Chapter 19: Something Goes Wrong

The plan went smoothly.

Then, just as they ran out of the stairwell and into the sunlight, everything went wrong.

Tong Xiangyu had a strip of black cloth tied over her eyes. She hadn’t been watching where she was going, and suddenly her foot struck something. She jumped, afraid it would roll away and hit something, making enough noise to draw the monsters. But when she looked down, she saw a skull with nothing left but skin stretched over bone and a few wisps of hair.

A scream shot up Tong Xiangyu’s throat and died there.

Song Ge reacted in an instant, pinning the rolling skull under her foot before it could crash into the trash can by the roadside and make a racket.

“See that SUV?” she whispered. “Go!”

Tong Xiangyu hadn’t recovered from the shock. But at Song Ge’s low, commanding voice, she forgot everything else and sprinted for the vehicle in the distance.

Running full tilt in the blazing summer heat, with three layers of masks over her face, was an experience Tong Xiangyu never wanted to repeat. The masks made it impossible to breathe quickly. Her brain felt starved of oxygen, and the innermost mask clung wetly to her nose and mouth.

She was miserable.

But she couldn’t take it off.

Almost there. The SUV was just ahead.

It was clearly only a hundred yards away. Even with the black cloth over their eyes, they should have reached it in half a minute at a full sprint.

But something was wrong.

They ran and ran, yet the black SUV stayed far ahead, still a hundred yards away in the shimmering, distorted air.

“What’s going on?” Song Ge realized something was wrong, too.

The noise they made, and the scent of the living, roused the silent monsters. Song Ge heard breathing on both sides of the road. Every hair on her body stood on end. She had no time to think. Grabbing Tong Xiangyu’s hand, she kept running.

As she ran, Song Ge scanned the area for somewhere safe to hide.

But now, anything unknown was a danger. No one knew which buildings might be harboring man-eating monsters.

Tong Xiangyu had been running at full speed, and now she was starting to tire. She kept pace only because Song Ge was dragging her along. Watching the sweat stream down Song Ge’s neck, seeing her sun-reddened forehead and tightly furrowed brow, Tong Xiangyu couldn’t help glancing back.

“Monsters!” Her eyes flew wide. “Song Ge, they’re chasing us!”

So many of them—more than a dozen!

And they were fast!

Song Ge already knew. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be running so hard.

Tong Xiangyu was falling apart inside, but she kept sprinting anyway.

This was when all that conditioning Song Ge had made her do paid off. She was exhausted, but she could keep going.

The thought of the monsters behind her was too terrifying, though. She couldn’t focus on running and kept looking back.

The black cloth had grown damp with sweat and was making it hard to see. Everything looked blurry, so Tong Xiangyu tore it off.

Blinding sunlight flooded her vision.

For a moment, the world went black. Her eyes burned, the pain making her head swim. Her legs could no longer match Song Ge’s pace. She stumbled and pitched forward onto the ground.

At the front of the pack was a child monster. Half its face had been bitten away, the wound rotting and crawling with maggots, yet it still wore a little backpack. It opened its mouth, full of mutated, sharp red teeth, and lunged straight at Tong Xiangyu.

Song Ge reacted in time. She drove her spear through the little monster, then bent down and grabbed Tong Xiangyu by the hand.

Tong Xiangyu couldn’t open her eyes. Terrified and crying, she tried to pull Song Ge’s hand off her. “Forget about me! Run! I can’t see!”

There was no time for this. Song Ge tightened her grip and hauled her up. “Don’t you still want to find your parents?”

That was all it took to bring Tong Xiangyu back to herself.

No. She couldn’t die yet.

She forced her sunburned eyes open to a red blur, gritted her teeth against the pain in her knees, and pushed herself up.

The other monsters were already swarming toward them.

Song Ge yanked Tong Xiangyu to her feet, shoved her aside, and shouted, “Run!” Then she gripped the spear, still skewering the little monster, and swung it hard at the pursuing horde.

The momentum sent the little monster sliding off the spear. It crashed into two others, knocking them down like dominoes.

That was when Song Ge realized the monsters had terrible balance. Once they fell, it took them ages to get back up. She remembered the old homeless man she’d kicked down earlier. He hadn’t been able to stand up again, either.

But there were too many monsters, and their numbers would only grow.

Song Ge took a hurried look around. At least twenty or thirty zombie monsters. She had only so much strength, while the monsters were endless. There was no way she could take them all down with one spear.

Her heart pounded as if it were about to leap out of her throat. Her ragged breathing rattled in her ears, muffled by her masks.

Song Ge shoved a trash can over to slow the monsters, then used the spear to vault onto the roof of a car.

“Song Ge!” Tong Xiangyu waved frantically in the distance. “This way!”

Song Ge looked over. Someone was standing beside Tong Xiangyu, and for a split second, her heart lurched. Then she saw that it was a living person, not a monster: a hale-looking old woman.

The old woman had a kind face, but she looked anxious. Clearly, she was trying to get Tong Xiangyu to hurry inside.

Song Ge calculated the quickest route between them. She glanced at the spear in her hand, then at the dozen bloodthirsty monsters before her. Gritting her teeth, she gripped the end of the spear and hurled it with all her strength at the front of the pack.

She meant to knock them down and buy herself time to reach the others.

But the monsters jostled together. The front few tilted backward without falling. Their chests and ribs had caved in, yet they didn’t seem to notice. They just panted and lunged toward her.

Damn it.

Song Ge saw that Tong Xiangyu’s shouting had drawn several monsters away. She quickly signaled for her to get inside and hide, then turned and jumped onto a shop sign. With a pull-up, she hauled herself onto the second floor.

The monsters even knew to split up. Some stayed below while others entered the shop.

But the storefronts were connected, and Song Ge could cross from one to the next.

Meanwhile, the old woman had already gotten Tong Xiangyu inside her home and locked the door.

Thinking that Song Ge had been trapped in the horde because of her and might be dead, Tong Xiangyu could no longer hold back her guilt, fear, and despair. She leaned against the door and burst into tears.

“Song Ge! Song Ge!”