Chapter 3

Unconsciously, everyone began to subconsciously obey Su Hao's orders. This was not blind obedience; his precise strikes and shrewd calculations and judgments had left an indelible impression on the others. Choosing the best leader is one of the innate traits of intelligent beings.

The zombies near the Mercedes-Benz were all attracted over. In their simple and brutal minds, living humans were synonymous with "food." This temptation was irresistible. They could only follow the shortest route, moving at their fastest speed, howling and charging forward in a frenzied state.

The parking lot was filled with hundreds of cars, forming an irregular "O" shape with the sloping exit as the endpoint. Su Hao's plan was simple—just fight and retreat, luring the zombies to chase him in a counterclockwise direction around the passage. When the zombie horde reached the bottom of the passage, the farthest point from the exit, everyone would immediately speed up and safely escape this predicament.

Future research has shown that the movement speed of initial virus-infected individuals is about three to four kilometers per hour. Compared to the average adult's walking speed of five kilometers per hour, it is undoubtedly much slower. Especially when running, zombies cannot catch up. This situation will gradually change as the virus evolves within the infected. But for now, Su Hao's plan was actually very sound.

"Thud——"

Su Hao chopped down another zombie. The moment the axe blade split the zombie's head, the grotesque creature's cheeks bulged, and under the immense pressure, an eyeball was violently ejected. This ball of intensely foul-smelling matter spun through the air and struck Huang Yi, who was at the end of the line, on the shoulder.

This thing had no lethal power; it was just a mixture of protein and fat. But for a girl who had been basking in the light of civilization just a few hours ago, it was as terrifying as experiencing the most horrifying film. Huang Yi was immediately terrified. She widened her eyes, her teeth and body trembled violently, and she let out a violent dry heave from deep in her throat. Suddenly, as if waking from a daze, she screamed in despair, frantically waving her hands and sprinting toward the exit of the passage.

This sudden change was so abrupt that even Su Hao was momentarily taken aback. The strong perfume scent and the screams from a living person were things the infected were extremely sensitive to. A few zombies at the end of the hunting group immediately turned around, emitting excited howls, and charged forward in a clockwise direction.

"Stop her——"

Su Hao's face turned pale as he chopped down the nearest zombie with a backhand and roared in urgent anger, "Don't let her get through. Grab her! Quickly, grab her——"

People, whose nerves were already stretched to the limit, could not react in time. Xin Yan glanced at the running Huang Yi, instinctively wanting to turn around, but her weapon continued to stab at the zombies. Zheng Chao's attacks also slowed, his eyes showing hesitation and fear. Li Libin's reaction was noticeably faster. He stood still for two seconds, took a few steps back, and seemed to want to turn and chase, but he unconsciously looked to Su Hao for guidance.

Their minds were entirely focused on "survival" and "zombies." They had no experience dealing with such terrifying scenes. The inertia of thinking in the civilized world made them unable to immediately stop Huang Yi's actions. After all, anyone would feel fear when faced with death and disgusting things.

Moreover, Huang Yi was a girl.

"You idiots! Why are you all looking at me? Grab her! If we get surrounded by the horde, we'll all die here——"

While cursing, Su Hao adjusted his steps flexibly, constantly changing his distance from the zombies to find the best angle of attack. These infected were the lowest level and easiest to deal with among the mutated creatures. But even humans with enhanced abilities could not withstand a dense horde of zombies.

He had just been vaccinated and taken Yingu. Although he was not afraid of viral infection, the bone-strengthening effect would not begin to show initial results for at least eight to twelve hours.

Su Hao had always believed his plan was very meticulous: he used separate teleportation to ensure his safety and minimize resource consumption. He stayed in the underground warehouse of the mall for a long time according to the city map's coordinates, thus avoiding the initial chaos and violence of the virus outbreak. However, he underestimated the intense fear of death in this era.

The strong will to survive made Huang Yi burst with unimaginable speed. In just five or six seconds, she had already crossed the side line of the parking lot. If the entire passage, filled with cars in the middle, were seen as a circular clock face, and the exit ramp as the twelve o'clock position, then Huang Yi had already run counterclockwise to about the four to three o'clock position, while Su Hao and the others were still struggling at the eight o'clock position.

Zombies have no thoughts, but they have a more sensitive sense of smell and hearing than any predator. A few zombies that had just left the Mercedes-Benz immediately detected the increasingly close scent of a living human. They became agitated, turned around, and accelerated, charging toward Huang Yi, who was screaming wildly and emitting a strong fragrance.

After a brief mental pause, the brain quickly released a strong sense of crisis. Li Libin and Zheng Chao turned around at the same time, their faces full of fear and anger, and sprinted toward Huang Yi's back.

