Chapter 20
The very next second after the iron gate slammed shut, more than ten zombies lunged at it with hideous roars.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Bang! Bang! Bang!
In life, these zombies had all been elderly people too frail to carry heavy things or do hard labor, yet now they possessed terrifying strength. With both arms raised, they smashed wildly at the gate, their sharp nails scraping across the iron with a scalp-crawling sound.
Then came a sharp crack—one of the screws on the gate hinge was shaken loose.
The zombies seemed encouraged by this and threw themselves at the gate even harder.
Amid the flying dust, the remaining screws on the hinge all dropped off one by one.
Seeing that the iron gate was about to collapse, Wei Cheng immediately pulled a six-step outdoor ladder out of the safe house. Before the ladder had even been fully set up, he had already climbed to the top of the wall and saw the dozen or so ferocious zombies below.
His face stayed calm. Holding the little crossbow, he rapidly loaded it and aimed straight at one zombie trying to shove a bloody hand through the crack in the gate.
The cold-glinting steel bolt first struck the zombie’s left knee joint. It instantly staggered and fell, knocking down three more zombies tightly packed behind it.
They writhed on the ground, trying to get back up, their gaping bloody mouths giving off endless hoarse roars. Then, in quick succession, more than ten steel bolts pierced through one rotten, hairless skull after another.
This self-defense crossbow did not have great range, but it made up for that with excellent accuracy and good sustained firing ability. Its magazine held twenty detachable steel bolts, so dealing with the ten-odd zombies below was effortless.
Once the zombies were truly dead, the overburdened iron gate crashed down with a thunderous boom!
Wei Cheng watched for a moment. Once he confirmed there were no other zombies nearby, he jumped down from the ladder.
As he walked, he smoothly replaced the crossbow’s magazine with a fresh one. Hiding behind the fallen gate, he swept the surroundings with a wary gaze, then checked whether any of the zombies might revive before finally letting his shoulders relax.
Still, he had killed a total of twelve zombies, so why had the system not notified him of earning any Twisty Coins? Could it be because Guanguan had not truly participated?
“Guanguan, come out.”
Guanguan came out of the safe house holding little Black Apricot. The moment he saw the elderly zombies sprawled messily outside the gate, along with the bloody severed limbs, he froze where he stood. Under the helmet, his chubby little face tightened. “Big brother…”
This time, Wei Cheng had not cleaned up the zombies and body parts in advance.
In the future, they would face even bloodier scenes, and there would be no way to avoid them. Rather than let the child panic when the time came, it was better to let him slowly build up resistance starting now.
The system’s mission to kill 500 zombies was probably also meant to help Guanguan grow.
Cruel as that was for a three-year-old child.
But in the apocalypse, there was no distinction between children and the elderly—only survivors and walking corpses.
Still, Wei Cheng felt a stab of pity and rubbed Guanguan’s head. “It’s okay. Don’t be scared. Big brother already killed them all. They can’t hurt you anymore.”
Little Black Apricot suddenly sprang out of Guanguan’s arms, shaking its little head and trying to bite the zombies.
“Little Apricot, stop!”
Guanguan grabbed the puppy and carried it aside. “Monsters are dirty-dirty!”
The little black dog barked twice, as if saying it understood.
Wei Cheng added, “Right now the iron gate is covered in zombie handprints. One more attack and it might be completely smashed through. We need to go into the village and look for a suitable iron gate.”
Guanguan lifted his pale little face. “Okay…”
He wanted to look, but was too scared to. Pointing at the ground, he asked, “Big brother, what do we do with this?”
Wei Cheng thought for a moment. “First let’s go see if anyone has a small handcart. We’ll haul these monsters away and burn them.”
Most of the houses in Sun Village were designed very similarly, and most of the iron gates had been custom-made at the same building materials shop in town, so finding a suitable gate was not hard. The difficult part was that they did not know whether the house they chose had zombies or living people inside.
Holding Guanguan’s hand, Wei Cheng walked along the village road, gripping the fully loaded crossbow tightly. Little Black Apricot followed closely at their feet.
Guanguan tugged on his brother’s hand and suddenly said, “Guanguan feels like this is familiar.”
Wei Cheng’s attention was fully on watching the surroundings, so he did not hear clearly. “What is it?”
