Chapter 71

As usual, today’s news bulletin was half an hour late. This time, however, the central leader did not appear. The people appearing on the various local stations were still the top officials—or acting top officials—of each area.

In S City, naturally, it was Vice Mayor Zheng.

A respected elder who had begun his career as a rural teacher, he had spent most of his life in education. Yet at his age, he had unexpectedly been entrusted with command of a region’s fight for survival and supply operations.

Vice Mayor Zheng was having an especially hard time controlling his emotions today. He choked up before he even began speaking.

He had not actually said anything yet, but everyone in front of their television sets found themselves shedding tears.

At that moment, the whole country shared the same feelings.

No words were needed.

At such a crucial time, Vice Mayor Zheng found himself unable to produce any ornate or rousing phrases. He restrained the turmoil in his heart and gave everyone a general summary of the day’s situation in a solemn voice—sincere, concise, and to the point.

“This will surely be the turning point in this great disaster.”

He looked into the camera as though he were looking at every single person watching.

The map had been updated.

The tiny green specks from before had almost all expanded, becoming patches of green. Some of those patches had even connected with neighboring patches, forming larger expanses of green.

Even more encouraging was the supply-route and supply-point plan Vice Mayor Zheng announced.

He announced that the first batch of areas and residential compounds to receive in-depth relief on the 27th—in other words, tomorrow—had been selected.

The first on the list was the High-Tech New District.

Most of the areas receiving supply routes in the first batch were beyond the Fourth and Fifth Ring Roads. Only one was within the Third Ring Road. From the map, it was clear that the areas about to receive supplies were all relatively large green zones.

Those green patches ignited hope in people’s hearts.

The various chat groups in the Youth Apartments were buzzing with discussion.

“This is what Jiang Cheng was talking about.”

The prerequisite for opening a supply route was clearing the roads first.

The country could no longer afford further military casualties. Its soldiers were simply too precious.

Each area would have to rely on its own strength to clear a road—one that at the very least would not cause military vehicles to sink into the rubble.

“Which group is everyone joining tomorrow?”

“I signed up for road clearing.”

“I’m going to Lekang Homes. Two of my coworkers live there. Sigh...”

“I’m going to clear Buy More. Once we have a supply point, our area won’t be short of necessities anymore, right? I wonder if they’ll be able to provide fresh vegetables and meat. I really, really want to eat some greens!”

“Me too!”

“Who doesn’t?”

The group administrators in every chat reminded everyone: “Go to bed early. Get plenty of rest.”

Many people turned in early because the day had consumed so much of their physical and mental energy. After taking a shower and lying down in bed, they quickly fell asleep.

But several of the girls who were especially close to Peng Ze, including Su Yu and He Tian, did not go to bed so early.

They arranged to meet downstairs in the small plaza to hold a memorial for Peng Ze.

They had no white candles, so they used scented candles instead. The flowers were clipped from the landscaping around the residential compound.

After wiping away their tears, everyone returned to their own buildings.

Only Su Yu and He Tian remained downstairs, talking.

“Make sure you protect yourself tomorrow.”

“I will.”

“The news didn’t mention these people at all.”

“These people” referred to those like Peng Ze—people who had survived nearly two weeks of the zombie disaster, only to answer the call to courageously leave their homes that day and end up infected or losing their lives.

“There must have been quite a few.”

“Bringing it up now might hurt morale. We still have to go out again tomorrow.”

“That’s true.”

“Either way, we have to protect ourselves properly. I heard Peng Ze was bitten on the ear.”

“There wasn’t much he could do. It was too hot—he couldn’t keep his helmet on.”

Some people had also put on motorcycle helmets when they first left home that day, only to take them off once the heat became unbearable. There was no way around it in this season, at this temperature.

But if Peng Ze had been wearing a helmet, he might have escaped this fate.

Two girls’ mournful sighs drifted across the plaza.

After taking a shower, Jiang Cheng sat at home, stroking Mo Li’s fur.

Mo Li had now fully recovered, but he still ate very little, and only in the evening. On days when the sun was especially bright, he did not eat at night either.

Over the past few days, Jiang Cheng had examined his body more than once and seriously suspected that he might be some kind of advanced transforming robot. But Mo Li’s body was extremely soft and warm. He was, without a doubt, a living carbon-based creature.

He could open the window and come and go on his own. During the day, he hid somewhere in the residential compound to bask in the sun, and Jiang Cheng often could not find him.

But yesterday evening, after Jiang Cheng used their mental link to let him know that she would be leaving the next day to face the zombies, he hooked a claw into her pant leg when she went out that morning and conveyed through their mental connection: I’m coming too.

Jiang Cheng had always wanted to know whether Mo Li could transform again. She knew that if Mo Li revealed his transformation in front of everyone, it would inevitably cause a huge commotion.

