Chapter 31: Flames
Before Chi Xiaoxian and Fang Yue even had time to express their shock, a blaring broadcast message echoed from the direction of the convoy.
“Refugees ahead, this is the Fifth Detachment of the Highland Military Emergency Rescue Team. Please pull your vehicle to the side, step out, and submit to inspection.”
The loudspeaker repeated the order once more, its tone grave and brooking no argument.
Chi Xiaoxian felt the phrasing sounded strange.
For refugees, shouldn’t the terms used revolve around disaster relief or assistance? Why were they demanding that they step out and submit to inspection?
Immediately after, Chi Xiaoxian understood the reason—the inspection was to confirm whether there were any infected individuals inside the vehicle. Once an infection was discovered, without a doubt, the outcome would either be forced removal or execution on the spot…
At the thought of this, Chi Xiaoxian bit his lip hard unconsciously.
He realized the reason behind Kevin’s eccentric behavior earlier. Kevin was far more sensitive to these military personnel than either of them.
Although he hadn’t explained why he ended up in a psychiatric hospital, his electronic ankle monitor said everything—not every patient in a psychiatric hospital required electronic shackles.
He was an important figure, at least to the psychiatric hospital, functioning as a target requiring constant monitoring at all times.
At this moment, however, their car was already fully exposed within the other party’s line of sight. It was too late to run—what were they to do?!
Fang Yue suddenly turned his head to say to him, “You stay in the car for now; I’ll step down and take a look.”
“Wait…”
The convoy had already driven extremely close to them, the megaphone still repeating that same line.
Fang Yue’s expression remained unchanged as he opened the car door and stepped out. Chi Xiaoxian shrank down into his seat, able only to pray that the off-road vehicle’s tinted glass could keep him hidden.
An armed soldier stepped down from the convoy, neatly and cleanly dressed, carrying a dignified countenance as he spoke to Fang Yue in a booming voice: “Where did you come from?”
“The Core Region,” Fang Yue said, showing no trace of emotion.
“And where are you heading now?”
“There are zombies in the Core Region; we are returning to District Six.”
“Did you sustain any injuries from zombie attacks along the way?”
Fang Yue assumed he was asking about him personally, replying, “No.”
The officer jotted down notes rapidly on a handheld tablet, saying while writing, “Produce your ID cards.”
Fang Yue’s heart stirred, yet he said, “My apologies, we left in too much of a hurry and didn’t bring them along.”
The officer asked no further questions, merely writing on his own.
Just as Fang Yue’s heart eased slightly, the officer suddenly raised the brim of his hat, fixing a hawk-like gaze onto the off-road vehicle. Narrowing his eyes, he said, “Please trouble the person in the passenger seat to step out for a moment.”
Fang Yue stood rooted to the spot, unmoving.
“Didn’t hear me clearly?” the officer said. “Do I need to repeat it?”
Just as Fang Yue was about to speak, the driver’s side window slowly rolled down, revealing Chi Xiaoxian’s face—
Except he had unearthed a pair of sunglasses from somewhere and put them on his face.
Fang Yue’s heart instantly leapt into his throat, unsure what scheme he was pulling.
“Hello!” Chi Xiaoxian grinned, tossing a head of dazzling silver hair, flashing the most brilliant smile at the officer.
This greeting caught even the officer off guard, leaving him momentarily dazed alongside Fang Yue.
“So sorry, it’s a bit inconvenient for me to step down. I injured my waist during wirework for a shoot last month, making walking rather difficult.”
“A shoot?”
“Yes, I’m an actor.”
The officer stared at Chi Xiaoxian for a short while.
Chi Xiaoxian’s silver-gray hair, paired with the sunglasses, plus that delicate lower half of a face revealed beneath the frames—a small yet straight nose tip, pale pink lips, and a smooth jawline… no matter how one looked at it, he appeared for all the world like a decent-sized celebrity star.