Su Hao had already chopped down four zombies in a row. He had no time to collect Yingu and could only fight and retreat. When he raised the fire axe again, preparing to chop at the neck of the zombie in front of him, Xin Yan suddenly rushed forward and accurately and viciously stabbed the zombie's eye socket with a dagger.

"Great! Well done."

Xin Yan's face was still pale, and her eyes showed fear, but her hands and feet were not trembling as violently as before, and her teeth were clenched tighter.

Su Hao looked at the girl with some surprise, took a deep breath to adjust his breathing, and said, "Let's go! We need to leave here as soon as possible."

Huang Yi's screams split the zombie horde that was originally surging toward Su Hao and the others into two groups. The zombies that changed direction and followed her, though only a third of the total, still numbered over a dozen. Continuing to lure and hold them had lost its meaning.

Suddenly, Huang Yi, who was running, stopped as if she had hit the brakes, tightly covering her face with her hands and letting out a scream that almost pierced the eardrums. In the empty underground parking lot, it immediately turned into a deafening echo——just a dozen meters in front of her, the zombie horde had blocked the ramp leading to the ground, waving their dirty, rotten claws and advancing step by step toward her.

Li Libin rushed over from behind, grabbed her hair, and dragged her back in the most brutal way. He ignored her cries and pleas, raised his right hand, and struck her beautiful face, which was smeared with expensive cosmetics and tears, repeatedly shouting, "Bitch! Slut! You'll get us all killed——"

"Let her go——"

Zheng Chao, a short and fat boy, burst with a strength that did not match his physique, using a mop to knock Li Libin away and hugging the sobbing Huang Yi tightly. He raised his head, glaring at Li Libin, who was about to swing his hammer in retaliation, and spat out like a madman, "If you touch her again, I'll smash your skull!"

"Fatso! Say that again, and I'll see what happens!"

Li Libin rolled up his sleeves and stared at Zheng Chao, who was half-kneeling on the ground, with an unusually fierce look. The spot on his shoulder where he was hit by the mop was burning, causing the veins in his arm to bulge. If it weren't for the approaching horde, he would have hesitated to smash the other's mouth with his hammer.

Huang Yi stopped crying, but she was still sobbing, occasionally lifting her half-fallen false eyelashes to secretly observe Li Libin, whose expression was enough to eat a person, and unconsciously hugged Zheng Chao's waist tighter.

Su Hao and Xin Yan had already run over. He took a big step forward, standing between the two arguing men, and roared, "Shut up. Do you want to die or live?"

Li Libin and Zheng Chao continued to glare at each other, but the slightly trembling corners of their eyes showed that they were both using their peripheral vision to watch the approaching horde.

Xin Yan, who was exhausted, supported her knee with one hand, bent over, and panted, asking in a broken voice, "What... should we... do now?"

Su Hao straightened his chest, staring at the horde blocking their way like a wolf, the gleam in his eyes particularly noticeable in the dim environment.

"There's no other way."

He shook his head, spat out a mouthful of saliva, picked up the blood-stained fire axe leaning against his leg, and said coldly and calmly, "We can only fight our way out."

After saying that, he looked around at the people standing around, walked past Li Libin and Zheng Chao, and charged at the approaching zombies with a low growl.

Xin Yan still followed behind him. Although her strength had not fully recovered, her steps were somewhat unsteady, but she held the dagger tightly.

Li Libin's throat moved up and down. He glared at Zheng Chao angrily for a few seconds and left a cold, sinister message.

"I'll settle this with you later——"

After saying that, he inserted the hammer diagonally into his belt, picked up the wooden stick Huang Yi had dropped, and left without looking back.

Soon, intense shouts and battle cries came from the front of the passage. Among them were the clear sounds of bone cracking and the dull thuds of heavy objects hitting bodies.

Huang Yi's expression gradually lost its fear. She clearly did not want to be held in this way. She struggled and broke free from Zheng Chao's embrace, looking at him with a mix of expectation and a hint of conspiracy.

"You said you would do anything for me?"

Zheng Chao, though not quite understanding why Huang Yi was bringing this up, still nodded.

"I've read all the love letters you wrote. You swore in them more than once——that you would die for me?"

The fat boy looked at her in confusion, seemingly already guessing what was about to come out of her mouth, which was smeared with bright red lipstick.

"Protect me, I... I don't want to die, I don't want to be eaten by those monsters."

Huang Yi tightly grabbed Zheng Chao's hand and quickly let go, saying in a very sincere and seductive tone, "As long as we can get out of here alive, I promise to be your girlfriend."

