The girl glanced at him, as if hesitating over whether to tell the truth. But clearly, this was not the time to be suspicious of one another. The people in front of her did not look like ordinary survivors either, so she simply gave them the location.
“Two streets west. It’s a community hospital. It’s still relatively safe for now.”
“For now?” Lu Xi repeated those two words.
“That mutant is occupying the shopping mall warehouse. It’s less than a kilometer in a straight line from the community hospital. If it decides to take a stroll over there one day, our base will be as defenseless as if it were made of paper.”
One kilometer.
For a mutant that stood more than two meters tall and had claws that looked capable of tearing through a security door with ease, it might only take a few minutes.
“How many combat personnel do you have? Any ability users?” Fu Shen asked.
The girl shook her head. “Six, including me. None of us are ability users. The rest are elderly people, women, and children. They help with logistics at the base, but they can’t fight.”
Six combat personnel had to protect more than twenty people while also facing the threat of a mutant. Bai An’an’s impression of the girl in front of her improved even more.
“You…” Bai An’an began, wanting to say something, but she did not know how to phrase it.
“My name is Xu Yuan.” The girl suddenly held out her hand to Bai An’an.
Bai An’an shook it. “Bai An’an.”
“Fu Shen.”
“Shen Hanzhou.”
“Lu Xi.”
“Paopao!” Paopao poked her head out from Lu Xi’s arms and added very seriously.
“Have you never considered going to Dawn Base?” Bai An’an asked.
“The one built by the military? We’ve heard of it, but we don’t know exactly how to get there. Communications have been down for a long time. A radio isn’t something just anyone can get.”
Xu Yuan continued, “Although we occasionally pick up fragments from the radio, the signal is always intermittent. Sometimes they say the base is to the east, and sometimes they say it’s to the west. Who knows which one is real?”
“Dawn Base is northeast of here,” Shen Hanzhou said. “From your current location, it would take about ten to twelve days if you travel by road.”
Xu Yuan’s eyes lit up, but they quickly dimmed again. “Ten to twelve days. In the current situation, traveling that far… I’m afraid only a few of us would make it there alive.”
Bai An’an fell silent.
She looked at Xu Yuan, then at the people beside her.
The five of them had combat abilities, Lu Xi was basically a mobile supply station, and she was their support. Even getting to Dawn Base would count as a long journey for them.
Xu Yuan’s group had more than twenty people, most of them elderly people, women, and children. It really would be difficult for them to travel that far safely.
“We can help with the mutant,” Fu Shen said.
His expression remained as impassive as ever, but simply standing there gave people a sense of reliability.
“Really?” Xu Yuan’s voice carried a hint of uncertainty. “Are you all ability users?”
Under normal circumstances, abilities were considered trump-card information in the Apocalypse and should not be revealed casually. But Shen Hanzhou only smiled and pointed at them one by one, introducing them without the slightest hesitation.
“Fu Shen is fire-type. I’m ice-type. Lu Xi is space-type. An’an is healing-type.”
Xu Yuan’s eyes widened.
“All of you are ability users?” Her voice rose, then she quickly lowered it again. “Four ability users in a team of five?”
“Paopao hasn’t awakened yet,” Lu Xi added.
He did not directly assume that Paopao was not an ability user. Instead, he emphasized that she simply had not awakened yet.
“Let’s deal with the mutant first.” Fu Shen brought the conversation back to the matter at hand. “Give us the exact location of your base, the layout of the shopping mall warehouse, the mutant’s condition, and everything else you know.”
Xu Yuan put away her surprised expression and nodded before turning around to lead the way.
“Come with me. I’ll tell you everything as we walk.”
The back door of the courtyard led into another narrower alley. As Xu Yuan walked, she gave them a general overview of the situation.
The community hospital was a three-story building. Her group had occupied the second and third floors. The first floor had been completely blocked off, leaving only a side entrance for people to come and go.
More than twenty people were crowded inside, and their food would probably last another day or two.
“Were you and your teammates the ones who killed the zombies in the square?” Bai An’an asked.