Chi Xiaoxian opened the car door, waving a hand at Fang Yue: “Manager, come give me a hand. Even though I have a waist injury, I still need to cooperate with their work, don’t I?”
Fang Yue quickly took swift steps forward. Chi Xiaoxian had already extended a slender, pale arm. The moment Fang Yue took hold, he heard Chi Xiaoxian bare his teeth with a “Hiss of pain,” giving his hand a scolding slap as he said in a delicate, spoiled tone, “Be gentle, don’t you know how?! My waist!”
Fang Yue: “.” *Keep acting, why don’t you.*
“Forget it,” seeing the two pulling back and forth, the officer knit his brows. “You sit tight for now. Did you bring an ID?”
“Sorry, I don’t have one either…” Chi Xiaoxian pressed his palms together in apology.
“Register both your names and addresses here.”
“May I ask what this information is used for?”
Chi Xiaoxian’s tone was polite. Although the officer appeared stern, he still explained to him: “To register uninfected citizens and their regions.”
Fang Yue took the registration form and filled in his and Chi Xiaoxian’s names, using homophonic characters instead, while filling in a random address. He guessed the military was currently offline as well, unable to verify their real identities, or else they wouldn’t have handed them a paper form to fill out.
He intentionally wrote his handwriting in a sloppy scrawl. Taking it back, the officer didn’t even examine it closely, stuffing it directly into his jacket as if performing a routine procedure.
Light dawned in Fang Yue’s mind—the primary mission of these people was not so-called statistical census, but intercepting vehicles to search for infected individuals, then hauling them away for treatment… or executing them outright.
If Chi Xiaoxian were like ordinary zombies—devoid of sanity and wearing a frantic expression—he would likely have been recognized at a single glance. Luckily, however, they seemed to implicitly assume anyone displaying normal mental faculties was uninfected.
“Can we leave now?” Fang Yue asked.
“Uninfected citizens may each receive a portion of food supplies. Hold on a moment.”
“Thank you.”
Seeing the officer turn to board his vehicle, Chi Xiaoxian let out a gentle sigh of relief, only for a light, ethereal query to drop beside his ear: “…Manager?”
Chi Xiaoxian squeezed out a smile: “It was a method, wasn’t it?”
Fang Yue raised an eyebrow, neither denying nor confirming it.
Just then, as the officer held two bags preparing to step down, another officer ran over from behind, leaning into his ear to whisper something. The first officer nodded and set the bags back down.
Following that, he walked over to Fang Yue and Chi Xiaoxian, saying, “You two come board a vehicle with us.”
Caught unprepared, Chi Xiaoxian said, “…What?”
“Just received a satellite communication—command requires us to transfer uninjured citizens to temporary shelters for centralized evacuation whenever possible.”
“Where is the shelter?” Chi Xiaoxian suppressed the anxiety in his heart, barely managing to ask.
“Underground in the Core Region,” the officer said. “We just received the notice ourselves.”
Chi Xiaoxian said urgently, “But—”
“Still have family in District Six?”
“Yes…” Chi Xiaoxian went along with his words.
“It doesn’t matter. The military will be responsible for locating survivors and transferring them. Perhaps you’ll meet in the shelter. Besides, relying on your own strength, heading back won’t accomplish anything anyway.”
Chi Xiaoxian cast a gaze seeking help toward Fang Yue, though it was obscured by the sunglasses.
Under no circumstances could he go to a shelter!
Fang Yue caught Chi Xiaoxian’s hand, giving it a gentle squeeze as if soothing him.
“How about this—we’ll follow you in our car,” Fang Yue said with composure. “My artist isn’t used to riding in other vehicles, plus he has a waist injury, making it inconvenient to move around. I see you don’t have many vehicles either; we might run into other refugees along the way, so driving our own allows us to carry a couple more.”
The officer pondered for a moment, then nodded: “That’s even better. Then follow behind us—don’t lose us.”
