The moment the phone touched his ear, no human voice greeted him; instead, a cacophony of desperate cries and furious curses assaulted him. Adults’ panicked shouts interleaved, seemingly attempting to restore some semblance of order amidst the chaos. Then, with the definitive thud of a closing door, an abrupt silence fell, finally allowing the faint sound of a young girl’s breathing to emerge.
“Brother, what’s the situation?”
A wave of relief washed over Jing Lan as his cousin’s voice reached him.
“Mengli Town is likely lost. We managed to drive out and are currently at Observation Post 115.”
After a brief pause for thought, he appended, “Uncle Lü, Brother Dao, and Little Lamai’s parents…”
“How are the rest of you faring?”
“We’re alright. Little Lamai managed to escape with us.”
A long, drawn-out exhale echoed from the other end of the line, leaving Jing Lan uncertain whether it was born of a great burden lifted from her heart or a profound sense of regret.
“Putting the phone on speaker should be convenient for you, yes?”
“It is.”
Jing Lan placed the phone onto the small, square wooden table positioned before the wire bed. “It’s Keke,” he announced.
“Yes, it’s me. I apologize that everyone’s been so startled.”
“You talk as if you unleashed the zombies yourself,” Lui Si quipped casually, a hint of dry humor in her voice.
“Keke sister!” Upon hearing the young girl’s voice through the phone, Little Lamai abruptly lifted his head, his eyes gleaming with a rekindled spark of life, as if he had just encountered a beloved family member. Witnessing this, Jing Lan couldn’t help but marvel inwardly, acknowledging that his capable cousin was undeniably a formidable local figure, possessing an astonishingly extensive network of connections within the region.
“It’s truly wonderful that you’re still so full of spirit. Little Lamai, just make sure to listen to your brothers and sisters. Everyone here is a friend of your parents; we are, in essence, all one big family. You are safe within the observation post right now; very few people are aware of this location. My situation here, however, is quite perilous. That’s why I’m calling you—to put it bluntly, it’s something of a plea for help…”
Keke then recounted the events that had unfolded over the past few hours at the National Middle School. Apparently, a student who had secretly scaled the wall to ‘go up the mountain’—a local idiom for visiting an internet café—had returned to school injured. Due to strict regulations, the school had initially ordered all students back to their dormitories. Tragically, this injured student had then succumbed to a frenzy, biting all eight occupants of his room. As fate would have it, the school soon after called for an urgent assembly on the sports field, releasing all students from their dorms for a lecture. When no sound emerged from the infected dormitory, someone was sent to investigate, only for eight newly turned zombies to burst out, immediately attacking everyone in sight. The school’s initial plan to open the gates for students and staff to evacuate was quickly thwarted when zombies were discovered already roaming the streets outside. Fortunately, one teacher, with remarkable presence of mind, recalled that the school’s computer labs were located on the sixth floor and above. Crucially, an anti-theft iron gate had been installed in the stairwell between the fifth and sixth floors to safeguard the valuable equipment. Swiftly, the teacher rallied the remaining survivors, urging them to ascend to the sixth floor.
“It’s a miracle you all succeeded,” Jing Lan remarked. A cold sweat pricked at Jing Lan’s back. Though Keke had refrained from explicitly detailing the horrific scenes, an undeniable tremor laced her voice. His cousin was renowned for her audacious spirit, having participated in outdoor camping and cave exploration; truly, there were few spectacles capable of unsettling her composure. “So, are all the survivors now confined to the sixth floor and above? And have you conducted any checks to ascertain if any of them bear injuries?”
“That’s precisely what I needed to tell you… Brother, I just killed someone. I pushed a fellow student—a junior with bite marks on her arm—from the upper floor.”
A heavy silence descended upon the four individuals in the room. Each seemed to harbor a profound apprehension about how to respond to Keke’s confession.
“Are you certain that anyone bitten will inevitably transform into a zombie?” Jing Lan broke the uneasy silence, his voice a low murmur.
“Certain… no, that’s not quite accurate. But I witnessed with my own eyes people turning within mere dozens of seconds after being bitten. It’s just like the scenarios depicted in ’28 Days Later’ and ‘Z Nation’.”
“Even assuming there’s a virus within zombie saliva, a mere few dozen seconds wouldn’t be enough time for the body’s circulatory system to fully deliver the venom to the central nervous system, would it…?”
