Chapter 25

The porridge was burnt and thick. In the past, Jiang Cheng would have dumped it out and made a new pot. But now Jiang Cheng wouldn't waste food like that. Though supplies were still plentiful for the moment, she had a strong sense of impending crisis.

She forced down the burnt porridge with a salted duck egg.

After she was full, she fed Mo Li.

Things were much better now—Mo Li was fully capable of eating on his own. She tossed a handful of cat kibble into the "nest" on the beanbag sofa, and he crunched away by himself. He wasn't fast, but he was completely independent when it came to eating.

He still hadn't used the litter box, though. Jiang Cheng had checked—the box was clean, with no trace of use at all. That worried her a little.

Her phone suddenly buzzed, just one short ring, then cut off—a sneaky sort of sound.

She picked it up. Li Jiangbing.

She called back: "I'm awake."

"Did you sleep well?" Li Jiangbing asked. "You looked pretty wiped out yesterday."

"Not bad. I've basically recovered my strength. The main issue was that I didn't sleep well the night before last either," Jiang Cheng said. "I've already had breakfast. Have you eaten?"

Li Jiangbing had eaten too.

Good, Jiang Cheng said. "Let's get to work."

They had to move early in the morning.

The bodies in the first-floor lobby needed to be dealt with.

Jiang Cheng and Li Jiangbing roused the members of the interim homeowners' committee from Building Two, and some of the building's residents also came to help. Together, they dragged all the corpses stacked in the lobby to the central garden plaza.

After all, this was where they lived—nobody wanted to leave a pile of corpses sitting in their own lobby.

Su Yu was there too, along with the other girl from last night. Each of them had also brought along another girl.

Everyone was busy, so Jiang Cheng didn't talk much with them—a nod here and there was enough of a greeting.

Master Luo was already hard at work in the plaza.

When he saw Jiang Cheng, he said: "I swung by the office this morning and took a look. That conference room was making a racket again early today, but now it's gone quiet. They didn't call you all again anyway. They're keeping an eye on it."

That conference room was like some kind of cocoon now—nobody knew what would finally emerge from inside.

Anyway, the door was locked tight and would never be opened. There were no windows in the basement, so they couldn't get out.

People from every building were moving. The zombie corpses killed during last night's building-to-building sweep were all being dragged out for centralized disposal now.

The paths between the buildings and the garden were bustling with people coming and going, looking like a hive of industrious worker bees. There was an oddly vibrant, lively feeling to it.

What a strange contrast.

The corpse pyre from yesterday had truly become a "heap."

A lot of people assume that burning corpses means reducing them to ash—but it really doesn't work that way. At a place like the Youth Apartment, with no professional crematorium equipment, open-air burning never produces "ashes." In the end, it just produces a "heap." You could even make out clearly defined human remains in that pile.

Fresh bodies were dragged onto the heap to keep burning. There was still plenty of fuel, more than enough.

Quite a few people had come to help.

But some people weren't there to help—they were there with cameras, snapping photos. There were traditional cameras with long telephoto lenses, and the newer compact digital cameras that could slip right into a pocket.

"How often does a person get to witness something like this in a lifetime? We've got to document it—maybe someday this will go into the history books," they said. "Cameras were invented for moments like this."

That almost sounded reasonable.

The fire blazed up, and waves of heat rolled over everyone as they kept a safe distance and watched.

The photographers moved in and out, searching for the perfect angles, near and far.

The scene was both frozen and in motion.

Just then, someone came running over: "The neighborhood next door has organized too!"

By "next door," they meant the residential complex across the street from the east gate—a place called Lucky Harmony Gardens.

On Sunday afternoon, when the residents of Youth Apartment marched out through the east gate in force toward the BuyDuoDuo Supermarket, they'd passed right by Lucky Harmony Gardens. That street was called Lucky West Street.

At the time, many residents of Lucky Harmony Gardens had watched them pass from their windows, and a few had even shouted questions from across the way.

And just as Jiang Cheng had been browsing property forums of other complexes and other big forums, plenty of outsiders had been browsing Youth Apartment's owner forum.