“No problem,” Fang Yue said with certainty.
Fang Yue sat back down in the driver’s seat. The officer suddenly tapped on his car window again, prompting Fang Yue to roll the window down hurriedly once more.
“Don’t stay at the very back. Cut in as the second-to-last vehicle so you don’t get lost.”
“Understood.”
The officer gave a greeting to the driver of the very last vehicle in the convoy. That driver backed his car up a bit, clearing a parking spot for Fang Yue’s group.
“Are we really going to follow them?” Chi Xiaoxian said with deep concern. “What do we do for the next step?”
“Right now it’s inconvenient to slip away; it would arouse suspicion instead,” Fang Yue observed their surroundings, saying calmly. “Wait for an opportunity.”
—
Before long, the sky finally darkened completely. The dense black night resembled a massive maw of an abyss, swallowing the scenery along the riverbank inch by inch. Only the faint light beam cast by the car headlights shone upon the phototactic little insects struggling fiercely in this season.
Through the rearview mirror, Fang Yue saw a chubby officer step down from the rear car, walking up to their vehicle, and tapping on Fang Yue’s car window.
“How can I help you?” Fang Yue asked politely.
The chubby officer pointed at the walkie-talkie: “The convoy has been driving continuously for seven hours. It’s been decided we’ll rest in place for half an hour. You guys take a break too, eat something before setting off.”
“Understood.”
“Did you get your food supplies?” the chubby officer asked with concern.
Fang Yue nodded.
Peering through the lowered car window, the chubby officer looked curiously into Fang Yue’s car, catching sight of the extraordinarily striking Chi Xiaoxian.
“I heard you’re an artist?” the chubby officer asked out of curiosity.
Chi Xiaoxian pressed two fingers together at his temple, giving a light flick as he offered a cool greeting.
“Yo, quite stylish indeed! As expected of a star—you really do look different from ordinary people, huh!” the chubby officer said cheerfully.
Rummaging through his pant pockets, he pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper, then fished a pen out from his chest pocket, handing them to Fang Yue together: “Have your star sign an autograph for me!”
Through the glow of the car headlights, Fang Yue made out the paper clearly—an empty administrative penalty ticket.
“You know my artist?” Fang Yue masked the disbelief in his tone.
“Ah, don’t know him, don’t know him,” the officer waved his hands repeatedly. “It’s just that I have a young daughter who loves chasing stars, especially handsome male stars—there isn’t one she doesn’t recognize. Her birthday is coming up; I’ll get a signature to bring home for her, she’ll definitely be thrilled!”
*Even that worked?*
Fang Yue watched with his own eyes as Chi Xiaoxian casually drew a wild, flying scrawl on the back of that administrative penalty ticket.
Taking the paper, the officer glanced at it and couldn’t resist saying, “As expected of a star, even the signature has style—I can barely recognize what characters these are.”
Chi Xiaoxian pushed his sunglasses up, saying in all seriousness to that chubby officer, “Take it back for your daughter to look at; she’s sure to recognize it. After all, my signature sells for quite a high price; she definitely knows it.”
Folding the paper up, the chubby officer placed it back into his pant pocket. Before leaving, he instructed them to rest well and avoid fatigued driving.
—
Once he departed, Fang Yue turned his head, looking at Chi Xiaoxian sitting there wearing sunglasses with an utterly far-fetched demeanor: “…Where did the sunglasses come from?”
“Randomly unearthed from the drawer.”
“Got addicted to acting, did you?”
Chi Xiaoxian pulled the sunglasses halfway down, a pair of gray eyes sparkling with a cunning glint: “Not gonna lie, it’s pretty thrilling. What do you think, Manager?”
“If a course were offered on how to talk absolute nonsense, you could definitely apply for a tenured professorship,” Fang Yue said with a flat expression.
“…Thank you for your praise.”
Fang Yue checked the time, then looked outside.
