Yesterday, although I looked outside, it was nighttime then, with only dim streetlights, making many details unclear. All I could see were dark silhouettes and hear screams.
But now, in the bright morning sunlight, the entire campus's devastation was laid bare before us.
It was truly a sea of corpses and blood.
The flowerbeds, roads, and playgrounds below were stained dark red. Everywhere were dismembered limbs and entrails.
A dense mass of zombies.
Looking out, it seemed the entire campus was filled with zombies. They no longer ran wildly like last night but wandered aimlessly around the campus.
I stood on the balcony, gripping the slightly rusty railing.
As I had previously complained, the Girls' Dormitory Building 2, where we were, was the oldest and most rundown in the entire Jingyang University Branch Campus.
Though it was only six stories high, lacking the grandeur of the twenty-story dorms in the new district, its location was unique, situated on the very outskirts of the campus.
On the east side of Building 2, right next to the school's two-meter-high iron fence.
And beyond the fence was the commercial street that students usually loved to visit.
On a normal day, this time would be bustling with noise, the aroma of fried dough sticks and the sweetness of soy milk wafting into the dormitory.
But now.
I squinted, looking beyond the wall.
The entire commercial street was in chaos, with several delivery vans and private cars crashed together, blocking the intersection, their hoods still smoking.
Most of the shops on both sides of the street were smashed, glass shards scattered everywhere.
And amidst the debris, groups of aimless dark figures wandered.
Some wore aprons stained with grease, others were in pajamas and slippers, and some were just half bodies, dragging long intestines across the asphalt, leaving black-red trails.
"Is that the owner of Li's Fried Rice?"
Li Wenli stood beside me, her voice as light as a whisper in a dream.
Following her gaze, I saw a corpulent zombie crouched beside an overturned tricycle, gnawing enthusiastically on a severed arm. The zombie's iconic red apron was particularly striking, though now soaked in a more vivid red.
"Ugh..."
Li Wenli's body suddenly began to tremble violently. She covered her mouth, retching, even though her stomach was already empty from last night's vomiting. The high-definition horror in daylight once again shattered her physiological defenses.
"Let's go back." I patted her shoulder. "If we keep watching, we'll end up vomiting all our bile."
Li Wenli nodded, said nothing, and turned stiffly back into the dormitory.
I sighed, followed her inside, and pulled the glass sliding door of the balcony shut, drawing the heavy blackout curtains tightly.
Initially, I wanted to open the door for some fresh air, as the room still reeked from last night's slaughter.
But compared to the fresher stench of decay and blood wafting in from outside, the "old smell" inside was slightly more bearable, at least offering a bit more sense of security.
The dormitory returned to its dim state.
After returning inside, Li Wenli seemed to want to find something to do to distract herself or perhaps to appear more composed. She walked to the mirror and picked up a comb from the table.
Her long hair hadn't been washed for two days, and combined with the cold sweat from last night, it looked greasy and disheveled. New chapters come out on g.com first.
"Zzz... zzz..."
The sound of the comb running through her hair echoed in the quiet dormitory.
I watched silently from the side. Honestly, it was the first time I looked at her so closely. In class, she always had her hair down, wore big headphones, and had a gloomy "keep away" demeanor. Coupled with her sharp tongue, few paid attention to her appearance.
But now, as she skillfully combed through the tangles, revealing a smooth forehead and tying her hair into a neat ponytail, a delicate and even slightly resolute face gradually emerged.
She was truly beautiful, with exquisite features, especially her eyes, which, despite often carrying a world-weary look, were beautifully shaped.
After tying her hair, Li Wenli stared at her reflection, her gaze somewhat dazed.
I felt a stir in my heart, thinking that at times like this, a girl's psychological defenses must be at their weakest. I sat on Wang Yanli's chair, fished out a pack of cigarettes from my pocket, hesitated, and asked, "Um... do you want to call home? Just to let them know you're safe."
As soon as I said it, I suddenly remembered that in our sophomore year, when the class was documenting students in financial difficulty, I, as one of the "special hardship cases," accidentally glimpsed Li Wenli's file.
Her family situation was even worse than mine.
Li Wenli's grandmother, her only relative in the world, had passed away last year. Her father, a gambling addict, had died in a stinking ditch after being beaten to death by debt collectors for owing a mountain of high-interest loans.
And her mother had disappeared without a trace long before the family fell apart, taking the last bit of money with her, not showing up for over a decade.
It was precisely because of this broken family background that Li Wenli developed her solitary, sharp-tongued, and prickly personality to protect herself.
What was I thinking? Instead of comforting her, I had hit a nerve.
"Um... sorry, I forgot..." I fumbled to explain, holding the cigarette the wrong way.
