Zhou Wang briefed everyone on the general situation inside the supermarket.
Jiang Cheng asked, “Were there any third-generation ones?”
Zhou Wang was stunned: “Third-generation?”
Jiang Cheng: “Their various metrics are similar to second-generation ones, but they’ve developed intelligence. They know to run away when outmatched, and they’ll even play dead to trick people. They’ve evolved.”
This was the first time Zhou Wang had learned that zombies had evolved further.
The middle-aged man felt a bit lost: “Zombies evolve too? Is there no end to this?”
Were humans even supposed to survive at this point?
Zhao Yi cut in: “It’s okay. They evolve, but aren’t we evolving too?”
Zhou Wang thought about his own running speed. With that kind of speed, even if everyone else died, he could probably survive. Humanity would find a way to carry on.
He nodded.
But when he looked back at the team he’d brought—including himself, there were only four “evolved” people—he couldn’t help but sigh.
Due to an oversight, they hadn’t communicated the information about third-generation zombies to Zhou Wang beforehand. So Zhou Wang hadn’t observed whether there were any third-generation ones in the supermarket.
In truth, given Zhou Wang’s speed, even if there had been a third-generation zombie, it wouldn’t have had time to show its intelligence before he was already gone.
In any case, the entire team was first reminded to stay alert for any suspicious behavior from the zombies, to avoid being fooled by third-generation ones.
People had been forming teams on the way over. Since many teammates who’d built good tacit understanding before hadn’t come back yesterday, these two hundred people were newly reorganized, and everyone was looking for familiar faces to team up with.
Fighting a second-generation zombie solo was too risky. Groups of three or four working together in coordination could take down a second-generation zombie in just a few strikes.
The smallest effective combat unit was two people—one defending, one attacking. With armor on top of that, the injury rate dropped dramatically.
The most unwanted members in Zhou Wang’s team were the elderly women. Nobody really wanted to team up with them.
Sister Pan couldn’t stand it and called out, “Hey, Auntie, come over here with us.”
Sister Pan herself was a woman as strong as any man, so people were happy to team up with her. In reality, their group already had enough members; adding one more elderly woman didn’t matter.
Li Jiangbing took one as well.
Zhou Wang took one.
A few more were absorbed within Jixiang Jiayuan’s own ranks.
That way, everyone divided up the elderly women among them.
After the assignments were made, the groups with the strongest combat capabilities took the lead, and a team of over two hundred people charged into Mai Duoduo.
The sound of footsteps alerted the zombies in the shopping area.
One zombie after another surged from the shelving areas toward the open space at the checkout counters.
Humans and zombies clashed head-on in the checkout area!
—
The best middle school in Guangxiu District, S City, was No. 14 Middle School.
In response to Mayor Zheng’s directive to “make time to catch the kids up on their lessons,” the school had reopened almost simultaneously with the city’s resumption of work, aiming to finish the curriculum from the previous semester.
Now, the school was overrun with zombies everywhere.
The campus was quite large, and occasionally one could still hear students’ screams in the distance, accompanied by zombie roars—then they’d quickly fall silent.
Zombies claimed flesh and blood, while simultaneously creating new zombies.
The class monitor led a string of people behind him, everyone tiptoeing cautiously, trying their best not to make a sound.
Everyone, including the monitor, was holding a foldable exercise mat for sit-ups. The mat could be folded in half, and when opened, it was almost as tall as a person.
Everyone was trembling with fear.
One girl had tears in her eyes, biting her lip tightly to keep from making a sound.
Because the class monitor, Huang Xuetao, had said: “If you dare cry out loud, I’ll throw you out to feed the zombies.”
The monitor’s eyes were dark and deep. He wasn’t joking.
Everyone was terrified.
They all still remembered how outgoing, cheerful, and helpful the class monitor used to be before. But since returning to school this time, he had completely changed.
Silent. Quiet.
Sometimes frightening.
They’d heard that his father had died.
But he wasn’t the only student who had lost a loved one. Some classmates never came back at all, and even their parents couldn’t be reached—their entire families had simply vanished from the face of the earth.
