Chapter 36

Ye Xiao and Bai Cheng felt a creepy little chill from that laugh; they glanced at each other, surprised. She had been so close, practically pressed to the door, and neither of them had noticed.
Ye Xiao snapped back to his senses and immediately set off after her.
Lin Tantan bolted from the scene, found some cover, and furtively checked her phone. Ugh, she’d missed the shot she wanted most. Once they started talking again their postures and expressions had shifted, and the fiery chemistry had cooled a bit.
Still… she’d gotten something. Lin Tantan snickered as she moved the photo into a new folder and set a password on it.
Suddenly a strange sound caught her attention. She listened closely, switched on her phone's flashlight, and shone it toward the curb. Under a drainage grate something was scratching and gnawing.
When her light hit it, the creature froze as if startled and tried to curl up. But Lin Tantan wasn't about to let it get away, a green strap whooshed out and wrapped the thing up tight.
She pried up the cement grate, hauled the creature out, shone her light beneath to make sure there was nothing else, and then put the grate back.
She examined what she’d caught: fat and large, a pointed head and chubby body, a long tail, gray fur thick and lush, it looked healthy, if a little dirty. Lin Tantan grinned. It was a mutant rat, three or four times the size of an ordinary one. Its eyes were lively, and it kept frantically trying to wrench itself free.
She’d hoped to snag a zombie rat, but a mutant one would do. She stood, tugged the wooden cord and said, "Am I just lucky or are you unlucky? Come on, you're coming with me."
The big rat squeaked and tried to claw back toward the grate, but it couldn't outmuscle Lin Tantan. Defeated like a dying rodent, it lay limp as she dragged it along.
Lin Tantan turned and saw a tall figure approaching. Even in the dark she immediately recognized Ye Xiao. Having just been caught sneaking photos, she felt guilty and quickly tried to change the subject. "Look what I caught!"
She went to lift the rat to show him, but the crafty creature took advantage of her momentary lapse. With a sudden leap it exploded with power and tried to break free.
The rat yanked her off balance. Luckily Ye Xiao hurried over and steadied her. He grabbed her wooden cord, hauled the airborne rat back down and stamped on it.
"Squeak! Squeak!" the rat struggled. Ye Xiao pressed down harder with his foot; it let out a sharp, pitiful cry and then lay still, too stunned to move.
Ye Xiao: "What is this? A rat?"
"Mm-hmm. I pulled it out from under the drain."
"It's hard to see here. We'll go back and take a look. I'll carry it." Ye Xiao told Lin Tantan to step aside. She glanced at him. "But if I let go, this strap will come undone quickly."
Almost forgot, this was her ability, not a real rope. Ye Xiao didn't have any rope on him either, so she kept holding the strap while he took the lower section and gave the rat that was playing dead a tug.
The big rat seemed to realize it couldn't get away; dejected, it shuffled forward on its paws.
Ye Xiao was surprised, the rat almost seemed sensible.
Lin Tantan, meanwhile, was thinking: hmm, he's holding it so high that the edge of his palm is touching mine. She quietly lengthened the strap a little so their hands wouldn't rub together.
Bai Cheng was still at his spot, doodling, when he saw the two who had left return in single file, walking something between them. He looked closely. "A rat?"
Under the light, the big rat's appearance was fully revealed: basically a blown-up house mouse, but with glossier, thicker fur, sharper claws, and more alert eyes. Seeing Bai Cheng, it seemed to know he wasn't an easy opponent; outnumbered three to one, it gave up on escape and flopped down resignedly.
Bai Cheng frowned. "Are rats this big now?"
"I don't know, I've never seen one before. It was scratching under the drain and about to come out when I spotted it," Lin Tantan said. Then they watched the rat dig the ground twice with its paws, leaving deep claw marks, the three of them twitched; that was cement.
Lin Tantan had an idea and idly prodded a rebar near the rat. At first it showed no interest, but after a moment it grabbed and gnawed at it with a crunch. It didn't bite it through, but the tooth marks were unmistakable.
This thing's practically turned into an iron-eating beast, isn't it?
Ye Xiao and Bai Cheng both realized how serious this was; ordinary people definitely couldn't handle a rat like this.
They had someone bring over a live chicken, one of the few poultry they had, and let the rat scratch it. When there was no sign of infection they breathed a little easier. But just as they'd discovered there were zombified birds and mutated birds, this rat might be a zombie-rat, and other animals could undergo similar changes.
