He carried his cousin down to the fifth floor of the academic building.
Several students sat sprawled on the corridor floor.
It was unclear if they were alive or dead.
Soon, however, one of them tilted their head, their eyes darting around, perhaps attempting to signal they were still among the living.
The white plaster wall was marred by numerous bloodstains.
Beneath the wall lay several blackened bones—likely human hand bones.
Keke gently pulled her hand free from her cousin’s grasp.
“Thank you. I can walk on my own now.”
“Are you sure you’re alright?”
The short-haired girl nudged one of the bones on the ground with her foot.
It emitted a soft, clattering sound.
“These are Xia Hua’s hands.”
“I ate them.”
“That’s why I still have a little strength left.”
Her voice, though feigning composure, still trembled faintly.
Behind Jing Lan, Gao Fei began to retch uncontrollably.
Jing Lan, too, felt as though the bones on the ground possessed a radioactive quality, emitting an unsettling, invisible light.
He had never imagined such an event could unfold.
No one understood his cousin, whom he had grown up with, better than he did: she was upright, courageous, and possessed a kindness that was almost disheartening.
Had she not been blessed with considerable intellect and a physique that stood out among girls, in addition to having studied martial arts for ten years under a folk master, Jing Lan was certain she would have been relentlessly bullied.
Thus, even in this transformed world, where people resorted to any means to survive and any action seemed possible, Jing Lan still found it difficult to reconcile himself with the events unfolding before him.
Jing Lan retrieved several small plastic bottles—each containing a clear liquid—from his bag and handed one to Keke.
“What kind of water is this?” Keke asked.
“Lightly salted water, with a small amount of glucose added.”
“Drink it in small sips.”
“How many others are still alive?”
The girl twisted open the cap and took two sips.
She first let the liquid moisten her mouth before swallowing.
“I don’t know.”
“Those confirmed dead are thrown downstairs.”
“Xia Hua—we ate her, and then we threw her down too.”
Jing Lan handed a bottle of water to the boy he had encountered earlier in the stairwell.
He then moved among the students sitting on the ground, offering water to anyone who still showed signs of life.
“Why did you have to eat Xia Hua?”
“She’s Xia Lang’s sister.”
“You couldn’t possibly have deliberately chosen to… eat someone you knew.”
Jing Lan still struggled to accept the juxtaposition of ‘eating’ and ‘people’ in a second-person narrative.
“She started hallucinating,” Keke recounted, leaning against the classroom wall.
“One student had committed suicide by slitting their wrists, and Xia Hua, seizing a moment when no one was paying attention, went to drink the blood from their arm—a naive liberal arts student, she didn’t realize this would only accelerate dehydration.”
“But I was foolish too.”
“The simple principle of blood separating into layers when left to settle—even liberal arts students learn that—yet I failed to remember it in time.”
“After the blood settles and separates, the upper layer, plasma, is close to saline solution and can quench thirst.”
“If I had only thought of this sooner, taken the dead person’s blood to settle, and given Xia Hua the plasma to drink, she might not have…”
Keke’s body sagged against the wall, and she curled into a corner, once again succumbing to tears.
“After that, she started seeing me as something else entirely.”
“She came over, demanding water, and when I told her there was none, she began to perceive me as some kind of villain, hitting and biting me.”
“Finally, she pulled out the knife from the student who had slit their wrists—in truth, she couldn’t have reached me with it, but in that moment, perhaps I, too, suddenly thought of drinking blood to quench my thirst.”
“My heart was a chaotic mess of irritation, anxiety, and myriad other emotions.”
“By the time I regained a sliver of clarity, I found that I had already drawn the knife and plunged it into Xia Hua’s chest.”
Jing Lan turned his head, his gaze falling upon the spattered bloodstains on the adjacent wall.
He surmised Keke must have cried once before, at that very moment.
He had truly arrived too late.
Originally, he could have departed on the 18th, or the 19th at the very latest.
Had it not been for that bastard Leng Yu causing trouble and almost getting him killed, Keke would not have been driven to murder and blood-drinking.
A small incident had occurred after returning from the granary to Leng Yu’s camp, but it would be omitted for now.
Jing Lan bent down to help his cousin stand, and as he did, the small stone Ye Yin Fengqizi had given him rolled out of his clothing pocket once more.
Picking it up casually, Jing Lan suddenly felt a familiar, halo-like sensation swaying and sublimating within his mind.
Only after he returned the stone to his pocket did the sensation gradually subside.
Keke continued to recount the events following Xia Hua’s death: as the first to take a life, Keke had inadvertently established a form of authority among the survivors, one perhaps founded on fear, even if that was not her intention.
The remaining survivors, who had witnessed her killing Xia Hua, trembled almost uncontrollably at the mere sight of her.
Yet, after she had separated Xia Hua’s blood to extract the plasma and fed it to several people on the brink of death from thirst, a sickening reverence began to manifest in their eyes.
