Chapter 8: Road to Survival 7
Pulling the rolling shutter would make a sound, and she didn’t dare to move now.
Because of the gap left at the entrance, the two of them were extremely careful when speaking and moving.
It was dark outside.
The town, without electricity, was plunged into complete darkness.
The night wind blew in from the entrance, carrying the stench of decay, and the surroundings were extremely quiet, with only the occasional howl of a zombie.
Chu Yian sat beside Lu Qingyuan, keeping watch, feeling tired, sleepy, and afraid.
She was worried that more zombies would gather outside,
and afraid that a zombie would crawl in through the door crack.
This fear kept her in a dazed yet awake state, until a shrill scream erupted from somewhere in the town, fully jolting her awake.
The scream caused the zombies outside to roar, and a series of pattering footsteps ran off into the distance.
In just half a minute, the scream disappeared. The town returned to its previous silence, and the fate of the person who screamed was self-evident.
Fear, fright, despair.
Chu Yian bit hard on her arm, tears streaming down her face. Nighttime was when people were most prone to emotional breakdowns; she was so scared, so afraid that she too would be bitten to death by those zombies outside.
“It’s your turn to rest.”
Just as she was on the verge of an emotional breakdown, a voice beside her suddenly spoke.
Hearing this voice, Chu Yian immediately felt herself losing composure, “Teacher Lu.”
“Hm.”
“Can I lean on you for a moment?”
Lu Qingyuan sat beside her, his gaze unruffled. He seemed not to understand Chu Yian’s actions, showing no empathy at all.
Seeing that he didn’t speak, Chu Yian still shamelessly inched closer little by little.
She rested her head on his arm, tears and snot falling silently. Even in such a sorrowful moment, she choked and whispered, “Sorry, I apologize.”
Lu Qingyuan, who was about to pull his arm away, paused, “It’s fine.”
His voice was completely devoid of emotion.
On the third day of the game, Chu Yian awoke from a nightmare.
She opened her phone; it was just six in the morning. Although she had only slept for four hours, she felt no trace of sleepiness now.
With power out everywhere, Chu Yian had kept her phone in power-saving mode except for listening to the radio and using it during Lu Qingyuan’s surgery. Now, her phone still had sixty-eight percent battery.
The mental breakdown from last night had completely vanished. Chu Yian put on her earphones and opened her phone’s radio function again.
“Hello, everyone, this is District 11 Radio.”
“A global virus disaster has erupted…”
“…”
“Please note: Fulen County in X City is the only safe rescue zone in District 11.”
The broadcast on the radio continued, re-energizing Chu Yian.
Seeing Lu Qingyuan’s gaze on her, she placed an earphone to his ear. After they listened to the radio broadcast again, Chu Yian switched her phone back to power-saving mode.
“Do you feel energized again?”
“Not really.” Lu Qingyuan indifferently shifted his gaze, lowering his head to change the dressing on his wound again.
Chu Yian had already experienced Teacher Lu’s aloofness yesterday, so she didn’t mind as she stood up to warm up, then crouched down again to look outside. The screams from last night must have drawn the surrounding zombies away, as the outside was once again empty.
“Teacher Lu, there are no more zombies outside. Let’s get ready.”
A few minutes later, the two of them went out, one after the other.
The street, trampled by a large horde of zombies yesterday, was even more dilapidated, with no undamaged vehicles in sight.
They had lowered their target from high-chassis, high-performance SUVs to any two-wheeled vehicle that could run, but still hadn’t found a usable one.
“Let’s go.”
Lu Qingyuan had given up on finding a runnable vehicle on the street. Compared to the town, there were probably more abandoned vehicles on the highway.
“Wait! I know where there are cars.”
Chu Yian suddenly raised her finger, her eyes sparkling with a light called wisdom.
“Where?”
“At a car dealership, of course.”
It was hard to find a 4S store in a small town, but there were definitely shops selling electric bikes and electric tricycles.
Drawing on her years of experience living in a small town, Chu Yian keenly found a car shop. It had clearly been visited by zombies too; the vehicles displayed outside were already trampled beyond recognition, but the cars inside were perfectly fine.
Among them, a brand new X-edge minivan was particularly eye-catching.
Of course, the three zombies roaring at them from outside the shop were also very eye-catching.
Their dark, stiff muscles bulged, and seeing two living people, they lunged with extreme speed.
Use a handgun?
That was Chu Yian’s first reaction, but reason stopped her.
No.
Once she fired, the sound would attract all the hidden zombies from the surroundings.
Just as she hesitated, Lu Qingyuan’s voice came to her ear, “Charge through.”
Charge, charge through?
Chu Yian’s body reacted before her brain; she grabbed Lu Qingyuan’s arm, draped it over herself, and sprinted towards the minivan.
But the three zombies were even faster than her.
In a blink of an eye, the closest zombie had already darted to within four or five meters of Chu Yian, lunging at her with bared fangs and claws.
Her life was almost gone, could she still worry about how loud the gunshot was?
Chu Yian decisively pulled out her handgun and fired two shots at the lunging zombie, then… both missed. The zombie’s mouth was stretched to its limit, the decaying flesh on its face already split down to its ears, as it lunged to bite her gun-wielding hand.
The distance was so close that Chu Yian could even see its exposed fangs and smell its foul pus.
Her mind went blank, and she only felt that she was not far from death.
A gunshot rang out, and the zombie was shot through the head, from its mouth.
At this moment, Lu Qingyuan, who had just dealt with the zombie on the right, raised the handgun he had retrieved from the vehicle, using his last bullet.
Roars echoed across the street, one after another.
More zombies were awakened by the gunshots; they burst out of houses and streets, all sprinting towards the direction of the gunshots.
“Hurry!”
Lu Qingyuan’s voice rang in her ear. Chu Yian gripped his arm tightly, quickening her pace to drag him into the minivan. The zombies followed closely, slamming into the minivan door without feeling any pain.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The once brand-new vehicle exterior instantly became dented and pitted.
“Drive!”
“I am driving!”
Chu Yian looked at the various parts in the minivan and began to start the vehicle according to what her instructor taught… Lu Qingyuan frowned tightly at her, “Are you running over ants?”
Chu Yian pressed the clutch to the floor and shouted, clutching the steering wheel, “This is my fastest speed! I haven’t even learned the third part of the driving test!”
She didn’t know how she ended up in the driver’s seat as soon as they got in; she was so flustered, so desperate.
Why was Chu Yian in the driver’s seat? Because Lu Qingyuan deliberately let her!
His injured thigh made it inconvenient, so he specifically pushed Chu Yian into the driver’s seat. Who knew her driving had… so much… room for improvement.
