Stock Up For Natural Disasters And Cubs Survive – CH26

Chapter 26

The knocking on the door continued for a long time. At last, faint movement came from the old iron door. The person inside was probably peering through the peephole to see whether it was a zombie or a human outside.

Wei Cheng lowered his head, hunched his body, and said weakly, “Is anyone there? Can you give me something to eat? I haven’t eaten in a long time.”

Perhaps because he heard a human voice, the person inside immediately unlocked the old iron door, and a beam of flashlight glare shot over.

As if he could not bear the brightness, Wei Cheng turned his head slightly—while also clearly seeing the mad delight in the boy’s eyes.

Behind the iron door was another barred security gate.

The boy’s eyes widened with excitement. Both hands gripped the bars tightly. “It’s you! You didn’t die? How did you escape? I know, I know—you left that little kid to the zombies, didn’t you? You let them eat him alive! That’s it! That has to be it!”

Wei Cheng braced himself against the wall as though he was barely standing. “Do you have any food? I’m starving to death…”

“Yes, there’s food. Come in, quick!”

The boy was so excited he was practically shaking. His hands trembled as he unlocked the barred gate. But the instant it opened, that person who had seemed weak with hunger suddenly shot forward like an arrow loosed from a bow. The boy was shocked and instinctively tried to block the door with his body, but his strength was nothing compared to Wei Cheng’s speed.

The moment Wei Cheng squeezed inside, the spring-loaded iron gate snapped shut behind him.

The flashlight that had fallen to the ground cast enough light to brighten the dark room. The boy’s face twisted viciously, and he began cursing. He snatched an axe from the top of the shoe cabinet and hacked at Wei Cheng. Blow after blow came down, but Wei Cheng dodged every one of them.

Then, instead of retreating, Wei Cheng counterattacked. He kicked the boy hard in the shin. The moment the boy reflexively lifted his leg in pain, Wei Cheng swept low and fast. The boy could not react in time and crashed to the floor together with the axe.

Wei Cheng immediately seized the axe, then dropped a knee onto the boy to pin him down, pulling out the rope he had prepared earlier and tying the boy’s hands behind him.

Fast, precise, without a wasted movement.

The boy’s face turned deathly pale. Only then did he understand fear. “You… you… don’t kill me! Don’t kill me! I’m only eleven! I’m still a child!”

Wei Cheng tied the rope into a dead knot and sneered. “Who isn’t still a child?”

From the moment he entered, he had already smelled the heavy odor of rotting corpses in the apartment.

Now that the fighting had stopped, the low, indistinct sounds of zombies were even clearer.

Wei Cheng frowned. “You’re keeping zombies.”

The boy’s eyes flickered guiltily. “Th-those are my mom and dad…” Then tears came out. “Little brother, I… I really didn’t mean to hurt you. My mom and dad both turned into monsters. Isn’t your family the same? We’re both pitiful kids. But I still love them. They’re really hungry. I was only trying to find them something to eat… And… and if I were really that bad, I wouldn’t have opened the door for you, right? You said you were hungry. I saw that you were pitiful, so that’s why I opened the door!”

Hearing that, Wei Cheng almost laughed from anger. He dragged the boy up like a dead dog, then took out his night-vision goggles and put them on. “Come on. Take me to see your zombie parents.”

The boy immediately started trembling. “N-no… don’t…”

“Don’t?”

Wei Cheng shifted the axe in his hand. “Didn’t you say you wanted to find your parents something to eat? You were born from them. Letting them eat you would be the perfect way to fulfill your whole family bond, wouldn’t it?”

The boy shook his head frantically and shouted, “No, no, I don’t want to die yet! I don’t want to die! I’m going to call the police—”

“Shut up.”

Wei Cheng’s patience snapped. He slammed the blunt back of the axe hard into the boy’s stomach, then said with a smile, “Scream one more time, and I’ll skin you alive, then slice you up like sashimi and feed you to the zombies piece by piece.”

