Chapter 30: Brain-Dead—Beyond Saving
However, as Zhan Yun and the others headed toward where they had parked, they saw that the driver’s door of their car was inexplicably wide open. Looking closer, they realized that two figures were sneaking around inside their vehicle, clearly up to something.
Zhan Yun immediately frowned and strode toward the car. When the two people noticed someone approaching, they hastened their movements.
With a loud vroom, the engine started. The two slammed the doors shut, stepped on the gas, and sped off in their car.
The car had been stolen… This was trouble.
“That car just now—wasn’t it yours?” the middle-aged man asked.
Hearing this, Zhan Yun’s brow furrowed even deeper. He was thoroughly fed up with this man.
“You didn’t lock the doors? In times like these, how could you not be more careful? What are you going to do now? Without a car, how are we supposed to leave this place…” the middle-aged man nagged on and on.
“Enough,” Su Ruizhe said coldly, his young face expressionless. “There are no zombies around right now. Go wherever you want—we’re splitting up here.”
The middle-aged man hadn’t expected Su Ruizhe to speak so bluntly. His eyes flickered, but he quickly adjusted his expression and forced a smile. “Little brother, that was my fault just now—don’t take it to heart. So… how should we proceed from here?”
Heh. So he still wanted to latch onto them?
“There is no ‘we.’ You are you, and we are us,” Zhan Yun said coldly. With that, he strode toward the other side of the street. He needed to find another vehicle, or at least somewhere deserted where he could take the jeep out of Su Ruizhe’s space—but no matter which option, he had no intention of bringing along those three burdens.
“Hey, hey, wait for us!” the middle-aged man hurried after them when he saw the four leaving.
“Don’t follow us! Or don’t blame me for being rude!” Song Chengshu waved the knife in his hand menacingly. He was starting to find the middle-aged man annoying as well—saving them from the internet café had already been more than enough.
Seeing this, the middle-aged man didn’t dare follow any farther and hesitantly walked back to the long-haired woman and the burly man.
The long-haired woman shot him a huge eye roll, then hurried forward and quietly said something to Zhan Yun and the others.
Zhan Yun raised an eyebrow slightly and glanced at Su Ruizhe and the rest. Seeing that none of them objected, he nodded.
The woman let out a sigh of relief, a faint smile finally appearing on her face, and quickly dragged the burly man along to follow them.
When the middle-aged man realized that he was the only one left behind, he wanted to chase after them—but he was afraid of Song Chengshu’s threat. Angry and anxious, he vented his frustration by kicking a broken-down car parked by the roadside.
Beep—beep—beep!
The piercing sound of the car alarm tore through the night.
“Run!” Zhan Yun said without hesitation, grabbing Su Ruizhe and sprinting toward a restaurant along the street.
Such a huge commotion was bound to attract a large number of zombies. Without a car, there was no way they could evade a siege. On top of that, Zheng Jiahe’s leg was injured—he couldn’t run very far. Zhan Yun also didn’t want to risk exposing Su Ruizhe’s spatial ability by taking the car out. He decided to find a nearby place to hide first and wait until the zombies dispersed.
The restaurant he chose was a self-built two-story structure. The front door was tightly shut, but there was a balcony on the second floor. It was enclosed, yet one of the windows was open. As long as they could climb up to the second floor and enter from there, they’d be safe.
The zombies’ joints were stiff—they couldn’t even climb stairs, let alone scale walls.
They rushed to the restaurant entrance. Taking advantage of his height and long legs, Zhan Yun stepped on a water pipe and nimbly climbed into the second-floor balcony, then reached out to help Su Ruizhe up.
Once on the balcony, Su Ruizhe pretended to pick up a rope from the ground.
After lowering the rope, they first pulled up Song Chengshu and Zheng Jiahe. To save time, the burly man climbed up the same way Zhan Yun had earlier, then turned back to help the long-haired woman.
Just as the long-haired woman grasped the rope and, with the help of the burly man and Zheng Jiahe, was slowly being hauled up—
As she let go of the rope and reached for the balcony, someone suddenly grabbed her leg. She instantly lost her balance, her body tipping backward, nearly falling straight down. Luckily, the burly man reacted quickly, leaning half his body out over the balcony and grabbing her wrist.
Both of them let out muffled groans. The man’s ribs slammed into the stone edge of the balcony, sending sharp pain through him, while the woman’s wrist made a brittle crack. Whether it was dislocated or broken, no one knew—but the pain drained the color from her face. She bit down hard on her lip and didn’t make a sound.
Seeing this, Zheng Jiahe rushed over to help, only to realize that someone else had seized the opportunity to climb up.
