Chapter 31

“We can’t control what goes on outside,” Jiang Cheng said as she pushed her shopping cart down the road. “But inside the compound, we absolutely have to hold things together.”

The core members of the interim committee were used to sticking together—even those who had already filled their carts wouldn’t leave first; they’d wait for the group.

Song Jingshuo and Li Jiangbing walked on either side of Jiang Cheng, pushing three carts in a row.

Occasionally a car passed on the main road.

Someone muttered: “Who even goes out in weather like this?”

Where would they go, and for what? Wasn’t staying holed up at home the best option?

Yesterday you could still hear fire engines in the distance, and ambulances too. Today, both sounds were gone.

Combined with the news begging residents to fend for themselves, it left people silent.

But think about it—a fire scene that was already dangerous, you rush in to save someone, and the flickering shadow you see isn’t afraid of flames, doesn’t feel pain, doesn’t fear death—a zombie.

No matter how brave the firefighters were, they’d be walking into a death trap.

Or an ambulance picks up a patient, and halfway there, the patient’s eyes suddenly snap open—pitch black, no whites at all.

In that tiny space, blood splatters across the windows.

The more you imagine it, the heavier it gets. People’s hearts sank, and even their footsteps grew heavier.

Song Jingshuo wholeheartedly agreed with Jiang Cheng: “Right, we can’t let our compound fall into chaos.”

The supermarket earlier had been pure madness.

People were fighting over supplies.

Because the youth apartment had already done a bulk shopping run yesterday—over a thousand people—and Brother Dong’s group hadn’t restocked in time, some shelves of daily necessities were nearly empty, which sparked the scramble.

To be fair, it wasn’t the youth apartment people who threw the first punch—it was the old men and women from Jixiang Jiayuan.

In normal times, when the elderly were unreasonable, most young people really could only swallow their anger.

First, because after decades of education in this country, young people’s manners were genuinely a cut above the older generation’s. Second, because once you reached a certain age, even the cops couldn’t do anything to you, and prisons wouldn’t take you.

But these were not “normal times.”

That very morning, they’d helped clear zombies for those same Jixiang Jiayuan folks, and not a shred of gratitude did they show—instead, they acted like the young people were trying to steal the supermarket goods from them.

The youth apartment crowd was already simmering with pent-up rage, and then these old geezers dared to throw the first punch.

Did they still think these young people were the same as before?

They’d chopped off heads. They’d smashed in brains. They’d gone through the gut-wrenching necessity of escorting injured neighbors they had just fought alongside into quarantine.

The murderous anger had been bottled up for two days, and when the old man shoved them with petty arrogance, it exploded.

The young man hit back.

“Old bastard!” His eyes completely changed, and he threw a punch.

Everyone heard a clear, sharp crack.

The old man collapsed with a broken bone.

The old man groaned loudly; the old lady jumped up and down screeching curses.

“Keep cursing! I’ll hit you too!” The young man’s forehead bulged with veins as he pointed at the old lady and roared. “Think this is still the old days?! I’ve killed before! I’ve chopped off heads! Go ahead, call the cops if you can!”

The sheer, overwhelming violence in his rage stunned the old pair into silence. The groaning stopped, the cursing stopped—they just froze.

The young man turned away in fury and loaded things off the shelf into his cart. None of the surrounding old folks dared to contest him again.

A couple of other young men nearby watched with cold eyes.

If anyone else tried to throw hands, they would have stepped in. Who would they help? That was clear as day—their own people.

Watching these fierce, strapping young men, the old folks—who were used to spitting, smoking, cutting in line, and grabbing freebies—finally realized with a jolt that the world had changed.

That girl from the youth apartment had smashed a glass door with an axe, like shattering a seal and releasing some terrible monster.

A shadow loomed over those who weren’t young or strong enough.

Scenes like this—Jiang Cheng, Song Jingshuo, and the others had witnessed several of them in the supermarket just now.

The youth apartment, as a closed community, had remained orderly up until this morning. Everyone had been able to keep up a normal facade.

But after stepping outside and coming into direct contact with the Jixiang Jiayuan residents, something had subtly shifted.

And it wasn’t fair to say the Jixiang Jiayuan people had “infected” them.

Everything that had happened from the night before last to now was enough to drive anyone mad and break them. It was just that the youth apartment had been effectively organized from the very start—that sense of “collective” had kept the negative stuff in check, preventing it from boiling over.

Everyone had felt that “order” still existed.

Until now.

“We have to keep it under control.”

“Toward outsiders, we don’t have to hold back—but inside the compound, there has to be order.”

That was the consensus the core members of the youth apartment’s interim committee reached on their way back with the shopping carts.

The youth apartment had almost no elderly or children—the vast majority were young people. If rescue didn’t come soon, it was easy to predict things would only get worse than today.

Today, fights were just shoves and punches. Tomorrow, it might be knives.

So far, no one had killed or injured a normal person. The chopped heads and shattered brains had all belonged to zombies or the infected.

No one had yet turned a weapon against a healthy, uninfected living human.

But that might not last.

When it got to that point, the youth apartment—full of able-bodied young people—could become the most formidable fighting force in the area if they organized and managed themselves effectively.

