“Trust me, there’s a reason for all this.”
Zhang Xiangyi wasn’t sure what mood she was supposed to be in when dealing with Xiao Xingzhi.
All in all, you could just barely call them friends.
While Zhang Xiangyi sat there in silence, Xiao Xingzhi’s mouth started yapping away with an explanation: “That house was left to me by my parents. They divorced when I was little, each started a new family, each had their own kid, and I was the one left behind.”
He paused, then went on, “The marginally decent part was that until I turned eighteen, both of them sent me living expenses every month. But it was barely enough to keep me alive. The tuition and all that, the state waived for me.”
Other kids could play around. He could only study hard, and when the money really ran short he had to go work part-time. When he was young a lot of places wouldn’t even take him, they were all afraid of trouble, so he had it especially rough. But at least he was still getting a little money.
After he came of age, it got even harder. Tuition was covered, sure, but living expenses?
And the property management fees!
The property fees he hated most of all!
Wait a minute…
Something occurred to Xiao Xingzhi, and he suddenly asked, “Things being how they are now, do we still have to pay property fees?”
He happened not to have paid this month, could he weasel out of it?
Zhang Xiangyi had been listening with a sigh, thinking how hard everyone had it, and then… turned out Xiao Xingzhi wasn’t worth a shred of sympathy!
“Is that house of yours far?” Zhang Xiangyi simply ignored him.
She’d prepared a fair amount of supplies. If it was far, transporting them would be its own problem, the roads were too dangerous. But this was only the early stage, it was worth a try.
“About two hours by shared bike.”
Zhang Xiangyi: “……” You want to take a good look at what just came out of your mouth?
After he said it, Xiao Xingzhi went quiet too. He knit his brows and looked at the girl sitting there resting with her eyes shut, and asked, very seriously, “Can you drive?”
Zhang Xiangyi took a deep breath and opened her eyes. She met Xiao Xingzhi’s gaze head-on, and before she could even open her mouth, the eyes across from her looked away. She rolled her eyes and went back to resting with her eyes closed.
The two of them came from different families, but their experiences were broadly similar: study was the only thing that changed your life, and with no money and no time, who learns how to drive?
“Ahem, ahem…” Xiao Xingzhi, for once, looked a little embarrassed. “I can drive. But I don’t have a license.”
He’d learned to drive from his roommate, planning to find time over winter break to go get his license, and then, out of nowhere, the zombie outbreak hit.
“And the car?”
“The car…”
One problem after another. Xiao Xingzhi slumped dejectedly into the sofa, sighed, stared at the ceiling, and listened to the zombies howling outside.
Even if they had a car, there was still one problem to figure out: how to haul all these supplies onto it while under siege by zombies.
The two sat in silence for a long while. Then Xiao Xingzhi spoke again: “That house of mine really is great, you know. Three floors above ground, two below, all five floors are ours!”
“If the house weren’t so good, I wouldn’t have hung onto it instead of selling, and I wouldn’t have gone out to work part-time just to pay the property fees. You have no idea how expensive those fees are! Three yuan per square meter! And that’s counting the shared common space! It’s already huge, and with that added in, the property fees alone come to nearly more than a whole month of my living expenses.”
It was like raising a child, who could you even complain to about that?
Sometimes he honestly wondered whether his parents had it out for him, leaving him such an expensive house on purpose.
“Is it fully furnished?” Zhang Xiangyi sat up. She’d assumed it was just an ordinary residence, after all, everyone was broke.
When she’d learned Xiao Xingzhi had a place, she hadn’t thought much of it. But now he was saying it was a big villa!
In that case she absolutely had to go. She’d never once lived in a big villa in her whole life.
“Fully furnished. I had nowhere else to go, so sometimes when I got off work late I’d stay there. I’d already paid for it, not living there would just be a waste, right?” Xiao Xingzhi sat up too, watching Zhang Xiangyi’s thoughtful expression, and pressed on, egging her along: “Actually it’s one floor below ground plus three above, the bottom one is a basement, and I renovated it later. People normally can’t even find the entrance. If we go, we can stash most of our stuff down there, and even if something comes up, we can hide down there and hold out for a good long while.”
“And the most important thing is, I’ve got great anti-theft measures, because I’m often away. It’s a rich neighborhood, sure, but I was still worried something might happen, so every door and window is dead-bolted shut. Back when I was still a minor, I even used all kinds of excuses to squeeze money out of my parents to replace the doors and windows, all crazy expensive, so there’s definitely no zombies inside yet. And it’s a rich district, where every villa is set pretty far apart, with hardly anyone around! A heaven-sent apocalypse home.”
“How about…”
The more she listened, the more tempted Zhang Xiangyi got. She rubbed her hands together. “Can you really drive?”
“Trust me!”
Xiao Xingzhi smacked his chest hard.
Zhang Xiangyi pressed her lips together. If anything, that made her trust him less.
“The landlord has a car parked downstairs by the flowerbed, a secondhand van. He used it to help me move some stuff not long ago, so I’d say it’s in good shape.”
Dear landlord, I’m sorry.
Zhang Xiangyi recited it silently in her heart, but that flicker of guilt vanished in an instant.
She was about to have a big villa to live in~
“There are two problems right now.” Zhang Xiangyi turned serious. “One, how do we get all this stuff down there? The supplies absolutely have to come with us. What exactly do you have over at your place? Whatever we’re short on, we’ll need to plan along the route and see if we can grab it. Two, we don’t have the car key.”