Beyond the window lay a thick, dense nightscape. Aside from the areas illuminated by the car headlights, everything else melted into a viscous darkness.
Now was a good opportunity to escape, but he was contemplating whether to slip away on foot or drive off.
Taking the car was clearly more convenient and safer, but surrounded by military vehicles front and rear, slipping away without drawing attention would be difficult.
“Ah!” Chi Xiaoxian suddenly remembered something. “Where’s Kevin? Did he jump into the river earlier?”
Fang Yue nodded: “He likely recognized the military and didn’t want to run into their people.”
Just as he spoke, Kevin’s face suddenly appeared outside the passenger window, startling Chi Xiaoxian so much his zombie affliction was almost cured on the spot, springing straight up from his chair.
Kevin was soaked through, mud clinging to his clothes, his long, withered yellow hair dangling across his face in thin strands, his complexion deathly pale like a phantom.
Hunche over, he opened the car door swiftly and sat inside in a flash. The surrounding officers were all resting, seemingly failing to notice his appearance.
“Are you injured?” Chi Xiaoxian didn’t know how high the bridge was, asking out of concern.
With icy clothes clinging to his body, Kevin shivered violently from the cold, yet pressed a finger against his lips to signal him not to speak, then whispered in a low voice, “Listen carefully.”
*Sizzle, sizzle—*
Chi Xiaoxian froze.
*Sizzle-sizzle, sizzle-sizzle—*
An eerie noise originated from the bridge structure on his left. It sounded as if something were clawing against the outer wall, the noise making one’s jaw ache and skin break out in goosebumps.
Chi Xiaoxian suddenly felt his heart pound wildly, followed by an almost deafening roar ringing in his brain—the frequency of that roaring noise actually matched that jaw-aching sound.
Clutching his head, Chi Xiaoxian endured the headache, saying, “Let’s leave fast—”
Fang Yue had just started the off-road vehicle when a massive *BANG* erupted. The roof of the off-road vehicle ahead of them caved deeply inward.
The three looked upward toward that indentation; an extraordinarily muscular zombie over two meters tall was snarling, smashing spiderweb-like cracks into the rear window of the off-road vehicle with two quick blows of its fists.
And that was a military off-road vehicle!
*BANG! BANG!*
Gunshots rang out in close succession as other officers jumped off their vehicles one after another to engage in battle.
The ground suddenly began vibrating at that moment. Immediately after, even a tassel hanging from the rearview mirror began swaying.
Fang Yue hurriedly whipped the steering wheel all the way around, just about to turn the car around, when he caught sight of an even more terrifying scene in the rearview mirror—a massive, pitch-black wave of zombies was sprinting from behind along the highway, like a dense swarm of bees.
Under the illumination of the headlights, they saw the clothing on that wave of zombies was entirely dark brown. Looking closer, they turned out to be camouflage uniforms—identical to the attire worn by the convoy officers!
A deduction flashed rapidly through Fang Yue’s brain—perhaps the zombie virus amplified the original person’s physical characteristics, which explained why those zombies looked so muscular and powerful moments ago.
At the same time, several zombies suddenly emerged along the bridge guardrail, clinging or hanging onto it like geckos. The sizzle noise from earlier was precisely the friction sound made as they climbed upward along the riverbank embankment.
A zombie planted its foot on the guardrail, kicked off with both legs, and leaped straight toward their car.
Fang Yue slammed on the accelerator, throwing that zombie off with a sharp turn.
Rising and falling gunshots were left behind them as they hurtled toward their originally designated direction at top speed—in a direct confrontation, with just the three of them, they stood absolutely zero chance of victory.
Driving a distance away, Chi Xiaoxian lowered his car window and turned his head to look back toward the previous direction. A vehicle seemed to have exploded over there, already transformed into a soaring sheet of blazing flames.
—*He hoped that chubby, cheerful officer could make it back home before his daughter’s birthday.*
