Chapter 4

The gate made some noise as it swung; the two dazed zombies immediately turned and then lunged viciously.
Lin Tantan stumbled back. The two slammed against the gate, hands threading through the bars, mouths gaping as they made those hoarse noises. Their skin was ashen and rotten; their pupils were pinprick-white, terrifying.
She swallowed, gripped the fire axe, tested it in her hand, and swung at the long-haired zombie.
The blade struck the skull squarely. The woman's other hand, the one not holding the takeout, whipped toward her, blackened nails clawing; Lin Tantan jerked free. The axe lodged in the zombie's head, then slipped loose and clattered to the ground.
She crouched, hooked the axe back with her foot, and this time attacked differently: from the side she chopped at the zombie's right hand.
She put all her strength into it. The blow left the hand half severed, useless; she followed with another swing through the same gap, and the head split in two like a watermelon.
Pushing off the gate to pull the axe free, she watched the female zombie topple back, then repeated the move and dispatched the blue-uniformed zombie.
Killing the two took a little over a minute. It had made a racket, mainly the thudding of zombies against the gate, and now others seemed to be converging on the dorm area. Lin Tantan opened the gate, slipped out, closed it behind her, and then dug the crystal cores from both corpses.
One was colorless and transparent, streaked with impurities; the other was black. If she hadn't found that gold core earlier, she'd have instinctively thought black meant water-type. Now she knew: black was dark-type, and transparent meant no element.
She walked down the tree-lined path toward the road. The avenue was quiet. An overturned car lay on the road; a zombie inside roared at her but couldn't crawl out.
The road was splattered with blood; several bicycles lay overturned and their owners were nowhere to be seen. Beside some of the bikes were gruesome pools of gore and carcasses so chewed up they were unrecognizable.
A few zombies had been hacked down as well. Lin Tantan got lucky and split their heads open. Two of them had crystal cores, one wood-type, one purple lightning-type, while another had none.
That wasn’t surprising; later records showed about one in ten zombies were born without crystal cores. Those zombies were like humans without abilities, weak and hard to evolve.
Lin Tantan kept going, running past the dorms that lined the shaded avenue. From time to time she saw students break into a run only to be caught and torn apart by zombies; screams echoed from one dorm building to the next.
After running a while, she finally reached the main road.
A right, straight along the main road, then a left and another straight stretch and she’d be out of the university district. Lin Tantan pulled off her mask, checked the map on her phone to confirm the route, and set off running again.
Screech, brakes screamed behind her. She turned and saw a dark green SUV barrel out of nowhere, drift to a stop, its driver seemingly unskilled, nearly clipping a traffic light, then the vehicle swung, half its body angled, and steered toward her.
She glanced, about to look away, but the next moment a swarm of zombies poured out from behind the SUV!
Damn it... Lin Tantan couldn’t even summon a proper curse. She spun and ran, but her body felt like trash, she felt she’d exhausted every ounce of strength; her legs pumped like wind-driven wheels but weren’t fast, and the SUV soon sped past her.
She looked at the car; several men and women sat inside, all watching her with sympathetic expressions.
Turning back to the horde barely ten meters behind, Lin Tantan cursed under her breath, people had said zombies less than two hours into the transformation couldn’t run fast. Where had these sprinting zombies come from?!
As the SUV was about to disappear, she suddenly thrust out her left hand. A near-transparent pale-green strap shot from her palm, snaked around the roof rack, and with a tug hauled her up onto the vehicle.
It was her first time using powers in this body, and she had no control, she overdid it and was flung over the roof, landing on the opposite side. Luckily she hooked the roof rack with the fire axe in her right hand in time, or she would have fallen.
When she looked up, the driver’s eyes were nearly popping out; he stared at her in terror.
“Look ahead!” Lin Tantan shouted, yanking on the strap to pull herself back onto the roof.
The car skimmed the planting strip; bushes scraped along the SUV’s left flank. She dodged quickly but her arm was grazed, opening several bleeding cuts.
She gripped the rack and focused; the pale-green strap dissolved back into energy and returned to her body. She panted twice, staring across the ten meters at the zombie horde, her heart still hammering.
End-of-the-world zombies were merciless!
“Who are you? Get off the car now!” a woman yelled, poking her head out of a rolled-down window.
Lin Tantan raised the fire axe threateningly. “Cut the crap, if we’re gonna die, we’ll die together!”
The woman immediately went quiet, her face drained of color. She slid back and rolled the window up.
The driver really didn’t handle the car well, and the road was bad, littered with abandoned vehicles. The SUV weaved and dodged; several times Lin Tantan nearly got thrown off, and several times the zombies nearly closed in. She decisively rummaged in her bag and flung things, milk cartons, cups, an apple, one after another, and, luckily, knocked down some of those speedy runners. Bit by bit, the car managed to pull away from the horde.
Lin Tantan wiped her forehead, sweat soaking her hair.
After ten minutes or so the SUV pulled over at a clear stretch of road. The people climbed out with wobbly legs; Lin Tantan jumped down, reached into her bag for a bottle of water, only to find none left. At the very bottom sat an apple; she grabbed it and bit into it, the sweet-and-sour juice crunching in her mouth. She sighed in relief, she was so thirsty.
