Chapter 17: The First Stop
Having set the graduate teaching building one kilometer away as their next target, Fang Yue and Chi Xiaoxian realized a problem almost simultaneously.
They needed to accurately map out the specific distribution of zombies outside so they could bypass them. No matter how you spun it, three people taking them on in a direct clash was an unwise choice.
Fang Yue decided to spend two days scouting to uncover some patterns and tracks in the zombies’ movements. Before that, however, Yuan Chengmin was already out of food. He didn’t have much to begin with, and after getting pillaged by Wang Xu’s gang, telling him to wait another two days might prove somewhat difficult.
If Yuan Chengmin lived directly below them, handing food down vertically through the window would be very convenient. Since he lived on the floor below the room across from theirs, however, the window drop method was useless, leaving taking a risk to step out the door as the only option.
And so, they agreed on a time. Seizing a moment when no zombies were present on these two floors, they opened the doors. Chi Xiaoxian packed the food into a plastic bag and dropped it down from the stairwell landing, while Yuan Chengmin caught it below—the entire process taking less than twenty seconds.
Next was scouting the enemy’s situation.
The view outside Fang Yue’s dorm room window was not expansive, two-thirds of it blocked by Building B. They could barely see a section of the street leading toward the print shop, which was far from enough.
“If only we could find a phone selfie stick to extend out,” Chi Xiaoxian pondered.
Fang Yue was clearly not the type to buy a selfie stick, however. They disassembled a mop, then a broom, joined the two poles together, and finally bound the phone tightly to the end with cloth strips before carefully extending it out the window frame.
There were simply too many zombies wandering the campus streets during the day, so they decided to observe at night instead. Chi Xiaoxian held the phone “stand” and moved it slowly, while Fang Yue tallied the number of zombies on the street in front of Building A, Building B, and the print shop that led toward the academic buildings.
Before long, Chi Xiaoxian’s arms couldn’t hold out any longer, shaking like a sieve, leaving the recorded footage so blurry it was hard to count accurately.
“You tally, I’ll hold the pole,” Fang Yue noticed as well.
Chi Xiaoxian’s arm muscles were still stiff, his hand shaking non-stop as he put pen to paper, drawing squiggly, distorted lines across the page.
Looking at those earthworm-like characters, Fang Yue hesitated to speak.
“I know I need to work out,” Chi Xiaoxian said composedly, clamping down on his endlessly shaking wrist. “Stating the obvious for you to save you some breath.”
“…”
After recording for a while, both of them noticed something off.
The number of zombies wandering outside tonight was far greater than over the past few days—nearly matching the density during daytime.
“Why are they coming out to tryhard in the dead of night instead of sleeping?” Chi Xiaoxian couldn’t help but mutter.
Previously, they had assumed zombies were less active at night because insufficient light affected their vision. Now that all the streetlights were powered off and dark, however, the zombie count had actually increased, indicating they did not rely on vision to hunt.
Perhaps it was hearing or smell, or even some other unknown method of perception.
This escalated Chi Xiaoxian and Fang Yue’s night escape plan straight to a hell-tier difficulty.
Neither could come up with a good idea for a moment.
At the thought of only being able to eat protein powder to maintain vital signs if they couldn’t reach the convenience store, Chi Xiaoxian even developed the hallucination of several stones grinding against each other inside his kidneys…
Seeing Chi Xiaoxian clutching his upper abdomen, Fang Yue asked, “What’s wrong?”
Chi Xiaoxian had a complex expression: “I feel like my kidneys are a bit deficient.”
“Where you’re clutching is your liver.”
“…” Chi Xiaoxian let out a sigh and simply lay back down on the bed, leaving his calves swinging back and forth by the edge.
“Don’t lose heart,” Fang Yue resisted the urge to stuff his legs back in. “There’s always a way.”
Pondering for a moment, he said, “First, direct confrontation can be ruled out. There is no way the two of us can beat that many zombies. Which means we must precisely pick a route, pass through as quickly as possible, and ideally draw the zombies away to other locations.”
