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The driver did not understand why Su Cheng was so frantic and was still bending down to pick up his phone.

Su Cheng could not help urging him, "Hurry, driver!"

"All right, all right, don't panic. I'll get going now."

Resigned, the driver started the car. "There are plenty of stores around here. There's one just ahead... You're only going to a store. What's the rush?"

Su Cheng had no time to explain. When the car stopped outside the store, she immediately jumped out, remembering to tell him, "Wait here for me! I'll be right back!"

"Fine. Be quick."

Su Cheng dashed into the store. It was fairly crowded, with customers leisurely browsing the shelves.

Su Cheng pulled off some plastic bags and headed straight for the ready-to-eat food section, filling one bag with bread and another with bottled water.

She hid them behind her back and ran out of the store.

"Hey?!"

"Stop that thief!!"

An angry shout came from the checkout behind her.

A first-time thief, Su Cheng had already scrambled into the car. The driver had no idea what was happening, but surprise appeared in his eyes when he saw the store clerk chasing after her. "You stole those?"

Su Cheng had no time to explain. "Go!"

The driver shook his head repeatedly and was about to lecture her when Su Cheng revealed the fish knife she had taken along the way. Her gaze hardened. "Go!"

Su Cheng had swiped the fish knife from the fresh food section while the clerk was not looking.

The driver shuddered. His mouth, which had just opened, immediately snapped shut. Afraid that angering Su Cheng might lead to something bad, he sent the car shooting away like an arrow the next second.

"Head for the outskirts."

"...Okay."

Su Cheng looked back through the rear window, her gaze landing on a gathered crowd. An old woman lay on the ground, with several people standing nearby, none daring to help her up.

The onlookers talked among themselves. "What's wrong with that old lady? Is she having an epileptic seizure? Someone call the police..."

The old woman's body kept twitching and shaking. To everyone's astonishment, she suddenly sprang to her feet, threw herself at the nearest man, and savagely tore off a mouthful of flesh!

"Aaaah!"

The man clutched his neck in agony, staggered back a few steps, and fell to his knees.

After biting the man, the old woman lunged viciously at another woman...

"Aaaah-"

"She's biting people! Help!!! Don't bite me!"

"Quick, call the police!!"

The onlookers scattered with screams, though some kept their phones raised and watched for the views.

Su Cheng sucked in a breath. It had already begun...

She knew clearly that once the zombie outbreak began, traffic in the city would grind to a halt. If she could not leave the urban area before it spread, she would be trapped inside the city.

With its dense population, the city was dozens of times more dangerous than the outskirts.

"Driver, hurry and call your family! Tell them to hide or head for the outskirts!"

Still wary after Su Cheng had threatened him with a knife, the driver did not process her words immediately. "Huh?"

"Hurry! Didn't you see that just now? That old woman was biting people. She's become a zombie! The man she bit will turn into a zombie soon too!"

The driver saw that Su Cheng looked completely serious, with a trace of anxiety and tension. She did not seem to be joking at all.

He swallowed and pressed harder on the accelerator, but said, "Th-that can't be... Those are just movies..."

Su Cheng shook her head. "Just call them. Whether it's true or not, you have nothing to lose."

"And don't bother thinking about calling the police. They're busy dealing with infected people now. They have no time for anything else..."

The driver had also seen the old woman convulsing and biting people in his rearview mirror. But people biting others had kept appearing in the news over the past two days, and he had assumed they had simply contracted rabies.

Yet Su Cheng's certainty made him wonder whether she knew something the public did not.

Stepping on the gas and honking the horn, he hurriedly called his wife. "Hello, don't say anything yet. Hurry and get Xiao Jian to drive you both to the countryside. I'm on my way too..."

After the driver hung up, silence filled the car. Perhaps affected by Su Cheng's anxiety, he broke out in a fine sweat across his forehead.

"Driver, go as fast as you can!"

The driver felt like crying. "I'm already going as fast as I can. There are other cars on the road..."

As a taxi driver, he dealt with the city's roads every day. He was practically a living map of the city.

But after driving for over half an hour, they still ran into traffic. The driver wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"There aren't usually many cars on this road at this time..."

The virus had yet to spread widely through Paulownia Blossom City, and the vehicles on the road still followed traffic rules, turning and advancing according to the lights.

Beep, beep-

The instant the light turned green, the driver could not help honking to urge the cars ahead to move.

Su Cheng gripped the two plastic bags tightly. "How far are we from the outskirts?"

Once she found somewhere to hide, she planned to survive the five days on the bread and water in the plastic bags.

"We're already out of the city center. Once we get on the expressway, it'll still take another hour..."

An hour. That was too long!

After a moment's thought, Su Cheng made her decision. "Driver, let's stay off the expressway. Take the back roads!"

