His thoughts swirled wildly, growing more real. He fumbled in panic to turn on the bedside lamp and peeked at the person next to him.
What he saw was a refined, handsome face. With eyes closed, it lost some of the daytime cold aggressiveness and gained gentleness. The hollow silver ginkgo leaf on his left ear rested on black hair, gleaming quietly under the lamp like the finishing touch on a painting.
The side-lying person slept deeply, chest rising and falling slightly with breaths, proving vibrant life.
If he didn’t know the teacher was a top university student, he’d think some celebrity had appeared. Tang Zhao’s tension vanished, leaving only a muddled thought in his mind.
He shook his head and marveled inwardly instead: Such composure—not surprising for a teacher!
He turned off the light, lay down carefully. Perhaps seeing the person beside him sleep so soundly, as if there was no danger at all, helped.
Thus, he fell asleep peacefully not long after.
But Bai Chen Zhu wasn’t sleeping—he’d passed out from exhaustion. His body couldn’t handle intense activity at all, so once he relaxed and touched the pillow, he blacked out.
The two stayed in the little balcony room for three days. Tang Zhao had stockpiled instant noodles, and Bai Chen Zhu ate them for three days straight. Now, the sight of instant noodles made him grimace.
Until the fourth day, when the power went out.
Tang Zhao spun in circles anxiously. “I paid this month’s electricity bill!”
Out of habit, he pulled out his phone to ask the landlord. It rang forever with no answer, and only then did Tang Zhao remember the communication outage—but he still hadn’t gotten used to it.
“Isn’t the main breaker downstairs?” Bai Chen Zhu asked, recalling the banging sounds Tang Zhao mentioned.
Tang Zhao nodded. “On the first floor.”
“It might be damaged.” Bai Chen Zhu speculated.
He opened the balcony door and walked to the edge to look down. The sun blazed, revealing sparse figures on the narrow street. A few shuffled slowly. Looking closely at their bloodied, filthy clothes and numb faces, it was clear they were no longer normal humans.
Tang Zhao followed and peeked once before jerking his head back in fright. “How did it come to this! Weren’t we told to stay home and wait for notice? Why hasn’t anyone taken them to the hospital!”
“Hospital?” Bai Chen Zhu tugged at his lips. “Probably already overcrowded with ‘people.’”
Neither Bai Chen Zhu nor Tang Zhao had faced zombies up close—they’d only been fleeing. But even imagining from movies and shows, they knew the lethal danger.
A sparrow flew by with a sharp cry. Tang Zhao reflexively looked back—and froze as if struck by lightning.
He grabbed Bai Chen Zhu’s clothes and pointed shakily in the direction Bai Chen Zhu had come from. “The flower! The flower! The flower!”
There, the rose plant had climbed to within one building of their location, clawing at the wall. The massive rose flower ‘stared’ silently at them, its dense stamens still stained with dark blood, crunching on the sparrow with snapping sounds.
It must have hunted plenty of live things these past days.
“We can’t stay here.” Bai Chen Zhu firmly dragged Tang Zhao back inside and locked the balcony door.
Tang Zhao spun in circles anxiously. “But where can we go? If we leave the apartment, I can’t charge my phone.”
Bai Chen Zhu’s hand paused while packing his things. He looked at him in disbelief. “Is that the only thing you’re concerned about? As long as the chaos doesn’t end for a day, the signal won’t recover. What you’re carrying is just electronic scrap.”
Modern people had grown accustomed to getting information from the internet, but unfortunately, the current network was as good as nonexistent, as if all the living people had vanished overnight.
Tang Zhao was at a loss for words. He wanted to say that the phone could still serve as an alarm clock, that he could use previously downloaded resources for offline navigation, that he could still… He came up with many reasons, but in the end, he had to admit that he was still stuck in the internet age.
“There aren’t many mutated things yet. There has to be a way out if we leave here.” Bai Chen Zhu thought for a moment. “I’m planning to head back to Floating Cloud City. If we’re going the same way, we can travel together for a stretch.”
“Floating Cloud City?” Tang Zhao scratched his head, trying hard to recall. “Ah, that’s the poorest city in the whole province!”
“Yeah. It’s my hometown.” Bai Chen Zhu made up a lie on the spot.
He remembered that the first base would be built there.
Floating Cloud City wasn’t like a big city; it had a small population, which meant fewer zombies. Though it was surrounded by mountains, there might be more mutated plants and animals.
But it was still a city, developed around underdeveloped tourism, so the city center had the necessary infrastructure. And because of the sparse population, the buildings were spaced relatively far apart, making it safer.
All these pros and cons led to Floating Cloud City becoming the first human base established in the book.
