Chapter 38: The Storm Approaches
Night fell again.
But for the skeleton, this made little difference—after all, she didn’t even have eyes.
That smell…
That familiar scent… it had faded a great deal.
But she could still trace it.
Step by step, the skeleton moved toward the smell, only to soon realize she was moving far too slowly.
At this rate, the scent might disappear before she even reached it.
The skeleton felt troubled.
What should she do?
Her empty skull strained to think, but nothing came. So she simply stood in place.
While she stood still, several zombies curiously shuffled closer.
Such a strange kin…
It seemed to carry the same scent as them, and yet… it also smelled delicious.
The zombies crowded around her, sniffing and sniffing.
When the skeleton came back to her senses, she was already surrounded.
She tilted her head slightly.
She felt…
These things around her smelled so good.
Instinct told her that she could eat them.
But… how?
Before she could figure it out, the zombie nearest to her suddenly burst apart. Blood and flesh splattered across the skeleton, but strangely, the mess quickly melted away until nothing remained.
As though… it had been absorbed by the skeleton.
Once the first had gone, the rest came naturally. The method of “eating” zombies became second nature to her.
By the time the farther zombies realized something was wrong, it was already too late to escape.
The skeleton devoured them all cleanly, even pressing her foot on the scraps that fell to the ground so she could absorb those too.
She ate more than a dozen zombies in this way, and at last, some flesh began to grow on her body.
No longer so dry and shriveled as before.
The first place flesh began to grow was on her head—her face gained patches of bloody tissue, though it was still shriveled and dry.
The skeleton’s movements grew more agile, and her mind a bit clearer.
She needed… to find a vehicle.
Somehow, the idea of transportation surfaced in her thoughts. So, while following the direction of that fading scent, she also searched for a car, devouring any zombies she passed along the way.
She was starving…
She felt that only by eating more could she move faster—fast enough to catch up to that smell.
As she traveled farther, she encountered not just zombies but also mutant rats and insects. She could eat all of them.
Hunger… such hunger…
She needed to eat more.
…
…
Perhaps because Mibao and the others had been traveling far too smoothly, on the fifth day of driving, they finally ran into trouble.
By now, zombies were no more than small fry compared to other mutated creatures. After all, zombies could only howl and lunge. They couldn’t fly, nor were they especially fast.
Even putting Chaolu aside, the newly joined Ye Duo could, with a sudden strike, take one down.
And so, the group had grown careless.
At this moment, they were driving in search of a gas station—the van was running low on fuel again.
“We should be around Wuhan right now. The Oasis Base isn’t far. In another three or four days, we should be near Taihang Mountain,” driver Zhu Dafu said happily.
Who wouldn’t be glad, when their days of endless travel were almost over?
Once they reached the base, they could finally rest properly.
The van wound its way through the city streets. The reason they drove slowly was that sometimes abandoned cars blocked the way, or hordes of zombies would appear to chase them down. At such times, they either had to take a detour or clear the path.
That was why, after five days of driving, they’d covered only a little more than half the distance.
Everyone in the van was drowsy—except for Mibao, who clutched her cloth doll with visible unease.
“What’s wrong?”
Sitting beside Mibao, Chaoyang noticed something was off. Normally, by this time, Mibao would already be dozing off in all sorts of slumped positions.
Mibao blinked, her chubby little face scrunched up. “I don’t know how to explain… it just feels bad.”
“Hm?”
What did she mean?
Mibao tried hard to put her feelings into words. “It’s like… like I’m about to be eaten by zombies. No, wait… worse than that. Something scarier.”
Chaoyang’s eyes flickered. He leaned close to her ear and whispered, “Did your alien brother tell you this?”
Mibao shook her head. “No, it’s just my own feeling.”
She couldn’t describe it properly.
If Chaoyang could step into Mibao’s shoes at that moment, he might have called it a restless unease—a sense of looming disaster.
Though her words were clumsy, Chaoyang still understood her meaning well enough.
He didn’t dismiss it as childish nonsense. Instead, he looked at the others. “Mibao says something feels wrong. Everyone, stay alert and watch our surroundings.”
At that, the others instantly sobered up and focused on the windows.
But after five or six minutes of driving, everything outside was still calm and quiet.
“Maybe Mibao just didn’t sleep well last night. I don’t see any danger,” Ye Duo muttered, her eyes sore from staring outside so long without spotting anything.
Chaoyang gave her a glance. “Mibao doesn’t say things lightly.”
Ye Duo: “…”
For some reason, she suddenly felt that this sharp little boy called Chaoyang didn’t like her very much.
But why?
Ye Duo couldn’t figure it out, so she gave up trying. She swallowed the rest of her words and went back to staring listlessly out the window.
As time passed, even Mibao began to doubt herself.
She tugged at Chaoyang’s sleeve. “Brother Chaoyang, maybe I was wrong? Maybe I just…”
“No,” Chaoyang gently patted her hand. “Either way, being cautious is never a mistake.”
He knew what Mibao was thinking. Because of her unreliable father, Mibao was always afraid of bringing trouble to others.
With Chaoyang’s reassurance, Mibao’s tense body gradually relaxed, and her heart wasn’t as panicked anymore.
“W–wait… what’s that?”
In the passenger seat, Zhao Xuehua rubbed her eyes at the sight of a cluster of black dots in the rearview mirror, thinking she was seeing things.
But after rubbing her eyes, those black dots only grew larger.
Her eyes widened as she rolled the window down and stuck her head out to look behind the car. The moment she did, her soul nearly flew out of her body.
“Ah! Giant bees! So many of them!”
Startled, Zhao Xuehua hurriedly pulled her head back inside and shut the window.
The others turned to look at the commotion, and sure enough, they saw a massive swarm of giant mutated bees chasing them from behind.
“Not good! They’re up ahead too!”
At the wheel, Zhu Dafu’s pupils contracted. He slammed the brakes.
Everyone lurched forward from the inertia, and then Zhu Dafu quickly jerked the wheel, causing their bodies to slam to the right along with the van.
On both sides, the giant mutated bees swarmed excitedly toward the van. They didn’t attack all at once, though—they seemed to find it entertaining, trailing them in no hurry.
“Damn! Mibao, you’re a real prophet—what you said actually came true!”
Even in a moment like this, Chaolu couldn’t resist cracking a joke.
“Come on, come on—someone play the witch and brew us an antidote!”
Everyone: “……”
Enough already. This was no time for a game of Werewolf!