“The car key’s easy.” Xiao Xingzhi flashed a toothy grin. “Do you have a lot of stuff? Just pack up your clothes and toiletries and bring all your food, everything else we can pick up on the way. There are two big supermarkets along this route, one small supermarket, plenty of convenience stores, and at least five pharmacies that I know of…”
“I’ve got all the dishware and stuff at home, and I don’t have many clothes. As for food… I cooked from one twenty-jin bag of rice three times and there’s still a lot left, and one pack of dried noodles I haven’t touched. For vegetables… all I’ve got is eggs.”
He hadn’t been back in several days either. If he was only going home to crash for a night, he wouldn’t have bought groceries.
Zhang Xiangyi stood up, beckoned Xiao Xingzhi over, and walked toward her little storeroom. She used the key to unlock it, then stepped aside to let him see. “One person to lure the zombies away, one to carry the stuff, and it’ll take a lot of trips, won’t it…”
“You…” Did you raid an entire supermarket?
Xiao Xingzhi never would have guessed that Zhang Xiangyi had a hamster streak in her, hoarding this fiercely. But there was no denying it, this was all good stuff, the kind that could save a lot of lives right now.
“You go pack your clothes and things first. I’ll work out a plan.” Xiao Xingzhi ran a hand through his hair. The few cases of water, milk, and laundry detergent gave him a headache. The rest wasn’t too heavy, just bulky.
Then he suddenly remembered his roommate going to his girlfriend’s dorm to pack up her things to move home, that had been a mountain of stuff, and Xiao Xingzhi’s head ached even more.
That had been moving things home. What they were doing now was moving house.
Zhang Xiangyi’s things… probably wouldn’t be that many, right?
Zhang Xiangyi opened her wardrobe. Her clothes really weren’t many: a few sets to rotate through each season, plus one nicer set per season to save face, and that was it. As for shoes, two pairs per season to alternate, plus one good pair to keep up appearances.
And those appearances weren’t kept up by much, after all, it only ran to one or two hundred yuan.
She had bought facial cleanser, though, since sometimes her face got oily and plain water couldn’t wash it clean. As for moisturizer, baby cream was worth having.
Packing everything up, it came to just one twenty-four-inch suitcase.
Her gaze landed on the quilt on the bed. Zhang Xiangyi walked to the doorway, leaned against the frame, looked at Xiao Xingzhi deep in thought, and asked, “Do you have a lot of bedding over there?”
Xiao Xingzhi looked up, brows knit. “Two sets to rotate.”
Zhang Xiangyi didn’t ask anything more. She turned, pulled out a small suitcase, and began stripping the quilt cover. If she could, she figured she might as well bring the cotton batting too, who knew what disasters life might throw at them later? What if there was an extreme cold snap?
At that thought, she packed up the batting after all.
Worst case, she’d just do the work herself later.
Once she’d finished with the bedroom and kitchen, she went back to the little storeroom, she had to get everything into a shape that was easy to carry.
The room was very quiet. Both of them instinctively softened their movements.
Now and then a person’s agonized scream still drifted in from outside, but the two of them carried on with their tasks as if they hadn’t heard a thing. There was no one they could help right now.
When Zhang Xiangyi had finally finished packing, she found Xiao Xingzhi still lost in thought. “Plan still not ready?”
“There’ll definitely be a lot of zombies at the supermarkets, and with the weather suddenly plunging, lots of people will be at the clinics getting medicine too. But we can’t not go.” Xiao Xingzhi shifted to the side so Zhang Xiangyi could see better.
He pointed to one of the supermarkets on the suggested-route map. “This supermarket here has the most complete selection, almost anything you’d need, you can get. But it also has the most people. I’m thinking about whether we should go back first, find a gas station along the way, grab some fuel, put everything back, and then come out again to forage for supplies, or just gather things as we go.”
“Gathering as we go could be a problem, though, our original supplies might get taken.”
Going to forage and entering a supermarket would definitely take both of them, not only to watch each other’s backs, but to carry more and grab a fuller variety.
But by the same token, the moment they both left, the car would be sitting there alone, and there was no guarantee some passerby wouldn’t see it and just drive it away.
That was something they couldn’t avoid.
“Protect the big haul.”
Xiao Xingzhi nodded at that. “Then later you carry some extra small junk you don’t need on you, and toss it far away when you head out. I just watched those zombies for a bit, they wander aimlessly at first, but the second they hear a sound, they move fast toward the source. The ones that died just now made noise and drew the zombies over.”
“Bring a pole too, do you have one of those clothes-hanging poles at home? That thing’s handy. Long-range attacks. Not great for killing them, but safer.”
“And don’t get bogged down trying to kill more zombies, how many can you take down alone, really?” Xiao Xingzhi started nagging again. “Your main goal is to lure the zombies away. And don’t go too far. I should…”
Xiao Xingzhi looked at the living room piled high with stuff, and quietly revised what he’d been about to say. “I’ll probably need some time over here. Once you’ve led the zombies off, just come back. There shouldn’t be another big wave around here, and I can handle a few.”
“You start moving things. I’ll come back to help once I’ve drawn the zombies away.” After committing the route Xiao Xingzhi had drawn to memory, Zhang Xiangyi tossed him the weapon she’d prepared ahead of time. “Keep a knife on you too. This is my bone-chopping cleaver, it’s pretty long, if a straggler zombie shows up, you’ll have to handle it yourself, so be careful.”
With that, Zhang Xiangyi hefted the long pole in her hand, a small bag hanging at her waist, packed full of stones she’d collected before.
The instant Xiao Xingzhi opened his mouth, she opened the door and left.
Very dashing.
“Don’t worry…”
Xiao Xingzhi sighed in silence. He hadn’t even finished talking…