The boy instantly went silent as a cicada in winter. Tears streamed down his face from the pain, but he did not dare make a sound.

“Don’t play tricks. Which room are the zombies in?”

Too scared to speak, the boy lifted his bound hands and pointed toward the master bedroom.

Wei Cheng shoved him forward. “Walk.”

The moment the bedroom door opened, the nauseating stench of decay became even thicker.

And now Wei Cheng could see the scene inside clearly.

An elderly zombie lay on the bed. Its mouth had been stuffed with a thick wad of bloody cloth. Its eye sockets were empty, and all four limbs were gone. Judging from the smooth, clean cuts, they had been chopped off while it was still alive.

Tied to a chair was another small zombie whose hands and feet had likewise been chopped off. It had suffered the same brutal treatment as the elderly zombie. From its remaining physical traits, the child had only been seven or eight years old before death.

The sheer bloodiness of the sight made Wei Cheng’s scalp go numb. He kicked the boy hard to the floor. “You deserve to die.”

“Who is the person on the bed? And who is the one on the floor?”

Before the boy could answer, Wei Cheng shook the axe in his hand and said coldly, “Tell me one lie, and I’ll chop you apart.”

The boy’s face was ghostly white. In a low voice, he said, “The one on the bed and the one on the floor… they were grandmother and grandson.”

“They were like you and that little kid. They came into town looking for food. But… but no one saved them. I called out to them from upstairs.”

The boy looked as if he wanted to laugh, but when he saw the gleaming edge of the axe, he forced it back down. “I… I was curious why people turn into monsters. If monsters bite someone, they become monsters. So if someone isn’t bitten, but dies, will they still become a monster? I… I gave them porridge with rat poison in it.”

Wei Cheng swung the axe and smashed it hard into the boy’s leg.

The boy screamed instantly. “Ahhh! It hurts! It hurts! My leg!” The sudden noise made both zombies stir restlessly.

Then he cried again, “How are you any better than me? Weren’t you the one who shoved that tiny child to the zombies so you could survive?”

“My little brother is sleeping soundly right now in a warm little bed. And even if danger really comes someday, I will use my own life to protect him. You…”

Wei Cheng’s black eyes were cold as ice. He swung the axe again and brought it down into the boy’s left leg. “…have to pay the price for what you’ve done.”

The axe blade, sharpened to a razor edge, slashed straight through the boy’s thin jeans, and drops of blood began seeping out one by one.

The boy let out a shriek like a pig being slaughtered. Hearing the excited hoarse growls of the two zombies made him break out in cold sweat. Panting in pain, he said, “He… he didn’t die, and you didn’t die, so why should I still have to pay? That grandmother and grandson—without me, they’d either have starved to death or been bitten to death by zombies. Rice is so hard to get now. I… I even let them eat their fill before they died…”

Wei Cheng gave a cold laugh. “Even in the apocalypse, no one has the right to casually take someone else’s life.”

The boy instinctively took those words to mean he was going to be spared. “Th-then you can’t kill me either. I… I know I was wrong…”

“I’m going to ask you a few questions. Answer truthfully.”

Grinding his teeth, the boy nodded furiously. “Ask. I’ll tell you everything.”

“How many living people are still in this building?”

The boy’s voice shook and sounded weak. “T-today… after the family that ran the grain-and-oil shop downstairs died… I’m the only one left in this building.”

This time the boy was not lying. Before coming here, Wei Cheng had already checked the third floor.

He asked again, “How many living people are there on the street across from here?”

“There’s a family of six… in 301 on the second floor across the street.”

“When the zombies left, were they the ones who moved all the supplies out of the grain-and-oil shop?”

Because of blood loss, the whites of the boy’s eyes were showing as he nearly fainted from pain. “Y-yes… it was them.”

“C-can you let me go now?”

Wei Cheng said nothing. He only looked down at him from above.

The boy had just begun to let out a shaky breath of relief when he suddenly heard the axe chopping through rope.

