The Imperative of Relocation

On the morning of the 16th, the three of them awoke simultaneously at 7 AM.

Outside the door, zombies howled, some even harmonizing in a cacophony that resembled a chorus of acute bronchitis patients singing folk songs.

Periodically, zombies would crash against the roller shutter door, producing a cacophonous booming sound that made Ling Yechen furrow his brow.

“Why do I feel like the zombies know we’re inside?”

Ling Yechen deliberately approached the roller shutter door, but the zombies showed no reaction.

‘Good, it seems they don’t possess X-ray vision,’ he mused.

Nearby, Lui Si peered out of a narrow transom window, situated a meter and a half above the ground at the back of the house.

“There are a few behind the house too,” she reported, her voice tinged with concern. “It looks like we’re in trouble.”

“Can they track scents?”

Jing Lan checked his dagger and shotgun, methodically loading shells into the barrel.

“If so, our subsequent movements will be severely hampered,” he stated gravely.

“Open-air camps will be virtually impossible, and any room with only one exit could easily become a death trap.”

Lui Si, seemingly having made eye contact with a zombie through the transom, quickly recoiled.

“If you ask me,” she began, a shiver running down her spine, “there might have been signs as early as the evening of the 12th.”

“We were staying at a motel on the edge of town then, and that area was usually quite sparse.”

“Remember when Uncle Lü died? So many zombies gathered, almost as if they were responding to some signal.”

‘And that zombie snake,’ Jing Lan thought, a grimace on his face.

‘Damn it all.’

‘If zombie snakes became prevalent, this apocalypse would become utterly unplayable.’

The trio quickly conferred, arriving at a unanimous conclusion: immediate relocation was imperative.

Should more zombies converge here, escape would become utterly impossible.

Even if the zombies were to starve in another half-month, the trio had abandoned some supplies when they left their car.

While surviving for half a month wasn’t entirely out of the question, it would undoubtedly be excruciatingly painful.

Ling Yechen then tentatively posed a question.

“For safety’s sake, would it not be more secure to remain here?”

Driven by an emotional impulse, he harbored no such desire.

“Let’s not forget, the idea of zombies starving in half a month is merely a hypothesis,” Jing Lan countered.

“If they don’t starve, or even if it takes a few more days—twenty days, a month—we could all be finished.”

He recalled a piece of wisdom Keke had once shared: never assume that the conservative choice is inherently the safest.

Peering through the bottom gap of the roller shutter, they observed over a dozen zombies wandering on the road outside, predominantly young adults.

Jing Lan remembered the proximity of a barbecue street, allowing him to surmise the events of the past two days.

“Getting out will likely require grenades,” Jing Lan declared, glancing back at the small wooden crate on the floor.

“Are we really resorting to heavy weaponry already?”

Lui Si, sensing Jing Lan’s firm resolve for immediate action, hastily began gathering her belongings.

Jing Lan swiftly outlined their strategy: after opening a crack in the roller shutter, he would toss out a grenade.

Following the explosion, he would fully open the door and provide cover with his shotgun.

One person would need to bolt out first to draw the zombies’ attention.

Jing Lan could then fire two shots to eliminate any zombies pursuing the vanguard, before the second person followed suit.

He himself would cover the rear, as only he, with his two months of combat training, stood a chance of winning a close-quarters fight against a zombie.

Evidently, the vanguard faced a considerably high mortality rate.

“I’ll do it,” Lui Si declared, tossing her small shoulder bag into Ling Yechen’s arms.

“I’m the shortest, so I’ll be the smallest target.”

“Such a minor height difference is hardly significant!” Ling Yechen exclaimed, attempting to return the bag.

Lui Si, however, refused to take it.

“But whether I’m suitable or not, perhaps Little Lanlan has more say?”

Lui Si cast her gaze towards Jing Lan, who was already inspecting the grenade.

“Suitability aside, initiative is paramount,” Jing Lan responded.

“A reluctant vanguard will always falter.”

“So, Yechen, do you also wish to be the vanguard?”

When asked this, Ling Yechen opened his mouth, on the verge of uttering ‘Of course.’

Yet, at that precise moment, his jaw went numb, and his mouth, betraying his will, refused to articulate a single word.

“Then Lui Si it is,” Jing Lan concluded.

“It’s alright; everyone has their own role to play.”

Ling Yechen lowered his head in vexation, feeling an urge to slap himself.

****

Ling Yechen gently raised the roller shutter by twenty centimeters.

