Chapter 33.1: “Someday, no one will dare treat you with this kind of indifference”
Xue Shen glanced back at the row of people standing in the distance. “Wu Heng probably won’t want to sit in the front passenger seat.”
“I know,” Xie Chongyi replied.
“Let the others sit in the back,” Xue Shen drew in a deep breath, his eyes filled with the heroic resolve of one going to his death. “I’ll sit in the front passenger seat.”
“No,” Xie Chongyi slowly shook his head. “I want Wu Heng to sit in the front.”
Xue Shen was at a loss for words.
“Old Xie, you’re really…” The boy made a show of giving him a shove. “Childish. What did Wu Heng ever do to you? He’s such an honest and quiet person…”
Xue Shen had only become friends with Xie Chongyi back in high school. If not for the fact that their fathers’ generation had once been comrades-in-arms, he and someone like Xie Chongyi—who looked lofty on the surface but was, in truth, more unruly than the mythical Taowu beast—would never have crossed paths in this lifetime.
Xue Shen prided himself on not being a paragon of virtue, but at least a man of both morals and conduct. Yet, in nearly three years of knowing Xie Chongyi, he hadn’t seen the faintest trace of “becoming better by association” in him.
At that moment, Xue Qi maneuvered his wheelchair to the side of the car. “Can it be started?”
Xue Shen looked at him. “Seems to be an old model.”
“No wonder.”
“Get in.” Xue Shen opened the jeep’s door. He firmly lifted the terrified Xue Qi into the vehicle, tidied away the wheelchair, then looked toward Wu Heng and Lin Mengzhi, who were still standing motionless at the distant sales counter. “You two, come get in as well!”
After saying that, he instructed Xie Chongyi, “Old Xie, later drive the car up to the supermarket entrance first.”
Seeing that Xue Qi was already in the vehicle, Wu Heng finally lifted his foot to move.
Lin Mengzhi grabbed him. “How about the two of us just walk? Walking is good for your health!”
“It’s fine, you can lean on me in the car,” Wu Heng reassured him without concern.
Until—Wu Heng tried the handle of the backseat door and found it wouldn’t open.
The window rolled down, and Xue Shen pointed at the front. “You sit in the passenger seat.”
“……”
Lin Mengzhi weakly scrambled into the back seat. He glanced around. “Huh, it’s actually pretty spacious.”
Xue Shen tried to ease everyone’s nerves with small talk. “This car’s not new—you can tell it’s been modified.”
“A modified car?! Why is it another modified car?! What if it falls apart halfway down the road?!”
Xue Shen replied coolly, “Let’s just see if it can make it out of the mall first.”
“……”
Wu Heng sat down in the passenger seat. He pulled out the seatbelt, and as he buckled it, he caught sight of the manual gear stick between the seats.
That made him a little uneasy.
When he withdrew his gaze, Wu Heng suddenly realized that Xie Chongyi had been staring at him for who knows how long.
Once caught, Xie Chongyi gave a slight smile. “Don’t worry, no one’s going to die.”
Wu Heng: “…Just—just not die?”
Xie Chongyi placed both hands on the steering wheel and slammed the gas pedal down.
Whoosh—
“Wang! De! Fa!” Xue Qi’s head almost separated from his neck.
“Holy crap holy crap holy crap holy crap holy crap holy crap!!” Lin Mengzhi’s body lifted right off the seat, only to be yanked back by the seatbelt.
Bang! Crash!
The jeep smashed straight into a watch shop. The entire glass storefront shattered, shards clattering down onto the roof of the car.
Lin Mengzhi’s face turned the color of an overripe eggplant. Clinging to the passenger seat, he pleaded, “Slower, let’s go slow—Class Monitor, dearest Class Monitor, it’s fine if we get back late! It’s not like the school cafeteria’s saving us any dinner anyway!”
The engine didn’t ease up for even half a second. It roared and rumbled, growling low as if to warn them it was about to lunge forward again.
“Reverse should be… this one.” With one hand shifting gears and the other spinning the wheel, Xie Chongyi sent the jeep hurtling out of the watch shop in reverse, like a bolt of lightning.
Inside, Lin Mengzhi and Xue Qi screamed like two hogs tied down to the butcher’s table.
And Xie Chongyi, without question, was the butcher holding the knife.
The jeep’s tires screeched sharply against the mall floor, passengers screaming in terror as the wildly swerving vehicle knocked down countless decorations along the way. The black jeep was like a panther gone berserk, completely out of control—while its driver’s face was alight with interest.
With a harsh screech, the jeep braked abruptly. Everyone lurched forward. When the shock subsided, they realized the car had driven straight into a supermarket.
“I’m gonna puke.” Lin Mengzhi unbuckled his seatbelt, pushed open the door, and collapsed onto the ground outside, retching up everything he’d eaten in the supermarket earlier.
Xue Shen frowned but still turned to check on Xue Qi. “Are you okay?”
Xue Qi shook his head. “I want some water.”
Wu Heng didn’t move. He stared straight ahead, eyes vacant.
Xie Chongyi rubbed his fingers along the steering wheel, muttering to himself, “Driving’s actually pretty easy.”
Wu Heng: “……”
They all got out of the car and began hauling boxes of rice, flour, and oil into it. The supermarket’s fruits and vegetables had long since rotted beyond recognition, crawling with flies and maggots larger and fatter than before the apocalypse, reeking with an unbearable stench.