Many of those still alive had personalities that had changed, more or less, compared to before.
But the class monitor was the scariest of all. No one knew what he had been through.
This class monitor, Huang Xuetao, was the Xiao Huang from Jixiang Jiayuan.
Jiang Cheng’s contacts list had only three people from Jixiang Jiayuan, and one of them was Xiao Huang.
But that phone actually belonged to Old Huang. College students might already have phones, but few people bought phones for middle schoolers. The school didn’t allow them either.
That phone was at home. Neither Xiao Huang nor his mother had seen Jiang Cheng’s text message.
Xiao Huang led the five classmates behind him, moving cautiously. Their target was the bicycle shed. Everyone’s bikes were parked there.
To leave the school, they had to have transportation—otherwise, it was nearly impossible for humans to outrun second-generation zombies on foot, or to force their way through hordes of zombies with just two legs.
They had to have vehicles.
Xiao Huang, walking at the very front, suddenly raised his fist, and everyone immediately stopped in their tracks.
Xiao Huang waved toward one side, and everyone quickly moved over to crouch beneath that wall, squeezing together in a tight cluster.
Each person opened their mat and held it over their heads, shielding their bodies.
At a glance, it looked like a pile of mats stacked against the wall.
Of course, to normal human eyes, this disguise was still easy to spot.
But it was enough to fool zombies.
Everyone held their breath and waited for half a minute. Sure enough, a few zombies rounded the corner, swaying as they slowly wandered along the side of the building.
Everyone was tense. The path wasn’t very wide, and even though they were hiding on the opposite side, they were still afraid the zombies might catch their scent.
Fortunately, zombies used their sense of smell in conjunction with sight and hearing—they had to detect prey through sight and sound first, and only when they got very close could their sense of smell confirm the presence of fresh flesh and blood.
In reality, the process only took a few minutes, but to these teenagers, it felt agonizingly long.
But at last, they made it through safely.
However, Xiao Huang didn’t give the signal, so no one dared to move. They stayed crouched there, still holding the mats over their heads.
Only when Xiao Huang softly said, “It’s clear,” did everyone fold up their mats and stand, following him onward.
Yesterday, during the second zombie outbreak, they had been in PE class.
These few students had been responsible for collecting the mats and carrying them to the equipment room. They had all collapsed inside the equipment room.
The first to wake up found that Xiao Huang had been the first to regain consciousness—he was prying open the eyelids of each unconscious classmate.
Because the eyes changed first, before the skin. Prying open the eyes was the quickest way to confirm whether someone was about to turn.
The early awakeners watched helplessly as Xiao Huang used a medicine ball to smash the heads of two classmates. He didn’t hesitate; his aim was steady.
Even though the skin of those two classmates hadn’t yet begun to change color.
Then, after a headache, Xiao Huang discovered he could sense zombies approaching. He told everyone to hide.
Some believed him; some didn’t.
Those who didn’t believe were dragged off and devoured by zombies.
That classmate had shouted, “They’re over there! They’re hiding over there—”
Luckily, zombies could no longer understand human speech, and they pinned him to the ground.
While the zombie was crouched over eating him, Xiao Huang jumped out and smashed its skull with the medicine ball.
Then he finished off the classmate who had tried to save himself by betraying them.
After that, no one dared to disobey what Xiao Huang said.
It had been utter chaos yesterday. They had even heard the dean’s voice from upstairs bellowing: “Kids, hide—stay hidden, don’t come out—”
Everyone had stayed in the equipment room, peeking through the crack in the door as they watched teachers lift chairs and desks to fight off the first wave of mutated zombies.
In truth, everyone had some experience killing zombies by now. But the biggest weakness humans faced when fighting zombies was the lack of weapons—one injury meant death.
Yet knowing this, the teachers still charged forward.
The dean’s surname was Shi. He was very overweight.
He had been strict to the point of overbearing—from dating to boys’ and girls’ hairstyles, he demanded everyone wear school uniforms every day and forbade students from wearing expensive shoes. He was widely disliked.
