Chapter 34
The decision to leave had come rather suddenly, so the two brothers had no choice but to pack quickly.
Wei Cheng first put layer after layer of wool clothing and worn-looking down outerwear on Guanguan. Since they would be leaving by car, he did not put a helmet on the child, only a furry hat. This hat protected the ears and the sides of the face, and on top were two small bear ears.
Guanguan had a padded neck warmer wrapped around him, and with his soft, fleshy chin, it was not easy to tie the hat strings if he kept his head down.
“Guanguan, lift your chin a little.”
The moment he heard that, Guanguan stood up on tiptoe, raising his two pink little cheeks high with all his might, his grape-like eyes black and bright. “Like this?”
“Haha, you don’t need to lift it that high.”
Wei Cheng lightly pressed his shoulders down and quickly tied the wool strings into a loose knot. Unable to resist, he rubbed Guanguan’s round little head again. “Go open the fridge and pack snacks for yourself and Little Apricot. Big brother is going to prepare the things we need to enter the base, okay?”
The moment he heard pack snacks, Guanguan’s eyes widened like bronze bells. He was not sleepy at all anymore. Scooping up the little black dog, he toddled toward the kitchen. “Mission guaranteed complete!”
Wei Cheng shook his head with a smile and pushed open the door toward the stockpile shelves.
The first thing that happened when entering a base was that survivors’ baggage would be inspected, so they had to prepare some basic supplies.
He carried a black elementary-school backpack and stood on tiptoe to pull down a large box from the shelf.
Inside were all the supplies they had scavenged on the highway.
He stuffed five or six bottles of mineral water into the backpack, then ripped open the bagged bread one by one, placed everything into food-grade plastic bags, and pressed them flat. The cheap fruit jam oozed out, instantly turning them into squashed, famine-style flatbread.
Now it really looked like refugee food.
Wei Cheng’s gaze lingered on the dozen or so cartons of cigarettes at the bottom of the box. He opened one carton and picked out a dozen sticks, slipping them into the backpack’s inner compartment.
He also took some pickled mustard greens, then bought a few elementary-school textbooks, a child’s paper cutter, and some useless bits of junk from the mall.
Carrying the backpack back into the house, he called out, “Guanguan, finished packing your snacks?”
“Finished!”
Guanguan was wearing his bulging little yellow duck backpack. In his hand he held his dog cup, and around Little Apricot’s neck hung a little dog snack pouch.
Not bad. It looked like both babies had packed plenty of good food.
Wei Cheng glanced at the clock on the wall. “All right, then let’s go!”
Once outside the safe house, Wei Cheng and Guanguan carefully checked the upstairs and downstairs again. After confirming nothing had been left behind, they packed the half sack of black coal by the heater stove and the small generator into the safe house as well.
The night was pitch black, and the cold wind was biting. Snowflakes sifted down from the roof.
Guanguan was blown by the bitter wind and snow so hard that he could not keep his eyes open. He could only cling tightly to his brother’s hand.
Wei Cheng checked the area outside the gate and, seeing nothing unusual, lowered his voice and said, “Let’s go!”
The heavy iron gate was locked once again.
A hard, slippery path had already been packed into the snow around their house. Clearly, that group had spent quite a few days coming over to scout the place.
Wei Cheng bent slightly at the waist and said quietly, “Guanguan, big brother will carry you out of the village.”
The little car could only activate invisibility and its other major functions after it was summoned. To be safe, they needed to reach the forest first before starting it.
Guanguan was wearing so many layers that it took him several huffing attempts before he managed to climb onto his brother’s back. His little hands even reached up to touch his brother’s face. “Big brother, it’s the snacks that are heavy, not Guanguan.”
Under such a tense escape atmosphere, hearing such childish words loosened Wei Cheng’s taut nerves quite a bit.
He smiled and used a bit of strength to hitch the child higher. “Not heavy. It’s only one little Guanguan.”
The child on his back swung his fat little feet happily, then corrected him in a tiny voice, “One Little Apricot, one Guanguan. Big brother said it wrong!”
“Mm, one silly little Guanguan.”