Xu Yuan sighed. “Yes. We wanted to search the area for supplies and medicine, but we were surrounded by zombies. After finally escaping, we ran into the mutant during one of its routine patrols, and the team was scattered. The community hospital didn’t have much medicine to begin with. After the virus outbreak, it was looted several times. If we can’t find more anti-inflammatory medicine, Xiao Li might not make it.”
Bai An’an instinctively touched her bulging backpack. The tourniquet and several boxes of anti-inflammatory medicine inside suddenly seemed especially precious.
“Routine patrol?” Lu Xi caught those three words.
Xu Yuan’s footsteps stopped. She looked back at him as if carefully considering how to answer.
“It’s… exactly what it sounds like,” she said. “That mutant walks around several streets near the shopping mall every day. Its route is very consistent, and so is the timing. We’ve observed it for a week and discovered that it comes out once every morning and once in the evening. Each patrol lasts about twenty minutes.”
Lu Xi frowned. “The mutant has regular behavior?”
“We find it strange too.” Xu Yuan lowered her voice and continued leading them. “Ordinary zombies basically have no intelligence. They just wander around aimlessly. But this mutant is different. It seems to… have a sense of territory. It also seems to know what it’s doing.”
Bai An’an listened, feeling a chill run down her back.
She imagined the scene. A monster more than two meters tall going out for a walk at the same time every day, patrolling its territory like a security guard as it moved back and forth between several streets.
This wasn’t simply mutation. It was more like some kind of repetitive behavior.
“Does it do anything else besides patrol?” Fu Shen asked.
“Yes.” Xu Yuan’s expression became even more serious. “It seems capable of distinguishing between zombies and humans. It drags relatively intact human corpses back to the warehouse. At first, we thought it was storing food. But when we later went inside to scout, we discovered that none of the bodies had been eaten. They were simply piled up there.”
“Piled together?” Shen Hanzhou asked.
“Neatly arranged in the corner of the warehouse, as if…” Xu Yuan’s voice dropped. “As if it were collecting them.”
Bai An’an felt as though she was about to lose her ability to think.
For a moment, she could not even decide which of the two things was more horrifying.
A mutant with a sense of territory and a concept of order was far more frightening than a mutant that was simply violent.
It meant that it might already possess a certain level of intelligence.
“We’re here.” Xu Yuan stopped in front of a rust-covered side door.
She first leaned against the door and listened for several seconds. Then she raised her hand and lightly knocked three times. After a two-second pause, she knocked twice more.
Rustling sounds came from inside. Soon, the door was pulled open a crack, revealing the face of a middle-aged man. He looked somewhat haggard, but his eyes were extremely alert.
“Xu Yuan?” The man visibly relaxed and opened the door a little wider. “You’re back! Xiao Li is barely hanging on…”
Halfway through his sentence, he noticed the people following Xu Yuan, and his expression immediately changed.
“Who are they?”
“An ability-user team we met on the way.” Xu Yuan stepped aside. “Come inside first. I’ll explain.”
Everyone followed her upstairs to the second floor.
They were greeted by a narrow corridor filled with a complicated mixture of disinfectant, sweat, and spoiled food. The windows had been nailed shut with wooden boards, and the entire corridor was illuminated only by several emergency lights.
“Little Xu is back!” someone shouted.
Several heads appeared at the end of the corridor.
Bai An’an saw elderly people, young mothers holding children, and teenagers.
Everyone was so thin that their features had become gaunt. Their eyes carried the exhaustion that only came from living under constant fear and hunger for a long time.
But when they saw Xu Yuan, a little light appeared in their eyes.
Xu Yuan hurried over and crouched in front of someone curled up in the corner. Her voice carried a rare tenderness.
“Xiao Li, I’m back. Don’t be afraid.”
Only then did Bai An’an notice the person in the corner.
He was very young, looking to be around twenty years old. His face was deathly pale, his lips were cracked and bleeding, and his forehead was burning with fever.
His left leg was wrapped in a dirty bandage. Yellowish-brown fluid was seeping through it, carrying a faint rotten smell.
He was infected.
Bai An’an’s heart sank. Almost instinctively, she walked over.