But if Mo Li could still transform, then sooner or later that day would come.

Yet throughout the entire day of fighting the zombies, Mo Li had remained in Jiang Cheng’s shoulder bag.

While resting, Jiang Cheng had placed a hand on his furry little head and communicated with him. She roughly understood what was going on—Mo Li had wanted to go out with her because he was afraid she might be injured during the “hunt.”

But amid the atmosphere of so many people uniting to destroy the zombies, Mo Li had judged that the situation before him was “not dangerous.”

A cat had its own standards for what counted as dangerous.

So while everyone else was fighting and killing, splashing themselves with revolting filth, Mo Li was snoring away in the shoulder bag.

There was simply no helping it.

Jiang Cheng stroked Mo Li, secretly hoping that he would transform again.

But that would mean a true “danger” had appeared.

The people preparing to fight the next day all went to bed early that night. Vice Mayor Zheng, however, could not. He had far too much to do.

On Thursday, June 27, Vice Mayor Zheng had slept for less than four hours when he was called out of bed just after dawn.

Secretary Sun hurried in, his footsteps quick. “The helicopters have been approved. They’re sending us two for support!”

Vice Mayor Zheng’s eyes were bloodshot. They did not shine with any light of hope. In fact, they looked terribly dim.

“But today is already Thursday...”

On Monday, the relief forces had broken through to the Fourth Ring Road, only to encounter a massive number of second-generation zombies at Rainbow Stadium. They suffered heavy casualties, and the area within a three-kilometer radius of Rainbow Stadium was classified as a high-risk red zone.

Vice Mayor Zheng had immediately requested military support.

But requests for military assistance were pouring in from everywhere—not just S City. In reality, because S City was a prosperous major city, it had already received a disproportionately large share of the surrounding areas’ military forces, manpower, and supplies.

Some supplies intended for S City had even been intercepted while passing through neighboring cities.

This was an extremely dangerous signal. It meant that central control was weakening and that the government was beginning to fracture as a whole.

That was also one of the reasons the central leader had finally decided to mobilize the public.

When Vice Mayor Zheng requested support on Monday, the massive numbers of second-generation zombies at Rainbow Stadium had been slowly spreading into the surrounding areas, but they were still largely concentrated in one place.

Ground combat was too dangerous. Soldiers were now more precious than gold.

The best option was aerial combat, using bombs or artillery shells to inflict large-scale casualties.

But the problem was not merely a shortage of helicopters. There was also a severe shortage of pilots!

Just as Secretary Sun had told Jiang Cheng, there was a shortage of people—an extremely serious shortage.

The military’s losses when the zombie virus broke out were far more devastating than the public could imagine. Why were there tens of thousands of second-generation zombies at Rainbow Stadium? In such an open space packed with people, ordinary civilians had no way to fight back—and no way to escape.

Not a single person got out.

The military survived because its soldiers were tough enough to resist and even kill zombies in the midst of the crisis. Otherwise, every military camp would have become another stadium.

The pilots who had survived the outbreak had been working nonstop for the past week and a half. Even bodies made of iron could not withstand it. Pilots were human, too.

At the same time, just as dawn broke, Zhou Wang at Jixiang Jiayuan had not intended to get up so early. He had been exhausted the day before and wanted to sleep a little longer to recover his energy. After all, he was middle-aged now.

But the ringing of his phone abruptly shattered his sleep and jolted him awake.

Zhou Wang’s heart pounded. He had a bad feeling. He took several breaths before he dared answer.

After listening to the report, he knew it was exactly what the hell he had feared.

When Jiang Cheng met up with Zhou Wang, she saw that his complexion was awful—yellowed and sickly green, the unhealthy color of someone on the verge of collapse.

“Didn’t you sleep well?” Jiang Cheng asked.

Zhou Wang forced the words out through clenched teeth. “Damn it...”

The middle-aged man was usually quite well-mannered and did not swear in front of young women. The moment Jiang Cheng heard him, she asked, “What happened?”

Furious, Zhou Wang ground his teeth. “From now on, inspections for people returning to the compound have to be stricter. We need multiple people checking one another—not just two people checking each other! Your compound needs to be careful, too!”

“Oh, your compound doesn’t need to. Everyone there is single...”

Jiang Cheng and the others never would have imagined that, after nearly two weeks of facing zombies, someone would still conceal an injured person. The injured residents of the Youth Apartments had even been considerate enough not to return; they had left on their own.

But when they thought about it, it was also completely human. Family members inspected one another, only to discover that someone they loved had been injured.

At that moment, could they really call out and expose them?

They knew perfectly well that the injured person would become infected and mutate, yet they still gritted their teeth, lied to the people at the entrance, and brought them through the gates.

Then the injured person mutated in the middle of the night. Because it was not dealt with properly, the entire family ended up together in death. Their screams alerted the neighbors, who finally discovered what had happened.

