Chapter 100

Zhou Wang told everyone the general situation inside the supermarket.

Jiang Cheng asked, “No third-generation ones?”

Zhou Wang stared at her in shock. “Third-generation?”

Jiang Cheng explained, “Their various indicators are about the same as the second-generation zombies, but they’ve developed intelligence. They know when they can’t win and will run away, or even play dead to trick people. They’ve evolved.”

This was the first time Zhou Wang had heard that zombies could evolve again.

The middle-aged people looked bewildered. “Zombies can evolve too? When will this ever end?”

Would humanity ever be allowed to live in peace?

Zhao Yi cut in, “It’s fine. If they evolve, then so do we, don’t we?”

Zhou Wang thought about his own running speed. With speed like that, even if everyone else died, he could still survive. Humanity would always find a way to continue.

He nodded.

But when he turned around and looked at his team, he couldn’t help sighing. Including himself, there were only four evolved people among them.

Because of the oversight, no one had told Zhou Wang about the third-generation zombies beforehand, so he hadn’t been able to observe whether there were any inside the supermarket.

Actually, with Zhou Wang’s speed, even if there had been a third-generation zombie, he would have run away before it had time to display any intelligence.

In any case, the entire team first reminded everyone to pay attention to anything unusual the zombies did, in case they were tricked by a third-generation zombie pretending to be helpless.

Everyone had already started forming groups on the way there. Many of the teammates who had previously worked together seamlessly had failed to return yesterday. These two hundred people had been newly reorganized, and everyone was pairing up with anyone they recognized.

Taking on a second-generation zombie alone was far too dangerous. Three or four people working together could kill one in just a few moves.

Even the smallest combat unit had to consist of two people: one defending and one attacking. With armor protecting them, the chances of injury dropped sharply.

The most unpopular members of Zhou Wang’s team were the elderly women. Nobody really wanted to take them along.

Aunt Pan couldn’t stand watching this. She called out, “You there, come join us.”

Aunt Pan was a woman whose strength rivaled that of a man, and everyone was happy to team up with her. Their group already had enough people, and taking along one more elderly woman wasn’t a problem.

Li Jiangbing took one as well.

Zhou Wang took another.

The others were divided among the residents of Auspicious Garden.

That was how they distributed the elderly women among the groups.

Once everyone was organized, the strongest groups led the way, and the more than two hundred people charged into Maidodo.

The sound of their footsteps alerted the zombies in the shopping area.

One zombie after another emerged from between the shelves and surged toward the open space by the checkout counters.

Humans and zombies clashed in a sudden battle at the registers!

The best junior high school in Guangxiu District, S City, was No. 14 Middle School.

In response to Vice Mayor Zheng’s call to “make up for the classes the children had missed as quickly as possible,” the school had reopened almost as soon as S City resumed work. They needed to finish teaching the lessons left over from the previous term.

Now the school was crawling with zombies.

The campus was quite large. Every so often, a student’s scream could be heard in the distance, accompanied by a zombie’s roar, before vanishing almost immediately.

The class monitor led a line of people behind him. Everyone moved on tiptoe, carefully trying not to make a sound.

Every person, including the class monitor, held up one of the folding mats used for sit-ups. The mats could be folded in half, and when opened, they were nearly as tall as a person.

Everyone was trembling with fear.

Some of the girls had tears in their eyes, biting their lips tightly to keep from making a sound.

That was because class monitor Huang Xuetao had said, “If you dare cry out loud, I’ll throw you out to feed the zombies.”

His dark eyes were cold and hollow. He wasn’t joking.

Everyone had been frightened into obedience.

They all remembered that the class monitor used to be such a cheerful, generous boy who loved helping others. But after returning to school this time, he had completely changed.

Quiet. Withdrawn.

Sometimes, frightening.

They heard that his father had died.

But he wasn’t the only student who had lost a family member. Some classmates had never come back at all, and no one could contact their parents. Their entire families had vanished without a trace.

