"Enough with the nonsense. Come on, follow me. This place isn't safe. There are a lot of zombies gathered in this library—at least several hundred." With that, Zhao Tianlei pulled Cheng Yao along, carefully making their way beside the wall.
Zhao Tianlei had originally planned to look for survivors, but the library alone had already become like this, so the sports field was naturally a massive slaughterhouse as well. As for the teaching buildings and dormitories, Zhao Tianlei didn't dare imagine what they were like. To begin with, the dormitory doors were all ordinary wooden doors, and there hadn't been many students inside at the time. If the apocalypse had erupted afterward, those students in the dormitories would have been unable to withstand the zombies' attacks with such fragile wooden doors.
As for the teaching buildings, Zhao Tianlei dared imagine them even less. The more people there were in a place, the more zombies there would be. He would probably be overwhelmed by the zombies before he could even rush in to save anyone. But the humanity in his heart prevented him from hardening himself and abandoning them just like that.
"Tianlei, what's wrong?" Cheng Yao couldn't help asking with concern when she saw how troubled Zhao Tianlei looked.
Zhao Tianlei said frankly, "There are so many students in the school. Although they weren't very nice to me usually, I can't bring myself to abandon them now. The zombies are terrifying and vicious, but there might still be survivors in the school. I'm wondering whether I should go save them. I've more or less searched the school's main buildings. We can give up on the dormitories, and I went to the cafeteria yesterday—there wasn't a single person there. As for the library, you saw it yourself. There are too many zombies inside, and there might not be any survivors there either. That leaves the teaching buildings and the office building."
Zhao Tianlei's words touched Cheng Yao a little. In the apocalypse, what Zhao Tianlei was doing could absolutely be called foolish. But Cheng Yao knew that it was precisely because of his foolishness that she had survived. So she would never stop him from being this foolish, because it concerned the hope of some survivors.
Cheng Yao immediately comforted him. "Go ahead and do what you think is right. Don't let yourself regret it. From your analysis just now, you've clearly already made your decision. I think most classes were in session when the apocalypse broke out yesterday, so there might not be many people in the office building. Why don't we take a look in the teaching buildings? Since we're going to save people, we might as well save as many as we can."
"Mm, all right. We'll circle around the teaching buildings. If there are too many zombies, we'll leave. We can't sacrifice our own lives just to save people. If there aren't too many zombies and we find survivors, we'll save as many as we can." With Cheng Yao's suggestion, Zhao Tianlei found it much easier to make up his mind. After speaking, the two walked side by side toward the school's teaching buildings.
Along the way, Zhao Tianlei relied on his memories from going out to search for food the previous day and did his best to avoid places with large numbers of zombies. Whenever he encountered a small group of zombies, he avoided them if he could. Only when they ran into an isolated zombie that spotted them approaching did Zhao Tianlei swing his fire ax and chop it to the ground.
Thus, although the straight-line distance from the library to the teaching buildings should have taken only three to five minutes, it took the two of them a full ten or twenty minutes. The difficulty they faced was obvious.
When they arrived in front of the teaching buildings, Zhao Tianlei didn't go straight inside. Instead, he first circled the outside of the buildings and surveyed them. After all, there were many students in the teaching buildings, which meant there would be many zombies as well. If they simply walked in, they would inevitably be surrounded by zombies. So Zhao Tianlei first looked through the windows on the outside, on the first floor. Once he did, it was clear that every classroom was a scene from hell. The blood splashed across the classroom walls displayed the tragedy that had occurred there.
Whenever Zhao Tianlei saw a classroom with such a scene, he abandoned the search without hesitation and moved on to the next one. After searching more than a dozen classrooms in a row and finding the same thing in every one, Zhao Tianlei was on the verge of giving up when a classroom suddenly caught his attention. Judging from the furnishings inside, it clearly wasn't a student classroom but an office for several class counselors. Although the interior was somewhat chaotic, there wasn't a trace of blood on the snow-white walls around it. In particular, quite a few desks and chairs had been piled up by the entrance, clearly to keep the zombies outside from getting in.
Zhao Tianlei was stunned when he saw this. He hurriedly climbed onto the windowsill and gently knocked on the window, wanting to see what was happening inside.
As soon as Zhao Tianlei gave the window a light knock, several figures appeared inside. It turned out that those people had been sitting or lying against the walls, so Zhao Tianlei hadn't been able to see them from outside. At first, the figures appeared extremely tense, but when everyone saw the figure knocking on the glass, some of them couldn't help crying. Zhao Tianlei also clearly saw what was happening inside. There really were some students hiding there, along with two teachers and a security guard.
Seeing that these people looked on the verge of tears, Zhao Tianlei hurriedly signaled for them not to make a sound, then pointed at the window. A student immediately stepped forward and opened it.
The two teachers and the security guard then approached the window as well. One of the teachers whispered to Zhao Tianlei, "Student, are you here to save us? It probably won't work with just one person. There are a lot of zombies in the corridor, and they're truly terrifying. If you really want to save us, go find more people first, then we can think of a way. Perhaps you can go out and see whether you can find the police and have them figure something out."
In any case, Zhao Tianlei was rather impressed that this teacher could remain so calm at such a critical moment. He especially felt a strange sense of goodwill toward the teacher's suggestions. Zhao Tianlei didn't even need to think to know that these people inside were scared to death, yet the first thing this teacher thought about wasn't how he himself could be rescued. Instead, he had first considered Zhao Tianlei's safety, then thought of a way for Zhao Tianlei to save them.
After hearing the teacher's words, Zhao Tianlei couldn't help revealing the truth. "Teacher, there are probably only a few living people left in the entire school. At the very least, I walked here from the library and didn't see a single living person. Everyone is already dead. Perhaps we're the only living people left in the school. If our school is like this, the city must be the same. The police have no way to come and rescue us."
Although Zhao Tianlei kept his voice low, the people inside still heard him clearly. Especially after hearing what he said, some of them immediately clutched their heads and began to cry.
The teacher also appeared utterly desperate, though he seemed unsure how to express it. Seeing everyone like this, Zhao Tianlei hurriedly comforted them. "Everyone, don't worry. Although the world has become an apocalypse, we still have hope of surviving. This morning, I hid in the library director's office and watched the rolling news broadcast on television."
"The government and military activated emergency measures the moment the apocalypse erupted. The military and government have now split into two groups. One is carrying out rescue operations and searching for survivors, while the other has begun building survivor bases. As long as we can stay alive and escape, then join up with those search-and-rescue personnel, we'll have a chance to survive."
Before you continue