After surviving the initial chaos, human bases sprang up everywhere, ushering in a glimmer of hope.
But before that, their primary goal was to stay alive amid this chaos.
Tang Zhao thought it over for a long time before making up his mind. “Bro, I’m not going to Floating Cloud City; it’s too far. I want to go back to Jiangzhou City to check on my family. It’s on your way back, so we can travel together for a stretch.”
The two quickly settled on a route and packed their things.
The vine tendrils next door were stirring restlessly, and the crashing sounds from downstairs posed another danger. Without power, being sandwiched from above and below in the dark little room would only be more perilous. It was better to head to the open space downstairs.
The sun hung high in the sky, yet the two inside the room broke out in cold sweat. They were like mice under siege from a pack of ‘cats’, dodging cautiously this way and that, all just to stay alive.
Bai Chen Zhu walked ahead with a single-shoulder bag on his back, while Tang Zhao followed closely with his bulging schoolbag.
The balcony was on the sixth floor. They carefully passed the silent fifth floor and stopped on the stairs between the fourth and fifth floors. The crashing sounds were very close, so close it felt like they were right underfoot, the vibrations reaching straight to their feet.
Bai Chen Zhu even lightened his breathing. He turned his face halfway and cautiously peered down the stairwell.
The fourth-floor apartment had a hollow iron security door, with a thick wooden door installed inside.
Now the wooden door lay in splintered pieces. A child with messy braids and covered in bloodstains was slamming into the shaky iron door with its body, bang bang bang, occasionally emitting eerie sounds from its throat.
A mix of crying and laughing, shrill and piercing.
At that moment, the child sensed someone nearby. It looked around left and right, then lifted its head. Its dull black pupils fixed on the two on the stairs, suddenly bursting with the gleam of spotting food. It bared its teeth in a creepy grin.
Tang Zhao peeked over from behind him and was so frightened by the horrifying smile that his mind filled with curses, though his body silently froze in place.
“Run!” Bai Chen Zhu leaped down in three strides, his long legs whipping through the air. He rounded the corner, passed the iron door, and dashed downward. Tang Zhao hurriedly scrambled after him in a panic.
Tang Zhao comforted himself: It’s fine, it’s fine. This thing had been slamming the iron door for so long; if it could get out, it would have already.
The crashing sounds from behind grew heavier and heavier.
At one point, as if deliberately opposing Tang Zhao, the iron door crashed down with a boom, followed by gleeful laughter echoing through the stairwell. The little zombie had broken free and was chasing them!
As the two rounded the third-floor corner, an iron door came hurtling down with a whoosh of wind.
“Bro!” Tang Zhao yanked Bai Chen Zhu hard, pulling him back. The iron door barely missed, smashing down right in front of Bai Chen Zhu and shattering into pieces.
One step more, just one step, and he would have been smashed with a busted skull and died right there. The two stared at the twisted iron door, their backs chilling amid the child’s laughter.
The zombie child bounced along laughing, chasing them while hurling things down from above—trying to block their path. It was unimaginable that a child could have such immense strength, casually tossing down iron doors, wooden shoe cabinets, and other heavy objects.
The two rushed to the first floor in heart-pounding terror. At the entrance, a man in a security uniform sat with his back to them amid the wreckage. Bloody security tools were scattered around, next to a broken electrical panel.
Clearly, the main breaker was out partly thanks to this security guy.
He heard the noise and slowly turned his head. Upon seeing them, his face twisted into the same ravenous greed as the child’s—the look of a starving beast finally spotting food.
The security zombie blocked the door, with the little zombie chasing from behind. Bai Chen Zhu picked up a steel pitchfork from the ground.
He gripped the steel pitchfork tightly, his eyes sharp. He charged forward fiercely, thrusting at the security zombie’s neck, trying to brute-force it down.
Amid Tang Zhao’s cry of alarm, not only did the steel pitchfork fail to topple the security zombie, but the zombie grabbed the two curved prongs and wrenched them outward. With a snap, the pitchfork clattered to the ground.
Bai Chen Zhu’s gaze sharpened. He swung the remaining iron rod sideways, but it bent into the shape of a neck.
The security zombie merely scratched at its neck like it was an itch, its vacant eyes staring blankly at them.
Bai Chen Zhu’s entire right hand trembled slightly from the numbness. He decisively retreated as the security zombie reached out. Tang Zhao hurriedly grabbed a shield to block the zombie’s claws.
The little zombie caught up, its filthy, unrecognizable floral dress in tatters, giggling as it rushed toward them.
“What kind of monsters are these!” Tang Zhao glanced back and forth, clutching his backpack straps, on the verge of collapse.
They were nothing like the slow, easily felled shambling corpses he expected—more like invincible King Kong brute force monsters!
