“Da Bai Tu!”
Consciousness returned to his body, Zuo Feng sat up abruptly and dashed towards the balcony.
The drizzling rain had stopped, the sun was shining brightly, and the accumulated water on the road had long since evaporated.
The scorching June sun, even for just an hour, was enough to dry the damp road.
Zuo Feng didn't know how long he had been unconscious.
Standing on the balcony, the road was a mess: a bus had crashed into a roadside shop, cars had rear-ended each other and collided head-on, and even a SWAT vehicle lay overturned by the road.
There were no towering flames; the exploded cars had long since extinguished, leaving only charred metal frames.
The road had lost its former bustle, and Gray-skinned Zombies with blurred faces wandered aimlessly.
A deathly silence hung over everything, until suddenly, a billboard crashed down. The previously scattered zombies seemed to receive a command, their legs trembling as they awkwardly shuffled towards the source of the sound.
Zuo Feng's gaze was fixed on the fruit shop he looked at every day.
The sign was crooked, the glass door shattered, the shop was in disarray, and that charming figure was nowhere to be seen. A pang of sadness surged in his heart.
“Da Bai Tu is gone.”
Zuo Feng's throat constricted, his eyes burned, and a knife-like pain reached deep into his heart. He fought back tears, taking a deep breath to try and calm himself, but guilt and regret surged like a tide.
The ruins and deathly silence before him silently accused the cruelty of the disaster.
Zuo Feng clenched his fists, his fingernails digging deep into his palms without him realizing it. He forced himself to look away, slumping powerlessly onto the balcony and opening his phone. His chat window with Da Bai Tu was frozen on her last reply — “See you tonight” — three words that were now especially piercing.
His fingertip slid across the screen, as if he could feel the lingering warmth of the past. Closing his eyes, Da Bai Tu’s laughter seemed to echo in his ears again, hollow and distant, reverberating among the ruins. Tears finally rolled down, splashing onto the phone screen.
“Da Bai Tu, I’m sorry, we both broke our promise… We couldn’t — see you tonight.” Zuo Feng clutched his head in pain, murmuring softly; at this moment, he was like a soul-less shell, his eyes staring blankly at the balcony floor.
Zuo Feng, an orphan, left school after graduating high school at 18.
Former classmates had long since lost touch, and his identity as a game booster meant he had no friends in real life — except for Da Bai Tu.
She was his only emotional anchor, and now even she had disappeared into the ruins.
An unprecedented loneliness and despair gripped Zuo Feng. Memories surged like a tide: every moment spent with Da Bai Tu, that charming and always smiling pretty face when they first met, which had warmed his lonely heart.
If life were only like the first meeting, who would have thought the apocalypse would suddenly descend, turning beauty to dust? Now, only memories burned in his heart.
Tears fell silently. Zuo Feng didn't know how long he stood on the balcony, until night swallowed everything, and sparse starlight reflected on his pale face.
The night wind blew, but the coolness could not dispel the gloom in his heart. He slowly stood up, his empty gaze sweeping into the distance, once again fixated on that fruit shop.
“I can’t give up! Da Bai Tu, wait for me! Even if you become a zombie, I will find you! I will search every corner of the world to find a way to revive you, no matter how slim the hope—”
Zuo Feng clenched his fists, purple light swirling deep in his pupils, flashing with a dangerous glow.
Right now, he had to survive…
“Food and water are running low, enough for two days at most. I must find weapons and supplies as soon as possible.”
He had fainted around 4 PM yesterday and woken up at 9 AM; it was now 8:30 PM, and he hadn't eaten or drunk for over a day.
After chewing two packs of instant noodles and downing a bottle of mineral water, Zuo Feng carefully searched for Gray-skinned Zombies near the fruit shop — Da Bai Tu was nowhere to be seen.
Her figure was too distinctive; Zuo Feng was convinced that even if she became a Gray-skinned Zombie, he would recognize her at a glance. Da Bai Tu's figure was the most… impressive he had ever seen.
“Get some rest early, conserve your energy. Tomorrow… I’ll make a weapon.”
Withdrawing his gaze, Zuo Feng walked into the bedroom, gently closing the door.
The room fell silent. Moonlight filtered through the curtain gaps, casting mottled light and shadow on the bedsheets.
He collapsed powerlessly onto the bed, his mind filled with images of Da Bai Tu.
Listening to her past voice messages on his phone, he gradually drifted into a dream amidst her charming voice. In his dream, it was always frozen on their first meeting, Da Bai Tu’s charming, smiling face.
Morning light pierced the room through the curtain gaps.
Zuo Feng slowly opened his eyes, a hint of determination flashing in them.