Zhou Wang had not even gotten out of bed at dawn before he was forced to deal with something like this.

And while dealing with it, one of their key personnel was injured.

After hearing the full story, everyone felt so frustrated they wanted to curse, yet could not bring themselves to do it.

In the end, Nie Kuizhang was the only one who managed to spit out, “Fuck!”

Jiang Cheng said to the others, “We need multiple-person inspections, too, just in case.”

There were no families living in the Youth Apartments, but over the past several days, many close-knit bonds had formed.

For example, Jiang Cheng and Li Jiangbing; Jiang Cheng and Song Jingshuo; Su Yu and He Tian; Zhao Yi and Gao Yuxuan; Cui Haiyang and Master Luo.

When two or several people were always together, even fighting zombies back-to-back, it was hard for them not to develop deep feelings for one another.

Everyone nodded in agreement.

Since they were still not far from the compound and remained within signal range, Li Jiangbing immediately used the walkie-talkie to contact the property staff staying behind and explain the new rule.

After everyone met up, they split into three teams. No team was made up of people from only one compound. Each team consisted of personnel jointly sent by all three compounds.

One team headed for the Fifth Ring Road, one for Lekang Jiayuan, and one for Maiduo.

Guo Jun and his colleagues all went to Maiduo. They were Maiduo employees to begin with and knew the building’s layout better than anyone else. Ordinary shoppers only knew the supermarkets and stores. Only Maiduo’s employees knew about the staff passages, storage rooms, receiving entrances, and the other facilities.

Jiang Cheng, Li Jiangbing, and Song Jingshuo all headed for the Fifth Ring Road.

The Youth Apartments brought out four large Route 535 buses. They also brought out the few SUVs they had. As for the compact cars and hatchbacks, they were left behind. They could not withstand second-generation zombies and were too likely to cause trouble.

Jiang Cheng and Li Jiangbing were both aboard one of the large buses. Everyone had taped the windows on the inside in a cross pattern to keep zombies from smashing through them.

Su Yu and several other girls were there as well.

Someone said, “Song Jingshuo’s car is really something.”

Jiang Cheng turned at the sound of the voice.

Sure enough, outside the window was Song Jingshuo’s SUV, its chassis exceptionally high, its build rugged, and its appearance striking.

He was handsome to begin with, and the fine vehicle only made him look even more so.

Another girl said, “I heard he bought a 180-square-meter apartment west of the Fourth Ring Road. It even has a great view overlooking the Wetland Park.”

“Really? He’s seriously impressive.”

“He works in finance. Money comes quickly in that line of work.”

Song Jingshuo was a successful young man by society’s usual standards—a young elite. He had a good build and a handsome face, and he had shown himself to be responsible, composed, and financially well-off. Naturally, he drew plenty of attention from women.

Li Jiangbing made an appreciative clicking sound. “Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk...”

Jiang Cheng smiled faintly and turned her gaze back to the road ahead.

The vehicles left the roads around the compound and merged onto a main thoroughfare.

Zombies began appearing on and beside the road.

This was the same route everyone had taken on Sunday to the Fifth Ring Road to collect supplies. They had driven it once on the way there and once on the way back, crushing and killing countless zombies beneath their wheels.

If they thoroughly cleared it again today, the Tech District would be connected to the Fifth Ring Road—and through it, to the organization and the nation.

On the highway, vehicles of every size roared forward with their accelerators pressed down.

At the compounds, the residents formed battle lines and fought the zombies.

Inside the Maiduo building, people searched and cleared the stores one by one, hallway by hallway.

Amid the thunderous chop-chop-chop of rotors tearing through the air, two helicopters flew directly from the southern part of the city to Rainbow Stadium by the Fourth Ring Road.

Looking down from the sky, a combat team member shouted to the pilot, “They’re too spread out! This won’t work! Circle around twice and herd them together!”

The military helicopters began circling. Countless second-generation zombies were drawn by the enormous noise. They raised their heads and ran after the giant birds in the sky.

The giant birds circled again and again, until the ground below was packed solid with a dark, surging mass of zombies—a sight that made one’s scalp crawl.

Small aerial bombs were launched, shrieking as they hurtled toward the ground.

Weapons with excessive destructive power could not be used in a city. The higher-ups had approved only small aerial bombs, and each of the two military helicopters carried six.

But even small bombs were terrifying to the city’s residents.

Viewed from the tops of high-rises, the enormous explosions struck the eyes first, and only afterward reached the ears.

At that moment, the same scene was unfolding in every city across the country.

An indiscriminate blanket bombardment.

That afternoon, Secretary Sun received a call from Jiang Cheng.

“The route has been cleared. The resupply point is ready. Please open a supply corridor to the Tech District.”

Secretary Sun drew in a breath and replied firmly, “All right.”