Chapter 117: How Many Zombies Are Here?
Song Yuqing’s face drained of color. She turned to Gaha, who was already tracking her with a deeply worried expression.
“Gah?”
“Manager, what is it?” Liu Xiaona asked, her voice tight with sudden nerves. Little Meat Bun shifted uncomfortably beside her.
Song Yuqing kept her eyes locked on the gargoyle. “Gaha… can you sense how many zombies are currently inside this base?”
Gaha blinked, thoroughly stunned. She tilted her head, scanning the immediate street before scratching her head in utter confusion.
“Gaha…” She gestured blindly. This is Base Zero. Aside from me, how could there possibly be any other undead here?
Song Yuqing cursed silently under her breath. This is a disaster.
An unknown number of zombies were actively masquerading as living survivors inside Base Zero. What on earth were they plotting? And how had their biology evolved to the point of becoming completely indistinguishable from ordinary humans?
Realizing the extreme urgency of the situation, Song Yuqing quickly pulled Liu Xiaona and Little Meat Bun aside, instructing them to double back and regroup with Zhang Yimiao. Since the base command was nowhere to be found, perhaps Zhang Yimiao could provide some critical context. They needed to decipher the mutants’ objective immediately and formulate a strategy to neutralize the threat—or, at the very least, find a way to purge them from the perimeter.
Keeping Gaha at her side, Song Yuqing stealthily resumed her pursuit of the middle-aged couple who bore such a striking resemblance to her parents.
The two of them moved on tiptoe, shadowing their targets through the rubble. The closer she got, the more her intuition validated the reality: these were undeniably the parents she hadn’t seen since the onset of the apocalypse. The silhouettes, the mannerisms—everything matched the people who had raised her, yet an unsettling wrongness hung over them.
Up ahead, the couple suddenly seemed to sense they were being tracked, snapping their heads back to scan the alley. Before Song Yuqing could dive behind cover, Gaha reacted, swiftly stepping forward to shield her manager’s body while executing a sharp, warning gesture.
By the time Song Yuqing peeked out from behind the gargoyle’s shoulder, the street was completely empty.
Damn it. I lost them.
Meanwhile, things weren’t going any better for Liu Xiaona and Little Meat Bun. They had successfully tracked down Zhang Yimiao, but the squad leader was entirely clueless. She had no idea where Nanjiao had gone, where the administrative higher-ups of Base Zero were nesting, or why a massive wave of unfamiliar faces had suddenly integrated into the community.
When Liu Xiaona pressed her regarding the status of the meteorite fragments, Zhang Yimiao smiled proudly. She explained that she had guarded the anomalies with her life throughout their grueling overland trek and had officially handed the specimens over to an elite research expert on the laboratory deck just moments prior.
“Do you actually know the person who took them?” Liu Xiaona asked sharply. “Can you take us straight to his station right now?”
Zhang Yimiao fidgeted. “Well… we’ve only crossed paths once, so I wouldn’t say we’re well-acquainted.”
Liu Xiaona and Little Meat Bun traded a tense, knowing look. Something was seriously amiss. Without offering any further explanation, they dragged Zhang Yimiao along to reunite with Song Yuqing and Gaha, launching a coordinated search to intercept the researcher who had taken possession of the fragments.
With the assistance of a few local technicians, the group managed to navigate their way deep into Base Zero’s newly configured laboratory quadrant. Prior to the catastrophic chemical storm, Base Zero had boasted an immensely wealthy, state-of-the-art underground facility. Now, over half of the subterranean complex lay in ruined, waterlogged sections, forcing the remaining research decks to compress into a fraction of their original size.
They systematically scoured every room, spanning the surface shelters down to the deep flooded basements, but the expert who had signed for the meteorite fragments was nowhere to be found.
Song Yuqing had harbored a dark suspicion that the “researcher” might actually be one of the disguised mutants, and their failure to locate him only added fuel to the fire.
“Look, I don’t know the man’s name, but I vividly remember seeing him working the control decks before my squad originally deployed to God’s Supermarket,” Zhang Yimiao insisted, defending herself as the group’s doubts began to mount. “I swear to you, he is a verified member of the research division! I’m not stupid enough to just hand a high-value asset over to some random stranger.”
At the very least, his face was logged in her memory.
“In this wasteland, a single casual encounter means nothing,” Song Yuqing sighed heavily. “Until you know a person’s baseline network, they’re a total stranger.”
The tactical board was growing incredibly messy. The supreme commanders of Base Zero had to be notified that a massive internal breach had compromised their security matrix; immediate defensive action was required.
Song Yuqing leaned in close, quietly whispering a series of rapid instructions directly into Zhang Yimiao’s ear. The squad leader’s features twisted into a look of profound disbelief, clearly skeptical of the theory, yet she ultimately resolved to trust the manager’s judgment.
Moving quickly under Song Yuqing’s guidance, Zhang Yimiao utilized her remaining logistical authority to coordinate an emergency assembly, successfully gathering the vast majority of the base’s remaining population out in the central sector.