At this moment, the internet had real meaning—information was flowing.

Among the outsiders visiting the Youth Apartment forum, the vast majority were from Lucky Harmony Gardens next door. Because they had witnessed that waves of group shopping on Sunday afternoon, they were desperate to know what was happening on this side, and they flooded into Youth Apartment's forum.

From there, they got a rough picture of what had occurred.

Back on their own forum, the residents of Lucky Harmony Gardens plunged into heated discussion:

[We can't just sit around waiting for death!]

[We're out of food at home.]

[The baby's formula is nearly gone!]

[We need to organize too.]

Lucky Harmony Gardens had everything from studio apartments to four-bedroom places, from small children to elderly people, and even plenty of domestic helpers. Demographically, it was basically a complete cross-section of society. Unlike Youth Apartment, which had a narrow resident base—mostly young, highly educated singles.

Now, Lucky Harmony Gardens had finally put together a team, going down to clear out the zombies wandering in their compound.

It had been far harder for them to organize than for Youth Apartment.

Some people were even fully armed and ready to head downstairs when their elderly parents sobbed and clutched at them, refusing to let them go: "Let someone else go! Let someone else go! You're my only son!"

It was so hard.

But as the forum posts said, they couldn't just sit and wait to die. Especially since Sunday evening, when the government's new announcement shifted its tone and clearly began encouraging citizens to save themselves.

They'd argued all night, and finally, this morning, some people had taken the lead to go downstairs. One. Two. Three. More and more. Eventually they'd managed to organize.

But though the neighborhood had a larger total population, it had far fewer able-bodied young men than Youth Apartment did.

Couples with children—the mothers basically stayed home. But some young couples without kids, holding cleavers and rolling pins, summoned their courage and went down together.

Some families had elders grabbing their only sons to stop them from risking their lives. But other families had the older generation holding the young people back, saying: "You're still young, stay put—I'll go."

After understanding the situation, Jiang Cheng paused to think, then urged everyone: "Let's go help them."

"This isn't the time for looking after only our own doorstep. If they collapse, we'll just be facing more zombies."

"At a time like this, we're all one and the same community. Not just neighborhood and neighborhood, city and city."

"Actually, right now—humanity is one community."

Zombies don't stay put in one place, after all. Zombies have legs. They walk. Next door, the population skewed heavily toward the elderly, women, and children. Imagine if they were left to fend for themselves and the whole complex fell to infection—would they one day have to face infant zombies crawling on the floor with baby bottles?

That's too nightmarish!

Even horror movies wouldn't dare film that.

The two complexes were far too close together. Youth Apartment's east gate almost faced Lucky Harmony Gardens' west gate directly. If one fell, the other would be next—lips and teeth.

If JiXiang Garden fell, it would essentially turn the area outside the East Gate into a zombie nest, and once those zombies started moving and spreading outward, the Youth Apartment would be the first to suffer.

Jiang Cheng's rallying cry got a response from everyone: "She's right!"

By now, everyone basically kept their weapons on them at all times. People like Jiang Cheng and Li Jiangbing would carry axes tucked directly into their waistbands, ready to draw at any moment.

But everyone still went upstairs to do some quick protective prep before regrouping downstairs.

The strong and able-bodied team surged toward the East Gate in full force.

When the two security guards at the East Gate heard what was happening, their blood ran hot, and they wanted to join in too.

Jiang Cheng stopped them: "You two are way too important! The safety of our compound depends on you two! You absolutely have to hold your posts. This place can't do without you."

That sounded pretty inspiring too. The two guards gave their word: "Miss Jiang, don't worry! We've got the gate covered!"

Because of a lack of organization, JiXiang Garden's main gate was still wide open, never having been shut down and locked up like Youth Apartment's had been.

Only two vehicle barrier arms blocked the entrance, and the people from Youth Apartment ducked right under them. The young folks, hot-blooded and fired up, shouted as they charged in: "Youth Apartment's here to back you up——!"

"Youth Apartment's here to help——!"

"We've arrived——!"