They discussed sealing off all the sewers and drains, and going out tomorrow to check how many rats and other animals had turned like this.
"What about this rat? Kill it?" The two stared at the rat on the ground. Lin Tantan squatted watching it chew the rebar, already chipping off fragments. A normal cage or rope surely wouldn't hold it, if they didn't kill it, would Lin Tantan have to keep binding it with her ability forever?
"Not yet, let me keep it for two days," Lin Tantan said. She felt the rat wasn't ordinary. Judging by the timing, most of the animals had only just mutated, but this rat seemed unusually powerful, which made her think of other possibilities.
In the apocalypse there were many cases of pets kept before the end mutating and becoming their owners' loyal bodyguards.
Lin Tantan didn't lack bodyguards herself, of course, but like humans, mutated animals formed their own groups. In those years after the end, it was essentially a contest and struggle between humans and other groups, mutated beasts, zombies, and zombie-animals.
Most encounters were conflicts, but there were examples of cooperation as well.
They said there were two typical examples: both were relatively weak, small, isolated bases that survived because of alliances. One was built at a mountainside and maintained friendly relations with mutated monkeys on the slopes; when one side had trouble, the other would help. The other sat on a high peak and had become good neighbors with mutated pine trees that covered the mountain.
Lin Tantan wondered if she could do something similar, raise a pack of mutated rats as muscle. She thought this rat was special, with the potential to lead a mutated-rat group.
Ye Xiao's expression was odd. "You want to keep it?"
"Just try it," Lin Tantan said. "Don't worry, I'll be careful. Besides, it doesn't infect people."
Ye Xiao still tried to dissuade her. "If you want to keep an animal like that, next time we see a canine I'll pick one for you, okay? Dogs are more obedient and smarter." A single rat didn't seem like something you could tame. "Or a cat would be fine, aren't girls more into cats? Keeping a rat... that image is a bit much, isn't it?"
Lin Tantan replied, "We'll talk about a dog next time. For now, I find this rat appealing."
Ye Xiao: "..."
Lin Tantan laughed. "If I really can't tame it, I'll just slaughter it and eat it." Mutated animal meat was nourishing, full of energy, even rat meat was something people scrambled for.
At the mention of being slaughtered for meat, the rat gnawing on the rebar froze.
Lin Tantan glanced at it, raised an eyebrow, stood up and said, "I'll head back now."
Ye Xiao said, "I'll walk you out."
"No, no, you carry on," Lin Tantan hurriedly said.
Ye Xiao insisted a bit more to look out for her. "What if it tries to run off again?"
"That's simple." Lin Tantan said, then wrapped the rat with a wide wooden strap into a glowing green ball, not a single hair showing. She held it like a ball, it even glowed like a lamp.
"I was off guard earlier. With precautions now, can it still get away?" Lin Tantan said, quite pleased and confident in her abilities. She waved a hand. "I'm off, no need to walk me out, really."
Ye Xiao could only watch her stride alone into the night. Her silhouette looked especially free and formidable, and he suddenly felt utterly without purpose.
Bai Cheng watched for a long time and finally chuckled under his breath. Lucky for him he gave up quickly, a girl like that would be hard to chase after.
Ye Xiao looked back at him with a long, distant glance. Bai Cheng patted his shoulder. "Keep trying."
Lin Tantan carried the green orb all the way back. She ran into two patrols on the way and startled them both; they asked what she had in her hands. Lin Tantan answered calmly, “Nothing, a glow ball.”
They replied, “That green glow ball looks really creepy from a distance.” A slick, green globe had lifted off the ground and was drifting over.
Lin Tantan went back to 302 and turned on the small living-room lamp. The light was dim and flickery, it was running off a generator. She shrugged off her cumbersome coat, carried the mouse into the bathroom, set it in the tub and unwrapped the layers to reveal a mouse that looked thoroughly stunned.
Seeing she was alone, the mouse’s first instinct was to bolt.
Lin Tantan quickly bound its four paws so that when it tried to jump it tumbled back down.
“Squeak! squeak!” the mouse sounded irritable.
“Trying to run, huh? Think you can run if you land in my hands?”
“Squeak!” The mouse bared its sharp teeth, its beady, thieving eyes fierce. The tips of those teeth flashed with gold light and the hair along its neck stood on end.