However, Li Wenli turned around, looked at my flustered self, and surprisingly smiled.
"Call who? The underworld?" She shrugged, her tone so calm it made my heart ache. "I don't have a family. After grandma passed, I truly became all alone. Every holiday, while others rushed home with bags, I stayed alone in the dorm or rented a small place outside."
She sat across from me, hugging her knees, resting her chin on them, her gaze empty as she stared at the floor. "Actually... it's kind of nice now. Those people I hated, those who gossiped behind my back, and those who looked down on me... they're probably all dead by now. This world, to me, makes no difference, maybe even quieter."
I looked at her, my heart a mix of emotions.
Yes, for someone already abandoned by the world, the world's destruction might not be an unbearable disaster.
"What about you?" Li Wenli suddenly lifted her head, her eyes bright as she looked at me. "Why don't you make a call? I noticed you've kept your phone in your pocket, never taking it out."
I chuckled bitterly, lowered my head, and with a click of the lighter, lit the slightly damp Hongtashan cigarette.
Blue smoke rose, blurring my vision.
Thinking back, after nearly three years as desk mates, I realized I'd never shared my family situation with Li Wenli, even though we were both seen as "outcasts" in the class. We never truly opened up to each other.
"Me?" I exhaled a smoke ring, my tone casual. "My parents don't want me."
"Huh?" Li Wenli was taken aback.
"When I was very young, probably in elementary school, they divorced." I flicked the ash. "Back then, they both felt they were still young and could find someone new. I was just a burden. Later, as they wished, they each formed new families, each had a smart, adorable second child to make them proud."
I took a drag, letting the spicy taste linger in my lungs for a moment. "The old man is henpecked; the stepmother doesn't let me in. On my mom's side, her new husband is a respectable man, doesn't want people to know his wife had a child, so they keep their distance. Apart from the legally mandated child support, which stopped when I turned eighteen, they basically pretend I don't exist."
I pointed to my faded T-shirt and then to the expensive compound bow on the table. "Why do you think I've been working so hard at construction sites during university? It was all to earn living expenses and tuition. I have to survive."
My gaze fell on the black compound bow, my eyes turning gentle yet somewhat wistful: This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
"You see those people in the club, each with tens of thousands worth of imported Hoyt or Mathews bows, gifts from their parents for birthdays or coming-of-age. But my three-thousand-yuan custom domestic bow was earned brick by brick on the construction site."
After I finished, Li Wenli quietly watched me, as if seeing another version of herself in the world.
"Heh..."
She suddenly chuckled.
"Looks like we're both outsiders," she said softly. "No fatherly love, no motherly care, marginalized by the world. No wonder we've survived until now, and even get along well."
"Yeah, outsiders." I nodded with a smile, suddenly feeling less lonely. "Maybe because we were already on the margins, when the world collapsed, we weren't crushed in the center."
In this zombie-filled apocalypse, two orphans abandoned by the old world found a strange sense of belonging amidst the dormitory full of corpses.
"Cough, cough..."
A dry itch suddenly rose in my throat, and I couldn't help but cough.
From last night until now, after intense activity, extreme fright, vomiting reactions, and just smoking, I hadn't had a drop to drink. I felt like there was sand lodged in my throat.
Li Wenli was the same. She licked her chapped lips, her voice a bit hoarse:
"Want to... drink something first?"
She pointed to the few pitiful supplies on the table.
I nodded. "Let's drink. Without water, we really can't hold on."
Li Wenli reached for the large bottle of Leibi.
"Fss—"
Li Wenli tilted her head back, eagerly taking a big gulp.
"Ah..." She exhaled deeply, handing the bottle to me. "Here, but we have to ration it. We don't have much water."
I took the bottle, its surface cool. Looking at the bubbling transparent liquid inside, I felt every cell in my body screaming, "Give me."
But I held back.
I just took a small sip, letting the sweet, fizzy liquid swirl in my mouth, moistening my parched throat and tongue before slowly swallowing.
I resisted the urge to take a bigger gulp, tightened the cap, and placed it back in the center of the table.
"Why not drink more?" Li Wenli asked.
"Better to ration it." I looked at the bottle, my gaze turning serious. "Without food, a person can survive a few days, even a week, but without water, especially in this high-pressure environment, in three days, we'll be dehydrated, lose mobility, and then we won't even have the strength to run, let alone fight zombies."
Li Wenli nodded, her expression turning serious too. "You're right. There's no faucet in the dorm, and once these bottles are gone, we're done for. We need to figure out a way to get water..."
She hadn't finished her sentence, planning to discuss a water retrieval plan with me.
Suddenly.
"Creak..."
A faint sound came from the corridor outside the dorm door.
Li Wenli and I instantly turned pale, our bodies freezing in place.
The sound was right at our door!