Chapter 26: Wait
Taking the wheel of a heavy truck for his very first time driving after getting his license, Fang Yue displayed a streak of boldness amidst his novice status.
Slamming his foot on the reverse gas pedal, the truck backed up with two loud rumbles, whereupon he whipped the steering wheel all the way around. With a silky-smooth turn, the truck glided away from the factory gates, charging straight up the slope toward the highway.
Once on the main road, Fang Yue drove with increasing stability.
As it turned out, Fang Yue’s persona as a reliable powerhouse would never shatter.
“My move earlier was pretty clever, wasn’t it?” Spotting the guard lying on the ground through the side mirror, Chi Xiaoxian turned his head toward Fang Yue to seek praise.
Fang Yue’s peripheral vision swept over him briefly. “You certainly know how to make full use of everything at your disposal.”
Chi Xiaoxian let out another chuckle.
Their vehicle was the sole car along the entire highway, the sound of the tires grinding against the road surface sounding exceptionally clear in the dead of night.
“Do you know the way?”
“Just keep driving in this direction, and follow the road signs later.”
The headlights cast a long beam of light into the darkness, within which countless tiny flying insects danced around. As the truck pushed continuously forward, insects slammed against the glass with constant splatters, sounding like raindrops hitting the window, yet carrying a tragic, solemn undertone.
Chi Xiaoxian felt somewhat hot inside the cab, as if a cluster of flames had been ignited inside his body, baking every limb and bone until they were thoroughly warm.
Reaching out to press the window button, he lowered the glass halfway down.
Yet even at the tail end of midsummer, the air rushing inside was unbearably stifling, the wind scorching hot, offering not a single trace of cooling relief.
Fang Yue noticed Chi Xiaoxian’s abnormal state: “What is it?”
“I don’t know…” Chi Xiaoxian panted, “I feel a bit uncomfortable.”
He suddenly caught a faint, strange scent in the air.
That scent grew remarkably vibrant in the scorching air, not only boring into Chi Xiaoxian’s nostrils, but even the pores across his skin were desperately craving it, greedily inhaling that rich, sweet aroma—
Resembling the single drop of perfume extracted from a thousand roses.
“Mmph—”
Unable to take it any longer, Chi Xiaoxian clapped his hands over his nose and poked his head out the window.
Fang Yue quickly brought the vehicle to a halt, reaching out to feel Chi Xiaoxian’s forehead.
Chi Xiaoxian acted as if dynamite had been lit under him, springing up from his seat and dodging his hand.
“On your hand—” Chi Xiaoxian looked over in fear and shock.
Fang Yue hesitated briefly before catching sight of a fresh wound on the inner side of his wrist.
He suddenly recalled that when getting into the vehicle earlier, he had reached out to search the truck’s drawer and accidentally touched a razor left behind by the driver.
Before he could treat it, the guard appeared, causing him to forget the matter entirely. By chance, his pain threshold had always been remarkably dull.
Fang Yue immediately jumped off the truck, went to the cargo container to locate the medical kit he had brought from the factory, disinfected the wound thoroughly with iodine, and wrapped it in gauze.
Performing this sequence of actions, he analyzed the situation calmly: the razor had never come into contact with Chi Xiaoxian’s blood, so he was essentially free from any risk of infection.
Analysis complete, he returned to the vehicle.
Chi Xiaoxian was slumping against the car window, taking panting breaths one by one. Seeing Fang Yue return, he quickly asked, “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” Fang Yue said composedly. “It wasn’t caused by you, so I shouldn’t be infected.”
Chi Xiaoxian was scared out of his wits. His own infection was one thing, but if he caused Fang Yue to suffer an injury and get infected, that would be an entirely different story.
“You react to blood, don’t you?” Fang Yue shifted the topic.
Chi Xiaoxian nodded, still somewhat shaken.
“That scent is pretty intoxicating. If I didn’t still have a bit of self-control, I really—”
He knit his brows, pausing for a moment before saying, “You’d better tie me up. It’s better to be cautious.”
Fang Yue looked at him, somewhat surprised.
He had indeed considered this plan, but feared that if he brought it up, Chi Xiaoxian wouldn’t be willing to return with him. He hadn’t expected Chi Xiaoxian to bring up the request proactively.
Stepping off the truck to double back to the cargo container, Fang Yue retrieved a long section of gauze.
Gauze was relatively soft, so tying him up with it shouldn’t feel overly uncomfortable either.
Returning to the cab, he was just about to turn on the interior light when he heard Chi Xiaoxian suddenly shout, “Don’t turn it on!”
Fang Yue froze for a second, looking toward Chi Xiaoxian.
Only then did he notice Chi Xiaoxian’s posture was somewhat strange—he had propped one leg up on his seat, curling his entire self into the chair.
“Still feeling uncomfortable?”
