Chapter 03

“I'm surnamed Zhou, with Rong from military weapon, not Rong from meimei Huang Rong.[1]“

“We have been squatting in this unfortunate T City for more than half a month, we haven't even touched a penny of our working subsidy, our bullets and forage are almost depleted as well. In this chaostic situation, even refueling cars were done sneakily as though we were thieves.”

“How do you think this virus broke out, is it a variant of rabies virus, or was this some kind of genetic attack by U.S. imperialists and those western super powers?  I watched the news broadcast a few days ago, but last night even TV's signal and radio's shortwave were gone, it's unfortunate because I've been following the “People's City Management Team” and “People’s Broadcasting Office" for most of the year without break. But the most unfortunate thing is…"

. Zhou Rong lit his cigarrattes, took a deep breath of smoke, and looked back only to see nervous looks on his members's faces. The car's side windows were open and the wind came whistling inside.

“Go… Gone,” one of the younger members said: "He just jumped out of the window …

“When did he leave?”

“When you talked about news broadcast. "

Zhou Rong fell silent for a moment, before saying in regret: “That's unfortunate, I want to show him the eight season of People’s Development and Reform Commission."

The zombie tide was lured to the southeast so now there were only about 10 living-deads wandering the streets. The young man rolled over on the ground, stood up, walked a few steps to the corner of the street, then dodged into a messy, big pharmacy.

The incandescent lamp flashed over his head. The walls were full of spattered blood, and several mutilated, crushed bodies laid across the gla.s.s counter, showing just how scary the situation was when the virus first broke out.

With the growing appeal of ethnic and gender equality, the ban for Omega's inhibitors had been lifted in many countries, but it was still a tightly controlled prescription drugs. The young man positioned the carbine in front of his body, bypa.s.sed the corpse on the counter, then used the b.u.t.t of the carbine to smash the gla.s.s cabinet. He let out a relieved breath when he saw the familiar injection, he quickly dismantled the packaging and administered the content into his arm's veins.

The pharmacy was probably had been hijacked several times, but it still has some remnants of supplies, protein powder, nuts, energy drinks and so on. He picked up a b.l.o.o.d.y saincloth knapsack from one of the bodies and swept all that remnants into it, at the same time noticing that he had also gained two containers of purified water.

After finis.h.i.+ng, he looked up and saw himself through the broken mirror at the counter.

He was wearing the motorcycle helmet, with a jacket full of rust,  jeans which had long lost its original color, and a pair of high-top ankle boots full of dried rotten meat.

Suddenly he noticed something; he pulled his jacket's zipper a little, and took out a pendant from under his collar.

It was an ordinary pocket-watch sized round bra.s.s case. He opened it and found an old picture inside, pressed under a flake of crystal.

A young couple were smiling at their five or six-year-old son. The wife was Caucasian, with linen-like hair and amber colored eyes, her beauty was visible even through the limited photographic technique from many years ago. The husband on the other hand was a completely oriental person, his appearance was clear and elegant if not a little bookish, with an extremely familiar face.

–his own face.

The young man closed his eyes and gasped for breath. A few broken images flashed in his mind: a rapidly shaking cabin, people screaming, corpses, a burst of flying ammunition cases, and a very brief image of a silver suitcase.

Then the focus of those images changed, becoming those of a cold, grey-skied early morning. Military boots treading across gra.s.s roots and dew, and a scolding voice sounded in each soldier’s eardrum:

"…… there is no tomorrow, no hope. Never wait for a rescue, any mistakes and you are doomed..."

“You will be the last if the few living men on this earth, the last hope to fight against the dead!….."

The young man subconsciously shook his head, he wanted to rub the eyebrows, but his hands were met with the hard surface of the helmet.

"Be careful! "

A huge force suddenly hit the young man on his side, making him fell to the ground with a resounding crash. The young man instinctively took hold of his attacker’s neck just as the sound of deafening gunshots filled the room a moment later!

