Chapter 22

Jiang Cheng finished eating, and then gave Mo Li water and cat food.

Mo Li swallowed more easily than at noon this time, and ate more than he had at noon as well. But for a human, the little bit of food a kitten eats still seemed like the appetite of a tiny bird.

Jiang Cheng was therefore very worried.

How could that little bit of cat food provide enough energy to support Mo Li’s astonishing transformation?

According to the law of conservation of energy in the universe, theoretically speaking, he should need a large amount of energy. If that energy came from food, then he should need a large amount of food.

It was about time. A voice came through the walkie-talkie: "Jiang Cheng, come downstairs."

Jiang Cheng replied, "Okay, coming right now."

Jiang Cheng felt the hot water bottle and found that its temperature had dropped considerably.

The heat had clearly been sucked out of it.

The heat in a hot water bottle was fixed. It wasn’t like the human body, which continuously generates new heat through digestion, absorption, and breakdown to maintain the body’s normal temperature.

Jiang Cheng replaced the hot water in the bottle with fresh hot water. Then she opened the wardrobe, took out a winter down jacket, and swapped it for the towel blanket.

"I’m going out to take care of something," she said, gently smoothing the fur on Mo Li’s forehead. "I’ll be back soon. You sleep well."

Mo Li opened his eyes and glanced at her, letting out a soft "meow."

That was great—he looked much better than he did at noon.

Jiang Cheng was so happy that she couldn’t help but kiss Mo Li on the forehead. "Good kitty~"

She stood up, picked up the axe from the sofa, grabbed her keys, clipped the walkie-talkie to her waist, and opened the door to head out.

Mo Li didn’t have the strength to move right now. He kept his eyes open, gazing at Jiang Cheng’s receding back until she disappeared.

About twenty or so people had gathered in the lobby.

By now, everyone knew who Jiang Cheng was. When she arrived, Li Jiangbing was just telling them about how Jiang Cheng had single-handedly taken down four mutants last night.

When they saw her, they all called out, "Jiang Cheng’s here."

Li Jiangbing said cheerfully, "Jiang Cheng, check out our gear!"

Everyone had come well prepared, mainly in terms of protection, each with their own clever ideas.

Li Jiangbing still had his arm shield and fire axe.

Someone had brought a pot lid, someone had a chair, and someone had pried a cabinet door off its hinges.

A young mind was definitely a good thing.

Jiang Cheng’s eyes lit up. "Great. We take the elevator to the top floor and sweep downward floor by floor."

Everyone gave a shout of agreement and piled into several elevators.

Sure enough, everyone had picked up the term "zombies" too. Now all they talked about, morning and night, was "killing zombies."

Li Jiangbing glanced at Jiang Cheng. "How’s the cat?"

"Better," Jiang Cheng said. "Left him at home."

Li Jiangbing thought Jiang Cheng was great in every way. Pretty, quick-witted, strong, and brave. It was just... something about the way she was with that cat.

It was a bit like those idiots in foreign movies who, at a critical moment, still go back to save the cat or the dog. That was a bit hard to take.

The elevator dinged—they were at the top floor.

Everyone gripped their weapons tightly and filed out, tense but a little excited, all looking at Jiang Cheng and Li Jiangbing. "Shall we start?"

Jiang Cheng thought for a moment. "Let’s make some noise first to notify the neighbors on this floor. Tell everyone we’re knocking on doors one by one, and if their homes are fine, they should just answer."

Li Jiangbing said, "I’ll handle that."

Li Jiangbing had the guy with the pot lid bang on something loudly a few times first, then he shouted at the top of his lungs: "Neighbors, the neighborhood committee is here to clear the floor! The neighborhood committee is here to clear the floor! If we knock on your door, you call out! If we knock and there’s no answer, we’re breaking the door down!"

His voice echoed down the hallway. Several households cracked open their doors, peeking out: "I’m fine here."

"My place is fine too."

"Same here."

The clearing team started from one end of the hallway, knocking on doors one after another. The neighbors had all heard Li Jiangbing’s voice earlier. Some opened their doors and poked their heads out, while others didn’t want to open up and simply answered from inside.