The driver hesitated for a few seconds, then turned the wheel. "All right."

An hour on the expressway was too long. If there were infected people along the way, getting stuck there with no way forward or back would be a serious problem.

The back roads would take longer to reach the outskirts, but they could avoid traffic jams to some extent, and there would be fewer people.

Su Cheng did not know whether every decision she made was right, but she could only do her best.

But the instant Su Cheng came back to herself and glanced sideways, every hair on her body stood on end. She cried out, "Wait!!"

Her warning came too late. An out-of-control car slammed at high speed into the taxi as it was making a U-turn!

Crash-

Beeeeep-

The taxi flipped onto its side from the impact and slid some distance before hitting the car ahead.

Su Cheng's head slammed into the driver's seat in front of her. As the car rolled, her ears rang and her head spun. Liquid trickled down her forehead...

She thought bitterly:

Why... another car crash...

She hated car crashes more than anything in her life, yet kept falling victim to them.

"How the hell were you driving?!"

"There are still people inside! Call the police and get an ambulance!!"

"Huh? There's someone in this car too... Aah! Why are you biting me-"

The voices around her gradually blurred. Su Cheng struggled to keep her eyes open, but her consciousness still sank into darkness.

Only after an unknown amount of time did Su Cheng slowly open her eyes.

It hurt so much...

Her body hurt, and so did her head.

"Munch, munch, munch..."

What was that sound?

Su Cheng's eyes gradually focused. When she saw the scene before her clearly, her scalp prickled, and she instinctively held her breath.

A small, thin "person" lay sprawled over the driver, taking huge bites out of his chest. A heavy smell of blood filled the car.

She had not noticed Su Cheng in the back seat and was wholly absorbed in "eating."

Trapped inside the overturned car, Su Cheng was deathly pale and trembling all over.

As an ordinary person who had lived in peaceful

times

for twenty-five years, her only misfortune had been losing her parents. She did not even kill chickens or ducks and rarely had the chance to confront bloodshed.

This was the first time she had seen a "person eating another person."

The thick smell of blood rushed into her nose. At such an extreme concentration, it stank, making her want to vomit.

But she could not.

Su Cheng carefully unfastened her seat belt. The faint click did not attract the female zombie's attention, but it nearly snapped Su Cheng's taut nerves.

Her heart pounded wildly. Terrified that the sound would alert the zombie, Su Cheng could only tell herself over and over to stay calm, stay calm...

She bent down and moved slowly, reaching for the fish knife only half a meter away.

Rustle.

!

She had touched the plastic bag holding the food.

The chewing stopped abruptly.

Su Cheng whipped her head around and met a pair of blood-red eyes. The lower half of the female zombie's face was covered in scarlet blood, and a piece of an internal organ still hung from her mouth.

Blood dripped steadily from the organ.

This was not a movie. This was real, a visual shock unfolding right before Su Cheng's eyes. Her pupils contracted slightly, and she felt as though her heart would leap out of her chest.

"Roaaar-"

The female zombie moved fast, immediately abandoning the driver's corpse and lunging at Su Cheng.

In a panic, Su Cheng threw herself toward the fish knife. The moment she grabbed it, she swung it behind her-

As it turned out, people really could unleash tremendous potential when terrified.

Su Cheng's blade struck the zombie's head hard and with perfect accuracy. The fish knife lodged in her skull, unable to sink even half an inch farther, and the female zombie froze for a second.

Seizing the opportunity, Su Cheng kicked the female zombie away. Ignoring her hand, which had gone numb from the recoil of the knife, she hurriedly crawled out through the shattered window, remembering to grab the plastic bag of water.

She did not know where the bag of bread had rolled. Several bottles of water had also fallen loose inside the car, but Su Cheng had no time to gather them or search.

She hurried out of the car. The entire road was already in chaos.

Cars had crashed into one another in a chain, black smoke rose from their hoods, and car alarms blared...

A zombie clung to a car's windshield, smashed the glass with its head, and leaped inside to devour the helpless, screaming people within. People fled in panic, chased by zombies baring their teeth and flailing their claws...

Cries and roars overlapped, striking terror into anyone who heard them.

"Urgh..."

Perhaps because she had hit her head earlier, Su Cheng's ears kept ringing, and she felt dizzy.

Su Cheng staggered a few steps, clutching her head. Once she felt slightly better, she dared not delay for even a moment and ran with the plastic bag in hand.

The female zombie in the car did not follow her out. Su Cheng did not know whether she had been injured too badly to crawl out or had already abandoned her "new prey"...

Unfortunately, Su Cheng had not run far before a newly mutated zombie targeted her. He chased after her, his beastlike roars sounding to Su Cheng like a summons to her death!