“You don’t need to lecture a biology major on this; regardless, it simply happened. As you just mentioned, didn’t Old Wang transform more than ten minutes after being bitten? It seems the transformation process isn’t fixed. In any case, this is no time for theoretical discussions. This isn’t merely a virus; or rather, it shouldn’t be considered a virus at all. It’s closer to a biological weapon.
“What’s even more troubling is my suspicion that the local military and police systems have also collapsed. I just contacted my great-uncle on my mother’s side; his police station is now utterly powerless, incapable of getting any response from higher authorities. I also called Old Cao, whose home is close to the military district, and he reported no activity on the highway for hours.”
“Who exactly is this Old Cao?”
“He’s a painter. Covertly, however, he deals in counterfeit documents and Thai aphrodisiacs.”
“Aren’t you afraid of getting yourself thrown in jail, you reckless girl?!”
“Let’s put that aside for now. In essence, the current situation is that I, along with a dozen other students and two teachers, are trapped on the sixth floor of the teaching building. There’s only a water dispenser in one office, and we managed to find two crying children, but absolutely no other supplies. We won’t last more than a few days. Downstairs, the entire area is swarming with zombies; there’s no way to descend.”
“So, you’re asking us to send reinforcements?”
“Not at all,” Keke responded with an unhesitating certainty. “From the current state of affairs, your arrival here would be nothing short of a suicide mission.”
It was an undeniable truth. A sudden, unsettling premonition stirred within Jing Lan.
“Then… Keke, what exactly do you plan to do?”
“There’s nothing to be done.”
“The computer classrooms… we could use electrical cables to fashion makeshift rappelling lines, lowering them from the upper floors.”
“The sports field is also completely overrun with zombies, but that idea could certainly serve as a last resort. Thank you, brother; your mind is as sharp and resourceful as ever.”
Jing Lan knew, of course, that Keke was already well aware of such possibilities. As an avid outdoor adventurer, his cousin possessed an exceptional understanding and familiarity with ropes. Her compliments were, without a doubt, pure teasing.
The voice from the other end of the line continued, “So, while I’m calling for help, my true intention is to tell you not to rush to rescue me. From your descriptions, it seems you managed to escape Mengli with minimal direct contact with the zombies. Brother, your swift elimination of Old Wang’s zombie form was due to your quick reflexes and the knife I gave you. You likely have no true understanding of these zombies’ combat capabilities.
“Let me put it this way: even with your two months of martial arts training, engaging a zombie without a weapon is essentially a death sentence. Even I, just moments ago, narrowly avoided being bitten several times.”
While dwelling on the terrifying nature of the zombies was an unpleasant subject, no one dared to interrupt, understanding that this grim reality had to be confronted.
“Therefore, my sole piece of advice to you now is this: do not attempt to engage the zombies directly, and strive to avoid all contact with them. The safest course of action is to remain at Station 115 and await rescue. The provisions there should comfortably last for half a month, wouldn’t they?”
Jing Lan mentally cataloged the provisions stored downstairs, roughly calculating the daily consumption per person, and offered a simple estimate. “There aren’t that many supplies; at most, they’ll last a week.”
“I also taught you how to identify wild vegetables and mushrooms, didn’t I? This season offers winter bamboo shoots, and you can find edible water dragonflies and large-bellied flower spiders. Just remember to twist off the spider’s head before you eat it.”
Both Lui Si and Ling Yechen wore expressions of discomfort, as though spiders were actively performing a grotesque dance within their stomachs.
What had begun as a desperate plea for rescue had, in fact, morphed into an earnest warning against any such attempt.
“But, stepping back for a moment, if it genuinely becomes impossible to remain on the mountain, I do have a few alternative destinations for you.
“Firstly, there’s my home. I have my recurve bow there, along with a gift I had intended for you, Brother—a 70-pound compound bow, and a plentiful supply of arrows. However, reaching my house necessitates traversing the entirety of Mengshan County, so this option should be considered a last resort.
“Secondly, you could make your way to Bodhi Temple. However, I haven’t been able to reach Master Daosheng. Furthermore, I suspect the temple will be the primary refuge many survivors consider. Should you, Brother, manage to establish contact with the master, then it becomes a viable option to contemplate.