“No.”
Chi Xiaoxian turned his face away slightly, dodging Fang Yue’s line of sight.
“Do you need me to take a look?”
“…”
“What is going on?”
A silent, anxious tension filled the air.
Chi Xiaoxian maintained his posture without moving. After a long moment, he said with some difficulty, “Can you step off the truck and stay outside for a bit longer?”
Fang Yue stalled for two seconds, and then vaguely sensed something.
He didn’t look at Chi Xiaoxian again, merely uttering a low “Alright,” and stepped off the truck.
He didn’t walk too far, standing alone in the dark of night, his gaze fixed on the distance.
Out there lay a band of black silhouettes, impossible to tell if they were rolling hills or buildings.
After a moment, he heard a leaked sound.
Low, deliberately suppressed, sounding like a moan, yet also like a sigh.
After another long moment, he heard the sound of Chi Xiaoxian tapping his fingers against the window glass.
*Tap, tap.* Two sounds.
Fang Yue turned around and walked toward the driver’s seat.
A faint, subtle understanding seemed to exist between them now.
Before Fang Yue boarded the vehicle, Chi Xiaoxian rapidly tossed that small wad of gauze out the window, pretending as if nothing had happened.
Returning to his seat, Fang Yue said nothing about it, merely asking, “Can I turn the light on now?”
“Mm.”
Chi Xiaoxian extended his hands, allowing the strips of white gauze to wrap around his wrists one by one.
Seeing him keeping his eyelashes lowered, his lips lightly pursed, and his cheeks carrying a faint blush, Fang Yue felt as though he were doing something to pick on him.
At last, Fang Yue used small scissors to snip an opening into the final section of gauze, wrapping both sides around to tie a butterfly bow.
“Quite a unique way of tying.”
“They bind dressings like this in hospitals.”
—
The truck drove for another stretch. Amidst the hum of the engine, Chi Xiaoxian fell asleep once more.
Fang Yue drove continuously until one in the morning, finally feeling somewhat sleepy himself. Bringing the truck to a stop by the roadside, he nudged Chi Xiaoxian gently, wanting to call him to sleep in the cargo container together. After all, compared to glass windows, sleeping inside an opaque cargo container made it far harder for wandering zombies to spot them.
Chi Xiaoxian was sleeping soundly, however, failing to wake up even after being nudged twice. He had no choice but to adjust Chi Xiaoxian’s seat back slowly, letting him lie flat down. Then he lay down himself as well.
Cramming two adult men inside an enclosed cab inevitably felt somewhat stifling. Fang Yue lowered the car window by a finger’s width. A trace of wind finally blew in with the night, the warm breeze flowing through the cab, carrying away the light perspiration from their skin surfaces.
*Pitter, patter…*
A fine, thread-like cool sensation touched his face.
When Chi Xiaoxian opened his eyes, it was already raining outside.
Raindrops drew distorted streaks of water along the window, resembling swimming, transparent little snakes.
It was already morning, but because it was overcast, the sky and earth merged into a hazy gloom, his vision growing even blurrier.
Fang Yue woke up as well, raising the car window and switching on the windshield wipers. The view of the road ahead finally grew clear as heavy rain washed over the pavement, kicking up a hazy mist of water spray.
“Is autumn coming?” Chi Xiaoxian murmured to himself. “Is this autumn rain?”
“It’s almost November,” Fang Yue said, then thought of another matter. “I wonder if seasonal changes affect the zombies’ movements.”
“If only they could hibernate,” Chi Xiaoxian said expectantly.
“Then what would you do?”
“I’d hibernate right along with them—find a comfortable, warm spot and sleep through the entire winter.”
Chi Xiaoxian imagined himself as a little bear, hiding inside a tree hollow, lying on soft, dry grass, guarding a stash of dried fruits picked in autumn, quietly slipping into hibernation.
Because the rain obscured vision, Fang Yue kept the vehicle speed very slow. The bloodstains on the pavement that had originally congealed turned into red rivulets flowing in all directions after being soaked by the rain.
Faint metallic odors mingled within the damp, rainy air, permeating the space. This smell was different from earlier, bearing an ancient, decaying basement atmosphere. Though its attraction to Chi Xiaoxian was greatly diminished, it still brought a sense of stimulation.
Chi Xiaoxian closed the car window completely, isolating the sound of rain outside the glass, making it sound ethereal and hazy.
The further forward they drove, the thicker the red rivulets on the ground grew, causing both their hearts to rise in tension.
Before long, they drove into a harrowing accident scene.
A bus had overturned on its side, several sedans collided in a chain reaction, and scattered corpses and severed limbs lay across the road surface, as if a massive meat grinder had existed here.
Fang Yue was already driving along the edge, yet it proved impossible to avoid entirely. The truck rolled over them, the tires lifting and dropping, producing a skin-crawling, dull thudding sound.