Wei Cheng answered Guanguan while never stopping his pace, jogging forward.
As they passed the water bridge, they happened to see the village house where that group had been staying.
Wei Cheng shushed softly. He had intended to lighten his footsteps and hurry past, but unexpectedly, he could vaguely hear a child crying inside the house.
Guanguan asked in his soft baby voice, “The little baby is still crying! Big brother, can Guanguan give the baby one candy?”
Wei Cheng fell silent for a moment.
From what those bad people had said, they had kidnapped a woman with a child and forced her to help them enter the village. That woman should be Grandma Shumei’s granddaughter.
Wei Cheng’s grandmother had lost her husband in middle age and her son in old age. Many people in the village mocked her and slandered her name. During the years when his grandmother was at her most devastated and miserable, fiery-tempered Grandma Shumei had often defended her fiercely and quarrelled on her behalf. She would also often carry over her little stool and come to their house to chat.
Guanguan asked again, “Big brother, when Guanguan was a little baby, did I cry this sadly too?”
“Mm, and right now you’re still a little baby too.”
With one hand, Wei Cheng pulled up the system panel, bought some things, and left them outside the door.
In his previous life, whenever Wei Cheng encountered young children while doing missions, he always had a little more patience and kindness for them.
Because he hoped that somewhere, sometime, someone might also help the little brother he had lost.
Very soon, they?? the row of village houses and entered the silent, deserted woods. The snow in the forest had already reached past Wei Cheng’s thighs.
After walking for about ten minutes, and after confirming there were no zombie tracks nearby and no chance of anyone showing up, the two brothers quickly entered the little car.
Wei Cheng immediately turned on all the major functions one by one.
The “cold resistance” within the Indestructible function quickly took effect, and the stiffness in the brothers’ frozen hands and feet slowly faded.
The last time Guanguan had drawn the wiggle-car function upgrade gift pack, the invisibility duration had been extended to 60 minutes, the Indestructible function had gone from 10 hours to 20 hours, and the car’s speed had reached 120 km/h.
He entered Yu City Base into the navigation system, and three options popped up below: Watcher Community, Highland Shelter, and The Thirteenth United Cannery.
Destination — Highland Shelter
Distance: 840 kilometers
Current population: ? (function not yet unlocked)
Number of zombies: ? (function not yet unlocked)
Danger level: Extremely High S
Extremely High S?
He searched the other two bases too, and their danger levels were both also Extremely High S.
This was the first time they had ever seen a danger level with a letter code attached.
Wei Cheng experimentally entered Huan City city center mall, and the danger level there turned out to be Extremely High S+.
Huan City really was dangerous!
It was now exactly 10:30 at night. At this speed, they would reach Highland Shelter at 5:30 tomorrow morning.
He could only hope nothing unexpected would happen along the way.
Wei Cheng glanced at Guanguan, who was already drowsy, and gently put a silk eye mask over the child’s eyes.
Guanguan felt like he was being controlled and wobbled his head. “Big brother…”
“It’s okay. Sleep.”
Guanguan lifted one hand and scratched a little, but in the end sleepiness overcame curiosity.
Only then did Wei Cheng gently press the start button.
The car, with invisibility activated, sped out like a flash of lightning, leaving not a single trace on the snowy ground.
—
In the latter half of the night, the woman covered in injuries finally managed to soothe her two-year-old daughter to sleep.
She forced herself up, wanting to see whether that group had come back or not.
And also… Grandma Song…
The woman wiped away her tears. She had been tricked by that group!
On the eve of the torrential rains, her grandmother had fallen ill, so the family had brought Grandma back to Changde Town.
Later, when the zombie outbreak happened, the family had honestly stayed hidden in the building. Because they had the elderly above and children below, they had not fled to another city like many others.
Unexpectedly, one day all the zombies from the bus station suddenly swarmed into the neighborhood.
In that sudden disaster, her parents, her husband, and her grandmother had all died. Only she and her child had survived by sheer luck.
Not long after that, the bathhouse not far away exploded again, and the whole of Changde Town became a nest of zombies.