One person cracked the door just wide enough and waved eagerly: "Hey, hey—across from me, you guys check my neighbor across the hall. I heard something off over there."

They all hurried over. And seeing so many people around, the man got a little braver, opening his door a bit wider: "When I went out in the afternoon to grab some stuff, I never saw him open his door. He must be home. Friday I got in the elevator with him, and we even said hello. Then all of us passed out. I haven’t seen him once since I woke up."

Li Jiangbing gripped his axe, stepped forward, and carefully knocked. "Anyone there? Anyone home?"

And sure enough, with the sound of chaotic, uneven footsteps approaching, the steel door let out a loud "BANG."

Confirmed—they had a job to do!

The group formed a semicircle around the door.

Those with the strongest protection were at the front. The cabinet door, the pot lid, and the chair were all in front, just waiting for the mutant inside—sorry, waiting for the zombie inside to come out on its own.

Why was the term "zombie" so easily accepted? Because it carries a sense of "not human."

A corpse. The corpse of a body.

You hear it, right? Already not a person anymore, right? I mean the ones we killed this morning.

Yeah, yeah, not people anymore. And that makes it okay for us to kill them.

Not people, just corpses. Even the government said "eliminate immediately."

So there’s no reason to feel guilty.

But whether the zombie opened the door was a matter of chance. Because the original zombies had very uncoordinated limbs and clearly no capacity for thought, driven purely by instinct. They didn’t have the mental logic of "press down on the doorknob to open the door."

That door was slammed countless times, but the clumsy zombie never managed to get it open.

Everyone waited patiently for a moment, and then—well, the patience ran out. They looked at each other. "What do we do? Break it down?"

How though? The doors in these newer apartments built over the last few years were all national standard level-4 steel doors.

Jiang Cheng patted the person in front of her on the shoulder, and that person stepped aside. Jiang Cheng slipped into the center of the circle.

She stood next to the door, back pressed against the wall, one hand holding the axe, the other reaching into her trouser pocket for her keys.

Her keychain had several cartoon keychains hanging off it. She grabbed the keyring and reached out, dangling the jingling bunch near the doorknob, making noise.

It worked.

The banging on the door stopped. Clearly, the zombie had been drawn to the sound.

The zombie began fumbling with the doorknob.

After a few tries, the door swung open. The fresh, living scent of more than twenty young people out there drove the zombie into a roar as it lunged forward.

The door panel, the pot lid, and the chair all shot out at once to hold it in place.

The moment the door opened, Jiang Cheng pulled back her hand, shoved the keys back into her pocket, and gripped the fire axe with both hands.

The instant the zombie was held in place, Jiang Cheng swung the axe down in a diagonal arc, striking it right on the side of the neck. The head went askew immediately.

The guy holding the door panel found himself facing the zombie nose to nose, and nearly vomited on the spot.

Li Jiangbing finished it off with another axe swing! The zombie’s head rolled to the floor.

Jiang Cheng and Li Jiangbing’s two axes had handled it cleanly in no time—no one else had even needed to get involved.

A chorus of "Whoa—" went up from the group.

Even the neighbor across the hall, who had been peeking through the crack the whole time, let out a "Whoa—" of his own.

It was gross, sure. But the fear and the tension quickly drained away.

Zombies weren’t such a big deal. They had numbers, they had weapons, and they worked together.

Li Jiangbing was strutting around, full of himself, and even made a show of extending his fist toward Jiang Cheng in a cocky gesture.

Everyone was watching, so Jiang Cheng played along and bumped her fist against his.

Li Jiangbing was beaming with pride.

It was a bit theatrical, but it did boost morale. Everyone looked even more fired up than before.

They cleared the entire floor, and that one apartment on the top floor had been the only one with a mutated.

Li Jiangbing asked, "What do we do with the body?"

Jiang Cheng said, "Put it in the elevator for now."

Two people dragged the corpse by its arms into the elevator, while others, grimacing with disgust, carried the severed head inside as well.

Everyone took the stairs down one floor together.

