The lock clicked, and the door swung open. After stepping inside, it slammed shut with a resounding thud. Lowering his gaze, he saw a woman lying on the floor. His eyes then lifted to Lui Si, who stood nearby, clutching an iron pot, and two children cowering by the dining table.
Outside, faint, fragmented sounds scuttled along the wall, gradually climbing towards the window—one of those familiar metal-framed windows, painted red.
The black-furred monstrosity pressed itself against the windowpane. The side facing inward resembled grey goosebumps, covered in dense, puckered folds, like empty eye sockets where eyeballs had been gouged out. Within these folds, bloody chunks of meat were embedded—perhaps ripped from a fat pig moments ago, or perhaps they were Old Feng’s flesh. These flesh-filled folds bore a chilling resemblance to blood clams, a delicacy favored by some along the eastern coast.
A child’s shriek pierced the silence of the room. Jing Lan swiftly drew the curtains. The black-furred creature, still clinging to the window, slammed against the glass with several heavy thuds. This sudden assault, paradoxically, silenced the terrified children. Then came a series of scraping sounds, followed by the clatter of loose bricks being overturned by the roadside. It seemed the black-furred monstrosity had moved on.
Ling Yechen stood frozen, his eyes wide and vacant. His entire body trembled uncontrollably.
“What… what was that thing?”
He had witnessed the black-furred monstrosity devour Old Feng. Its immense maw had ripped flesh from bone in a matter of moments.
Everything had unfolded with such terrifying speed. Lui Si’s arm gave a shaky tremor, and the iron pot clattered to the floor.
Jing Lan glanced down at Old Feng’s Wife, who lay motionless on the ground. He bent to check for a breath, only then noticing the woman’s head, grotesquely disfigured by the impact.
“Such strength. You didn’t need to do that.” While he felt a sense of camaraderie and gratitude for being saved, Jing Lan found this act of killing utterly excessive.
“I saved you!” Lui Si suddenly snarled, her gaze turning savage as she lifted her head. “She was trying to snap the key, to keep this door from opening!”
“If the door wouldn’t open, I would have run towards the highway.”
“You couldn’t outrun that monster!”
Jing Lan had never seen Lui Si like this. It was as if the person on the ground was Lui Si’s kin, and Jing Lan himself was the murderer.
She must have been consumed by immense fear at that moment. Her furious outburst was merely a desperate attempt to maintain her composure.
Jing Lan had no desire to argue further with Lui Si. Even though the female corpse on the floor shattered his perception of her, he simply could not fathom why this seemingly troubled young woman, in a flash of lightning, could so ruthlessly strike down someone with whom she had no quarrel, showing no mercy and delivering an almost instantaneous death blow.
Even if her action had saved him, it was still utterly unexpected.
Could Lui Si’s hidden identity be that of an assassin? Yet, at this moment, she was trembling with fear. Her body, which had previously seemed slightly plumper than Ling Yechen’s, now appeared to have instantly thinned. He couldn’t tell if it was the muscle contractions caused by her terror, or merely an optical illusion cast by the dim light.
The two terror-stricken children wailed uncontrollably, intermittently casting bewildered glances at the unwelcome visitors. They seemed unable to reconcile their parents’ sudden, violent deaths with the seemingly benign presence of these older siblings. Little Lamai gently coaxed and guided the two children into the bedroom.
Only three people remained in the room.
Ling Yechen abruptly seized Jing Lan’s hand. “What do we do, senior? Will I be eaten by that thing too? What exactly is it? Is it also a zombie? Why does it seem so alien to this world? What on earth is happening to this world? Why… why is this happening?”
“A Blood Blanket. The locals also call it a ‘Ground Roller.'” Jing Lan explained, pushing open the barrels of his double-barreled shotgun, ejecting the spent shells, and then loading a fresh slug.
“It’s not a new phenomenon. I have a book in my car, ‘Ten Great Border Mysteries,’ written by a famous explorer. He once journeyed through the southern border, collecting extensive research for this book, and it includes accounts of the Blood Blanket legend.
“In essence, it’s a creature—or perhaps not a creature, as no one has ever truly seen its full form—that moves like a carpet both in water and along the shore. Rumors of the Blood Blanket have existed since World War II, with tales of soldiers in the rainforest drawing water from rivers, only for a ripple in the water to drag them beneath the surface.”
Jing Lan continued to draw the curtains on the remaining windows.
“Similar legends can be found across South Asia, Southeast Asia, and even Latin America. More recently, in March 2000, a hunter named Lamoli encountered one here, and his dog was killed by the Blood Blanket.”
Lui Si and Ling Yechen watched Jing Lan in silence, uttering not a word.
After a long pause, Ling Yechen spoke, his voice trembling. “Um… senior, aren’t you scared?”
If, last night, Ling Yechen and Lui Si had yet to fully grasp the reality of the global zombie outbreak, then now, with a new terrifying creature emerging and brutally annihilating a kind person they had just met, in an even more horrific manner, there was no longer any ambiguity regarding the events unfolding. The distracting question of ‘Is this a dream?’ had become utterly irrelevant.
The world’s grotesque mutation stood stark naked before them. Previously, having consumed countless thrilling contemporary works, people would instinctively view anomalous events with a detached, spectator’s curiosity, never truly taking them seriously. It was the false calm of a modern audience.
Now, even that false calm had vanished. The primal fear of death had been unearthed from the depths of their hearts, surfacing like great masses of foam upon the sea.