“Thirdly, there’s my maternal great-uncle’s farm. I won’t elaborate much, as you just spoke with him. He possesses hunting rifles and protective netting there, making it a potentially defensible stronghold for an extended period. Yet, it’s the most distant option, requiring passage through the entire county… traveling there right now might prove unrealistic.
“Fourth… I’m unsure whether I should even mention this. I’m not certain of the inherent risks or the reliability of this particular option. Approximately forty kilometers north-northeast (30° east of north) of Dingguo Mountain, which is roughly twenty kilometers north of the Goat Cave Scenic Area, there might be a secret military base.”
“How could you possibly know that?” Jing Lan asked, his voice tinged with surprise.
“Last summer, my friend and I were there collecting butterflies. My friend was taking pictures and happened to photograph a group of people who looked like a tour group. Instantly, they approached us, displayed their rather intimidating identification, and then commanded us to show our own IDs and delete the photographs. It was quite clear they were individuals involved in classified operations.”
“How do you always manage to stumble into such thrilling predicaments?”
“It’s all thanks to your upbringing, Brother,” the young girl retorted with a hint of exasperation. “In any case, I merely mentioned that option offhandedly. Even if such a base genuinely exists, there’s no guarantee that everyone inside hasn’t already been infected. And what if, by some bizarre twist of fate, the people I encountered were just ordinary tourists using fake IDs to intimidate us? There’s no way to be certain, is there?”
Having imparted this information, Keke offered a few more words of encouragement to the group, then announced her need to go calm her younger schoolmates, promising to contact them again when she had a moment. With that, she ended the call.
Despite having established contact with the band’s driving force, a profound sense of uncertainty settled even more deeply within everyone’s hearts.
For a long time, perhaps, everyone had regarded Keke as a person adorned with an abundance of brilliant accolades: the county’s top scorer in the college entrance examination, five years of martial arts training, proficiency in archery and outdoor pursuits, and even the co-founder of a moderately famous band where she served as both bassist and lead vocalist. By conventional standards, Keke was undeniably an exceptionally formidable young woman. This assessment, driven by sheer force of habit, persisted even into the throes of disaster, leading each person to harbor somewhat unrealistic expectations of her—a subconscious phenomenon, certainly. After all, no matter how intelligent or academically accomplished she was, she couldn’t simply scare zombies to death; imagining silencing them with music, as in ‘Mars Attacks!’, was likely equally impractical. Thus, when Keke called for ‘help,’ yet found herself compelled to caution them ‘not to rush’ to her rescue, an inescapable and potent sense of powerlessness began to spread among them.
Lui Si, seemingly bored, leaned against the load-bearing pillar next to her bed, scrolling through her phone. Ling Yechen stared blankly, lost in thought. Little Lamai simply turned on his side and drifted off to sleep.
A chill settled in Jing Lan’s heart. He glanced around, the darkness of the pitch-black forest seeming to surge inward like a liquid, causing him to shiver involuntarily.
Casually picking up his phone, he discovered Keke was still sending him WeChat messages.
[If there were no one else, what would you do?]
It was a direct, piercing question.
[I’d stay and seek refuge at 115.]
[Liar. You wouldn’t abandon me to die trapped upstairs.]
[‘…’]
Keke was right. If Ling Yechen and Lui Si weren’t there, he would never have stayed to await rescue; he would have gone to save Keke, no matter the cost.
Was this the bond between siblings? Not entirely.
Perhaps it also stemmed from an intense hatred for ‘helplessness.’ This was an indelible mark left on his heart by a now somewhat distant past, a decree that activated instantly, like a mental imprint, impossible to refute.
Keke continued to send messages: [After all these years, you’re still so stubborn.]
[I will get you out.] Jing Lan immediately replied. Typing felt like a counter-attack. He hated being called stubborn, even if he didn’t deny it.
[I believe you, Brother. But please, calm down first. Think of a good plan. I had you put me on speaker earlier precisely so others would hear. You now need to consider not just me, but also your other friends. The best approach is to reach a consensus, but if that’s not possible, you must avoid acting alone. If order remains unrestored, then teamwork will become increasingly vital.]
Jing Lan pondered for a long time how to craft a response that was both appropriate and preserved a brother’s dignity in front of his sister. After much deliberation, he couldn’t think of anything, so he could only honestly reply, [I understand.]