“Previously, the method we used was tossing aluminum cans and phone alarms. That works for short-distance escapes, but now the distance is a full kilometer. Aluminum cans aren’t enough, and we only have two phones. We can’t just toss them all along the way.”
Covering himself with a blanket, Chi Xiaoxian let out a grunt to signal agreement.
*Tossing all along the way…*
Chi Xiaoxian sat up with a start: “Got it!”
“Don’t we have personal mobility devices?! We can use a mobility device to drag aluminum cans across the ground as it moves—the noise of the cans scraping against the pavement can draw the zombies away!”
Fang Yue raised an eyebrow slightly. Chi Xiaoxian always had unexpected, clever tricks up his sleeve.
“There’s a critical problem, though—a mobility device requires someone standing on it to move…” Chi Xiaoxian remembered an essential detail.
“That’s not a problem. A simple modification will do,” Fang Yue said nonchalantly.
Chi Xiaoxian clapped his hands: “Awesome!”
The mobility devices were stored in a dedicated charging room beside the dorm building for students to retrieve and use at will. Fang Yue couldn’t complete the installation of this pressure mechanism inside the dorm room, so they had to find a way to reach the charging room first to retrieve a mobility device.
After Chi Xiaoxian shared their idea with Yuan Chengmin, they set a time for their escape. The first stop was the charging room downstairs, which meant they had to eliminate the zombies inside the building first to smoothly reach it.
Chi Xiaoxian and Fang Yue packed up their remaining food and clothing, each bringing along their previously used weapons.
Once the agreed-upon time arrived and seeing no zombies outside the door, all three stepped out at the same time!
With the power cut, the stairwell was pitch-black, filled with a foul, rotting stench. Fang Yue switched on his flashlight, illuminating two floors of space, allowing Chi Xiaoxian to clearly take in the horrifying sight inside the stairwell.
The door to the dorm room opposite Chi Xiaoxian’s was wide open, its thin door panel smashed by zombies, a broken metal strip jutting awkwardly into the air. A bloody trail stretched from the bedroom to the doorway, where a severed hand lay at the entrance—half its palm gnawed away, its cross-section a mangled mess of blood and flesh.
Chi Xiaoxian nearly stepped on that severed palm, clamping his mouth shut tight to prevent himself from crying out.
They tiptoed down to the third floor. Catching sight of the “302” doorplate, Chi Xiaoxian suddenly remembered Feng Bing mentioning an anti-wolf stun gun in her room, so he tugged on Fang Yue’s wrist and gave him a look.
Fang Yue remembered it as well. The door to Feng Bing’s room was half-ajar, the lock undamaged, but a few footprints covered the doormat outside, deep red blood seeping onto them.
Seeing the two stop on the third floor, Yuan Chengmin asked quietly in confusion, “What is it?”
“We want to go inside to find a weapon.”
“Hurry up then, I’ll wait at the door.”
Yuan Chengmin felt somewhat terrified in his heart, but right now the three of them were a unit; he couldn’t leave the other two to set off alone.
Chi Xiaoxian followed behind Fang Yue into the living room. The room was in complete disarray: the sofa was tilted to one side with a broken leg, the water dispenser bucket had rolled onto the floor, and deep red footprints stretched toward the bedroom, heading inward.
*Swish—!* The curtain was blown open by the wind, puffing up like a white cloth bag.
Chi Xiaoxian, who was on high alert, was startled by the sight.
Immediately after, with a *clack-clack*, the empty water bucket rolled gently across the floor.
Chi Xiaoxian stared at the footprints on the floor, the hair on his arms standing on end. He reached out to grab the hem of Fang Yue’s shirt. The comfortable cotton texture of the fabric allowed him to regain a trace of composure from his imagined terror.