Yet, Ling Yechen observed Jing Lan’s slender fingers calmly sorting through the shotgun shells in his leather case. Though this hand had once been too weak from illness to even hold a pen, it now showed not a trace of tremor.
“Of course I’m scared. Those who aren’t will be the first to die.”
The words might have been true, but they offered little reassurance. Ling Yechen chose not to press further. He stepped forward and grasped Jing Lan’s left hand, shrinking beside his senior like a frightened girl.
“Well, there’s no need to be *that* scared…”
Their plans were now utterly derailed. The violent deaths of Old Feng and his wife were secondary; to put it cruelly, it might even save them a few meals.
But if the Blood Blanket continued to roam nearby, it could mean that even if the zombies starved, they still wouldn’t be able to venture outside.
Since the Blood Blanket appeared to be a normal carnivore, participating in the food chain, it wouldn’t need to specifically hunt living humans like zombies. With so many small animals in the forest, it wouldn’t starve.
At this thought, Jing Lan realized the anomalies went far beyond this. The Blood Blanket, a mysterious creature whose true form had been unknown for decades, was almost dismissed as a myth by the world. Yet now it had appeared alongside the zombie crisis. Considering the earlier zombie snakes, Jing Lan suspected this forest might harbor even more dangerous mutations.
What if a zombie elephant simply showed up tomorrow and tore the house apart?
Too many unknowns had emerged in the world. Decisions based on existing experience were no longer reliable. No one knew whether staying or leaving was the correct choice.
The three of them sat in the house’s dining room. From the adjacent bedroom, the sound of children weeping drifted out.
Suddenly, a creaking sound, like breaking wood, emanated from the woodshed behind the house. Jing Lan’s face darkened. “That thing is still here.” He grabbed his shotgun and rushed towards the woodshed.
The woodshed was an annex built behind the house. It was constructed from wooden planks and common red, white, and blue tarpaulin.
At this moment, the lower planks of the woodshed were being gnawed by the Blood Blanket. The thin, brittle wood was quickly torn open, creating a gaping hole.
“Shit.” Jing Lan muttered an expletive under his breath. He aimed his shotgun at the Blood Blanket, which was now poking its head through the opening, and fiercely squeezed the trigger.
With a deafening blast, the Blood Blanket let out a high-pitched shriek of agony, hastily retreating.
But then something unexpected happened: the spot where the bullet hit began to hiss and spark with fire.
Jing Lan shone his LED flashlight, revealing a flash of red near the sparks. Focusing his eyes, he saw a pile of fireworks and firecrackers.
“f*ck!” Jing Lan couldn’t even hear his own curse. The giant single-shot firecracker, a ‘Red Thunder King,’ exploded with a thunderous roar far louder than the shotgun, drowning out his words. This was immediately followed by a whole bag of ‘Cracklers’ igniting with a rapid-fire *pitter-patter*. Cracklers were small fireworks made from reactive metals, known for their high burning temperature; Jing Lan recalled playing with them, how they wouldn’t extinguish even when thrown into water. Now, burning together, they emitted a dazzling magnesium flare. A pile of straw and dry shrubs, kept in the woodshed for daily use, quickly caught fire. Next to them sat a multi-shot skyrocket, its fuse now hissing and spitting.
Jing Lan’s heart sank with dread. He turned his head and, to his horror, saw the box of grenades Old Feng had shown him earlier, lying right on top of the burning kindling. If those exploded, the consequences would be unimaginable! Jing Lan snatched up the grenades and fled the woodshed, shutting its plastic door behind him as he went.
Inside the woodshed, skyrockets whizzed and shot erratically, accompanied by a cacophony of crackling and popping.
In the dining room, Ling Yechen and Lui Si stared, dumbfounded.
“Senior… are you a mischievous child too?”
“Mischievous your head!” Jing Lan snapped, annoyed, and lightly tapped Ling Yechen’s skull. “This family had no sense of safety! Stacking fireworks in the woodshed! I just hope this doesn’t attract zombies!”
Ling Yechen helplessly covered his ears. He hated the loud noises. “It probably won’t blow up the house, right?”
Jing Lan leaned closer to catch what he was saying.
“That, it won’t. Fireworks are made with black powder; they don’t have that much power.”
Just as he spoke, as if to deliberately contradict him, a thunderous roar erupted from the woodshed, a sound even greater than the ‘Red Thunder King.’ The dining room windows shattered instantly.
An alarm blared in Jing Lan’s mind. He suddenly realized what was exploding.
Detonators! Damn it, Old Feng had been secretly hiding detonators to blast fish!
Dynamite fishing and poison fishing were local vices. Lacking the patience of anglers, people resorted to heavy weaponry, turning a fish pond into a vast expanse of white bellies floating on the surface in half a day, with several men then cooking up a fish hotpot flavored with explosives or poison.
And the detonators used for fishing weren’t small, practical electronic ones; they were specifically designed for fishing, and, aside from lacking fragmentation, their explosive content could be even higher than a grenade.
And if Old Feng had hidden more than one detonator in the woodshed—
Before his thought could finish, another series of explosions, interspersed with flashes of fire, erupted. The plastic door of the woodshed leaped into the air in a blaze of light, flying directly into the dining room and landing with a thud on the corpse of the hostess.
Meanwhile, the brick wall at the back of the woodshed was blown away, revealing a gaping hole two meters high and four meters wide, exposing the inky black night to the three of them.
If, until this moment, Jing Lan had still been considering ways to block the opening, then upon hearing the zombies’ roars echoing from the direction of the highway, he understood.
This house was no longer safe to stay in.