He turned his head in horror. “You… what are you doing!”

The two zombies, now freed from their bonds, began writhing quickly across the floor.

The boy screamed for help. He tried to struggle upright, but his hands were tied and both his legs were badly injured.

When he felt a rotten zombie’s mouth clamp onto his pant leg, he kicked wildly in panic. “Get away! Get away from me!”

“You lied! You said you wouldn’t kill me!”

Wei Cheng’s face was expressionless. He shut the bedroom door, cutting off the sounds of chewing and the boy’s shrill screams.

.

When Guanguan woke up, he did not see big brother.

He rubbed his eyes, scratched the new little curls growing on his head, and backed himself off the soft little bed like a car reversing into a parking space.

Downstairs, the little black dog barked.

Guanguan squeezed his feet into his fluffy little slippers and ran to the top of the stairs. “Little Apricot! Where is Guanguan’s big brother!”

The little black dog barked once. It spread its front legs, flattened its body on the floor, and wagged its tail like a little whirlwind.

It was inviting Guanguan downstairs to play.

Guanguan understood immediately. “Wait till Guanguan washes his face and brushes his teeth, then I’ll come down!”

At that moment, the front door moved. The instant he saw who it was, Guanguan began waving happily. “Big brother! Big brother!”

Wei Cheng came in holding a lot of things. “Guanguan’s awake?”

“Awake! Awake!”

Guanguan ran down from upstairs and looked at the things in Wei Cheng’s arms. “Big brother, where did you go!”

Wei Cheng shut the door behind him. “Big brother went to the mall and bought two boxes of steel pellets.”

Among the weapons in the mall, the more lethal ones were only one type of small crossbow and one heavy compound crossbow.

The former only supported bolt magazines, while the latter could use either steel pellets or bolt magazines.

They still had to kill nearly five hundred zombies. If they bought only steel bolts, it would cost them more than a hundred thousand. The price of a single steel bolt could buy eighty steel pellets.

Considering that this mission would mostly involve short-range shooting, Wei Cheng chose steel pellets instead, since they also had a decent hit rate at close range. And pellets would bury themselves directly into the zombies’ skulls, making them less likely to bleed much, which reduced many risks for them.

Back on the empty highway, when killing zombies, they could simply pull the steel bolts back out of zombie heads and reuse them. But here, where there were more zombies and also living humans nearby, recovering bolts was basically impossible. Besides, Wei Cheng had no intention of letting the family of six across the street get hold of any mall-made steel bolts.

“Big brother, so many little beads! Can Guanguan and Little Apricot play with them?”

Wei Cheng said, “They’re dangerous. If you swallow this kind of bead, it can kill you.”

The moment he heard “dangerous,” Guanguan immediately dropped the idea of playing. He quickly hugged Little Apricot and backed away from the pellets, shaking his head hard. “No! Guanguan’s life and doggy life are also lives!”

Wei Cheng laughed and rubbed his little head. “Did you wash your face and brush your teeth yet? Breakfast is already ready.”

Guanguan placed Little Apricot into the dog bed and scampered upstairs. “Right away! Right away!”

After breakfast, Wei Cheng took Guanguan and Little Apricot upstairs.

He had already blocked off the stairwell that led from the grain-and-oil shop on the first floor to the second floor. The front building entrance downstairs had long ago been sealed by the shop owner too, so for the moment, this three-story building was safe.

“Big brother, whose home is this?”

Wrapped up once again like a chubby little ball, Guanguan looked at the cramped, old room and asked curiously, “What’s that smell? It smells as nice as Teacher Xiaomei’s shampoo!”

The night before, after dealing with the three zombie corpses, Wei Cheng had also cleaned the dirty, messy room. To mask the smell of blood, he had sprayed a lot of perfume.

“Perfume.”

Wei Cheng opened a corner of the window, then set up the crossbow on the windowsill. “For these next couple of days, we’ll enter the safe house from this room.”