Fang Yue’s brows knit tighter and tighter—not only because of the corpses littering the ground, but because the dashboard showed the fuel level was nearly empty.
Driving along the entire way, he hadn’t spotted a single gas station road sign.
Seeing Fang Yue lower his driving speed, Chi Xiaoxian asked what was wrong. Fang Yue told him the current situation.
“If only we could use navigation; at least we’d know how far it is,” Chi Xiaoxian let out a sigh.
Bringing the truck to a stop, Fang Yue retrieved his phone and charger from his backpack, plugging them into the vehicle’s power outlet. Chi Xiaoxian’s eyes lit up: “I almost forgot the truck could charge devices.”
He wanted to pull his phone out to siphon a bit of power and play games for a while, but sheepishly pulled his hand back—the vehicle’s fuel was almost on empty to begin with, so he couldn’t add insult to injury.
Once Fang Yue’s phone powered on, he checked offline navigation and discovered the nearest gas station along the highway route was still twenty kilometers away. Beside that, however, they could also head into District Four to refuel; the nearest gas station inside District Four was only five kilometers from them.
Fang Yue and Chi Xiaoxian discussed it and decided to divert into District Four to fill the truck up with gas.
—
Just as Fang Yue was about to turn onto the fork leading to District Four, a sedan came speeding toward them head-on.
Because it was driving against traffic, Fang Yue whipped the steering wheel hard to narrowly avoid it, but the sedan showed zero sign of turning, slamming head-first into the highway guardrail.
Fearing there were injured passengers inside the car, Fang Yue stepped off to inspect the situation, bringing his crowbar along.
The front compartment of the sedan was crushed into a massive dent, half the hood fallen off, the headlights completely shattered. Fang Yue looked into the driver’s cab, and his heart instantly sank as an eerie sensation arose naturally—
The driver’s cab was completely empty.
Immediately after, the damaged door of the driver’s cab fell off with a loud clatter. An object rolled out from inside the car; looking closely, Fang Yue couldn’t help breaking out in a cold sweat.
It was a lower half-body consisting only of parts below the arms.
Returning to the truck at top speed, he turned the vehicle around, slammed his foot on the accelerator, and drove away from the intersection.
“What was wrong with that car? Charging over as if blind, completely reckless,” Chi Xiaoxian asked in confusion, unable to see the interior of the sedan from the passenger seat.
“The person inside might have been infected,” Fang Yue said vaguely.
For some reason, he didn’t want to describe the details to Chi Xiaoxian. The person’s upper body had been devoured, yet their hands still held the steering wheel, their foot still resting on the gas pedal…
“You’re wet.”
Chi Xiaoxian pulled a towel out of his bag, bringing his two bound hands together to toss the towel to Fang Yue.
“Thanks.” Fang Yue wiped the rainwater from his face.
The rain grew heavier and heavier, the air temperature plummeting almost instantly. Wind wrapped in rainwater barged in through the gap in the car window, making Chi Xiaoxian, who was still wearing short sleeves, shiver violently. He pulled out his bedsheet and draped it over his legs.
As the truck entered the city center roads, the number of wandering zombies on the streets increased dramatically. Rain washed the blood from their bodies, the pale red wastewater swirling around as it drained into the city sewers.
After another ten minutes, they arrived at a gas station.
The gas station was situated in a very busy traffic area, filled with a chaotic mess of parked vehicles, crisscrossed with zero order.
Some cars had crashed blindly into each other, the bloody corpses of drivers still sitting inside the cabs; others had their doors wide open, the occupants nowhere to be found.
Fang Yue maneuvered the truck inside with great difficulty by squeezing through gaps, smashing past an abandoned taxi blocking the front, before finally pulling up near a refueling spot.
“You sit tight; I’ll step down to take a look,” Fang Yue said, moving to open the car door.
“Let me go down instead,” Chi Xiaoxian stopped him. “I’m a zombie; they show no reaction when bumping into me. But you’re different—you’ll be in danger.”
Chi Xiaoxian extended his tied hands toward Fang Yue: “Help me untie this.”
Fang Yue hesitated briefly, but ultimately helped him untie the gauze, saying, “You pay attention to safety too.”
Chi Xiaoxian nodded.
*Isn’t it just refueling? How hard could it be?*
After turning into a zombie, there were finally things that only he could do while Fang Yue couldn’t. Thinking this way, Chi Xiaoxian pulled the car door open with confidence.
“Wait—”
Before Fang Yue’s words could land, Chi Xiaoxian’s leg had already stepped out.
Immediately after, his uncooperative foot stepped right into thin air.
With a heavy *thud*, Fang Yue watched with his own eyes as he tumbled straight off the truck, rolling across the ground twice in supreme glory.
