Not only had some of their own turned into zombies, but the front door on the first floor wouldn’t close properly, and the ground-floor windows had been smashed by zombies. More and more zombies were making their way into the building.
Fu Erdie was on the sixteenth floor, so she wasn’t yet facing the horde directly. But just from the screams coming from below, she could tell the situation was dire.
She pulled her dog into her arms, stroking its smooth black fur, listening silently to the sounds coming from all directions.
She knew her state of mind was wrong, she had to pull herself together immediately.
She had already made up her mind: she would live out her final month.
Even if she couldn’t last that long, at least before she died, she could still enjoy the air conditioning, cuddle her dog, and eat white rice.
That was already far better than those who lived in constant fear or were torn apart alive, wasn’t it?
With that thought in mind, Fu Erdie frantically brainwashed herself. She ate three meals of white rice with pickled vegetables every day, consuming much more than usual. After all, whenever the power went out, any leftover rice would become useless.
The eggs, pancakes, and dried meat she had been reluctant to eat in the first two days, she took them all out to go with her meals.
Every meal, she treated as if it were her last.
This state of forced calm mixed with lethargy lasted until the tenth day of the apocalypse.
On that day, Fu Erdie suddenly realized that she had been in such a daze she hadn’t taken out the trash.
There wasn’t much household waste, just some snack wrappers. Still, she had dutifully placed the bags into the cardboard box that once held the ornamental plants, planning to toss it downstairs once it was full.
But now, she realized: it was June 15th. After all these days, why wasn’t that cardboard box full yet?
She sat up from the sofa, went to the balcony, and opened the box. On top were the wrappers from yesterday. Beneath them, there was no unpleasant odor.
Was it because the air conditioning had suppressed the smell? Slowed down decomposition?
That didn’t seem likely. Even so, the balcony was still around 28 degrees.
She thought for a moment, then picked up a small wooden board beside her and lifted the top layer of trash.
At first, she felt the board hit something hard. When she uncovered the object underneath, Fu Erdie froze.
Where the trash should have filled the bottom layer, there was now a dense mass of roots.
In disbelief, she reached out to touch them. The rough texture, it was unmistakably roots!
She tried to lift the cardboard box, but with just a slight tug, the box fell apart around the edges. Fu Erdie then realized that only the outer shell of the box remained; the bottom, like the trash, had long since been broken down into nutrients for the plants and vanished.
The root system, like steel bars exploiting every crack, had already penetrated deep into the floor, extending she knew not where.
Her mind, which had been in a fog for days, suddenly snapped to attention as if jolted by the clang of a copper bell.
The words “plant mutation” surfaced in her mind.
She immediately stepped back, retreating into the living room to put distance between herself and the plants.
In the novels, such plants could devour humans!
Had the last few days of peace she had left already come to an end?
But then again, being eaten by a plant seemed much better than being torn apart by zombies.
Her body, pressed against the wall in fear, slowly began to relax.
All those times she had convinced herself to face death calmly had, at this moment, actually paid off.
She returned to the balcony, standing at a distance, and gently prodded the plant leaves with a drying pole.
No reaction.
She turned sideways, crumpled a piece of paper into a ball, and tossed it at the plants.
Still no reaction.
After testing it five or six times, the plants remained motionless.
Fu Erdie’s racing heart began to calm. She cautiously approached again, touching the roots, stems, and leaves.
Truth be told, she didn’t have much of a green thumb. These plants had been planted by her aunt and grandmother when they came to visit her.
There were gardenias, pothos, spider plants, and succulents.
Fu Erdie never fertilized them. She only watered them when she remembered. Yet the plants thrived on their own.
You could say they were resilient by nature, or that only the toughest plants could survive under her semi-neglect.
She never imagined that in the apocalypse, they would mutate, break through their containers, and adapt to the changing environment so rapidly. For now, they seemed harmless, but she had no idea what they might become.
Then again, calling them “harmless” was probably too absolute. She didn’t know how deep the roots had already gone, nor what the plants in other people’s homes had turned into.
If every plant was this resilient, would buildings end up hollowed out, their structures compromised by these roots?
The thought of roots spreading like ivy, densely occupying every inch of steel and concrete in the building until the high-rise collapsed, sent a chill down her spine.
She pulled out a saw she had scavenged from the neighboring apartment and stared blankly at the plants.
After a long pause, she set the saw aside.
Having such strong resilience was their own merit.
She only had a month left to live, at most. Why should she cut off their chance to survive?
As for the others in this building, she couldn’t worry about them.
If plants really all had this trait, even if she cleared out the ones in her own apartment, the plants sitting unattended in other homes would still be there.
If the building was doomed, it was doomed.
Besides, with these mutated plants around, she no longer had to worry about how to dispose of her trash. The only thing she needed to figure out was whether she herself might end up being treated as trash.
She put the four remaining sides of the cardboard box back in place, wrote the words “Eco-Friendly Green Plant Box” on it with a marker, tossed the trash back in, and loosely closed the lid.
On the twentieth day of the apocalypse, June 25th,
Fu Erdie observed the mutated plants she had named “Eco-Friendly Greens” every day. When she had nothing else to do, she sketched their daily changes in her drawing book.
She noticed that the plant growing best wasn’t the originally robust gardenia, but the small pothos.
Its stems and roots were the thickest, and its leaves had grown much larger, each one now nearly the size of two palms, doubling in size.
Moreover, the pothos’s roots could distinguish between trash and non-trash.
When she touched them, nothing happened.
When she wiped the roots with a clean tissue, there was still no reaction.
But when she placed a snack wrapper on the roots, they released a faint green substance. The color was so pale it was barely visible unless you looked closely.
This substance could silently dissolve and absorb the plastic waste, turning it into part of its nutrients.
Fu Erdie suddenly felt like she was keeping a pet, one that only ate what she gave it and never gnawed on anything else.
Not only had the tiles beside its roots remained intact, but even the cardboard box that served as its “nest” still maintained its outward appearance.
Fu Erdie found this fascinating. The pressure of the apocalypse seemed to ease, if only slightly.
Still, while her mind felt a bit better, her body was struggling.
There were more and more zombies in the building. The corpses of those they had killed before were rotting in the stairwells. Even from several doors away, the stench of decay was unmistakable.
Flies and mosquitoes had multiplied, relentlessly surrounding her doors and windows, finding their way through every crack.