The sun sank toward the horizon.
Two small figures stood behind the rooftop railing, watching the sunset. After the rain, the world felt fresh and beautiful.
A cool breeze ruffled Fuling’s hair.
After leaving the darkened city center, everything here felt so open and natural.
And yet the loneliness of being cut off from the world had never gone away.
“Ling, I don’t want to stay in the city center anymore.”
Fuling looked up at Linglan and spoke slowly, one word at a time. “I want to see what the world outside is like.”
Linglan nodded gently.
They hadn’t brought much food on this trip. Staying here wasn’t a long-term solution.
Linglan glanced at the zombie on the chair. The parasol welded into the ground beside her blocked the sunlight, leaving her terribly weak.
The shock of seeing those words was hard to describe. Then came the fear and reverence of facing death.
Her optimism had been so dazzling—and so cold.
“Should we get rid of her?” Fuling asked uncertainly, a screwdriver in hand.
Linglan shook her head, pulled a chocolate bar from her bag, and handed it to Fuling.
Seeing that, Fuling said no more.
She’d just come up with a plan.
“There’s a Physical-Type Mutant at a middle school south of here, near the Second Ring Road. We can lure it over to the overpass and wound it badly. Then it should kill all the zombies on the bridge.”
The mutant at the school was small and fast. Linglan could pin it down for about two seconds with her ability—plenty of time for Fuling to carve a few gaping wounds into it.
Once badly injured, a mutant would hunt zombies to make up for its lost energy. Neither Linglan nor Fuling was good at handling a crowd of enemies, so they’d need a little outside help~
And once it had served its purpose, of course, they’d butcher it like a spent mule.
“Because Ling is special~ If we bring an ordinary mutant, the zombies won’t get hostile.”
Let’s camp here tonight.
The shelter was badly damp, so Fuling tore open an emergency blanket, wrapped herself in it, and nestled against Linglan. She soon fell asleep, happy as could be.
A piece of chocolate still sat in her mouth. Her peaceful cheeks moved as she slowly chewed.
Linglan had recovered her spent mental energy and didn’t need sleep.
She was thinking about Miss Revival Coin.
The Mother Entity could grant genes, and the genes from the Mother Entity with the mechanical arm could restore a zombie’s intelligence.
The more damaged the brain, the more limited the consciousness that emerged.
But one thing remained consistent: zombies tended to retain their original personalities.
Miss Revival Coin was already dead. Even if she were brought back again, she’d only become another cheerful zombie.
Still…
The road ahead was bound to be difficult. With only Fuling and Linglan, they simply didn’t have enough hands.
To run the armored train they’d always dreamed of, they’d need plenty of people to keep it going—and anyone allowed aboard would have to be someone Linglan deeply trusted.
But Linglan didn’t know how Fuling felt about that. If she disliked having other people around, they could always settle for a two-person RV instead.
Either way!
They could take it one step at a time~
When morning came, Linglan broke the parasol beside the zombie. After the heavy rain the previous day, Miss Revival Coin was soaked through.
Linglan simply stripped off everything but her underwear and left her there to enjoy the sun.
Fuling seemed to get jealous at that.
After Linglan finished, Fuling trotted over and asked timidly, “Ling, what kind of person am I to you?”
Linglan looked her over.
The classic oval face of a young girl, lively and pretty. Her full chest strained against her shirt, making her look a little top-heavy—but seeing her after a bath had shown Linglan exactly how someone so slender could have such generous curves.
However you looked at her, she was stunning.
Fuling’s lips drooped, her expression turning dejected. “I remember a scientist saying that humans look hideous to zombies… I’m ugly, aren’t I?”
She stole a quick glance at Linglan, then lowered her head and began to fiddle with her fingers.
She looked so hurt.
Linglan crouched and cupped Fuling’s face. When she saw Fuling’s eyes suddenly dart with panic, she knew the girl already regretted asking.
The insecurity, the psychological scars of being cut off from everyone for so long…
Before Fuling could take it back, Linglan kneaded her cheeks until she went, “Ah-woo, ah-woo~”
Then Linglan moved behind her and summoned a sheet of paper and a pen from across the room. Leaning against Fuling’s back, she reached beneath her arms and held the paper and pen out in front of her.
With careful strokes, she wrote:
“You’re one of a kind, too. Beautiful and cute.”
“Hehehe…”
Fuling’s happiness meter was maxed out!
The two buckets of gasoline Miss Revival Coin had provided solved their problem perfectly. As the zombies downstairs gradually returned to the overpass to sun themselves, the two slipped away down the stairwell from the third floor.
Next, they planned to drive to the middle school and put their lure plan into action.
“Skrrt—”
After parking, Linglan noticed Fuling staring at the school with a complicated expression.
Outside its walls sat countless abandoned scooters and cars. Just looking at them brought back a vivid picture of the spore outbreak—
The students had been leaving class with their own thoughts on their minds, while the parents’ voices mingled in a lively chorus.
Whether they’d been exchanging cheerful greetings or discussing some trouble, it had all turned into a single, unified scream.
Linglan squeezed Fuling’s shoulder, and they climbed out of the car together.
The school’s accordion gate had toppled sideways, twisted and battered.
Their gaze passed over the field, speckled with dark spots, and the decrepit classroom buildings overtaken by vines. Empty window frames. Walls cracked by bombardment. Cold steel rebar.
The warm-colored paint had long since faded, but patches of it stubbornly remained, blending with the gray plaster under years of wind and rain into a muddied, oppressive shade.
Linglan pushed a chocolate bar into her chest cavity. The vines happily coiled around it, but couldn’t bring themselves to gobble it down in one bite.
Instead, they pressed the bar to her ribs and grated off little chocolate shavings, as if grinding cheese.
“It should be patrolling inside the building. It used to be a school disciplinary director, so it won’t let any outsiders onto campus,” Fuling whispered. “There shouldn’t be any other mutants.”
Linglan nodded, and they entered the schoolyard.
Fuling ran her right hand over a damaged ping-pong table and drew her entrenching tool.
Clang, clang, clang!
The heavy blade rang against the parallel bars as the two scanned their surroundings.
Books lay scattered everywhere. Bones had rotted white. Classroom doors gaped open. Everything was dead silent. The clang of steel echoed above the schoolyard, drawing out a pitch-black figure.
Its long tail dragged over the ground, its sharp bone spurs gouging a white line into the dirt.
Its backward-bending legs stepped down the stairwell with an imposing thud, thud, thud.
It raised its head. Black chitin plates covered its face like a mask.
When it saw the disturbance on the schoolyard, its body trembled with rage.
“Zziii—!”
A shrill, insectlike screech burst from its throat.