“Want some?” A bottle of water was offered to her. Lin Tantan straightened and looked at the man holding it, so kind?
The man was handsome and well dressed, though his flushed cheeks undermined the effect. He said, “You must’ve used up your water throwing things at the zombies. Thanks to you, we probably would’ve been caught otherwise.”
A sharp female voice snapped, “If it weren’t for her, we could’ve driven faster and wouldn’t have been chased at all.”
It was the woman who’d told her to get out earlier.
Lin Tantan replied, “If it weren’t for you, I’d still be walking along just fine.”
She took the unopened bottle from the man and said thanks. “Since you think I helped, we’re even.” She twisted the cap, but it wouldn’t budge, the thing was on tight.
The man offered, “Want me to open it for you?”
The woman snorted again. Lin Tantan didn’t understand what she was laughing at and declined the man’s help. She twisted harder and finally opened it, but the cut on the back of her hand, grazed by the branch, started bleeding again.
The man glanced at her wounded hand and smiled without saying anything.
Lin Tantan gulped down about half the bottle. The man said, “We’re all from this city. We’re heading back to check on our families. If it’s on your way, come with us, there’s safety in numbers.”
The city… the end-of-the-world guides all warned against heading to crowded city centers, but Lin Tantan had to get to North University City.
There were actually two ways to get to North University City; she’d checked earlier. One cut through the city and was shorter as the crow flies, but who knew what the city was like now. The other was the highway, which would mean a long detour.
From Lin Tantan’s years of watching films, she knew one thing: after the end came, the highways would be choked with wrecked cars. To get past them you’d have to walk, and her legs weren’t any longer than anyone else’s. One detour like that could easily add up to over a hundred kilometers; she’d have to walk without sleep for a full day and night.
Besides, zombies seemed to spring up inexplicably out in the open. At her current level of ability, being surrounded by them in the wilderness would be a death trap.
The city would actually be better. Although there would be many more zombies, there were also more obstacles, places to dodge and hide. And even if you couldn’t drive through the streets, the straight-line distance was under fifty kilometers; in a dozen hours or so she could walk it.
Still, that was only how she thought about it, Lin Tantan had no intention of travelling with those five people.
Three men and two women; apart from one of the men, none of them had any special powers. That man was only in the midst of awakening, he must be suffering the usual symptoms: rising temperature, dizziness, aching all over, yet he carried himself with a calm ease. Aside from a hint of flushed cheeks, there was nothing obvious wrong with him, and she couldn’t help but admire him a little.
But that didn’t change the fact that they were a bunch of rookies.
Being with them would slow her down and increase the likelihood of danger.
She decided and said plainly, “No, it’s not on my way.” She started to leave, but since the car had given her ten minutes’ ride, saving her an hour’s walk, she turned back and added, “Actually, I don’t recommend you set out right now. Especially you: eat something nutritious and high in calories, get some rest, and preserve your strength.”
She didn’t want to say more. After those two warnings she went, leaving a brisk, decisive silhouette behind.
The sharp-voiced woman bristled at her words. “What’s with that attitude? You took our car and now you’re giving us attitude?”
The others were also put off by Lin Tantan’s manner. They’d seen her smash and beat the zombies in the car, each strike precise. Though they’d been annoyed at first that she’d jumped in, watching her fight had erased that annoyance and replaced it with respect.
Thrown into chaos, they still hadn’t figured things out. The girl, however, seemed oddly at ease. She wasn’t fazed by the creatures, she moved skillfully and boldly, and she was willing to travel alone. People admire strength; even if Lin wasn’t truly powerful yet, the way she presented herself made others look at her in a new light.
That was why they wanted to pull her along with them.
Who would have thought she’d take that tone? They were clearly heading toward the city, how was that not on the way?
Only the man shifted slightly, braced the car, watched Lin Tantan’s receding back, a thoughtful glint crossing his eyes.
While Lin Tantan walked alone, the little group she had been thinking about hadn’t actually reached Beida University yet.
On the outskirts of Yang City, eight people were taking a break. Most of them belonged to a national special operations team; they had just returned from a strange anti-terror mission abroad that had lasted three life-or-death months. They had completed the mission, only to find their homeland turned upside down on the day they returned.
One could say the entire world had changed.
Some sat, some stood; some wiped the hot barrels of their rifles, others kept a cautious watch over the perimeter. A few were fiddling with laptops, and a couple were busy dismantling parts from a wrecked light aircraft, all of them frequently glancing at a tall, slender figure who was on the phone.
Dozens of zombie corpses lay scattered nearby, evidence of the fierce battle they had just fought.
After a moment the tall figure ended the call and turned. He was a strikingly handsome man, with eyebrows like bold strokes of ink and eyes that seemed always to hold a smile, yet right now those eyes bore no smile, only a sober gravity, dark and fathomless like two deep pools.
Meeting his comrades’ questioning looks, he said in a low voice, “Command wants us to enter Yang City and rescue several key individuals.”
If Lin Tantan had been there, she would probably have recognized him and leapt for joy, because this was the man she’d been obsessed with: Ye Xiao.