Some defended, some attacked, and they had even learned from Jiang Cheng how to create noise on the door handles to lure the zombies into opening the doors themselves. They made it down to the fifth floor without any trouble.

Just when it seemed like they were about to wrap things up smoothly, something went wrong on the fifth floor.

Because there were so many people, not everyone was actually pulling their weight.

Jiang Cheng was a girl, and the young men were so pumped up they were howling with enthusiasm, so she and the other two girls hung back, letting the excited, hot-blooded bunch take the lead.

No one expected there to be two zombies in that room.

The first one to come out was a regular zombie, and everyone had gotten used to working together, blocking it first before killing it. But just as they managed to hold the first one in place, a second one came out, using the first zombie's back as a stepping stone and leaping into the air.

A dark shadow loomed overhead.

Jiang Cheng's pupils contracted sharply.

It was a second-generation zombie, infected from a bite by an original zombie!

Li Jiangbing was a big guy and had been at the front the whole time. He had trained in combat, so his reflexes were lightning fast. He swung his axe straight up at the thing.

The zombie landed, and Jiang Cheng followed up with a chop of her own axe. Then hammers, baseball bats, and kitchen knives came rushing in from everyone else. With all those weapons piling on at once, even a second-generation zombie as agile as this had no room to dodge—they basically smashed its brain to pulp in a chaotic flurry.

But even so, when the zombie had come down, it had still knocked one person to the ground and bitten him.

Now the zombie was dead, but this man was covered in blood. It had torn a piece of scalp off his head, and blood was streaming down his face.

The hallway fell dead silent. The fiery enthusiasm and raucous yelling from moments ago were gone.

Everyone seemed to snap back to reality from that game-like, absurd excitement.

No one spoke.

"I..." the injured man sat on the ground, blood covering his face, stammering, "I scratched myself, I, I really—I panicked just now and accidentally put my face against someone's kitchen knife, I..."

But everyone's eyes were on him, and not a single pair believed him.

They stared at him, and in their eyes, wariness was already creeping in.

Jiang Cheng turned her head and quietly said to the person beside her, "Get him a towel."

The quick-witted person hurried into the room, grabbed a towel from the bathroom, and came right back.

Jiang Cheng took the towel, folded it, walked over, and crouched down to press it against his head to stop the bleeding, saying softly, "I know. But we still need to keep an eye on things, just in case..."

"How about this," she said. "I live in 0306, and the room next to me, 0308, is empty right now. You can go stay there. We'll observe for one night and talk again tomorrow. Maybe by tomorrow it'll be nothing."

Her voice was gentle, but every face around was tense.

Because most of these people had been in the square during the day, and they all knew that back then, she had used that same soft voice to send the two people from Building 2 into the property management office's conference room.

They also knew what was happening in that conference room now.

"I... I didn't..." the injured man's teeth were chattering from fear. "I really..."

Tears started streaming down his face.

Locked up. He would definitely die.

He instinctively tried to grip his weapon only to find nothing in his hand.

He looked down—his weapon was already in Jiang Cheng's grip.

He looked up.

Jiang Cheng's eyes locked with his for a single second. Both of their expressions shifted.

The next instant, the young man struck like lightning, reaching out to snatch his weapon back. But Jiang Cheng had already sprung backward, retreating before his hand could close!

She lost her balance, falling backward, and the people behind her reached out in unison to catch her.

But one thing was for sure: he didn't get his weapon back.

The young man lunged forward, trying to pounce, but everyone raised whatever they were holding and pointed it at him: "Hold it!"

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Don't take another step! Stop!"

Both sides were locked in a standoff.

Li Jiangbing tightened his grip on his axe. "Brother, calm down. We're—"

"Don't touch me!" the young man shouted, face drenched in blood, features twisted, no longer wanting to hear any of it.

He had been on their side a moment ago, but he knew that from the second he got bitten, in their eyes, he was already a zombie.

The veins on the back of his hand bulged as he pointed at the people around him: "Don't touch me!"

"Whoever fucking touches me, I'll bite them!"

"You hear me?! I'll bite you all to death!"

"I'm infected, and none of you are walking out of this alive!"

His desperate, hysterical screams echoed through the corridor.