She spoke quickly, clearly having thought through the order of her words. The fat boy's eyes immediately lit up with a fiery glow, and his breathing became rapid.

For some reason, Zheng Chao suddenly felt like crying.

The first time he saw Huang Yi, he fell madly in love with this girl. He had pursued her for two years, but she had never even let him touch her fingers. Of course, this was not surprising. Zheng Chao came from an ordinary family, and words like "handsome" and "tall" would never be associated with his short, fat body.

He never missed a chance to buy lottery tickets and would work part-time near the school in his free time. Pursuing a girl was not just about talking. Sending flowers, eating out, shopping, watching movies... all of this required money. Although he knew that the chances of Huang Yi choosing him among her many suitors were almost zero, he still worked hard to do everything he should. Because Zheng Chao believed: on the other side of the love scale, among the eye-catching factors like money and good looks, there was a small, unremarkable but classic and important weight.

That was sincerity.

Perhaps feeling that her previous words were not enough, Huang Yi grabbed the fat boy's hand again, pressed it heavily on her chest, and said without hesitation, "As long as we can get out of here, I'll marry you."

Zheng Chao's expression instantly became very vivid. He felt his blood rushing to his head. The intense excitement and indescribable excitement made him struggle to pull his hand away from Huang Yi's chest.

"Are you... serious?"

He still had a bit of doubt. After all, he had been rejected many times before.

Huang Yi's brows began to furrow. She glanced at the terrifying horde not far away, bit her lip, and suddenly cupped the fat boy's chubby face, closed her eyes, and kissed him forcefully.

The two lips touched for less than two seconds, but the sudden happiness that descended from the sky instantly permeated Zheng Chao's entire body. He no longer doubted, feeling like he had been injected with adrenaline, grabbed the mop beside him, and howled like a rabid dog, bravely joining the battle against the zombies.

He did not see——the moment he turned around, the gentleness on Huang Yi's face instantly turned cold. She wiped the saliva from her lips with the back of her hand and then took out a tissue from her pocket, wiping it with intense disgust.

...

On the cold cement ground, six zombies lay with severely damaged or completely smashed heads.

The survivors' efficiency in killing the infected was not high. Although they knew the weaknesses of their opponents, they still inevitably panicked in actual combat. Especially the faces of the zombies, twisted and rotten by the virus, always caused their weapons to miss the target, hitting parts of the zombies' heads. Whenever this happened, Su Hao had to swing his steel axe in time to save his slow and flustered teammates.

In the face of sudden disasters, many people will die. Only the most tenacious and the most insane can survive through repeated battles.

It is very cruel, but it is a fact that everyone must face.

"Speed up, we need to go faster——"

Su Hao was covered in splattered blood and flesh, his eyes fixed on the horde in front of him, giving orders with urgency but composure. He had already switched the fire axe to his left hand and held the M500 he had just drawn in his right. These words were not superfluous——seven more zombies had come from the exit direction, and due to the influence of the group, a considerable part of the horde that was originally moving counterclockwise was also turning.

The four people were all focused on fighting the zombies. No one noticed that Huang Yi was following behind the group. When the two zombies in front were just killed, and the subsequent horde was attracted to the left side of the passage, Huang Yi suddenly slipped out through a gap of about three meters on the right side of the passage and ran toward the exit ramp about twenty meters away.

She chose the perfect moment—the gap between the two groups of zombies made this distance clear. As long as she was fast enough, she could safely escape the underground parking lot.

Su Hao and the others were not unaware of this opportunity. But they had expended too much energy and were moving more slowly.

"Damn bitch, she doesn't care if we live or die——"

Li Libin cursed and chased after her with a wooden stick. The others did not speak, just stepped on the sticky blood and flesh on the ground, trying to speed up.

It was better to save their strength for when they were alive rather than waste it on shouting.

Huang Yi ran forward like a madwoman. She did not think she was despicable; she just did not want to die, did not want to become meat in the zombies' mouths.

Just as her long left leg stepped into the sunlight, a ravenous zombie suddenly pounced. Its grayish-green claws tightly grabbed her right ankle, dragging her to the ground.

"Help, help! Save me——"

Huang Yi screamed in a voice that was not human, kicking her legs desperately to break free from this terrifying death grip. Her soft rubber soles accurately stepped on the zombie's grotesque face, repeatedly pushing back its mouth that was extending forward. This was a battle of strength and will, a test of who could hold out the longest. However, Huang Yi saw in despair that another zombie was getting closer from about five or six meters away, ready to join the struggle at any moment.

"Zheng Chao! Save me! Save me——"

Huang Yi chose the only person who might help her.

She had always been smart, especially in matters of love.

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