V1C7

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With one hit, Lin Jue flipped over the lunging zombie and smashed the metal pipe into its skull, the dull crack of breaking bone vibrating through his arm. Gao Yifei trembled at the sound and stayed away.

Lin Jue rubbed his numb wrist and offered a hand to her. “Let’s go. Song Hanzhang is going to the sports centre, we should follow up as well.”

Gao Yifei was on the verge of tears. “Aren’t you scared?”

Lin Jue looked down at the zombie by his feet. Its face was smashed beyond recognition, a bloody mess of flesh and bone, but its brain was still intact and it squirmed on the ground, eerie growls coming out from its throat. Lin Jue picked up the already bent metal pipe and striked down- the pipe entered through its open mouth, pinning its deformed head onto the ground.

Gao Yifei gave a low cry and hid behind Lin Jue, refusing to even look at the dead body.

“It’s not that bad once you’re used to it, and even if I really am afraid, I can’t show it in front of a girl. That would be too embarrassing.” Lin Jue forced down his trembling heart and squeezed a smile onto his face.

Gao Yifei giggled, her face softening under the lamplight with a sense of relief.

“Lin Jue, I actually wanted to ask you just then.”

“What is it?”

Gao Yifei rubbed her wrist as if building up her courage, before asking in a whisper, “What you got from the plaza… it was a virus antibody, right?”

?!

That moment of shock had already revealed the truth. When Lin Jue finally recovered his senses, it was too late to hide anything. He really wasn’t any good at acting.

Gao Yifei was also a little panicked. She stared at the bloody pipe in Lin Jue’s hands, as if fearing that its next target would be her. “I-I’m just asking… It was just a random guess. Don’t all those movies have these kinds of plots…? And Zhou Yuxiu’s easter egg said the same thing… But you’re right for not taking it out, after all, we have so many people here and you can only save one person with it. But if I get bitten…”

“Can you… consider saving me?” Gao Yifei asked, then lowered her head with a bitter laugh as if feeling ashamed for her words. “Ah, don’t mind me too much, I’m just saying things, I mean it’s your possession in the end, I just… After seeing that person, I feel like it’s too, too cruel, all of this… If possible, I don’t think anyone would want to become those kinds of monsters.”

Lin Jue lightly mumbled an assent, but a sense of grief took hold in his heart.

No one wanted to become a monster. He was the same.

“Sorry, because of me you also fell behind.” Gao Yifei forced a smile towards Lin Jue, her eyes glinting with tears. “I feel much better now. Let’s go.”

Lin Jue looked around. Liu Shan was standing in the shadows not far behind him. “Wait, let’s go together!”

Did he hear them?

Lin Jue frowned. He had always felt that there was something off with Liu Shan, and if something as important as the antibody was leaked… As he was contemplating, Zhao Liangsheng caught up to them and kicked the dead zombie next to Lin Jue to release some anger. “Where are the other two?”

“Song Hanzhang and Zhou Yuxiu walked faster than us. They should be in the sports center already,” Gao Yifei said.

The four continued forwards.

The sports center stood tall and eerie in the night, with a few lit windows that probably belonged to some teacher’s office.

Song Hanzhang stood before the stairs of the building, looking up. Next to his feet were two zombies whose brains had been penetrated by the shovel. Despite the threat of death all around them, Zhou Yuxiu was exhausted. She didn’t dare stray from Song Hanzhang though and so sat down on the stairs. When she saw the figures walking towards them, she jumped up like a scared bird. “There- there’s more! Zombies! Four of them!”

Song Hanzhang looked back. “It’s the others.”

After so many shocks, Zhou Yuxiu’s reason was on the verge of breaking. She nervously bit into her glove, staring at the figures in front of her. It was only when the light revealed their faces that her judgement slowly returned and she sat back down in a daze.

The other four arrived below the sport center. Gao Yifei went up and sat next to Zhou Yuxiu, patting her hand comfortingly, but Zhou Yuxiu widened her eyes in terror and shrank back, trembling and mumbling to herself.

Lin Jue couldn’t help but feel a bit of sympathy. When they had first met Zhou Yuxiu, she was a normal girl with a love for dressing up, yet not even half an hour later, she was on the verge of a mental breakdown because of this horrid environment.

“Are there many people in the sports center at night?” Song Hanzhang asked.