A rain of fast bullets. .h.i.t  the warehouse's door at the corner, and soon after, a few living-deads fell out of the door to the ground, their bodies twitched for a short moment before finally turning into a pile of unmoving flesh and blood.

Zhou Rong put down his gun, pulled out the cigarette in his mouth, and stepped on it: “Are you two okay?”

The young man pushed away his “sneak attacker” and turned to sit, holding two fingers between his eyebrows to quench his spliting headache.

“h.e.l.lo, we saw the zombies pus.h.i.+ng on the warehouse's door when we came in…” Yan Hao got up and spread out his palm to the young man sitting on the ground. The latter accepted his hand, leveraging on him to stand up, then took off his motorcycle's helmet: “Thank you.”

Yan Hao: “…”

Yan Hao stared at his handsome face; despite his instinct to conceal his feelings,  the flush on his white face made it very obvious. He coughed awkwardly: “Nothing … It’s okay. "

Zhou Rong found this quite interesting. He stroked his chin, smiled and asked: “Xiao Ge[1], come eat with us?”

– If there was a top ten worst pick-up line list at the end of the world, this must be the top one.

The young man did not answer and instead went to pick up his backpack and slung it over his right shoulder.  He also carried the carbine he had previously stolen from Yan Hao, and walked past the two other men to head towards the door.

Unexpectedly, Zhou Rong grabbed his shoulder: “This …”

“Are you following me?”

The two men looked at each other froma very close distance-  an invisible string of tension seemed to be tightening inside the messy pharmacy. After a long while, Zhou Rong finally smiled modestly: “What are you saying, my feelings are hurt…”

"…… clearly I am someone who is responsible for the safety of people’s life and property."

The young man took another careful look at Zhou Rong and felt that he may have made a mistake. This person should not be a member of the local army, but a former soldier who now resorted to stealing after being expelled from the military.

“Don’t look at me like that, come with us, no one’s going to hit you for those two packs of cookies.” Zhou Rong said, flicking a piece of minced meat off the young man's shoulder without the slightest disgust, he continued: “We have to go to the downtown's shelter to meet with my other teammates, After combining the groups, we'll launch a positioning signal to notify the local government to send helicopters to pick us up– T City will be cleaned with nuclear tomorrow. Here, this is my ID.”

With his blood-stained finger gloves, Zhou Rong gingerly took out a cowhide envelope from under his vest. The young man opened it and indeed, there was really a red colored seal of the army introduction letter inside.

Zhou Rong looked smugly at the young man while carefully putting the official letter back inside vest, he said: “You can't go anywhere. Choose, dying because of your own heroism act or accepting the organization's arrangement… What was your name again?"

After a moment of silence, the young man’s eyes fell to the ground, catching the sight of a spilled medicine box with “XX Sinan Chinese Herbal Pieces Co., Ltd. (Guangdong 2011x.x.xx)” written on it.

"…… Sinan,” The young man answered hoa.r.s.ely.

"Nan from South-North.[3]"

Half an hour later.

“Their bodily fluids are highly toxic, and the result of the bite is 100% of either infection or death, followerd by mutation. The mutation rate vary from person to person, the shortest mutation time is 50 seconds counted from the moment the heart stops beating, while the longest is more than 24 hours, during which the body's stiffness and speed stayed the same as a normal body. "

Sinan raised his eyebrow: “Where is the object of observation?”

“Several of my team members,” Zhou Rong said, gulping.

Seven and eight special force soldiers were sitting respectively on left and right sides of the car. Their bodies b.u.mping around as a result of the zombies constantly blocking the way.

At  Zhou Rong's side, Yan Hao took a paper bag from behind him and offered it to Sinan who was sitting opposite him.

The paper bag was filled with a few pieces of high-protein chocolate and military compressed biscuits.

Sinan casually threw the paper bag back to him and pointed to his backpack, as if saying: I have this here. Then, he immediately asked Zhou Rong: “You are from the local garrison?”

