Stock Up For Natural Disasters And Cubs Survive – CH27

Chapter 27

The snack street, once lined with fruit stalls and cooked-food vendors, was now packed with a mechanically writhing army of decayed, bluish-gray zombies. Dragging their stiff bodies forward, they slowly advanced, throwing wide their bloody jaws and fangs as they howled at the sky. All those corpse-cries merging together made one’s skin crawl, like a dense swarm of lice scrambling to leap into a boiling pan of oil.

Even the resettlement buildings in the distance, where there had once still been traces of living people, had become spoils in the zombies’ hands.

An ordinary little town would never normally have had so many people. But when disaster struck so suddenly, everyone from more than twenty nearby villages had rushed to Changde Bus Station, hoping to catch a coach out as quickly as possible. No one had expected that in the blink of an eye, tens of thousands of people would all turn into zombies.

Without needing his brother to remind him, Guanguan put Little Apricot into the safehouse and obediently hid by his brother’s side.

This was the first time he had ever seen so many monsters! But after such a long period of training and desensitization, little Guanguan would no longer be scared to tears by these monsters!

“They look like watermelon flesh full of black seeds!”

Clenching his fists, his round, fleshy face serious, Guanguan declared, “When Guanguan grows up, he’s going to smash all their heads!”

Wei Cheng lowered the binoculars, feeling a little relieved inside. He rubbed Guanguan’s head. “You don’t need to wait until you grow up. You can smash their heads right now.”

He adjusted the curtains he had just pulled wide open and set them back in place. Zombies had senses as sharp as animals. He had opened the curtains wider just now to observe the distant situation, and that had drawn the attention of several zombies, which were now clawing and snarling madly at the windows of this building.

Although the downstairs unit entrance had already been blocked shut by the grain and oil shop owner, if hundreds upon thousands of zombies rammed the door together, it probably would not take long for them to smash it open completely.

Once the curtains were adjusted, leaving only enough of a gap for the scope’s line of sight, Wei Cheng said, “Guanguan, come here. Pull this part.”

A little nervous, Guanguan carefully placed his short little finger there. “Here?”

“That’s right.”

Wei Cheng stepped behind him, held his little steamed-bun hand in his own, gently pulled the trigger, then quickly guided his hand back outside the trigger guard.

One zombie collapsed soundlessly to the ground, without causing any commotion in the zombie horde.

Guanguan’s eyes went round, but he still remembered to lower his voice. “Brother! Brother! Guanguan hit a monster!”

[Congratulations! Little House Owner successfully participated in killing 1 zombie and earned 10 Twist Coins!]

“Guanguan made money too!”

Brimming with enthusiasm, Guanguan said in his milky little voice, “Again! Again!”

Wei Cheng looked at the zombie crowd, so packed that they were almost crushing in the doors of the shops lining the market street. “There are more and more zombies. Let Brother kill a bunch first. Then when only a few are left, I’ll bring you along to play.”

Guanguan obediently listened, without pestering him at all. Lifting his face, he said, “Okay! Guanguan will practice first with the toy gun!”

He ran back into the safehouse and brought out a big box of toy guns whose bullets were made of soft foam. “Brother, Guanguan is playing with this!”

“All right, then Brother will set up the suction-cup stand for you!”

Because he had just shot a monster, Guanguan was playing much more enthusiastically than usual. Seeing that, Wei Cheng quickly returned to the window and continued the fight.

Steel pellets shot out through the crack in the window, precise and fast, striking the zombies in the center of the brow one after another. Outside, zombies fell in sheets. At some point, a thin mist of blood began to hang in the air.

[Congratulations! Little House Owner successfully participated in killing 78 zombies and earned 780 Twist Coins!]

[Congratulations! Little House Owner successfully participated in killing 230 zombies and earned 2,300 Twist Coins!]

[Congratulations! Little House Owner successfully participated in killing 370 zombies and earned 3,700 Twist Coins!]

…

[Congratulations! Mission completed successfully! Accumulated zombies killed: 500! Accumulated Twist Coins earned: 5,000!]

[Remaining Twist Coins have been deposited into your account. Please check them. Please continue accepting new missions to earn more Twist Coins!]

[One surprise prize wheel has been activated!]

The steel pellets were less powerful than steel bolts, and the hit rate was only around seventy percent. But to save money and keep them safe, Wei Cheng had no choice but to expend more effort. From morning till night, for a full day, the roads around the grain and oil shop became carpeted with corpses. The zombies behind them could no longer advance, and in the end they actually all retreated to the rear.

Those people had used the trick of diverting disaster eastward, drawing all the zombies from the bus station into the market street and the resettlement buildings. Now those zombies had retreated back again. If that group escaped danger, there was no telling whether they would come looking for trouble with them.

The mission was complete. They needed to leave as soon as possible.

Wei Cheng rubbed his aching shoulder, then suddenly sucked in a breath.

“Brother, what’s wrong!”

Guanguan dropped his toy and ran to the window at once, asking worriedly, “Did Brother get hurt?!”

Wei Cheng pulled the curtains in the cozy home shut, then glanced at his own swollen, damaged fingers and shook his head. “It’s fine. I just need to put a band-aid on it later.”

“Guanguan will put it on for you!”

Like a little firecracker, Guanguan dragged out the small medicine box from under the coffee table, rummaged around wildly, and finally found a band-aid. “Ta-da! It’s here!”

But after studying it for quite a while, he still could not figure out how to open it, and instead got himself so anxious that he spun in circles.

Wei Cheng crouched down with a smile. “Brother will do it himself.”

He tore one open and stuck it on his finger, then saw Guanguan and Little Apricot both gazing at him eagerly.

So he opened another one and stuck it on Guanguan’s fair, chubby arm, then put one on Little Apricot’s forehead too.