The one who had grabbed the long-haired woman wasn’t a zombie—it was the middle-aged man from before. After realizing he’d caused a disaster, he had immediately chased after them, with several zombies already in pursuit. In his panic, he’d yanked the long-haired woman down and climbed up himself.
“Help! The zombies are right behind me! Pull me up!” the middle-aged man screamed hysterically. After dragging the woman down, he jumped upward, grabbed the rope, and flailed dability userately like a frog, trying to scramble onto the balcony.
Perhaps fueled by adrenaline, he actually managed it. He clung to the edge of the balcony, swung his right leg up, and was just about to haul himself inside when something cold and hard suddenly pressed against his head.
Trembling, he turned to look. In the moonlight, Zhan Yun stood above him, looking down coldly, a pistol in his hand. The dark muzzle was aimed straight at his temple.
“Go down.”
A bead of cold sweat slid down the middle-aged man’s forehead. He forced an ugly smile. “Big brother… let’s talk this out… let’s talk…”
“Go down. Don’t make me say it a second time.” Zhan Yun flipped off the safety, his finger resting on the trigger—the threat unmistakable.
The middle-aged man’s legs began to shake. He glanced back over his shoulder. Four or five zombies had already reached the area below the restaurant, stretching out their arms, trying to grab the “food” dangling in midair.
Along the long street, many more dark figures were swaying as they approached this way. If he jumped down now, he would die a horrible death.
He dability userately tried to reassure himself: That gun must be fake! Firearms were so strictly controlled in the country—how could an ordinary civilian possibly have a real one? This big guy was surely just trying to scare him with a fake gun!
Zhan Yun curled his lips into a cold smile, aimed at a zombie whose outstretched hand was just about to grab the long-haired woman, and pulled the trigger.
With a sharp bang, a bloody hole appeared right in the center of the zombie’s head. It didn’t even make a sound before collapsing straight to the ground.
“Go down.” Zhan Yun turned the muzzle back and said it to him for the third time.
The middle-aged man’s hands and feet went cold. Trembling, he jumped down and then fled as fast as he could.
The second-floor balcony window was extremely narrow, only wide enough for one person to pass through. Because the middle-aged man had occupied most of the space earlier, the long-haired woman and the burly man had been squeezed into the farthest corner the whole time. If not for the burly man’s strong arm strength, the long-haired woman wouldn’t have been able to hold on until now.
Once the middle-aged man was gone, the long-haired woman was finally able to climb up onto the balcony with Zheng Jiahe’s help.
After closing the balcony window, they opened the balcony door and went inside.
But the moment the door opened, all of them were stunned by what they saw. Inside the room, a little boy was crouched beneath a desk in the far corner, holding a tiny black kitten in his arms. Only two pairs of identical, glossy black eyes were visible.
“Uh, little one, where are your mom and dad?” Zheng Jiahe was the first to break the silence, walking toward the boy with a gentle smile.
The child huddled in the corner and gently shook his head.
“Big brothers and sisters want to rest here for a bit. Is that okay?” Zheng Jiahe asked softly.
The child tilted his head, thought for a moment, then nodded lightly.
Only then did everyone step into the room together and close the balcony door again.
Zhan Yun took a look around the room. There was a bed, a sofa, a color TV, a wardrobe, and a desk—it was clearly a bedroom. It seemed the restaurant owner lived directly on the premises.
Just then, there was suddenly a sound of pounding on the door outside the room.
Zheng Jiahe hesitated and was about to check it out, but as he turned around, his pant leg was suddenly tugged. He looked down and saw that it was the little boy.
The child shook his head at him, clearly signaling for him not to go over.
Listening to the urgent, chaotic pounding outside, Zheng Jiahe felt it was probably zombies hitting the door.
“Mommy… fell asleep… Daddy cried… Mommy woke up… bit Daddy… Daddy told me to wait… can’t go out…” The little boy looked to be about three years old. His speech wasn’t very fluent, but Zhan Yun and the others were able to piece together his fragmented words and arrive at a rough conclusion.
The boy’s parents were likely the owners of the restaurant. His mother had probably died of a high fever on the night of the Blood Moon, and her body then mutated and bit her husband. Before dying, the boy’s father had left the child some food and locked the door from the outside.
The ones pounding on the door now were very likely the boy’s mutated parents…
Zhan Yun abandoned his original plan of opening the door and killing the zombies. It would be better to leave the same way they came once the zombies downstairs dispersed. As for the boy’s parents, it was best to keep them sealed in there.
“Meow.” The kitten let out a soft, milky cry.
The little boy pulled a small piece of beef jerky from his pocket and let the kitten hold it with its tiny paws, nibbling at it bit by bit with its little milk teeth.
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