Guanguan shook his head. He could not really explain it. He just felt that big brother holding his hand, while little Black Apricot scampered around their feet, somehow seemed a tiny bit familiar.
There were more than thirty households in Sun Village. Around twenty of them had their gates unlocked, which meant there were either people or zombies inside. The remaining ten or so had padlocks on the gates—those people might have left the village, or they might already have died during the high-temperature days.
After walking for more than ten minutes, Wei Cheng finally found a gate very similar in height and width to their own. The gate stood slightly ajar, and the house did not look like it had any living people inside.
He had some memory of this household. The owner was an old man living alone who had first lost his wife and then his son. Grandma had once told him that the old man was one of the village’s key poverty alleviation targets—someone receiving targeted poverty assistance. Leaders often came to bring him rice and flour, and to show the success of the poverty-relief work, village officials had replaced his old broken wooden gate with a sturdy stainless-steel one.
Wei Cheng lowered his voice. “Guanguan, do you want to go into the safe house and wait for big brother?”
Guanguan tapped his Ultraman helmet. “Guanguan not scared! Guanguan brave! Ultraman gives Guanguan power!”
“Okay. Then let’s go in and take a look.”
The moment they stepped inside, a nauseating stench of rot hit them.
Wei Cheng immediately pulled out a face mask. Guanguan was a little better off because he still had his helmet on. Pointing toward the chicken coop, he said, “So many little chicken monsters!”
The chickens in the coop had long since rotted, and quite a few green flies buzzed nearby.
As they approached the house, they could hear a harsh wheezing moan.
Wei Cheng pressed down on the crossbow at his waist and warned, “Stay close to big brother. If there’s danger, go into the safe house right away.”
Guanguan nodded obediently.
Wei Cheng stood still outside for a moment before slowly nudging the door open with the bow.
He saw an emaciated old man lying on the bedboards, his empty eye sockets crawling with white maggots.
All kinds of pills were scattered across the floor.
The old man had succeeded in seeking death, but the poisonous fog had still turned him into a living dead man.
His rotting body was stuck to the bed and could not move, but his mouth could still produce that ghastly zombie rasp.
Suppressing his nausea, Wei Cheng shot a steel bolt and ended the old man’s zombie state.
Then he immediately picked up little Guanguan, who had been hiding behind him, and ran out of the house.
[Congratulations! The little house owner participated in killing 1 zombie! Earned 10 Twisty Coins!]
Guanguan slapped both little hands over his mouth, eyes wide and round. “Big brother! Guanguan killed a monster too!”
They searched around the house again and found no more zombies. However, in a storage shed filled with mineral water bottles and cardboard boxes, they did find a three-wheeled handcart.
The bloody remains in front of their own gate were currently the most dangerous thing, because the smell of blood would easily attract zombie hordes from miles around. As soon as they found the cart, they hurried back to clean up the remains and scrub the ground.
Fortunately, none of the zombie corpses or Wang Ajun’s severed limbs were missing, which meant they were still safe for the moment.
Wei Cheng threw the corpses into a dirt trench where villagers often dumped trash, then tossed in a lighter wrapped in a bunch of dry straw. Before long, the zombies were completely swallowed by flames.
“Come on. Let’s go take down the gate.”
Wei Cheng was not tall enough, so once again the ladder had to help.
Old-style rural gates were easy to remove. As long as you unscrewed the six screws on the four hinges, then lifted gently, the whole gate panel could come right off.
Meanwhile, after learning that he too had helped kill a monster, Guanguan’s confidence had soared. He volunteered himself as big brother’s little bodyguard, holding little Black Apricot and vigilantly watching their surroundings. If any monster appeared, he would warn big brother, who was busy stealing someone else’s gate!
Wei Cheng leaned the removed steel gate against the wall, tilted the three-wheeled cart slightly, then gave it a light push. The steel gate automatically fell onto the cart.
Only after they had hauled it back and successfully installed it did Wei Cheng and Guanguan finally let out a breath of relief.
Even though they would sleep in the safe house that night, not having a front gate at all gave no sense of security.
The brothers were both exhausted after a full day of work, so dinner was very simple.
Each of them had a bowl of clear udon soup, and Wei Cheng specially made three little vegetable-and-tofu-skin rolls for Guanguan.
When it came to stir-fried vegetables, Guanguan did not like them at all. Back at the welfare home, Teacher Xiaomei had once made celery stir-fried with meat. Guanguan had picked out all the meat and eaten it, then secretly stuffed the celery into his pocket.
