Back at his apartment, Lin Xian took a bottle of disinfectant mixed with bleach from behind the door and carefully sprayed the entrance and hallway. Only then did he go inside, shut the security door, and fasten the chain.
The first thing Lin Xian did was pull out his phone and open the map to find Chen Sixuan's location.
The first rule of the apocalypse: beware the Black Night.
The second rule of the apocalypse: never act rashly.
Lin Xian never went into a fight unprepared. Jiang City had fallen completely. Those who remained were either survivors holed up in shelters, marauders prowling the streets, or zombies swarming everywhere.
Night was even more terrifying. No one knew how many uncanny things lurked in the darkness.
Judging by what survivors said across the radio frequencies, those things defied description. Very few people survived an encounter with them.
"7.2 kilometers. Not exactly close..."
Before the apocalypse, a taxi could have covered that distance in a dozen minutes or so. But traffic had ground to a halt and roads and bridges were damaged. Lin Xian reckoned it would take him half an hour even on a motorcycle.
He had no idea what things were like over there, either. In the apocalypse, hardly anyone would risk a rescue like this for someone other than their own mother.
Lin Xian's eyes flickered, and he sighed inwardly.
Teacher Chen, I hope you're worth the risk.
At 18:45, night gradually fell.
Lin Xian pulled down the iron shutter over the window and began preparing dinner.
He hadn't gone looking for supplies today. People fleeing Jiang City and other survivors had already picked the supermarkets and convenience stores clean countless times. Even a packet of ketchup was hard to find.
Fortunately, food and drink weren't all he looked for. He also hunted for all kinds of mechanical parts that other survivors ignored.
02:42
A faint sound woke Lin Xian from a light sleep. He sat up and listened, his gaze fixed on the door in the darkness.
The sound seemed to have come from the corridor outside.
He picked up the short knife he kept for protection and quietly went to the door.
He had reinforced it with steel plates several times, making it much sturdier than an ordinary security door. But he had no guarantee it would hold against those things. High up in the building, his only escape route was the staircase off the corridor.
Lin Xian leaned close to the peephole and looked out. The corridor was pitch-black. Only the dim green glow of an emergency light revealed the outlines of the walls and floor.
After watching for a while and seeing nothing, he turned to go back to sleep.
But he had taken only two steps when an eerie knock came from the metal door behind him!
Knock... knock!
The two slow knocks made Lin Xian's scalp prickle!
Was someone really there? Or had one of those things found his hiding place?
Grim-faced, he returned to the door. After a moment's hesitation, he tightened his grip on the knife, held his breath, and looked through the peephole again.
Lin Xian sucked in a sharp breath!
In the corridor, beneath the dim green light, an old man in a black burial shroud had appeared before his door. He stood perfectly still. His face was gaunt and deathly pale, and his eyes, on the verge of rotting, were a lifeless gray-black. The sight of him was chilling.
Worst of all, the corpse-like old man seemed to be staring straight at him through the peephole!
Lin Xian stumbled back two steps on instinct, stunned.
Wasn't that Old Man Li from downstairs?
But he was already dead...
Lin Xian took another step back, his expression grave. Whatever stood outside looking like Old Man Li was no longer human.
Was he a zombie?
But why would a zombie knock?
Lin Xian's face darkened. If this was one of the uncanny things that came out at night, he was in trouble.
"Old Man Li, why couldn't you stay in your coffin and enjoy the peace? Why come back for more suffering..." Lin Xian cursed under his breath.
Time crept by. Wide awake now, Lin Xian stood behind the door with his back against the wall, gripping his knife.
The knocking did not come again.
Then came something stranger. From the other side of the wall he leaned against, he heard a faint sound like fingernails scratching. It was quiet, but it made his scalp crawl. Something seemed to be on the other side, clawing at the wall without stopping...
"Fuck!" He sprang back and stared at the wall. "That thing isn't trying to get in, is it?"
Lin Xian was at a loss.
Whatever was outside seemed to have sensed him. Only a wall separated them.
His best option was to hold his breath and make no sound. As long as the door held, he was safe for the moment.
He had prepared an escape route, too. He had already moved most of his supplies onto On the Infinite. Only a few days' worth of food and water remained in the apartment, along with a generator and storage battery.
The minutes dragged on. That eerie scratching kept sounding beside Lin Xian's ear, haunting him.
At last, the sound stopped. Lin Xian breathed a sigh of relief, got up, and looked through the peephole again.
This time, what he saw made every hair on his body stand on end.
A girl had appeared in the corridor outside. Covered in blood, she lay slumped on the floor. She struggled to rise, reaching toward his door as she called weakly,
"Help me... help me..."
Lin Xian narrowed his eyes. The girl looked no older than fifteen or sixteen, and her clothes seemed utterly out of place in the apocalypse: short shorts, a low-cut crop top, and a bright baseball jacket. She even wore a wireless earbud around her neck. She looked young and fashionable. If not for the blood smeared across her face, he might have thought this was no apocalypse at all, but a girl from next door paying a late-night visit.
Lin Xian said nothing in response to her plea.
He had just seen a dead man standing outside. Now a Little Girl had suddenly appeared in his place. Anyone would find that suspicious.
The things that came out at night were unpredictable. Besides, she was a stranger. Wouldn't opening the door put his own life at risk?
The time crept toward five in the morning. Dawn was still at least nine hours away.
Through the peephole, Lin Xian saw that the girl had turned pale. She lay sprawled on the floor, unconscious.
"Damn it. Is she some kind of monster setting a trap to make me open the door?" Lin Xian muttered, his head aching. This was far stranger than any zombie.
Unable to resist his curiosity, Lin Xian looked again.
This time, he saw Old Man Li standing beside the Little Girl. His head hung low, as though he were sniffing her.
Old Man Li shifted his feet stiffly, stepped in front of the Little Girl, and slowly bent down.
Lin Xian's pupils contracted. Clinging to Old Man Li's corpse was a Strange Bug covered in long, thin legs like a black centipede. It took up almost his entire back!
What the hell was that thing?
Lin Xian drew in a sharp breath.
The Strange Bug's legs twitched, lifting Old Man Li's arms. Then the corpse lunged straight at the Little Girl.
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