Many of those still alive had changed, to one degree or another.

But the class monitor was the most frightening of all. No one knew what he had been through.

This class monitor, Huang Xuetao, was Little Huang from Auspicious Garden.

Jiang Cheng’s contacts contained only three people from Auspicious Garden, and Little Huang was one of them.

But the phone actually belonged to Old Huang. University students might already have had phones, but few middle school students were given their own. The school didn’t allow them, either.

The phone was at home, and neither Little Huang nor his mother had seen Jiang Cheng’s messages.

Little Huang cautiously led the five students behind him forward. Their destination was the bicycle shed. Everyone’s bicycles were parked there.

To leave the school, they needed some form of transportation. Otherwise, it was difficult for a person to outrun a second-generation zombie, much less break through a large group of them on foot.

They had to have a vehicle.

Little Huang, walking at the front, suddenly raised his fist. Everyone immediately stopped.

He waved to one side, and the others hurried over and crouched beneath the wall, pressing shoulder to shoulder in a tight cluster.

Each of them opened the mat in their hands and held it over their head, hiding their bodies.

At a glance, it looked like a pile of mats stacked against the wall.

Of course, a normal human looking with their eyes could still easily see through the disguise.

But it was enough to fool the zombies.

Everyone held their breath and waited for half a minute. Sure enough, several zombies rounded the corner, swaying slowly as they wandered along one side of the building.

Everyone was extremely tense. The passage wasn’t very wide, and although they were hiding on the opposite side, they were still afraid the zombies might catch their scent.

Fortunately, a zombie’s sense of smell worked together with its sight and hearing. It needed to discover its prey through sight or sound, and only after getting close could it use its sense of smell to determine whether it had found the scent of fresh flesh.

The process lasted only a few minutes, but to the boys and girls, it felt incredibly long.

At last, they made it past safely.

But Little Huang still hadn’t given the order, so no one dared to move. They continued crouching there with the mats held over their heads.

Only after Little Huang quietly said, “It’s clear,” did everyone fold up the mats and stand, continuing to follow him.

Yesterday, during the second zombie outbreak, they had been in physical education class.

These few students had been responsible for gathering the mats and carrying them to the equipment room. Everyone had passed out inside.

The first person to wake up saw that Little Huang had been the first to regain consciousness. He was prying open the eyelids of every unconscious student.

The eyes changed first, followed by the skin. Prying open someone’s eyes was the fastest way to confirm whether they were about to mutate.

The student who woke first watched helplessly as Little Huang killed two classmates with a shot put. He didn’t hesitate, and every strike was steady.

Neither of those two students’ skin had even begun to change color.

Then, after Little Huang’s headache passed, he realized that he could sense when zombies were approaching. He told everyone to hide.

Some believed him. Some didn’t.

Those who didn’t were dragged away and devoured by the zombies.

One of those students shouted, “They’re over there! They’re hiding over there—”

Fortunately, the zombies could no longer understand human speech, and they merely pinned him to the ground.

While the zombie was crouched over the student, eating him, Little Huang leapt out and crushed its skull with the shot put.

Then he killed the student who had tried to save himself by betraying them.

After that, no one dared disobey or ignore anything Little Huang said.

Yesterday had been chaos. Then they heard what sounded like the head of discipline shouting from upstairs:

“Kids, hide—hide and don’t come out!”

Everyone hid in the equipment room. Through the crack in the door, they watched the teachers raise chairs and desks to fight off the first wave of mutated zombies.

Most of them had some experience killing zombies by then, but the lack of weapons was humanity’s greatest weakness when facing them. One injury meant death.

Yet even knowing that, the teachers still charged forward.

The head of discipline was surnamed Shi, and he was very fat.

He had been far too strict with everyone, enforcing rules about everything from dating to the hairstyles of boys and girls. He required them to wear school uniforms every day and forbade students from wearing overly expensive shoes. He was deeply unpopular.