“When the virus just broke out some experts thought it was a variant of rabies, so the first batch of infected people were sent to the military's custody, the local garrison was soon completely eliminated.” Zhou Rong spread out his hand over his chest as a show of condolence, then continued: "If you go to the military camp now, it should be filled with tens of thousands of of living-deads, so densely packed that it'll incite… a h.e.l.l of a crowd phobia in people. "

“Then why did you come to T city?”

“To perform the task." Yan Hao whispered on the side.

Sinan glanced at him, making Yan Hao looked intently at the shaky floor of the car with his lips pulled in a tight line.

“We came to carry out the task, but our luck was bad. We ran into a zombie outbreak and had to temporarily changed the content of the mission, we then decided to go to the refuge to rescue ordinary people.” Zhou Rong casually asked: “How about you, Xiao Ge?”

Sinan didn’t answer, “What is your mission?”

He thought that the team’s purpose must be the same as Tang Hao: to seize omega from the war zone area—a so-called precious strategic's resource. However, Zhou Rong actually sighed and said depressingly: “This Gege really is out of luck ah… The mission's target has died, so if I go back now I'm afraid I'll just be given as food to the zombies as punishment …"

“Not necessarily dead,” Yan Hao suddenly whispered.

The other team members looked at both of them, and Zhou Rong asked, “Can you still live after free-falling from a 9-kilometer-height?”

Yan Hao was silent.

“Rong Ge!" The driver suddenly shouted from the front: “The latest road map has came out, come and see the lane!”

Zhou Rong got up and walked to the driver's seat, patting Yan Hao's shoulder on the way.

Sinan suddenly found himself left with Yan Hao who would often cut into his conversation with Zhou Rong, intentionally or unintentionally making people aware of his existence.

Why would he do that?

Yan Hao suddenly put a fist up to his mouth and coughed, handing out a box of cigarettes to Sinan: “Smoke?”

Sinan’s appearance was extremely oriental, but his eyes were amber-colored like his mother. When he stared intently at someone, there would be an ice-cold illusion surrouding him.

He looked at Yan Hao for 10 seconds before shaking his head: “No, thank you.”

"………………"

Yan Hao, who was a little nervous, smiled at him. He took out a cigarette, but did not ignite it, only tossing and turning it in between his fingers, as if this action could help him to ease his emotion.

A moment later, Zhou Rong came back to the rear compartment while carrying a bag of equipment with him. He took a sit and start digging into the equipment bag with a sigh: “The situation is not easy—we'll arrive at the refuge in two hours at our current speed, but we are still unclear about the zombie density at the City Center's street. I’m going to go up there and shoots with the machine gun to open up a way, you can just sleep for a while…. why Xiao Ge, do you want to see me do it?"

Zhou Rong opened the metal box containing firearm parts, and easily took out a ruby earrings from a tool slot, before bucking it in his right ear.

Sinan: “…”

Sinan sat opposite them, his eyes moving from Zhou Rong’s ears to Yan Hao’s ears, two identical rubies flas.h.i.+ng in the dim compartment.

At that moment his question was finally answered and he felt that he now understood the whole story.

"Sorry." Sinan said sincerely while getting up and patting Yan Hao's shoulder. He headed to the front seat, sitting beside the driver.

Yan Hao: “…??? "

There was a strange silence surrounding the rear compartment.

However, the well-meaning Sinan ignored it, he nooded to the driver and immediately closed his eyes to sleep.

Unedited, please do tell me if you spot any mistake.

Still looking for editor/proofreader ~

T/N:

[1] He was talking about his name's characters.

Surnamed Zhou (周), with Rong (戎) from military weapon (兵戈戎), not Rong (蓉)from meimei Huang Rong (黃蓉妹妹). Meimei Huang Rong is a reference to a character from novel The Legend of the Condor Heroes by Jin Yong.

[2] Xiao Ge: Little Brother, or a way to adress a younger guy.

[3] Talking about name's characters too: Nan {南} from South-North [南北}

More will be coming this weekend ~ 0/

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