much slower.
Fu Erdie breathed a sigh of relief. Gripping the hammer she had prepared, she leaped down from above and struck the young zombie’s head.
“I’m sorry.”
The young zombie’s skull burst open, brain matter and blood spilling across the floor and splattering onto Fu Erdie’s face.
She turned on the faucet.
Since no one had lived there or used the water for over ten days, the water that first came out was tinged with a rusty red.
Her hands trembled, but she continued washing them. Once the water ran clear, she washed her face and neck, rinsing the blood from her hair. Checking the surveillance footage and seeing no zombies in the hallway, she dragged the young zombie’s body outside.
The feel of a zombie’s body was truly unpleasant. Touching it directly, it was somewhat stiff, yet it still had the texture of human skin.
Perhaps this was what a freshly deceased human body felt like.
Forcing herself to endure, Fu Erdie dragged the young zombie out and laid it next to the elderly zombie with the caved-in skull in the hallway.
This time, when she saw the middle-aged zombie wandering over, Fu Erdie wasn’t as afraid.
Because its speed wasn’t that fast.
She returned to the neighbor’s apartment with relative composure and locked the door behind her.
The temperature was high now, probably as hot as last night, still 35 or 36 degrees.
Exhausted, she sat in the corner of the living room, listening to the sound of the zombie scratching at the door, her face blank.
It wasn’t until hot drops of water landed on her knees and calves that she realized she was crying.
Staring blankly at the tears dripping onto her legs and the floor, Fu Erdie finally couldn’t hold back. She hugged her knees and wept silently.
Why was she, someone who was afraid of squashing a cockroach because of the mess it made, someone who hated the feel of moths, now swinging a hammer at zombies that were human just yesterday?
Zombies were disgusting. Corpses were disgusting. Death was terrifying. Why did she have to face all of this?
When she returned to her own apartment via the balcony, Fu Erdie had already calmed down.
Her home still looked the same as before the apocalypse, quiet and comfortable.
She took a shower, turned on the air conditioner, ate rice with pickled vegetables, gave Mozhi her dog food, and cleaned the dog’s toilet area.
Everything was orderly, no different from before.
But Fu Erdie knew, things were different now.
She put the trash she had collected into a bag, placed it inside the cardboard box that had held the ornamental plants the day before, and planned to lower it downstairs along with the plants.
But seeing that the box was only half full, she decided to wait a few days until it was full before throwing it out.
Now, whether it was cardboard boxes or garbage bags, every item was finite.
As for the ornamental plants she had thought about “setting free” the day before, Fu Erdie thought irresponsibly: since the sidewalk below was paved with bricks and had no soil, there wasn’t much difference between leaving them downstairs or keeping them here.
After a night of chaos, the flow of vehicles outside seemed to have become much more orderly.
Because everyone had come to understand that under these circumstances, no one could move the cars wrecked in accidents. Each crash created another bottleneck.
If you could avoid cutting into lanes, you did, because if the roads got completely blocked, no one would be able to get through.
And quite a few people, like Zhao Xiaolu, seized the chance to drive off in cars that had been abandoned after their owners died.
From her balcony, Fu Erdie witnessed at least ten such attempts. But only three groups managed to get into their vehicles successfully. The others were caught out in broad daylight, surrounded by zombies on the road and torn apart, scenes of extreme brutality.
Other survivors on the ground floor learned from these failures and chose to act at night, when zombies’ vision was poorer.
Standing upstairs in the comfort of her air-conditioned apartment, Fu Erdie watched the people below like a spectator watching passersby.
She knew that when her water, electricity, and gas were cut off, she would become just like those countless people struggling to survive, thrown into the apocalypse, desperately trying to stay alive.
The scenes on the road played out in different variations each day. The situation in the hallway also mutated.
On the first day, most people, like Fu Erdie, either tried to escape by car if they hadn’t turned into zombies, or hid in their homes.
At the time the outbreak hit, the hallways were mostly filled with the elderly and children, or office workers who had left early or weren’t on shift.
There weren’t many people, and many were waiting for their family members to join them.
On the second day, those who couldn’t reach their families or had been abandoned by them began rallying others to fight the zombies.
After all, the zombies weren’t fast, clearing the hallway would benefit everyone.
Fu Erdie joined in, spending several days fighting in the stairwell alongside others.
But during those days, people were gradually scratched. Even if they didn’t die immediately, they eventually turned into zombies, scratching at doors or even breaking through to wander the hallways.
Slowly, fewer and fewer people dared to come out and fight. Reactions of extreme stress increased. Those who had once fought alongside their companions, full of courage, now saw those same companions turn into monsters, and fear and despair took hold. They no longer dared to venture out.