At the thought, reactions among the core members varied.

Some were worried, deeply unsettled.

Others felt a small flame ignite inside them, stealing a glance at Jiang Cheng’s back as she walked ahead.

Song Jingshuo’s brows were knitted tight.

He had graduated from a top university, was highly capable in every way—a quintessential young urban elite. Elites like him could only rise higher by standing on the foundation of a rule-of-law society.

The more civilized and prosperous this society was, the more room people like him had to grow.

He had already bought a large flat this year, planned to finish the renovation by autumn, and move out of the youth apartment by year’s end.

Chaos was the last thing he wanted.

The more he thought about it, the heavier his heart grew.

He couldn’t help but glance sideways at Jiang Cheng. This girl had a strange, uncanny calm—talking to her gave you a kind of inner peace.

But Jiang Cheng stopped walking.

The moment she stopped, Song Jingshuo and Li Jiangbing stopped too, and everyone behind them had no choice but to halt.

Before anyone could ask “What’s wrong?”, Jiang Cheng had already let go of her cart’s handle, pulled her fire axe from the back of her waist, and strode straight toward a street-level shop along the road.

The perimeter of the youth apartment had a ring of commercial storefronts.

This area had high population density and heavy foot traffic, so the shops all managed to stay in business. There were small restaurants, fast food joints, hair salons, and more.

Of course, the shops were all closed now. Most had glass doors secured with U-locks; some had rolling shutters.

Jiang Cheng went directly for one of the glass-door shops with a U-lock.

Without a word, she swung the axe and shattered the glass door.

Everyone was stunned.

But Song Jingshuo said, “You all watch the carts,” then called out, “Jiangbing, let’s go.” He headed for the same shop.

Li Jiangbing followed without hesitation.

“It’s a pharmacy,” someone finally realized.

Someone grumbled, "Why are those two the ones giving orders?"

Someone shot back, "If you're so good, you do it. If you can handle it, we'll listen to you too."

The first guy shut his mouth, looking sheepish.

"But the pharmacy—are we not paying for that either?" Su Yu asked hesitantly.

Everyone looked at her, then at the three of them.

Not paying at the Buy More supermarket had been following the crowd—those people from Jixiang Jiayuan all grabbed stuff and ran, so their Youth Apartment crew couldn't just stand there like fools and pull out their wallets. Mostly it was because the scene was already chaos, and the supermarket staff weren't even manning the registers, just watching.

So everyone had slipped into a sort of collective unconsciousness.

Following the herd.

But now...

Before anyone could finish looking, Jiang Cheng was already coming out with her arms stacked full of medicine boxes.

Right behind her, Li Jiangbing and Song Jingshuo emerged too, carrying just as many boxes.

The moment they'd gone inside, Jiang Cheng had said, "Mainly grab fever reducers, respiratory meds, stomach and gut stuff, anti-inflammatories, and antibiotics—oh, and painkillers. Anything else you personally need, take it yourself."

The three of them walked out clutching bundles.

Jiang Cheng led the way, and she didn't head for her own car—she headed for their companions' shopping carts: "Load it onto your own vehicles, no need to sort, just stuff it in, as much as you can fit. We'll coordinate rations later if anyone needs something specific."

Everyone swarmed, grabbing boxes from her arms and cramming them into whatever gaps they could find in their carts. The carts were already packed full, so they jammed boxes sideways and vertically—a few shoved between bags of rice and flour, and for the big rolls of toilet paper, they tore the plastic wrap and squeezed pills into the cardboard core.

Most medicine boxes were small enough that anywhere with a tiny bit of room, they forced them in.

Song Jingshuo and Li Jiangbing followed her example, not loading their own vehicles but distributing to everyone else.

The three of them handed out their hauls, then turned and went back in.

The second trip, they still shared with the others, but also started stuffing some into their own cars.

By the time they went back a third time, other people wanted to go in too.

In fact, from the moment Jiang Cheng had smashed the pharmacy's glass door with her axe, people had been watching.

The Youth Apartment's temporary committee had a habit of leading from the front during supply runs and covering the rear on the way back. That was exactly why so many able-bodied young people were willing to follow their commands—because they actually shouldered responsibility, carried the weight, and gave everyone a backbone.

So they were already the last group from Youth Apartment walking down the street.

Strung out behind them were all the Jixiang Jiayuan folks. Many of the elderly moved slowly, and after the big crowd left, they'd lingered with a "picking through leftovers" mentality. So they'd actually left the supermarket even later than the young ones.

From a distance, they spotted the Youth Apartment kids gathered outside a shopfront. They muttered, "What are they doing now?"

They shuffled closer, watched for a moment, and understood: after robbing the supermarket, now they were robbing the pharmacy.

The old people almost slapped their thighs. "We need to stock up on meds too!"

Old age came with a hundred aches and ailments—they needed medicine far more desperately than the young.

One old man lifted his foot to climb the steps and follow inside.

Just then, Jiang Cheng and the other two were coming back out to the doorway. The old man tried to squeeze past.

Jiang Cheng swung her axe in a sharp arc through the air, freezing the old men and women in place at the bottom of the steps.

"Us first." She pointed the axe at the people below, her voice icy. "We finish, then you go in."