Still unwilling to give up, Wu Heng used vines to wrench off the lock of the supermarket’s freezer. He stepped into the cold storage packed with meat, but the overwhelming stench turned his face green. He immediately turned and walked back out.
The meat was hopeless. If they wanted to eat it, their only option was to hunt fresh game on the road after setting out.
Xue Shen, like Lin Mengzhi, ended up throwing up as well. Afterward, he took out the notepad from his pocket and began checking off the supplies they needed to load into the jeep, one by one.
“Stock up on rice, flour, and seasonings that keep well.”
“Skip wet seasonings, and definitely no fermented goods—those are basically all spoiled already.”
“Compressed biscuits.”
“Dried goods.”
“Snacks—just a few bags for a treat.”
“We don’t need daily necessities. Old Xie already stocked up plenty before—enough to last us a long time.”
Once the jeep was packed full, the group finally set off on the road back to the school.
This time, Wu Heng tightened his seatbelt as far as it would go. Vines sprouted from his back, wrapping tightly around the seat, refusing to let his body so much as sway.
“There’s someone outside!” Lin Mengzhi suddenly pointed ahead and shouted.
Wu Heng and Xie Chongyi both turned to look in the direction he pointed.
A massive crowd.
“Not people—zombies.” Wu Heng looked toward the back seat. “Lock the doors. Roll the windows up.”
“They must’ve been drawn here by the blood stench from the Reptile House,” Xie Chongyi shifted gears and floored the accelerator.
It was the first time Wu Heng had ever seen a horde of zombies this large.
The closer they drew, the clearer their rotting, melting faces became. The zombies were pounding ceaselessly against the mall doors, drool and blood pooling into rivulets at their feet. Hunger drove them onward, gathering in the direction of the blood-scented air.
The engine roared, shards of glass flying, and in the glow of the sunset, two starkly different scenes unfolded—inside the jeep and outside.
Clang!
The jeep slammed down heavily, crushing several zombies beneath it—arms still outstretched mid-grab—into pools of pulp. The wheels carried the vehicle forward, thudding and cracking as they plowed through the horde, tearing it apart limb by limb.
The zombies didn’t know how to dodge. They only knew there were living beings inside the car. Clumsily, one after another flung themselves at the jeep, pressing skulls bared with white bone against the windows—only to be sucked under the wheels in the next instant. Their softened, decayed bones crunched apart easily in the grinding churn.
The jeep carved a crimson path for itself, speeding toward the school.
Aside from Wu Heng and Xie Chongyi, the three in the back seat all wore expressions tinged with pity and discomfort.
After all, just a little over a week ago—when they had no concept of what an apocalypse even was—these zombies, now mindless and driven only by raw flesh, had been no different from them. Among them were students their own age, as well as the elderly and children, men and women alike.
The disaster was hammering the truth into every survivor with bloody reality: its impartiality extended to all living creatures on Earth.
The sunset painted the sky a uniform shade of blood-red. Once, such an evening glow might have been considered romantic. Now, its hues seemed identical to the bloodied tire tracks stretching behind their jeep.
Bang! Bang bang! Bang bang bang!
“Holy shit!”
“Old Xie!”
Just as everyone was sunk in grief, the jeep suddenly swerved left and right in perfect S-curves, then shot straight into the roadside greenery, catching them all completely off guard.
Xie Chongyi tossed out an apology, but not a trace of regret could be found on his face—not even if one used a magnifying glass.
—
The jeep stopped by the wall at the school’s back entrance.
Scaling the wall was a skill of its own; without experience, long legs wouldn’t help.
After more than a week of practice, Xie Chongyi and Xue Shen were already proficient at climbing in and out. Crouched atop the wall, Xue Shen glanced between Lin Mengzhi and Wu Heng, then settled on the taller, sturdier Lin Mengzhi. “Lin Mengzhi, hand Xue Qi to me.”
Lin Mengzhi planted his hands on his hips, stunned. “Hand him over? How am I supposed to do that?”
How could he make a living person sound like some object?
“Hug him, then pass him up.” Xue Shen stretched out his hand.
Lin Mengzhi made a reluctant noise, then rolled up his sleeves.
Though Xue Qi wasn’t small, after all the torment he’d endured recently he’d wasted away to skin and bones. When Lin Mengzhi lifted him, he expected it to be heavy—but it felt no different from cradling a bundle of cotton. He raised Xue Qi overhead, and Xue Shen reached down to take him from his arms.
After passing Xue Qi up, Lin Mengzhi handed the wheelchair over as well.
He turned to Wu Heng. “I’ll lift you up too.”
Wu Heng: “…Am I disabled?”
At that moment, still standing atop the wall, Xie Chongyi reached out his hand to Wu Heng. “Come on, I’ll pull you up.”
Wu Heng shook his head.
At the base of the wall, several supple vines broke through the ground. They climbed upward along the wall, laying themselves across the top one by one, weaving vertically and horizontally until they formed a ladder of vines.
Xie Chongyi: “……”
Lin Mengzhi: “……”
With an easy, almost graceful gait, the boy walked up the vine ladder, stepped over the wall, and down again on the other side.
The moment his shoes touched the school grounds, the poppies withdrew instantly, not lingering to do even half a moment’s extra work.
“?” Lin Mengzhi was dumbfounded. “What about me?!”
He stretched out his hand to Xie Chongyi. “A’Heng’s Class Monitor, pull me up!”
Xie Chongyi swung one leg over the wall, casting Lin Mengzhi a sidelong glance full of meaning. “Climb up yourself.”
LMAO