Plan of action

"Why are there books too?" He packed his share of the supplies into the bag Zhang Yi had given him, tossed it casually into a corner of the shack, then changed the subject.

"Someone was throwing books away on the way here, so I picked them up." Zhang Yi set the books on the cardboard. Finally free, he took out a bran cake, broke it in two, and gave Zhang Ruiyang half before he began eating.

Nan Shao picked them up for a look and couldn't help chuckling. They turned out to be several "martial arts manuals": Six Meridians Divine Sword, Secret Method for Cultivating Qinggong, Shaolin Qinna Method, Tantric Buddhism's Superior Cultivation Method, and copies of Five-Animal Frolics and the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon. One glance was enough to tell they belonged to some wuxia fan's collection. Only Shaolin Qinna Method, Five-Animal Frolics, and the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon had come from legitimate publishers. The other three were obviously shoddily made fakes, riddled with typos and printed on coarse paper, with the print on the reverse showing through.

Zhang Ruiyang leaned over too, curious, and began leafing through them with him. But he didn't even glance at the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon, which Nan Shao considered the most valuable. Instead, he kept flipping back and forth through the books filled with little figures.

"Left... right... hit... no... hand..." The little fellow had learned some characters from his grandmother before. Now, spotting one he knew made him as happy as seeing a good friend. Each time he pointed one out, he looked up at his father, then continued searching for more familiar characters after receiving an affirming nod.

Nan Shao realized that Zhang Yi had picked up these books to teach Zhang Ruiyang to read and keep him entertained. He stopped finding them funny, gathered Zhang Ruiyang into his arms, and began teaching him characters. He had once had little fondness for children, those little terrors, but after meeting Zhang Ruiyang, he couldn't help wishing he had a son like him. Unfortunately, that wish was destined to go unfulfilled in this lifetime. He wasn't attracted to women at all, and the person he loved and had cherished with all his heart saw him as a pervert and wished he were dead. Better to stay just as he was now, living quietly, simply to stay alive.

Zhang Yi leaned against the earthen wall behind the shack, feeling the faint coolness seeping from it. As he gnawed on his bran cake and watched the man and child learning characters with their heads together, a faint warmth rose unbidden in his long-numb heart. It felt as though he hadn't seen such a

heartwarming

scene in many years.

Drawing in a breath of air thick with the stench of decay, Nan Shao looked at the cracked earth on either side of the road. He knew that if the sun kept beating down like this, surviving would become even harder. The survivor base he had stayed at last time had lacked water. The water-type ability users simply couldn't supply drinking water for its population of over a hundred thousand, so ordinary people like them had been the first to be abandoned, forced to leave the base and find another way to survive. He just didn't know how Xiao Wei and the others...

Shaking his head, Nan Shao stopped himself from thinking any further. Someone lightly patted his shoulder. Zhang Yi had already walked ahead, carrying his length of rebar. Zhang Yi was thin, which made him look especially tall. When he walked fast, the slight limp in his right leg became noticeable, but his back always remained straight, as though nothing could bend it. Yet the gray mingled into his hair at the temples, the creases between his brows, and the resolve at the corners of his mouth all showed that this man, who was about his own age, could hardly have led a smooth life.

He quickened his pace to catch up. The two men walked side by side, soon disappearing among the ordinary people heading out to hunt.

This time, at the Vanguard Squad's call, the ordinary people riding in the same vehicle planned to attack Small Shop Street in the old district. The Vanguard Squad was the group made up entirely of young and middle-aged men that Zhang Yi and the others had encountered yesterday. It held considerable influence and prestige among Wangyang Town's ordinary people. The Vanguard Squad promised that once they took Small Shop Street, everyone could keep the Corpse Crystals from the zombies they killed themselves and take as many supplies as they could from the captured area. Such terms were extremely tempting to the others, who could only kill scattered zombies on the outskirts of the county seat. Besides, they would get to work with the Vanguard Squad. They might even catch its eye during the fighting and be accepted into its ranks, making life much easier afterward. Almost no one refused.

Zhang Yi agreed not because he wanted to join the Vanguard Squad, but because he knew the layout of Small Shop Street and understood that the operation had a good chance of succeeding. Yangyang hadn't eaten anything but biscuits and mixed-grain bran cakes in a long time. He feared the child wouldn't grow properly if this continued. He had to get something nutritious.

Once they left the safe area around the parking lot, the people from their vehicle scattered to avoid attracting a large horde of zombies with the concentrated scent of so many people. They would take their own routes to the rendezvous point and launch the attack at noon sharp.

When most of the people around them had dispersed, Zhang Yi didn't take Nan Shao straight to the rendezvous point. Instead, he went behind a nearby foundry, where there was a sand storehouse. Few people had come here even before the apocalypse, so there were hardly any zombies.

Zhang Yi found a spot that was easy to defend and allowed them to keep watch on their surroundings at any time. Then he spread fine sand on the ground to make a sand table and drew a rough map of the old district for Nan Shao.

Chapter 9: Plan of action

The old district of Ziyun County had narrow lanes, aging houses, and relatively little foot traffic. Small Shop Street was its commercial street, no more than ten meters wide and five hundred meters long. There were no large supermarkets and only one small one. The rest were all sorts of old-fashioned shops, restaurants, photography studios, tailoring shops, book and disc rental shops, grain shops, general stores, and so on.

"There's a secondary school here, and this is the county hospital's inpatient ward." Zhang Yi tapped the corresponding places on the map with a slender twig as he spoke. "There should be quite a few zombies. Even if we get separated, don't run that way."

"There's a small lane here. Almost everyone on both sides has moved away, so there usually aren't many people. The houses are single-story, with back doors and courtyard walls low enough to climb over easily. Once we're done, we'll leave this way. We won't get blocked in."

"This is an old general store. Rice, flour, oil, canned pickles-it has everything. This one's a fruit shop. In this heat, the fruit should have spoiled long ago. No need to go there. The small supermarket mostly has snacks and drinks. There are a few small restaurants that should have some food inside. An incense and candle shop, a tailoring shop..." The factory dormitories were also in the old district. Over the past few years, the county government had been pushing hard to develop the new district. The old district was on a slope, its terrain cramped and narrow, and had been almost completely abandoned, so little had changed. Most people had moved out. Even the hospital's outpatient and internal medicine departments had moved to the new district, where construction was still being hurried along in preparation for relocating the entire hospital. The county secondary school was doing the same. Those that remained were all old shops that had been open for years. That was why Zhang Yi was still so familiar with the place even after five years.