Guanguan’s eyes sparkled. Touching the band-aid on his arm, he said, “This is Brave Guanguan’s medal!”

Wei Cheng laughed. “After we get home, Brother will take you to the mall to buy a real medal. Brother doesn’t want you or Little Apricot getting hurt.”

“Let’s eat first.”

After killing zombies for an entire day, being tired was secondary. The main thing was that he felt nauseated.

Wei Cheng actually did not have much appetite, but when he thought that Guanguan had only gnawed on a little bread roll at noon, he felt a little uncomfortable inside.

That evening, the two brothers each ate a bowl of steaming hot tangyuan.

Guanguan bit into one soft, chewy dumpling, and sweet dark sesame filling immediately flowed out. “Yummy, yummy!”

Then he giggled. “If I’d known, I would’ve named Little Apricot Little Tangyuan!”

Wei Cheng glanced at Little Apricot, who was wolfing down dog food. “You’d better not let it hear that, or it’ll go bite your little Ultraman shoes again.”

Little Apricot had recently become very fond of chewing things. It did not chew the furniture at home, but it was always secretly biting the tops of Guanguan’s shoes. Several of his pairs had already suffered.

Covering his mouth with one little hand, Guanguan said in a cowardly whisper, “Guanguan isn’t scared of it!”

Wei Cheng was amused. After taking a sip of soup, he called, “Little Apricot?”

The little black dog, having finished its dog food, trotted over eagerly. “Woof!”

Guanguan immediately buried his head in his tangyuan as if nothing at all had happened.

He had grown up. He was now a smooth and flexible little Guanguan who knew when to bend and when to stand!

After a simple dinner, Wei Cheng looked at how the sky outside had gone completely dark.

He said, “Guanguan, get ready. We’re heading back to Sun Village immediately.”

Guanguan blinked. “But Brother is already suuuper tired today.”

Wei Cheng did not brush him off. He knew Guanguan might not fully understand, but he still explained everything bit by bit. “Today, someone deliberately drew the zombies to the market street and the resettlement buildings ahead.”

Guanguan scratched his head. “Why? Were they trying to escape?”

“Not necessarily to escape.”

Wei Cheng analyzed, “Near the bus station there’s a very big bathhouse, and on both sides of it there are several supermarkets, noodle shops, and fast-food stores. Those places hold a lot of survival supplies. Those people knew that if they tried to flee with all those supplies, they’d definitely get robbed. So they occupied the place like bandits, gathered together the resources from those shops using their own power, and turned them into supplies for their base. The zombies in the bus station were their greatest threat, which is why they thought of a way to lure them over here to us.”

Guanguan looked a little confused. “Then… are they bad guys?”

Wei Cheng thought about it, then said, “Right now, we can’t define an entire group as good or bad, because everyone is just trying to survive. But Brother has a feeling this group is definitely not easy to deal with. They never expected the survivors on the market street to be capable of handling a zombie horde. Today, we killed these zombies, blocked the way of the ones behind them, and forced them back toward the bus station. If those people manage to get out alive, they’ll definitely come investigate.”

Guanguan leaned against his brother, his little face full of worry. “But Brother is really, really tired.”

Wei Cheng smiled. “It’s only a little more effort. From town to Sun Village is only half an hour. Now that our mission went smoothly, this winter Guanguan, Brother, and Little Apricot can finally spend it at home safely and peacefully.”

Then he rubbed the child’s cheek again. “And we still haven’t spun the surprise prize wheel. After we get home, Guanguan has to draw a grand prize!”

Guanguan nodded. “Okay! Guanguan is going to draw a super grand prize!”

Guanguan ran upstairs to change clothes, and Wei Cheng took out gauze and tape, enduring the pain as he wrapped his worn palms several times over.

There was no knowing what dangers might show up on the way. To be safe, he still needed to hide the wounds well. If zombie blood contaminated them, not even the system would be able to save him.

—

“Brother Wang, Brother Wang, those zombies came back!”

The first through third floors of the bathhouse were pitch black. Every window on the fourth floor was covered with black blackout cloth, but inside, the lights blazed as if nothing had changed from before the apocalypse.

The few people sitting at the mahjong table were all startled. “They came back?”

“Didn’t we already figure out a way to lure them all away?”

“I even saw with binoculars this afternoon that the zombies were near the resettlement buildings.”

The man who came to report said anxiously, “Not the zombies from the resettlement buildings. They—it’s the ones that came back from the market street!”

“Brother Wang, what do we do?”

The man they called Brother Wang had a face full of flesh and a fierce look. He flicked the ash from his cigarette. “Never would’ve thought this tiny Changde Town still had someone capable of that!”

“And it wasn’t just a hundred-something zombies either. There were a few thousand of them!”

“His damn grandmother! We even pried open the government office’s armory and used the best stuff inside, all so we could drive those damn things out of the station once and for all, then use that time to move the supplies from the supermarket warehouse inside the station. Now that the zombies are back, the brothers inside probably won’t make it back!”

Brother Wang grabbed the ashtray and smashed it hard onto the floor. “Whoever pulled this off definitely wasn’t just one person! Looks like quite a few people have camped on the market street! We strike first! Since zombies react slowly at night, the few of you take your gear right now and go deal with them! I refuse to believe these people have guns too!”

Meanwhile, on the other side, Wei Cheng and Guanguan came downstairs wearing night vision goggles. Using bolt cutters, they snipped through the chain hanging on the unit entrance door. The moment they stepped out, a strong stench of corpses hit them.

Even with his helmet on, Guanguan still could not help giving a little dry heave.

“Be good. Endure it.”

Wei Cheng picked Guanguan up and carefully stepped around the bodies on the ground. Just then, several beams from flashlights suddenly flickered in the distance.

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