Wei Cheng watched everything Guanguan did. Taking advantage of Director Wang and Teacher Xiaomei not being there, he quickly pulled the oily vegetables out of the child’s pockets. Otherwise, Guanguan’s favorite little pants would truly have been impossible to wash clean.
Guanguan poked one tofu-skin roll with his little fork. “Big brother, is this all vegetables inside?”
Wei Cheng said, “There are other things too. It’s very fragrant. You’ll know if you try it.”
Guanguan wagged a finger. “Teacher says you can’t trick three-year-olds.”
“I’m not tricking you. It really is delicious. Every time big brother finishes one of these tofu-skin rolls, he gets a hundred points on exams. If you eat one, you can too!”
Guanguan held the roll under his nose and sniffed it, half convinced and half doubtful. “That powerful?”
He thought for a moment, then clipped the roll toward little Black Apricot, who was at the side wolfing down dog food. “Little Apricot, you eat first!”
Wei Cheng laughed. “How could a puppy eat a fresh, fragrant vegetable roll like this? You try it. If you don’t like it, give it to big brother.”
At last Guanguan took a bite. When he tasted the spinach and carrot, he pressed his lips together, but as he kept chewing, he began to think it actually smelled kind of good. His eyes lit up. “It tastes like ham!”
Wei Cheng coaxed him, “It doesn’t just have ham. I also put in your favorite little beef cubes. But big brother forgot which roll has the beef.”
Three-year-old little glutton Guanguan immediately took the bait. “Big brother, don’t worry! Guanguan will just eat them all!”
What made Guanguan especially happy was that the remaining two vegetable rolls both had beef cubes inside.
Every night after washing up and getting into bed, Wei Cheng would review the ten Chinese characters they had studied that morning with Guanguan.
Guanguan was not only smart, but also very cooperative. Sometimes he could even infer one thing from another and learn two extra characters.
“Big brother! Big brother! It’s time for you to read Guanguan a storybook!”
“What do you want to hear today?”
Guanguan hugged his brother’s arm. “Guanguan still wants to hear the story about the little chicks looking for the sun together.”
Wei Cheng opened the fairy-tale book and read softly, “At dawn, the baby chick discovered that the sun had disappeared…”
“…Sunlight returned to the earth. After going through one danger after another, the little chick and his friends finally found the sun for all humankind.”
—
September 27, 3XXX.
While the outside world had been turned upside down, Wei Cheng and Guanguan had safely survived for one month in Sun Village.
At first, Wei Cheng had suspected the village might be hiding danger. But later, he and Guanguan gradually explored the whole village and discovered that there truly were no other living people and no zombies there.
Still, they had not taken any of the villagers’ leftover rice, flour, or grain. They had only taken firewood, coal, red bricks, sand, and several iron gates from the houses.
During this period, the two brothers had been busy raising the courtyard walls higher and installing a second reinforced gate, so they had not gone out to do any zombie-killing missions.
Besides, there were no zombies in Sun Village now, so if they wanted to kill zombies, they would have to go elsewhere. Wei Cheng still did not want to bring Guanguan into that much danger.
The safe house was good in every way, except that the space was too cramped. Ever since the old house had started feeling lived-in again, energetic little Guanguan and little Black Apricot had also grown more fond of playing and sleeping outside.
That night, as usual, Wei Cheng was reading Guanguan a storybook when suddenly the overhead tube light flickered a few times, and then the whole house fell into darkness.
Little Black Apricot barked anxiously twice.
“Big brother? Did our light break?”
Wei Cheng suddenly remembered that in his previous life, the power grid had collapsed at the very moment Huan City city center completely fell and became a zombie nest!
“No, the light didn’t break. The whole country has completely lost power.”
This month, they had only earned 310 Twisty Coins. Converted into safe-house residence time, that was at most seven hours. And now that the power grid had collapsed and winter would arrive in another two months, if they wanted to extend the amount of time they could stay in the safe house, they had no choice but to do missions. But Wei Cheng also knew clearly that no matter how many missions they did, with their current abilities it would be impossible to save up enough Twisty Coins for a full year of residence in the safe house.
Then suddenly he thought of the safe house’s low-noise gasoline generator.
But where were they supposed to find gasoline?
Right—the highway!
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