Behind his back, everyone called him Fatty Shit or Dead Fatty.

Director Shi charged at the zombies with a desk held over his head, roaring as he blocked their advance and bought the students inside the classrooms time to shut the front and back doors.

Everyone shoved storage cabinets, desks, and lecterns against the doors to barricade them.

Then, through the doors, they heard Fatty Shit’s screams.

The students began to cry.

Most of the subject teachers were in poor health.

That was simply what the profession was like, especially for teachers at top schools. Most of them had one ailment or another.

Only the physics teacher, who had arrived that year, liked working out and was relatively strong. He awakened an electrical superpower. With no weapon, he fought the zombies bare-handed, driving his fingers into a zombie’s eye socket and sending an electric current straight through its brain.

The physics teacher was covered in wounds, blood flowing from his eyes, ears, and nose.

It was a fighting style that meant dying together with the zombie.

The cafeteria’s head cook, an auntie, swung her four-foot-long iron spatula at the zombies.

She was the only one who could be considered to have a weapon.

During the battle, she awakened a metal-based superpower. The head of the spatula could transform and extend at will, and the more she killed, the braver she became.

But then she encountered the PE teacher, who had mutated directly into a second-generation zombie.

The PE teacher had graduated from a university of physical education, and his physical abilities were comparable to those of a soldier.

As a zombie, he killed the head cook.

Little Huang and several others hid in the equipment room. There were sit-up mats, vaulting boxes, and basketballs and volleyballs inside. The only thing that could barely count as a blunt weapon was a medicine ball, and it wasn’t easy to use.

Without weapons, they didn’t dare venture outside.

They spent the night hiding in the equipment room. Eventually, they could no longer stay awake and fell asleep. When they woke up, the school had become eerily quiet.

Little Huang focused and sensed the surroundings. He decided it was safe outside, and they left.

He had awakened a superpower called “Danger Sense.” Relying on his perception, the group made their way toward the bicycle shed.

Along the way, they saw, in the distance, that a student in the teaching building had awakened a metal-based superpower. He had melted the legs of desks and chairs into ladders, extending them bit by bit downward from the third floor.

One student after another climbed down the ladder.

But halfway down, several second-generation zombies charged over. The students on the ground scattered in every direction, while those above scrambled back up in panic.

The noise attracted even more zombies.

Many of those second-generation zombies had been teachers who had sacrificed themselves in fierce battles to protect the students the day before.

Guided by Little Huang’s Danger Sense, the group continued forward without incident.

As they passed the laboratory building, someone suddenly called to them in a hushed voice from above.

“Students, students—”

They looked up and saw several heads poking out of a classroom on the second floor. Judging by the color of their uniforms, they were younger students from the eighth grade.

“Students—please help us!” they begged.

Little Huang and the others stacked the six mats they had among them. The students on the second floor planned to jump down and use the mats as a cushion.

Little Huang reminded them in a low voice, “Bite down on your collars. Don’t make a sound!”

The students above turned and passed the warning along.

Each of them held the collar of their school uniform between their teeth. First, they climbed out through the window and lowered themselves onto the rain awning jutting out from the first-floor window. Then they sat down, lowering themselves as far as possible before jumping.

The people below divided up the work. Some held the six mats in place so they wouldn’t come apart.

The others stretched out their arms.

The mats covered only a small area. Although most of the students above managed to land on them, they would immediately roll off and tumble onto the ground.

The others stretched out their arms to catch and steady them, helping them avoid a hard fall. They were afraid that the pain of hitting the ground would make someone instinctively open their mouth and cry out, attracting the zombies.

More than twenty students were rescued from the building.

They said, “The teachers and students in the corridors have all mutated. But there are still people in the language lab and several chemistry laboratories.”

“We have to save them!”

Little Huang actually didn’t want to go save anyone.

Because the person he had to save was in the Technology New District.

His mother worked at the district government office in the Technology New District.

He no longer had a father. He had to save his mother!