Jing Lan rushed into the bedroom, intending to lead the three children away.
There, he saw a collapsed brick wall pinning a boy, who was wailing hoarsely.
“Help! Let’s lift this rubble together!” Little Lamai shouted back, then turned to another boy, frozen with fear in the corner, and yelled, “Come help us lift it!”
The collapsed brick wall had been leaning against the backyard woodshed, a large section of which was now blown apart.
Jing Lan interjected, attempting to lift the wall, but it remained stubbornly immobile.
The sheer weight suggested the boy pinned beneath had surely suffered fractures.
Even if they rescued him, finding medical supplies would be another challenge.
Furthermore, Lui Si had killed the two children’s mother with a pot, and while there were reasons for her actions, it was highly unlikely the children would forget the sight of their mother’s death.
From the dining room outside, Ling Yechen’s voice rang out, “Hurry! It seems zombies are approaching from the road!”
Jing Lan gritted his teeth, seizing Little Lamai’s arm.
“Forget him, let’s go!” he urged.
Just as he moved to grab the child in the corner, he noticed a mass of black fur writhing closer beyond the brick wall, which had been blasted by the detonator.
The Blood Carpet was also drawing near, eager to join the commotion.
Jing Lan pulled Little Lamai, rushing out of the bedroom.
With a guttural rumble, the furry Blood Carpet lunged at them through the gaping hole in the wall.
It inadvertently brushed against a burning piece of wood on the ground, recoiling swiftly from the heat.
The four of them flung open the front door and sprinted wildly outside.
Jing Lan felt a sudden tug as Little Lamai wrenched his hand free.
Turning back, he saw the thirteen or fourteen-year-old boy cast a somewhat chilling gaze his way before spinning around and dashing back towards Old Feng’s house.
“Hey, come back!” Jing Lan’s shout did not cause Little Lamai to falter in the slightest.
Attracted by the cry, the other two turned to look, and Ling Yechen hesitated, pausing his steps, only to be shoved forward by Jing Lan, who had already turned back and was running towards the car.
“Don’t bother with him.”
The three rushed back to the car, slamming the doors shut with resounding thuds.
Two zombies shrieked, flinging themselves onto the car windows.
One zombie thrashed its head wildly from side to side, then began smashing its head against the passenger-side window, sending its incisors flying.
Terrified, Ling Yechen scrambled into Jing Lan’s lap in the driver’s seat.
“The glass won’t break.”
The car ignited, shifted into gear, and the accelerator was pressed.
With a roar, it should have sped away—yet it did not.
The headlights revealed the road ahead: a dense, unmoving blockade of cars.
It was no wonder Old Feng’s activity had so quickly drawn the zombies.
These zombies were likely the drivers of the cars clogging the road.
They must have believed the city lockdown wouldn’t last long, so they simply waited on the road—perhaps people returning home who had nowhere else to go.
They had likely slept in their cars with the doors open, only for this catastrophe to strike, transforming them into the walking dead on their journey home.
“Both ends of the road are blocked…” Ling Yechen stared out the window with a hint of despair.
The headlights illuminated the congested stretch of road, where throngs of frenzied zombies were shambling towards them.
“Would it still be better to go back to Old Feng’s house?”
“And are we really just going to abandon Little Lamai there?”
“I’m not going back!” Jing Lan snarled, his fist slamming against the steering wheel.
“Remember that overturned truck? I wondered how it could have flipped on this road, but now I’m starting to think the Blood Carpet might have been responsible.”
“How is this thing so much more powerful than what the books described?”
“If it can flip a truck, we might end up being spun around like a yo-yo if we go back.”
In truth, Jing Lan didn’t entirely believe his own words.
He suspected that even if the truck’s overturning was linked to the Blood Carpet, it was likely due to the driver being startled and slamming on the brakes.
The Blood Carpet had just proven incapable of even breaking a house window, at most tearing apart the woodshed’s planks.
Flipping a vehicle was an even more remote possibility.
Jing Lan simply did not want to return to that place.
Old Feng’s family had been kind-hearted, and Old Feng, who had repeatedly claimed no one outside his family could be trusted, had readily entrusted his shotgun and his safety to Jing Lan.
Yet, Old Feng had ultimately died by Jing Lan’s hand.
Old Feng’s wife, momentarily panicked, had been bludgeoned to death by Lui Si with a pot—the very pot that had just been used to cook chicken soup for their guests.
Jing Lan no longer wanted to blame Lui Si, for she had saved his life.
To speak dispassionately, her decisive action might well be the appropriate conduct in an apocalypse.
Yet, Jing Lan had no desire to return.
What would be the point of going back?
To collect the bodies of that family?
“So what do we do? Where do we go? Can’t we go anywhere at all? Are we just going to…”
“Shut up, you little sissy!” Jing Lan snapped through gritted teeth, his agitated state making it impossible to maintain his composure.
Perhaps the moment “Shut up” left his lips, he realized it was too harsh, so he immediately followed it with the playful “little sissy” to lighten the mood.
However, in their current situation, the jibe felt unsettling, almost like an accusation.
No one laughed.
Ling Yechen, his face flushed with anger, stammered indistinctly, “I… I’m not…”
Repeatedly reversing, then accelerating to ram zombies, they did this seven or eight times.
By then, those in the car felt as though they were about to vomit the chicken soup they had just eaten.
The crucial issue was the narrow road, which lacked space for the car to maneuver.