Behind his back, everyone called him “Fatty Shi” or “Dead Fatty.”
Fatty Dean Shi charged at the zombies with a desk held high, bellowing as he blocked their advance. He bought the children in the classrooms behind him precious seconds to shut the front and back doors.
Everyone shoved storage cabinets, desks, and the podium against the doors to barricade them shut.
Then, through the doors, they heard Fatty Shi’s screams.
The students wept.
Most of the subject teachers were in poor health.
That was just the nature of the profession—especially at key schools, where teachers almost all carried some chronic ailment.
Only the new physics teacher, who had joined this year, was into fitness and relatively strong. He awakened an electric-type superpower. Unarmed, he fought with his bare hands, digging his fingers into a zombie’s eye sockets and sending current surging through its brain.
The physics teacher was covered in wounds, blood streaming from his eyes, ears, and nose.
It was a suicidal way to fight—taking the zombie down with him.
The head cook, an auntie, swung her 1.2-meter-long iron spatula to meet the zombies head-on.
She was the only one who had a proper weapon.
During the battle, she awakened a metal-type superpower. The head of her spatula could deform and extend at will, and the more she fought, the fiercer she became.
But then she ran into the PE teacher, who had mutated directly into a second-generation zombie.
The PE teacher had graduated from a sports university, and his physical fitness rivaled that of a soldier.
The zombie he became killed the head cook.
Xiao Huang and the others stayed hidden in the equipment room. They had sit-up mats, vaulting boxes, basketballs, and volleyballs. The only thing that could even vaguely serve as a blunt weapon was the medicine ball, and it wasn’t even comfortable to wield.
Without weapons, they didn’t dare charge out.
They hid in the equipment room through the night, eventually succumbing to exhaustion and falling asleep. When they woke up again, the school had fallen eerily silent.
Xiao Huang focused and sensed for a moment, then concluded it was safe to go out.
He had awakened a “danger perception” superpower. The group had relied on his sensing ability all the way toward the bicycle shed.
Along the way, they spotted students in the teaching building who had awakened a metal-type superpower. They had melted the legs of desks and chairs into a ladder, extending it bit by bit from the third floor down.
One by one, the students climbed down.
But halfway through, several second-generation zombies rushed over. The students below scattered in panic, while those above scrambled back up in terror.
The noise attracted even more zombies.
Many of those second-generation zombies were teachers who had fought fiercely to protect the students just the day before.
Relying on Xiao Huang’s “danger perception” ability, this small group advanced safely.
As they passed the lab building, someone upstairs called out to them in a hushed voice: “Classmates—classmates—”
They looked up and saw several heads poking out from a second-floor classroom. Judging by the school uniform colors, they were eighth graders.
“Classmates—please help us—” they pleaded.
So Xiao Huang and the others stacked all six of their mats together. The students upstairs planned to jump down, using the mats as a cushion.
Xiao Huang warned them in a low voice: “Bite down on your collars. Don’t yell!”
The students upstairs turned and passed the reminder to everyone else.
Each of them bit down on their uniform collar, climbed out the window, lowered themselves onto the rain ledge below the first-floor window, sat down to reduce the drop height as much as possible, and then jumped.
The people below divided tasks: some held the six mats together so they wouldn’t scatter.
The others stretched out their arms.
The mat area was small. Although the jumpers could mostly land on target, they would inevitably roll and tumble to the ground immediately.
The others reached out to catch and steady them, to keep them from hitting the ground too hard. They were afraid that if someone got hurt and cried out in pain, the sound would attract zombies.
They rescued over twenty students from above.
Those students said: “The teachers and classmates in the hallways have all mutated. But there are still people in the language lab and a few chemistry labs.”
“We have to save them!”
Xiao Huang didn’t actually want to rescue anyone.
Because the person he had to save was in the Science and Technology New District.
His mother worked at the district government office there.
He had already lost his father. He had to go save his mother!
Leave a Reply