Guanguan nodded while hugging Little Apricot. “Okay!”

The curtains were heavy, making the whole room quite dim. Guanguan and Little Apricot sat obediently behind big brother, building little block houses.

A few zombies wandered aimlessly across the street below.

Wei Cheng was just about to pull the trigger when he paused. He picked up the binoculars and looked more closely. Across the street, apartment 301 was in the middle of a fight.

Apparently, one family member had turned into a zombie.

At that same moment, the apartment building entrance across the way burst open from the inside in panic. Human beings calling instinctively for help when danger struck had instead drawn the attention of even more zombies.

A little girl was seized by the leg by an old zombie that came after her and was yanked to the ground. “Mom! Dad! Save me! Grandpa wants to bite me!”

The father turned and ran at once, but the small, thin mother threw herself back without hesitation to save her daughter.

Nearby, two young people in their twenties—a man and a woman—were already being dragged down by zombies clawing at their limbs.

Guanguan crept closer and whispered, “Big brother, someone’s getting bitten by monsters!”

“Yes.”

Just as the old zombie opened its bloody mouth wide and was about to bite through the little girl’s foot, a steel pellet shot out and struck the zombie directly between the brows.

“Mom! Mom!”

The grip on the girl’s leg loosened. She scrambled and crawled into her mother’s arms.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, hurry, we have to go!” The mother was trembling all over as she clutched her daughter tightly.

More and more zombies were flooding onto the street.

At the very instant Wei Cheng shot the old zombie, the young woman had already been bitten in the neck artery. She convulsed and collapsed, blood spraying everywhere, while dozens of zombies tore into her still-conscious body and devoured her with savage frenzy.

“Juanjuan!”

“Let her go! Let her go! I’ll fight you!”

The young man who had been protecting her went mad. He swung his kitchen knife wildly in every direction.

Just when several zombies had surrounded him completely and he shut his eyes, bracing for death, he did not feel the pain he expected. When he opened them again, he found that the zombies around him had all already fallen.

He froze for a second. Then, when he came to, he saw several more steel pellets flying like blades of wind into the heads of the zombies that were still chewing on his girlfriend.

“Juanjuan, Juanjuan…”

The young man held his girlfriend’s ruined body and wept bitterly. “I’m sorry… I couldn’t protect you…”

Soon, zombies were dropping all over the ground, but even more began appearing from the street corner.

It turned out that the father—the man in this family who had run the fastest—had tried to start one of the cars parked in the alley. The sound of the engine had been far too loud, drawing in the surrounding zombie horde.

He had thought that as long as he could get the car moving, he would have a path to survival. But instead, there was a mangled zombie lying in the back seat.

Guanguan watched with intense tension, his little face taut. “Big brother, why isn’t that big brother running? Why is he hugging that big sister and crying?”

Wei Cheng kept firing as he answered, “They should be lovers.”

“Lovers?” Guanguan scratched his little cheek. “Like lotus paste and mixed-nut mooncakes? Are they tasty?”

Wei Cheng let out a sigh, then laughed. “I don’t know either.”

This family had probably been caught off guard when the old man in the house suddenly turned into a zombie. The whole change had happened too quickly, and they had panicked too badly. If they had all run together, Wei Cheng might have been able to carve them a path to escape. But with one here and one there, he could save this side and lose the other.

Before long, the mother and daughter were also dragged down by zombies.

Wei Cheng immediately pulled the trigger and fired rapidly, but there were more and more zombies. Though they were slower than before, two women and a child with no means of self-defense were soon overwhelmed again by a fresh wave.

In only a few breaths, the entire family of six was dead.

“Something’s wrong.”

Wei Cheng frowned at the endless stream of zombies appearing on the street. He pulled back the curtain and looked through the binoculars, only to see thick smoke billowing above the long-distance bus station.

Someone had blown up the bus station, and now the dense zombie horde was moving toward the relocation apartments and market street!

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