Survivors

That low, hoarse growl laced with savagery was clearly not a sound a normal human should have made.

No explanation was needed. Everyone immediately became exceptionally alert.

After roughly confirming the direction the sound had come from, no one dared rashly stick their head out to look. If it really was some aggressive beast, that would make it far too easy to draw a predator's attention.

...Using a small compact mirror that one of the five—a woman—happened to have on her, they cautiously extended it beyond the window and repeatedly adjusted its downward angle. Through the inverted reflection, He Qiu, crouching halfway down, was the first to see what had made the strange noise outside. He could not help but suck in a sharp breath, even dropping the hand that had been covering his mouth.

"What did you see?"

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

Among them, the young man who looked the youngest lowered his voice again and took the initiative to ask.

"...Hard to say. We're in big trouble. Take a look yourselves—look down the street and you'll see it. But don't stick your heads out, and remember, keep your voices down. Really, really don't make any loud noise, or 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 foolish enough to ignore him. Everyone sensibly shut up.

He Qiu voluntarily gave up the spot closest to the window and solemnly handed the compact mirror to the person beside him. One after another, they peered outside through the reflected image. As expected, each of them revealed the same expression: pupils constricted, faces filled with indescribable complexity.

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

Staring fixedly at the scene in the mirror, the young man's seemingly calm expression finally broke. He Qiu distinctly heard him mutter something under his breath, but could not make out the words.

Everyone was now pale with lingering fear. The woman in the casual ruffled dress had gone especially white, clearly realizing the terrible consequences her instinctive urge to scream upon waking might have caused in their current situation.

Fortunately, she understood the situation now. She still covered her nose and mouth and did not make any unnecessary sound.

That made He Qiu quietly let out a breath of relief. The fingers he had tensed in readiness relaxed slightly.

He knew very well that at a critical moment like this, if there were even one "teammate" who could not control their own reactions, things would most likely head in an extremely troublesome, perhaps even tragic direction.

Fortunately, from the looks of it, this woman in her early thirties was at least not that hopelessly clueless.

Without question, everyone had at least some familiarity with things like Resident Evil, The Walking Dead, and World War Z. They could quickly grasp their current predicament.

If the stench in the room had not forced them to hold their breath from the start, and if the third-floor room at the very top of the villa had not happened to help conceal the scent of their "living" bodies, then their situation right now... would have been far more dire than merely hiding relatively safely against the wall indoors.

After all, anyone who saw the dim figures wandering aimlessly and slowly through the faint gray fog along the street below would realize the problem.

...Or rather, those shambling yet still moving "corpses."

Most were covered in blood and grime, their eyelids rolled back like real corpses, no pupils visible at all. Their skin had turned gray and ashen, their clothes were in tatters, and some were severely mutilated, missing arms or legs, their wounds split open to expose flesh and bone in the most literal sense. A rare few even had their "contents" spilling from their chests and abdomens, their bloated bodies looking as though they had been soaked for a long time, thick pools of mucus slowly seeping from beneath their skin as mosquitoes and flies endlessly circled them...

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

Their limbs were stiff, their movements slow. They wandered without purpose, stopping and starting, occasionally bumping into several wrecked vehicles that lay as silent as coffins along the street. They were like a group of dementia patients, yet also like evil ghosts roaming the human world!

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

Or rather... zombies!

Silence filled the room.

And with those "warm and hospitable" local residents downstairs, it was obvious that none of them could rashly leave this temporarily "relatively safe" little multistory villa.

Holding their breath, they briefly checked the room. Once they confirmed that no "uninvited guest" would suddenly emerge from some corner or from below the stairs to give them an enthusiastic "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 care about.

Since the window glass was now practically useless at blocking wind and biological scents, at He Qiu's reminder, they carefully shifted positions and stayed in a corner of the room with relatively poor ventilation.

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

He Qiu, a photographer in his twenties;

Du Qifeng, a college student still sheltered in life's ivory tower, with a look of clear-eyed stupidity on his face;

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

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

And Zheng Defa, a ride-hailing driver and the only one among them who still had a phone on him, though his attempt to make a call had confirmed that there was currently no signal indoors.

They came from different provinces across the country, had never known one another before, and could hardly have been more unrelated.

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

Not much, but barely enough.

Especially after briefly confirming that none of them had any effective means of contacting the outside world, and considering the room's furnishings, the obvious Western style of the street, the English signs, and other clues, it was highly likely that they had undergone something as absurd-sounding as "collective transmigration"...

The more dangerous the situation, the more they had to avoid panicking!

After a short discussion, having concluded that rescue would most likely be impossible for the time being, everyone's gaze almost simultaneously turned toward the filthy long blade beneath the wooden cabinet, as well as every corner in the room where items might be hidden.

The operation began.

According to their hastily agreed-upon division of labor, two people were assigned to crouch by the window and the stairway respectively, responsible for watching for danger and movement on the street outside and downstairs.

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

The other two acted like characters in a classic game, carefully beginning to "rummage through" the large items in the third-floor room, trying to find useful supplies—especially the weapons and food they desperately needed, as well as newspapers, electronic devices, and anything else that might provide information and help them understand the situation...