An Unexpected Find in the Medium-Radiation Zone

“Something is watching us.”

Holding my hand, she spoke softly, sweeping the flashlight around, searching carefully.

I, on the other hand, was starting to panic.

What was it?

A mutant or just a normal animal?

I didn’t know.

I squeezed her hand a little tighter, and she immediately, mercilessly, shook it off.

“Take the flashlight and shine it over there.”

Su Yanlan handed me the flashlight, pointing to a tree trunk on our right.

Though my heart felt empty and exposed, I did as she said, suppressing my unease and steadying the light in the direction she indicated.

In the white beam of the flashlight, the thick brown trunk of the tree was stained with blood.

Dried, brown blood, mixed with some unidentifiable milky-white substance.

I watched as Su Yanlan walked slowly toward the tree.

She pushed aside the overgrown vines, the rustling sound making the atmosphere even more oppressive.

“…Someone died here.”

After a brief silence, she spoke.

I hesitated for a moment, then decided to go and see for myself.

At the base of the tree was a skeleton, dressed in a green overcoat.

It was leaning quietly against the trunk, a large hole in its skull.

The skeleton’s right arm was bent backward at an impossible angle, its bony fingers clutching a black pistol.

I’m no military expert, so I couldn’t identify the model of the gun.

Su Yanlan bent down, picked up the pistol, and handed it to me.

Then she glanced at the tattered overcoat on the skeleton, pursed her lips, and pulled me away from the thicket of vines, back onto the forest path.

“This? Aren’t you afraid I’ll turn on you if you give it to me?”

The gun felt heavy in my hand.

I’d never handled one before.

My knowledge was limited to: pull the trigger, and a life-ending bullet comes out.

“It doesn’t matter, Miss Qin Yue. I trust you’re not foolish enough to fire a gun recklessly in a radiation zone.”

She simply squeezed my right hand, the one holding the gun, making me cry out in pain.

“So, that thing you said was watching us… was it the skeleton?”

I rubbed my bruised wrist and looked back.

In the distance, I could still see the small point of light that was the entrance to the forest.

I knew it.

How could we have run into a mutant so soon after entering the radiation zone?

“No.”

But to my surprise, Su Yanlan shook her head.

She grabbed my right hand and aimed it toward a dense patch of vines on our left.

The vines there were particularly thick and mostly leafless.

She held me from behind, placed my finger on the trigger, and pressed down.

A sharp crack echoed through the forest, followed by a piercing shriek.

The massive blast made my eardrums tremble, but what horrified me even more was the grotesque monster ten meters away.

It burst from the vines, its pale skin covered in bloody wounds that exposed pale pink muscle.

Its body was hunched over, its leg muscles withered and thin, yet somehow they supported its frame.

Its long arms, nearly two meters in length, dangled to the ground.

Even bent over, it looked much taller than me.

I had no time to wonder how such a tall creature could hide so silently in the vines, because the frenzied monster was already charging at me.

It closed the ten-meter distance in less than a second, lunging toward us, its hands outstretched to impale both me and Su Yanlan.

Bang!

Another shot rang out.

The monster’s advance halted.

I finally snapped back to reality and, in a panic, repeatedly pulled the trigger, emptying the clip into its deformed body.

One shot, two shots, three shots.

I don’t remember how many shots I fired.

All I knew was that by the time the monster collapsed to the ground, the gun in my hand was empty, making only a series of hollow clicks.

“Hah… hah…”

Gasping for breath, I felt a warm drop on my face.

I dropped the gun and wiped my cheek.

A smear of red blood was on my palm.

“Tsk, sixteen bullets. I fired two, you fired fourteen.”

Su Yanlan let go of me.

Without her support, I sank weakly to the ground.

I propped myself up, my mind replaying the chaotic moment, the deafening gunshots still ringing in my ears.

If Su Yanlan hadn’t fired that second shot, I would have been dead before I could even react.

“You knew where it was. Why did you go over to check the corpse? Weren’t you afraid of being attacked?”

Once I caught my breath, the question finally hit me.

She knew where the mutant was, so why did she turn her back on it?

“Miss Qin Yue, I had you behind me, didn’t I? It would have attacked you first anyway. If it had come out on its own, I might have been able to capture it alive.”

Su Yanlan smiled at me, but my heart grew heavy.

So, was this cruel person really the same one who had gently handed me bread this morning?

Using a living person as bait… that’s going too far.

“I have to say, using me as bait and a human shield is a bit much, don’t you think, Miss Yanlan?”

I glared at her, finally understanding why she had held me when she fired the first shot.

If the monster had gotten close, I would have been the first to die, not her.

“It’s not too much.”

Her reply was as calm and flat as ever.

She ignored my resentful gaze and walked over to the monster’s corpse, flipping it over.

Only then could I get a closer look at the creature.

A yellow bullet was lodged in its forehead, the wound healed around it—likely an old injury.

The fatal damage was the bloody mess on its chest—my handiwork.

In my panic, I had instinctively aimed for the largest target.

Now, a cluster of small holes gushed blood.

On each of its legs, a single bullet hole was perfectly placed in the knee—that must have been Su Yanlan’s work.

I could never be that accurate.

“Tsk, if you hadn’t killed it, we could have gone back to the camp. Now we have to go deeper.”

She looked at me.

Her words were blaming, but for some reason, I saw a hint of a smile on her face.

She seemed to be enjoying my predicament.

This person is so strange.

How can one person have so many faces?

The elegance of our first meeting; the psycho in the shop at night; the gentleness of this morning; the coldness at the camp gate; and now, this sadistic amusement.

I understood her less and less, but I knew one thing: I couldn’t handle another scare like that.

I hadn’t screamed, but the terror of being so close to death had taught me a lesson.

That suffocating, speechless feeling… I had never been so afraid of dying.

“It’s getting late. The leader only gave me one day off, and I have to be back there early tomorrow. Let’s come out again another time, Miss Yanlan.”

I looked at my watch and put on a worried expression.

I took her hand and looked into her eyes with a pleading gaze.

I couldn’t believe that after experiencing such mortal terror, I could put on a perfect mask so quickly.

What surprised me even more was that Su Yanlan actually agreed.

“Alright.”

She thought for a moment, then helped me up and took back the coat that had been hers to begin with.

Great, so I’m going to freeze all the way back.

I hope I don’t get a fever.

Praying silently, we started on the long road home.