Survivors

That hoarse, savage, low growl was clearly not a sound any normal human should have made.

No explanation was needed. Everyone immediately became highly alert.

After roughly confirming the direction the sound came from, no one dared poke their head out to look. If it really was some aggressive beast, that would easily draw a predator's attention.

...Using a small compact mirror that the woman among the five happened to have on her, they cautiously extended it past the window and repeatedly adjusted its downward angle. Finally, through the reversed reflection in the mirror, He Qiu was the first to see the source of the strange noise outside. Crouching halfway down, he couldn't help sucking in a sharp breath and even let go of the hand covering his mouth.

"What did you see?"

Noticing his reaction, no one dared let their guard down.

The youngest-looking man among them lowered his voice again and took the initiative to ask.

"...Hard to say. We're in serious trouble. See for yourselves. Look down the street and you'll spot it, but don't stick your heads out. And remember, keep your voices down. Don't—absolutely don't—make any loud noises. People will die!"

"And make sure you hold the mirror steady!"

He Qiu's voice was even lower than the other man's.

Seeing how he kept stressing the point, looking as though he wished he could use sign language, no one was stupid. They all wisely shut their mouths.

He Qiu voluntarily moved away from the spot nearest the window and solemnly handed the compact mirror to the person beside him. One after another, they peered outside through its reflection. As expected, each of them revealed the same look: pupils contracting, expressions too complicated for words.

"Hiss... This... this is Resident Evil, isn't it? No, that's not right. Then this place really should be..."

Staring fixedly at the image in the mirror, the young man's seemingly composed expression finally fell apart. He Qiu distinctly heard him mutter something under his breath, but couldn't make out the exact words.

Everyone looked shaken. The woman in the casual lace dress had gone especially pale, clearly realizing what terrible consequences her instinctive urge to scream upon waking might have caused under the current circumstances.

Fortunately, she understood the situation now. She continued covering her mouth and nose and did not make any unnecessary sounds.

That made He Qiu quietly breathe a sigh of relief. The fingers he had tensed in preparation loosened slightly.

He knew perfectly well that at a critical time like this, if there really was a "teammate" who couldn't control their own reactions, things would most likely head in an extremely troublesome—even miserable—direction.

Luckily, judging by things so far, this woman in her early thirties was at least not that clueless.

Without question, everyone had at least heard of or seen things like Resident Evil, The Walking Dead, and World War Z. They could quickly grasp the predicament they were in.

If the stench in the room had not forced them to hold their breath from the beginning, and if this room's location on the third floor—the top floor of the villa—had not helped conceal the scent of them as "living people," then their situation right now... would have been far more serious than merely hiding safely by the wall indoors.

After all, anyone who saw the dim figures below on the street, wandering aimlessly through the faint gray mist, would have recognized the problem.

...Or rather, those shambling "corpses" that were still moving.

Most were covered in blood, their eyelids rolled back like actual dead bodies, their pupils nowhere to be seen. Their skin had gradually turned gray and decayed, their clothes were ragged, and some had clearly lost major portions of their limbs—missing arms or legs, flesh peeled back around their wounds, quite literally exposed to the bone. A very few even had their "contents" spilling out from their chests and abdomens, their bodies bloated as if soaked for a long time, thick mucus slowly seeping from beneath their skin as mosquitoes and flies circled constantly around them...

Normally, no living person could possibly survive such injuries. Yet these "people," still capable of movement, seemed completely unaware of their own condition.

Their limbs were stiff and their movements slow as they aimlessly wandered, stopping and starting. From time to time, they bumped into several wrecked vehicles on the street, silent as coffins. They resembled a group of dementia patients, yet also evil ghosts roaming the human world!

Clearly, they were a group of dead people still "alive."

Or rather... zombies!

Silence filled the room.

And for now, with those "warm and welcoming" local residents down below, it was obvious that none of them could rashly leave this temporarily "relatively safe" multistory villa.

Holding their breath, they briefly inspected the room. Once they had confirmed that no "uninvited guest" would suddenly emerge from some corner or from beneath the stairs to give them a warm "hug,"

At a life-or-death moment like this, aside from the potential threat of airborne viruses or microorganisms, a little stink was no longer something they could afford to worry about.

Considering that the window glass was now practically useless at blocking wind and biological odors, the group carefully shifted positions at He Qiu's reminder and settled in a corner of the room with relatively poor ventilation.

After ensuring that their fields of view overlapped and that they could keep watch over the stairway, a brief exchange allowed them to quickly complete rudimentary introductions and gain a preliminary understanding of one another.

He Qiu, a photographer in his twenties;

Du Qifeng, a college student still sheltered in life's ivory tower, with an expression of clear-eyed stupidity;

Lu Yun, a middle-aged shop owner reeking of musk-scented cigarette smoke, who claimed to run an incense and candle shop and whose brows were now almost twisted together from the stench;

Wang Yawen, who worked for a media company and was also still pinching her nose tightly;

And Zheng Defa, a rideshare driver and the only person among them who still had his phone on him, though he had already confirmed while trying to make a call that there was currently no signal inside the house.

They came from different provinces across the country, had never known one another before, and could not have been more unrelated.

And most importantly—after confirming that all five of them seemed to fit the description of having encountered some kind of silver, GG-interface-like message under different circumstances before falling unconscious—they could tentatively conclude that they were all fellow "victims," and an unspoken temporary understanding formed among them.

It wasn't much, but it was barely enough.

Especially after they confirmed that none of them had any effective means of contacting the outside world, and considering the distinctly Western furnishings in the house, the English signs on the street, and other clues, it seemed highly likely that they had encountered something as absurd as "collective transmigration"...

The more dangerous the situation, the more important it was not to panic!

After a brief discussion, having guessed that rescue would most likely be unavailable, everyone's gazes almost simultaneously fell upon the filthy long blade beneath the wooden cabinet, as well as every corner of the room where items might be hidden.

The operation began.

According to their agreed temporary "division of labor," two people were assigned to keep watch by the window and at the stairway, respectively, monitoring the street outside and any movement downstairs.

One person went to find relatively clean cloth first, intending to deal with the long blade beside the cabinet, which appeared to be covered in dried blood and likely still carried the "zombie virus."

The other two, acting like characters from a classic game, began cautiously "rifling through boxes and cabinets" among the larger items in the third-floor room. They hoped to find useful supplies, especially the weapons and food they urgently needed, along with newspapers, electronic devices, and anything else that might serve as a source of information, so they could figure out exactly what was going on...