Jing Lan twisted off the grenade’s safety cap, then pulled the pin with a forceful tug.

With a hiss, acrid gunpowder smoke erupted.

Jing Lan quickly assessed the distribution of zombies outside the door, then hurled the grenade into a cluster of them that had gathered face-to-face, almost as if deliberating their next meal.

The suddenly rolling grenade seemed to elicit curious grunts from some of the zombies.

Four seconds later, a roar three times louder than a thunderclap, reverberated against the roller shutter.

Simultaneously, Jing Lan and Ling Yechen hoisted the shutter higher, and Lui Si burst forth, with Ling Yechen close on her heels.

Jing Lan, bracing the door with his shoulder, raised his shotgun and fired at two zombies approaching Lui Si.

Having not used the aiming sight, merely raising the gun to his chest, he dared not hope for headshots at this range.

His primary practice at the shooting range in his university city had been with aiming sights, and he lacked confidence in his hip-fire accuracy.

Indeed, one shot struck the abdomen of a zombie lunging at Lui Si.

Blood spurted from the zombie’s belly, and the immense stopping power knocked it to the ground, yet it struggled and rose again.

‘Well, isn’t that something,’ he thought, ‘they even have health bars, do they?’

However, both the TV series ‘The Walking Dead’ and zombie expert Max Brooks’s ‘The Zombie Survival Guide’ had stated that zombies could typically only be killed by destroying their brains.

It was unexpected to find that the lore from these fictional works—which now seemed less fictional—was actually true.

The trio’s coordination proved remarkably smooth.

Lui Si displayed an unexpectedly nimble agility, likely honed by her frequent travels over the past two years.

Ling Yechen, by contrast, stumbled somewhat, yet he at least managed to watch his step, avoiding tripping over a zombie whose head had been partially blown off by grenade shrapnel.

Even Jing Lan was surprised.

After firing two shots, he saw a remarkably ferocious, corpulent zombie hurtling towards him from a dozen meters away.

Mustering his courage, he ejected the spent shell, swiftly loaded another round, and as the zombie lunged with its grasping, ‘salty pig-hand,’ he deftly dodged aside, then delivered a headshot that blew its brains out.

‘Two shots, then another, plus teleportation, and a super move that throws bombs—am I Graves from League of Legends?’

Jing Lan mused with a touch of self-satisfaction, but no sooner had he regained his footing than he noticed zombies rapidly converging from several directions along the entire street.

Each one was running at the absolute limit of its physical capabilities.

A hunchbacked old woman zombie, despite her short legs, scurried forward with surprising speed, resembling a Japanese geisha performing a brisk, accelerated trot.

Upon realizing the necessity of an all-out sprint, Jing Lan immediately unleashed a frantic dash, his reflexes, honed by years of running practice, kicking in swiftly.

He soon realized, however, that his two companions could not match his pace.

Ling Yechen fared relatively well; slender males typically possessed greater speed.

Lui Si, however, even after shedding all her gear, narrowly avoided the zombies’ grasping fingertips on several occasions.

With zombies constantly emerging from various directions on the street, the trio found themselves unable to run in a straight line, significantly impeding their speed.

As Ling Yechen reached the entrance of a breakfast shop, he spotted a very corpulent zombie seated squarely in a large barrel of white porridge by the door.

Upon seeing the three living individuals, it gleefully sprang up, overturning the porridge barrel with a clang.

Startled, Ling Yechen cried out and swerved, colliding directly into Jing Lan, who was covering the rear.

“Why are you yelling so loudly!?” Jing Lan snapped, his own nerves frayed, baring his teeth.

“How many times have you crashed into me now? Am I really that soft and inviting to bump against?”

Seizing the moment while they had gained some distance, Jing Lan produced another grenade and hurled it into the middle of the road.

With a deafening boom, a zombie’s head, propelled with a slight arc like a ball kicked by Messi, soared through the air and landed directly in their path.

Meanwhile, the white porridge overturned by the corpulent zombie earlier had spread across the concrete, causing several other zombies to slip and fall.

The number of pursuers finally dwindled, and as the road extended into a vast banana grove at the city’s edge, the path suddenly grew quiet.

The two men, breathless and panting, slowed their pace.

However, Jing Lan continuously maintained an overlapping field of vision with Ling Yechen to avoid any blind spots.

Though exhausted from their arduous sprint, and still gasping for breath, unable to speak, the two men exchanged a look of grim acknowledgment, confirming a shared, despairing realization.

Lui Si was gone.