“Quite a few. The pool on floor one will be filled with swimming teams training; if you go inside now, there’ll definitely be an entire pool of zombies like dumplings in a pot. The basketball courts in floor two don’t close until nine and there are always a lot of people in the gym. There aren’t many people in the stadium near the oval though.” Zhao Liangsheng leaned on his metal pick and looked towards the center. “I’m from the sports course so I know what these people do at this time very well. If you go to the top floor, you’ll most likely also find a few couples with their pants off, heh.”

Song Hanzhang looked at his watch: 20:45. The music started at 20:40 and five minutes were enough for even the slowest moving zombies to go from the market street of the south dormitory to the plaza.

Lin Jue stood next to Son Hanzhang and looked up at the sports center as well. “Are we still going to the recreation center?”

“Of course.”

“But there aren’t many zombies here. If we find a room with metal doors to hide in, we should be able to survive until dawn, right?” Lin Jue suggested, trying to find an easy way out.

“And wait for our deaths?” Song Hanzhang glanced at him sideways, a hint of mockery in his eyes.

Lin Jue mumbled a rebuke. “You saw back at the dorms that the zombies couldn’t break through metal doors. They were all shut into their rooms.”

“’Be careful, they’re getting stronger’.” Song Hanzhang repeated the words from Gao Yifei’s easter egg. “Even if I had such a plan before, after hearing those words, I would have given it up. You might be able to find momentary solace by hiding, but if you think that you can survive by living like a rat in the sewers… Do you remember the bell at eight-forty? That was our first warning.”

Lin Jue stared down at the bloodstains on his pipe, silent.

“No one likes pointless slaughter unless it’s for survival,” Song Hanzhang said calmly and let out an almost inaudible sigh. “We aren’t certain what it means when it says ‘getting stronger’. It could mean intelligence, power, or special strengths such as picking out people in hiding one by one. To prevent the worst case scenario, we have to choose the most dangerous route from the start. Guerrilla warfare is our best strategy right now and constantly changing bases might give us a sliver of hope.”

“… I understand,” Lin Jue nodded.

He had to trust Song Hanzhang. He had been saved by him from the very beginning. The zombie was one, hiding the antibody was another. He wasn’t someone who didn’t understand gratitude. If it wasn’t for Song Hanzhang, he probably would have died back in his dormitory.

Even though they had barely known each other for an hour, that inexplicable trust still remained. Perhaps it was because Song Hanzhang was the first living person he had met on this cruel night.

He was like a lone boat floating in the ocean under the cover of night, finally seeing a distant lighthouse, guiding him home.

“It’s about time. Let’s go to the south entrance of the stadium,” Song Hanzhang looked at his watch again and said.

There were no objections.

The zombies they met on the way were all mostly solitary, and the combined power of Lin Jue, Song Hanzhang, and Zhao Liangsheng easily tore a bloody path through them. There were obvious differences between their fighting styles. Zhao Liangsheng had great strength and he was the most vicious, almost always piercing the zombie’s brain before kicking it away. Lin Jue was used to fighting up front and after regaining control of his emotions, he would stop after shattering the zombie’s skull. Song Hanzhang was the most lazy. Perhaps because he wished to save his stamina, he would normally only sweep the zombie away, keeping it away from their paths and without aiming to kill it.

The six half-sprinted out of the south entrance.

Before them was a spacious street, and opposite of them was the market of the southern dorms. All the different types of shops still looked to be open, the lit lights revealing a few zombies that hadn’t been drawn away by the bell stuck behind doors or shelves.

The smell of barbeque drifted out from one of the stores into Lin Jue’s nose and he swallowed hard, but the scent of rot and blood hidden amidst the barbeque made his stomach feel sick again.

The night wind pushed a metal can across the road, only to be stopped by a zombie’s corpse right in front of them.

The ground was littered with beheaded zombies, drawing out a clear path of slaughter.

This inhuman battle strength and simple method… Song Hanzhang tightened his grip on the shovel.

He really was here.

“Who… who is it?” Liu Shan squeezed out the question, it sounding more like a sob than a query.

The glass door to a food stall was pushed open. A handsome young man, one hand holding a cluster of lamb kebabs and the other, a glistening sword, walked out and waved joyously at the people in front of him.

“Yo. Good evening, living folks.”

***

Vera’s Notes:

“The sports center stood tall and eerie in the night with a few lit windows that probably belonged to some teacher’s office.” Vera screams in agony. The greenhouse gases that are being wasted pain their soul. (Luci: it just means that they’re good teachers and are staying behind to mark papers or something)

Luci: Say hi to my favourite handsome young man. (Vera: Simp.)

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