Keke had no idea Jing Lan would still come to rescue her.
Her only gamble was that the zombies would starve to death, or that a far-off rescue team would eventually arrive.
She couldn’t allow herself to starve.
Thus, with trembling hands, she gripped the knife tightly and cut open Xia Hua’s body.
Using a lighter found on a deceased male teacher, she set fire to the curtains to cook the meat.
She ate only the muscle tissue.
The internal organs, she knew, might carry prions.
The smell was intensely gamey.
It tasted somewhat like goose.
Keke felt that if she managed to survive, she might not want to eat meat for three months.
The aroma of cooked meat drew other survivors—though, naturally, none dared to snatch any.
Keke held a sharp knife, and she had already taken a living person’s life with her own hands.
The survivors knelt on the ground, begging for food—extreme weakness being the primary reason they couldn’t stand, their limbs already severely fatigued.
Yet, the possibility of a Stockholm Syndrome effect could not be ruled out either—even though Keke hadn’t oppressed them, they had conjured an image of a terrifyingly powerful Keke, gradually sanctifying this phantom amidst their extreme mental tension and despair.
Keke, unable to refuse them entirely, distributed portions of her junior’s flesh to the survivors who knelt on the ground, swaying their heads, as if bestowing alms upon beggars.
But the torment of thirst proved even more terrifying than hunger.
Drinking plasma, it seemed, was addictive.
At dawn on the 21st, one survivor secretly murdered another with whom they had a grudge.
Under the gaze of everyone present, they crawled before Keke, imploring her to collect the plasma from the person they had just killed.
Keke stepped forward, and with a swift backhand strike, plunged her knife into the killer’s lower jaw, the blade piercing their brainstem.
The murderer died instantly.
“Here, only I may kill.”
This act served as a deterrent, meant to suppress any potential urges for mutual slaughter that might arise among the group.
Keke pushed the corpse aside.
The survivors, whether sitting or crouching in the hallway, lowered their heads.
The two bodies provided additional plasma for everyone.
However, some could not endure this hellish world.
During the day on the 21st, two individuals committed suicide by leaping from the building.
As Keke finished recounting the experiences of the past few days, Jing Lan concurrently confirmed the state of the survivors in the hallway.
Aside from Keke, only three remained.
A male student named Wu Risheng was in relatively good condition, having actively consumed both plasma and meat.
The other two girls, Yu Fang and Ying Yan, were extremely weak, as they had been utterly unable to swallow the flesh of classmates they had lived alongside, only managing to drink plasma.
Pilot Gao Fei attended to the three survivors, ensuring they continued to drink small amounts of water.
The lightly salted water with glucose could rapidly replenish their energy, and since they had already consumed plasma, they had not yet fallen into the most severe state of dehydration.
He was confident their lives were no longer in immediate danger.
The cousin pair stood before a window in the academic building.
“What about the others?” Keke posed a rather vague question.
“Which others are you referring to?”
“Let’s start with those closest to us.”
“Lui Si is missing.”
“Izayoi… he’s dead.”
Keke’s body seemed to tremble imperceptibly.
“He might still be alive,” Jing Lan quickly added, then recounted how the grave where the body was buried had been disturbed.
Keke shook her head gently.
“You know, deep down, he merely became a zombie.”
“But chronologically—”
“You like him.”
“That’s why you refuse to accept it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“He’s a boy.”
Keke finally seemed to regain a semblance of her former self, a faint ease returning, yet she also offered a poignant smile.
“You, of all people, equally disdain most of the world’s population.”
“That’s why when you do like someone, it’s so strikingly obvious.”
“Even if your sexual orientation is towards girls, for you, some people can truly be more intimate than lovers.”
“Just speak less.”
“Conserve your energy for digesting the sugar water.”
His cousin eyed his face with a hint of amusement, but a flicker of pain soon crossed her features.
“I really should have said yes to him.”
“If only I had known I’d never see him again.”
Even though he was merely the band’s temporary drummer, and they typically only communicated online, Keke and Ling Yechen had developed some affection for each other.
Perhaps music had a way of stirring deep emotions.
“He was so timid and vulnerable, yet he dared to fall for someone.”
“But I truly believe that anyone he loved would be incredibly fortunate, because once he found his other half, he would surely transform in remarkable ways…”
“Good heavens, why am I rambling on like this when I don’t even know him that well?”
“I truly… sigh, I truly hope he’s alive.”
“Now I understand you; I also hope he’s a resurrected corpse, a living person, currently running down the highway.”
Jing Lan no longer wished to discuss the topic.
Yet, once it had been broached, he found himself meticulously re-evaluating every possibility of Ling Yechen’s survival.
Of course, none of those possibilities could withstand the scrutiny of basic probability.
‘Then live on in my heart.’
Jing Lan vowed silently.
Live in my heart forever.
I will never forget.