A few days later, five or six new people moved in next door. From their accents, they clearly were not from Changde Town. But at that time, she had been too frightened. In the entire building, only this small group of them were still alive, and if she and her child wanted to survive, they had no choice but to huddle together with them.
Later, that group started fishing for information and asked whether she knew of any remote, safe villages.
The woman honestly told them and led them toward her hometown.
But the moment they saw Grandma Song’s house, with its high walls and strong old home, greed sprang up in them at once. They scouted it for several days and discovered the walls were too high to easily get in. So they hypocritically tried to persuade her to go over and trick the old woman into opening the gate. She refused, of course. Before her own grandmother died, she had always spoken fondly of Grandma Song, this old friend of hers. Yet those people showed their true ugly faces, beat her brutally, and threatened to chop off her daughter’s fingers with an axe.
Only then, sobbing, had she given in.
The middle-aged woman feared she would ruin the plan, so she had her tied up, snatched away her daughter, and used the child to try to deceive Grandma Song into opening the door.
Even from far away, she could hear her daughter’s heart-rending cries.
A mother becomes stronger for her child. She struggled to run after them, but the middle-aged woman feared she would ruin things, slapped her across the face, and after warning her, shoved the child back into her arms.
She fled back home clutching her terrified daughter, but for a long time after that she heard no movement from that group.
Had Grandma Song and her grandson already…
The woman hunched over and stepped out into the yard. Suddenly, her foot bumped into something.
Looking down, she saw two cans of formula milk and a spring knife lying on the ground.
Carrying them, she ran toward Grandma Song’s house. The main gate was locked, and there was not the slightest sound inside.
Gripping the spring knife tightly, she walked toward the back wall and there saw two stiff frozen corpses lying straight in the snow.
It was the father and son who had beaten her!
Good! They deserved to die!
There were also traces of blood on the ground, and the motorcycle was gone. So that group must have escaped with injuries.
The woman looked at the knife in her hand, and her expression grew firmer and firmer.
In this inhuman apocalypse, no one could be relied on. She had to stand up on her own if she wanted to keep herself and her daughter alive.
As the sky slowly brightened, the woman left Sun Village with her sleeping daughter strapped to her back and stepped onto the road of survival that belonged to them alone.
—
From Sun Village to Yu City, along this stretch of mountain road, Wei Cheng and Guanguan encountered two waves of zombies in total.
The first wave had been lying in ambush under the snow. When the car drove over them, one could clearly feel the crisp crushing sound and vibration of zombie skulls breaking beneath the wheels.
The Defense Level total was 30 points, enough to kill 30 zombies in one go, and just that single encounter had used up their automatic shredding chance.
The second wave consisted of about twenty zombies. Fortunately, the mountain snow was very deep, so their movements were sluggish as they stumbled toward the car.
Gunshots would echo loudly in the mountains, so in order not to awaken even more zombies buried under the snow, Wei Cheng chose not to use a gun and instead used crossbow bolts.
He quietly stopped the car and used the small crossbow through the open window to deal with them.
Just as he was handling the zombies in front of him, a blue-faced, fang-mouthed zombie slowly crawled out from the snow on the other side.
Its withered, stiff hand slammed heavily against the car window.
Guanguan’s sleepiness vanished instantly, and he shouted, “Big brother! There’s a monster here!”
“Don’t be scared!”
Wei Cheng had just finished killing the twenty-odd zombies blocking the road. He turned his head, immediately reversed, and the zombie fell into the snow from the force.
His face stayed calm. He swiftly turned the wheel left, and when several more zombies began climbing out of the snow, he restarted the car and sped away.
Even so, that disturbance still woke over a hundred zombies buried across the snowfield.
The zombies behind the car kept popping out of the snow like gophers, only to be blocked by the thick drifts.
Guanguan’s eyes were round and gleaming. “So exciting!”
Wei Cheng smiled and glanced at him. “You weren’t scared just now?”
“Not scared!”
Guanguan shook his head and made a little finger-gun pose with his hand. “Guanguan’s gun is at home. Otherwise, I’d show them!”
“So impressive. When you’re a little older, big brother will teach you how to use the small crossbow.”