The acceleration from the impacts wasn’t sufficient; many of the zombies they hit weren’t killed outright.
They would scramble back up, howling and screeching like debt collectors, resulting in an ever-increasing number of zombies surrounding the car.
While zombies indeed couldn’t smash the car windows, a new problem had emerged: both dead and living zombies began circling the vehicle.
The car’s wheels were periodically being lifted by zombies on the ground.
With its low chassis, if the car’s underside were to be propped up by the zombies, it would be as immobile as a turtle on its back with tin cans under its belly, flailing its limbs uselessly.
The occupants would then be trapped, waiting for death, as stepping out would instantly make them a zombie feast.
Clearly, they couldn’t continue fighting hordes here.
Jing Lan yanked the gearshift into reverse.
“Fasten your seatbelts! We can’t stay here; the hillside next to us isn’t too steep.
We’re driving straight down it!”
Before anyone could respond, he floored the accelerator.
The car veered off the road, crashed through the bushes, and lurched bumpy down the hillside.
The hillside here was indeed not very steep.
Below the slope lay what appeared to be a seasonal river valley, currently in its dry season.
Even during the wet season, it likely didn’t hold much water, as the riverbed seemed to lack smooth pebbles, instead being dominated by sharp, angular breccia.
This made for an incredibly jarring ride; perhaps even breeding two pigs in the car wouldn’t produce such intense vibrations.
The river valley stretched for several kilometers, finally terminating at a steep incline.
In the summer, a small, picturesque waterfall might appear here.
However, due to poor visibility at night, Jing Lan failed to brake in time.
The car plunged directly over the waterfall, crashing violently onto the shingle beach below.
The shingle beach, similarly rich in gravel, proved fatal for the tires.
With several loud bangs, the car’s tires burst.
Of course, the occupants didn’t hear it, as the airbags deployed with a resounding “thwump.”
Ling Yechen felt as though he had been pummeled, his head and neck nearly transforming into something out of a Shinbo Akiyuki anime from the impact of the airbags.
The chassis likely also struck a protruding rock, emitting a sharp, metallic clang.
Jing Lan drew his dagger, intending to puncture the deployed airbag on the steering wheel.
He then suddenly recalled that the contents of airbags might be toxic, so he refrained.
He twisted the steering wheel, sighing.
“The steering mechanism is completely shot.”
The group frantically checked themselves for injuries.
Fortunately, aside from Ling Yechen’s eye socket being swollen from the airbag impact, everyone else was unharmed.
The three of them sat in the car in silence for half a minute.
Suddenly, a commotion erupted from the bushes on the car’s right side.
The three occupants nearly sprang out of their seats like cats startled from sleep.
Jing Lan immediately exited the car, retrieved his shotgun from under the seat, and walked towards the rustling bushes.
Soon after, a gunshot echoed, and something collapsed within the foliage.
“A railway worker.”
“It seems there’s a railway nearby.”
He pulled open Ling Yechen’s car door.
“Come on, Yechen.
The car’s totaled.”
Lui Si, in the back seat, opened her own door, carefully avoiding the deployed airbag above the window, and stepped out.
The night breeze gently stirred the girl’s slightly disheveled bun.
The young man in the passenger seat covered his forehead with his hand.
“Does it still hurt a lot?”
“Just kill me too.”
“Get out, I’ll find you a plaster.”
“Kill me.”
Jing Lan raised his shotgun, and Ling Yechen instinctively flinched, almost believing Jing Lan was truly about to blow his brains out.
Of course not.
Jing Lan ejected a spent shell casing and loaded a fresh bullet.
“If you die, I’ll be sad for the rest of my life.”
“Don’t say such disgusting things.”
“I’d keep sending you messages on WeChat, but no one would ever reply.”
“Someone like you wouldn’t do that at all.”
Silence.
“I would.”
****
The three of them sorted through the supplies in the car, then departed from the accident site.
Instant noodles were discarded, only compressed biscuits kept.
In the passenger-side glove compartment, there were several precious original albums.
After a moment’s thought, Jing Lan tucked a Supercell album, “ZIGAEXPERIENTIA,” into his backpack.
“Listen to it until you die?” Lui Si asked, tucking two packs of plasters from the trunk into her clothes pocket.
There were also a few small books in the central armrest compartment, two of which Jing Lan placed into his backpack.
“Read them until you die?”
“Not exactly,” Jing Lan replied, holding one book up to Lui Si.
“‘Ten Secret Tales of the Border,’ by Bai Xing.
Is this the book you mentioned before?”
“Mm, I always thought of it as an urban legend, but now I have a feeling it might come in handy.”
Lui Si pouted.
“What about the other book?”
“That one, I’ll read until I die,” Jing Lan said, not showing her the book.
Gasoline was heavy, but knowing it would be incredibly precious in the future, Jing Lan filled two empty drink bottles with it.
Following the riverbed, the three continued to walk forward.
It was past midnight, and the hills and trees on either side were so profoundly dark they seemed to exude the scent of ink.
The beam from their LED flashlight revealed faint, floating green lights, like silent will-o’-the-wisps.
Further on the horizon, a deep reddish-brown glow faintly permeated the sky, likely indicating Mengshan County town.
The power grid was still operational, with electricity expected to last at least another week.
Lights continued to burn within the city.
However, what sights were illuminated beneath that glow was difficult to imagine.