This marked only the second time the entire colony had been summoned to a mandatory roll call since the acid rain had ceased. The first assembly had been orchestrated by the central command the morning the storm broke, systematically logging headcounts and assigning specific labor details to jumpstart the reconstruction efforts.
What Song Yuqing and her staff failed to realize, however, was that since that initial roll call, the demographic matrix of Base Zero had been quietly, systematically shifting. Unfamiliar faces were continuously filtering into the workflow, while established, familiar personnel were vanishing without a trace. In fact, both Nanjiao and the Xie brothers had completely dropped off the local radar over the past forty-eight hours.
As the crowd of survivors packed tightly into the muddy thoroughfare, Zhang Yimiao stepped up onto a structural crate. She announced that to celebrate their survival of the level-five catastrophe, they were going to capture a grand collective photograph to commemorate the historic milestone.
Once the huddle stabilized, Song Yuqing pulled Zhang Yimiao down to a quiet vantage point, instructing her to carefully scan the crowd and isolate the high-ranking administrators, the unfamiliar newcomers, and the researcher who had commandeered the meteorite fragments.
Initially, Zhang Yimiao had viewed the manager’s paranoia as an exaggeration, but as she systematically cross-referenced the faces in the crowd, a cold dread settled over her.
Not a single member of Base Zero’s executive command deck was present in the huddle. Is it possible they all perished during the height of the storm? No, that made absolutely no sense; she knew for a fact that the administrative elite had personally organized the initial reconstruction rollout just days ago.
More critically, her eyes swept the assembly three separate times, but the specific researcher who had taken custody of the stones was nowhere to be found.
Zhang Yimiao’s voice faltered slightly, panic bleeding into her tone. “Are… are there still personnel logged in the shelters who haven’t reported to the courtyard? We need to dispatch a detail to bring them out immediately!”
Liu Xiaona instantly picked up the cue, bellowing across the square, “That’s right, folks! A grand community photo like this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! It would be an absolute tragedy if anyone got left out of the frame!”
Hearing her shout, several survivors in the huddle nodded in somber agreement. After navigating the brutal horrors of the post-apocalyptic era, everyone understood that every passing day was increasingly volatile. You never knew when the person working right beside you would suddenly vanish from the census. Failing to secure a physical memory to hold onto was a recipe for lifelong regret.
“Hey, that new middle-aged couple hasn’t reported to the line yet! I have no idea which sector they’re logged in!” someone from the crowd hollered back.
“Please, those two literally just arrived a couple of days ago,” another voice dismissed carelessly. “If they don’t want to participate in the photo, just leave them be. I barely even know their names anyway.”
“Come on, man… we’re all going to be sharing the same living sectors from here on out. What if they harbor a grudge because we didn’t invite them into the frame?”
“Who cares what they think!”
Song Yuqing stepped forward, smoothly intervening. “Why don’t a few of us jog over and escort them to the square ourselves?”
“Oh, look, no need! I literally just caught sight of them earlier,” a technician noted. “They were finishing up a shift. They promised they’d head right over.”
The moment the words left his mouth, Xie Qiang and his wife emerged from a side alley, walking arm-in-arm toward the assembly.
“See? Here they come.”
Song Yuqing’s hands clenched into tight, sweaty fists. Standing right at her hip, Little Meat Bun caught her mounting anxiety. Moving with gentle precision, the little panda extended his thick paw, firmly squeezing her fingers to offer a silent anchor of support.
As the couple neared, Song Yuqing desperately fought to master her internal emotional storm. A frantic, contradictory knot of tension twisted in her chest; a part of her was terrified they would instantly recognize her, yet a deeply buried, vulnerable shred of her soul secretly desperately hoped they would. After all, she was the daughter they had loved and nurtured for decades.
No. It’s better if they don’t look at me, she corrected herself fiercely. Her parents were fundamentally undead entities now—existences locked in absolute opposition to human life, potentially harboring a sinister internal plot.
Xie Qiang and Zhang Lin squeezed their way into the center of the crowd, their features softening into warm, genial smiles as they politely apologized to their neighbors for their tardiness. They cast a casual, passing glance directly toward Song Yuqing and her staff, offering a perfectly polite, detached nod before looking away—acting exactly as if she were a total stranger they had never laid eyes on before.
Song Yuqing’s expression darkened, a cold hollow settling in her stomach.
“Is this truly the absolute entirety of our remaining baseline population?” Zhang Yimiao asked, her brow furrowing deep as she scanned the courtyard.
The survivors traded uneasy, searching glances.
“Yeah… this is pretty much everyone left alive.”
“Wait, where exactly is the Chief Director?”
“I haven’t caught sight of his detail in days,” a scout muttered, his voice dropping. “Maybe he…”
The entire street fell into a heavy, suffocating silence. There were certain grim realities that the survivors deliberately chose not to voice aloud, yet every human standing in the mud knew exactly what the silence implied.
The catastrophic acid rain had technically stopped falling from the heavens, but that didn’t mean the colony had achieved safety. During the ongoing reconstruction efforts, it had become a horrifyingly common occurrence for structural framing to suddenly give way, caving in entirely as the lingering, toxic groundwater systematically ate through the concrete foundations below.