Fang Yue pushed open the bedroom door cautiously, yet the room inside was surprisingly neat and orderly. Feng Bing appeared to be a girl who truly loved life—a floral tablecloth, a cat-shaped desk lamp, and a glass vase on the desk holding a bouquet of dried flowers.
Feng Bing hadn’t had the chance to say where the stun gun was placed, so they had to look for it themselves.
Seeing nothing on the desk, Fang Yue was about to rifle through the drawers when a nerve in Chi Xiaoxian’s brain twitched violently.
By the time his brain registered what was happening, his body had already collided with Fang Yue, tackling him to the side.
A zombie was actually hiding on the bed opposite Feng Bing’s!
It launched itself from the bed, leaping down like a pit viper that had lurked in ambush for a long time finally catching its prey. Fang Yue delivered a blunt strike with his rod that landed right on its skull; it wobbled, lost its balance, and pitched backward.
Seizing the opportunity, Fang Yue continued searching, but opening two drawers in a row yielded no sign of the stun gun Feng Bing mentioned.
Low, raspy snarls of the zombie came from behind as it actually crawled back up in a wobbly, distorted manner.
Knowing there was no way to subdue it completely, Fang Yue yanked Chi Xiaoxian along as they rushed out, slamming the bedroom door shut at lightning speed.
Yuan Chengmin suddenly called out at the entrance, “One’s crawling up from below! Are you two done yet?!”
“Not yet!”
Heavy *thud-thud* sounds suddenly echoed against the bedroom door. Fang Yue and Chi Xiaoxian hurriedly rushed over to brace against the door. Once the door was smashed open by the zombie, they would truly be attacked from both front and back.
“What do we do now?”
“These monsters aren’t easy to kill off. You and Yuan Chengmin go upstairs first, get back into the room and lock the door.”
“We leave together. I’ll count down three seconds, then we release the door and rush up together.”
“This zombie’s speed is too fast; we can’t risk three lives.”
Chi Xiaoxian’s brain spun at high speed, his gaze landing on the coat rack near the living room entrance, where a jacket and a gray canvas bag hung.
This sparked a flash of inspiration—a stun gun was an item meant to be brought outside, so it was very likely stored in the jacket or the bag.
“Brace against it first, give me a second!” Chi Xiaoxian rushed over to the coat rack, searching through the jacket and canvas bag.
There were quite a few items inside the canvas bag: books, a pencil case, tissues, an umbrella… Finally, at the very bottom of the bag, his fingers found that anti-wolf stun gun!
Catching the stun gun tossed over by Chi Xiaoxian, Fang Yue opened a crack in the bedroom door. The zombie’s hand shot out from the gap in a flash, clawing wildly in the air.
Lining up his target, he pressed the switch against its arm.
*Crack!* Electrical sparks flashed past in an instant. The arm twitched twice and limply dropped back.
“It works!” Chi Xiaoxian said in delight.
—
Outside the door, Yuan Chengmin had already been scared out of his wits by the zombie rapidly crawling up the stairs.
This zombie was entirely different from those he had encountered before—it didn’t walk upright on two legs, but pressed its belly against the stairs, crawling upward with extraordinarily flexible limbs, its movements resembling a grotesque frog.
Unable to wait for the two of them to find any weapon, he turned around and began scrambling frantically up the stairs.
His rapid breathing and panicked footsteps instantly drew the attention of the zombie in the stairwell. The zombie raised its head, and from that terrifying, contorted face, Yuan Chengmin recognized who he was—Wang Xu!
In the half-second he froze in shock, Wang Xu bounced up with astonishing force, closing the distance between them in an instant.
Yuan Chengmin only felt a gust of foul, rotting wind blow against his face, that gaping, bloody maw inches away, yet he stood pinned in place as if his soul had been ripped away.
In the next second—*CRACK!*
Fang Yue arrived just in time. A blinding arc of golden electrical sparks flashed through the dim stairwell.
Wang Xu twitched violently, tumbling down the stairs in a heap.