He quickly got up — a weapon plan had already formed in his mind: grinding the rounded tip of a sharpening rod into a sharp spike.
On the balcony, a solitary figure used the concrete floor as a whetstone, carefully grinding the sharpening rod, his gaze occasionally sweeping the street below: partly to observe the zombies' characteristics, and partly to search for traces of Da Bai Tu.
Through the peephole in the early morning, Zuo Feng observed three zombies wandering on his floor: a couple from next door, plus the short, stout, middle-aged man with glasses from across the hall.
The stout man looked miserable now, wearing only a pair of baggy shorts, his bare upper body and fleshy belly gnawed with a head-sized bloody hole, intestines dragging on the ground.
“Gray skin, gray fingernails, gray eyes, two small fangs, attracted by sound…”
Grinding non-stop, Zuo Feng recited these features in his mind; they were etched into his memory. He knew that every detail was a matter of life and death.
“Extremely slow movement, shaky legs, like an infant learning to walk — perhaps the virus hasn't fully taken control of the body? As long as I'm not ambushed or surrounded, the threat isn't great.”
Zuo Feng took a deep breath, continuing to focus on sharpening the rod, secretly calculating how to exploit these weaknesses.
As for headshots being a weakness in movies? Until proven, it remained questionable.
“Bang—” A gunshot ripped through the silence! Zuo Feng suddenly stood up and looked towards the street.
In the distance, a man with a bulging backpack was running for his life, clutching a pistol in his hand.
No need to think much, the overturned SWAT vehicle by the road was the answer — the gun clearly came from there.
The echo of the gunshot still reverberated through the silent street, and dozens of zombies wandering on the road all turned, swaying their bodies, letting out roars, their arms rigidly extended towards the running man, as if to snatch him into their grasp.
“This speed, they could race an elderly person with a cane!”
Zuo Feng knew the zombies were slow, but he hadn't expected them to be so clumsy even when they started hunting.
A slight curve appeared on his lips, feeling more confident; as long as he didn't stand still or get ambushed and surrounded, avoiding these zombies would not be difficult.
“Indeed, there are still many brave people in this world.”
The gunshot clearly came from a small supermarket on a distant street, and combined with the man's bulging backpack, he was clearly risking his life to gather supplies.
“While firearms are powerful, cold weapons are better against zombies; gunshots are deafening, and once fired, who knows how many zombies they'll attract? A slight misstep could lead to being surrounded; against them, cold weapons are more practical.”
“What a pity…”
Zuo Feng shook his head with a light sigh. He saw the running man precisely struck by a zombie falling from the third floor, then completely engulfed by the swarming horde of zombies.
He let out a light sigh of regret — this person was finished! He guarded against front, back, left, and right, but didn't guard against above; if he had quietly dealt with the zombies using a cold weapon, why would he have attracted such a surging tide of zombies? With so many living dead wandering around, to dare to shoot rashly, this person was truly reckless.
“I wonder if there are still guns in the car…” His eyes burned as he swept over the overturned SWAT vehicle by the road.
The thought of getting a gun surged in his mind — the target wasn't zombies, but those humans who were even more terrifying than the living dead after the collapse of order.
In less than thirty seconds, the previously gathered zombies actually dispersed.
Zuo Feng had assumed the man had been gnawed to nothing but bones, but that wasn't the case.
Only the first three zombies to pounce each took a bite, then slowly retreated. Less than twenty seconds after the man was bitten, the other surrounding zombies seemed to instantly lose their target, their attack behavior abruptly stopping, leaving only them wandering aimlessly and dispersing.
“Zombies don't attack humans to eat; their behavior is more like simply spreading infection!
Once a human is infected, the zombies stop attacking. From being bitten to the other zombies stopping their attack, the time is approximately between fifteen to eighteen seconds…”
Zuo Feng narrowed his eyes. He saw the man lying on the ground suddenly twitch.
The spot where the man fell was only about two hundred meters from Zuo Feng’s building.
From the thirteenth floor, looking down at the ground two hundred meters away, he could discern outlines, but details were hard to make out. The man struggled to move his body, crawling extremely slowly towards Zuo Feng’s building.
“He’s turning into a zombie so fast?”
Zuo Feng shook his head: fifteen to eighteen seconds after being bitten, zombies stop attacking, and transformation into a zombie takes about two minutes… Was the infectivity of this virus really so terrifying?
“No! He’s still alive!” Zuo Feng, who was about to look away, suddenly froze, his gaze locking onto the man again — he saw the man, facing his direction, struggling to lift his arm and vigorously wave his hand.
How could a zombie… wave? This was clearly the behavior of a living person!