JiXiang Garden had only mustered a small number of people, but the zombies in their garden were far more numerous than those at Youth Apartment.

On Saturday night, too many families had been out enjoying the cool air in the garden. Unlike Youth Apartment, where lots of young people had been inside playing video games and were, fortunately, sealed off in their own units.

The JiXiang Garden people were stuck in a hard-fought battle when Youth Apartment's massive team appeared like troops dropping from the sky.

This huge swarm of young people stormed in with shouts, swinging without a moment's hesitation, unafraid at the sight of blood, and neither fainting nor retching at severed hands or shattered skulls.

Their combat power was fierce, and the moment the main force arrived, the tide of battle turned instantly.

They only showed a flicker of reluctance when they encountered child zombies or baby zombies, but they still swung their iron rods and brought down their axes without mercy, taking out those zombies with no room for hesitation.

Around just past ten o'clock, the fight was basically over.

Everyone fanned out across the garden with their various weapons, sweeping through and checking every corner, terrified of missing anything.

Those baby zombies could suddenly crawl out of the bushes or even spring up from the ground to lunge and bite — they were pure nightmare fuel.

For the people of JiXiang Garden, this was their first face-to-face battle with zombies, and the psychological shock hit hard. Most of them felt completely drained, plopping down wherever they were, catching their breath as they watched those energetic young folks from Youth Apartment finish up the cleanup.

Jiang Cheng and a few other core members of the interim committee had just gathered when a man who looked to be in his forties walked over and asked: "Thank you so much! I know your compound has already set up a temporary committee — are you the people on it?"

He switched his cleaver to his left hand and extended his right.

Among the group, Song Jingshuo stood out — tall, with a sharp, elite bearing. The man made straight for him.

Song Jingshuo almost instinctively reached out to shake his hand, clearly having muscle memory for that gesture from years of habit. He exchanged pleasantries: "Yes, we're the heads of the Youth Apartment interim committee. My surname is Song. And you, sir?"

The man said: "My surname is Huang. I'm one of the organizers here in this compound. Honestly, thank you from the bottom of my heart. We never imagined anyone would come to help us."

Mr. Huang's eyes were a little moist — he genuinely was moved close to tears.

Song Jingshuo was about to keep talking, but Jiang Cheng cut in: "Hey, big brother, does the cleaver work well? Is the cleaver better or the axe? I've been wondering whether I should switch to a cleaver too."

Mr. Huang found this girl utterly clueless — seriously lacking in social awareness.

If she were one of his subordinates, she'd never get a promotion.

He answered dismissively: "Either works."

But the girl was even more dense than he'd thought, as if she had no idea at all that this was a moment for the heads of two compounds to be having a proper exchange. She just stuck her hand out: "Here, give me the knife — let me try it."

Mr. Huang couldn't really refuse, and just like that, his cleaver ended up in this girl's hands.

Furious, he was about to say something when he saw that girl take a step back and hand the cleaver to a huge, muscle-bound guy beside her.

Her voice turned cold: "He's injured."

Everyone followed her gaze. Mr. Huang himself looked down.

He was wearing summer shorts, and on his calf — several scratch marks. Small ones, like the claws of a small animal... or the hands of a very small child.

"It's nothing," Mr. Huang said. "Just a scrape. A band-aid will do."

But the young man from Youth Apartment who'd been shaking his hand had already pulled his hand back. He'd even taken a step back, standing together with that girl.

Mr. Huang froze.

He saw that clueless girl from Youth Apartment pull a walkie-talkie off her belt.

"Call all our people over," she said. "Screening the wounded — now."

Word spread from person to person, rallying calls going out in every direction, and soon everyone knew: this was an order from Jiang Cheng of the interim committee.

The people of Youth Apartment had already been through this before — they all knew exactly what it meant.

The people of JiXiang Garden were still sitting on the ground, breathless and spent, when suddenly shadows fell over them.

They looked up. Those warm-hearted, brave young people from Youth Apartment had tightened their grips on their weapons, faces grim, forming a tight circle.

Step by step, they advanced — closing in and surrounding them.