At first, Wei Cheng had thought about teaching Guanguan how to use a slingshot, but after studying it for a while, he gave up on the idea. Guanguan was too small. If he used that kind of slingshot badly, he might hurt his own eyes.
At 6:00 in the morning, Guanguan and Wei Cheng finally arrived safely near Yu City Highland Shelter.
As the name suggested, Highland Shelter stood on high ground. It had been built atop a mountain and could both attack and defend. Before the apocalypse, it had been a well-known hot spring resort town.
They were currently below the highway. As long as they crossed the highway and kept going a short distance downhill, they would be able to see the mountain road, and at the summit of that road lay their destination.
There were no vehicles on this section of the highway. Presumably, the shelter had already hauled them all away—after all, iron was a valuable resource in the apocalypse too.
Wei Cheng did not dare relax. Carrying Guanguan on his back, he climbed over the highway. On the way down, he noticed many fresh footprints scattered across the snowy slope. It looked like quite a few people had reached the shelter before them.
About five minutes later, they finally saw the imposing mountain resort in the distance. But the once-open road had now been blocked by a checkpoint set up by the shelter.
The iron gate at the road entrance was tightly shut, and long stretches of barbed wire ran off on both sides, too far to see the end.
A queue of survivors stood there, shivering from the cold.
Guanguan climbed down from his brother’s back and let out a startled cry. “Big brother, so many people!”
Wei Cheng estimated there had to be at least twenty of them there.
Just then, the sound of a vehicle came from behind them.
It was a large supply truck, its cargo bed covered in black canvas. The man in the passenger seat wore a helmet and held a sniper rifle.
The people in line automatically stepped aside to let the truck through.
When the stone gate opened from inside, the survivors in line became visibly restless. The person at the very front had lips frozen purple and shouted, “Leader, leader, when are you going to let us in? We’ve already been waiting two hours. We’re almost freezing to death!”
A guard, holding his gun, replied coldly, “The virus has a five-hour incubation period in the human body. Your group still needs to wait outside for another three hours!”
He glanced toward the back. “The second group has to wait four hours. The people who’ve just arrived at the end need to wait the full five hours!”
Holding Guanguan’s little hand, Wei Cheng frowned slightly.
One woman could not hold back her tears. Her whole body shook violently. “Another three hours? I… I’m really going to freeze to death!”
“In weather this cold, five hours will kill us!”
The guard replied, “Those are the rules!”
“But… but look at how little we’re wearing. We’ve been walking all night. We’re starving and freezing. We really can’t hold on!”
Just as the truck was slowly passing through the gate, the man in the passenger seat suddenly raised his voice: “Check their baggage first, then separate them into quarantine rooms. Rules are dead, people are alive. If you leave them out there any longer, they’ll all turn into zombies from the cold!”
The guard immediately responded, “Yes, sir!”
The crowd instantly brightened and started thanking him one after another. “Thank you, leader! Thank you, leader!”
The truck drove through the gate, and several guards began carefully checking the survivors’ belongings.
One middle-aged guard even paused when he saw Wei Cheng and Guanguan. He probably had not expected such small children to still be alive.
Guanguan was a little afraid of strangers, so he quietly buried his face against his brother’s leg.
The middle-aged guard said nothing and continued rummaging through their bags. He found a child’s paper cutter and confiscated it. “No knives of any kind are allowed in the shelter.”
“Uncle, my little brother is too young. I can’t relax if he’s separated from me. Could you keep us together?” Wei Cheng lowered his voice. “There are a few cigarettes in the inner compartment of the backpack. I picked them up. You work so hard protecting us—I really don’t know how to thank you.”
The middle-aged guard’s brows rose. Sure enough, he found several cigarettes. After seeing the brand, his eyes lit up a little too. “Kid, you really know how to talk—and how to scavenge. Even found Huazi, huh?”
He licked his cracked lips, glanced around a few times, and when no one was looking, quietly slipped the cigarettes into his trouser pocket. Then he waved at a few younger guards. “What danger could these two little kids possibly pose? Even if they turned into zombies, one kick would finish them off. Keep them together. No need to waste resources!”
The younger guards replied, “Yes, Captain!”
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