Lin Tantan wasn’t the least bit intimidated. “Golden-type ability, huh? Look at you. Let’s see whose gold is stronger.” She flicked her hand; golden light sparked and the length of rebar that had come with the mouse was sliced into eight pieces in an instant, clinking and rolling across the smooth white bathtub.
The mouse: “……”
It curled itself into a trembling ball.
Lin Tantan was satisfied. “Stay still and be good. I’ll give you a bath, you’re filthy.” She let a thin stream of water flow from her palm and wet the mouse’s fur, squeezed a big clump of body wash onto it and worked it into a lather all over the animal.
She was operating with only one hand; the mouse, intimidated and its paws bound, crouched oddly and let Lin Tantan scrub it, only squeaking softly when something was uncomfortable.
“Why are you just a mouse? A hamster would’ve been nicer, or a field mouse, anything but this. Taking you out would be embarrassing, so your role is ‘working mouse,’ got it?”
“Do you have any underlings? Gather them for me if you do.”
“Can you fight zombified animals?”
“Can you spy for me? Can you kill zombies?”
She chattered on while rinsing and lathering again and again until the mouse was finally clean.
At a thought, a small cluster of red flames flickered up in her palm. The mouse shrank back in fear, but when it realized Lin Tantan wasn’t going to burn it and was instead trying to dry its fur, it calmed and even closed its eyes in contentment. “Squeak!” Its long tail began to wag.
This squeak was far more submissive than before, it carried obedience.
Since its mutation the mouse had grown smarter. A human with four different abilities was an overwhelming threat; submitting to someone this powerful was not so hard to accept.
Once Lin Tantan dried its fur the mouse instantly puffed up. Its light-gray coat was sleek and smooth, and a small tuft of golden hair on the crown of its head made it look only faintly like an ordinary house mouse, in fact, it was almost a little cute.
Lin Tantan stepped out of the bathroom and the mouse trailed obediently behind. She took a slice of ham from the coffee table and the mouse hungrily nibbled it down. Then she tossed it a gold crystal core; the mouse grew even happier and clambered over it, crunching on it the same way it would a biscuit.
Lin Tantan narrowed her eyes. Those crystal cores could blow up if misused by a human ability user, yet this mouse was simply biting them up and swallowing them whole.
She ruffled its pointy head. “Be good and listen. There’ll be plenty of tasty things, and you won’t miss out on the cores.”
The next day, January 15th, a few squads sent out from the west district came back reporting sightings of both mutated animals and zombified animals.
The two were easy to tell apart. Mutated animals tended to be larger, stronger and more combative; as long as food was abundant they weren’t overly aggressive toward humans, and they did not spread infection.
Zombified animals, on the other hand, were grotesque: corpselike, with hardly a patch of healthy skin, pus oozing from their bodies as if they were ashamed to show themselves in public. Their cries were all snarls; they were frenzied, mindless eating machines and they were infectious.
Not long after that news, a group of zombified cats and dogs showed up outside the west district. They were chasing the latest batch of survivors, about ten of them in all, all distorted and smeared with blood, eyes either bloodshot or cloudy-yellow, drooling and making low, guttural noises. Like demonic breeds straight out of some horror cartoon, they were deeply unsettling.
They crept forward among other zombies, closing in on the high wall that hid countless delicacies.
The zombies tumbled into the moat, but the cats and dogs could still leap. One red-eyed zombie black cat howled and launched itself in a forward bound, clawing up the wall; in two swift swipes its sharp claws had found purchase on the parapet, until a wind blade struck it, decapitating it. Its body and head fell heavily back into the moat.
Ye Xiao stood expressionless on the wall, watching the zombified cats and dogs with a cool gaze.
Every short distance along the wall people held their positions: ordinary citizens, ability users with battlefield experience, and newly trained users who had learned under Lin Tantan.
There were quite a few of them; with another manmade barrier piled up on that high wall, the sight was impressive.
When a few more cats and dogs leaped up, a thirty-something female ability user made a twisting motion with her hands and an ice spike shot forth, impaling a large zombie dog.
Another female ability user unleashed a blazing crimson fireball that struck a zombie cat in the skull.
As a one-legged zombie dog slowly dragged itself up from the bottom of the moat, a young man pressed his hands to the wall and murmured something to steady himself. Then two earthen spikes suddenly thrust out from the wall at its feet, skewering the almost-pressing belly of the short-legged crawled-up dog.
Lin Tantan was on the wall too, watching how the ability-users who’d come from under her wing performed. She touched her chin with a small, satisfied smile, finally, they were starting to look the part.