Chapter 5

Early the next morning, Lin Tu rode her motorcycle to the edge of town, carrying a packed lunch.

It was a typical rural layout—the outlying houses were scattered far apart, with roads connecting each dwelling however they happened to be placed. Many of the roads even looked self-built.

Lin Tu had already mapped out a relatively secluded route to Combatants the night before. She took out her drone and carefully checked the conditions along the route, confirming there were no large gatherings of zombies, before hiding her motorcycle outside town.

She ventured cautiously onto the main road, making a bit of noise to draw nearby zombies out and dispatch them. Step by step, she generated just enough sound to clear the zombies along the main road, avoiding the risk of a sudden ambush.

Along the way, Lin Tu planned to enter the houses on either side, clear out any zombies lingering inside, and collect supplies while she was at it.

Her motto was simple: strip everything clean, leave nothing behind.

The first house she chose was on the outermost edge of town—a wooden self-built villa with a large fenced-in backyard behind it. Looking at its exterior, she had a feeling she couldn't quite explain: bigger house, better stuff inside.

All the windows had been boarded up with wooden planks. Clearly, the owner had realized the importance of hiding from zombies—but hadn't hidden thoroughly enough. The front door and its lock were undamaged, yet the door itself stood open from the inside. That was the beginning of this bloody tragedy.

Lin Tu carefully pushed the door open, avoiding the dried, frozen bloodstains on it, and stepped into someone else's home for the first time in this way.

The first thing she saw was a trail of blood splattering from the shoe rack in the entryway all the way up to the ceiling. The blood was nearly dry, though it still felt slightly sticky. When she inevitably stepped on it, she felt a strange texture—crisp on the outside, soft and chewy inside.

Lin Tu peered into the house. The cabinet dividing the living and dining areas had long since toppled over, and the floor was covered in broken glass and bloodstains. The sofa, refrigerator, and television were scattered about as if a fierce battle had taken place here. The birdcage by the window was broken open, and the walls bore shocking bloodstains, proof that someone had fought for their life in this room.

Lin Tu tapped the shoe rack lightly with her crowbar. The room was silent, so quiet you could hear a pin drop—no zombies stirred.

"Maybe they all left?" Lin Tu checked each room briefly and confirmed there were no zombies.

The only oddity was a nursery. The crib was piled high with rotten flesh, stacked like a lavish pyramid of meat dishes. Several large chunks of rotting meat had fallen to the floor under gravity, as if the "plate" couldn't hold it all.

The entire room reeked of a thick stench. Even Lin Tu, who had grown used to zombies over the past few days, nearly gagged again.

She was here to retire, not to be in a survival extreme challenge... Lin Tu calmly closed the door. She really didn't want to dig into where all this rotten flesh came from, but she knew it wasn't normal—

This flesh clearly came from zombies. So who would be so bored and so cruel as to tear zombie flesh into pieces and pile it up in a crib?

With a hint of suspicion and caution, Lin Tu began collecting supplies.

Ordinary families tend to stock up near the fridge and cabinets. This family's fridge didn't hold much food, and much of it was bought from the farmers' market without sealed packaging. To avoid risk, Lin Tu didn't take any of it. But in the cabinet next to the fridge, there were several unopened cans of premium formula milk—with English labels standing out oddly next to other Russian-labeled items, clearly local specialties.

—This was probably a young couple who'd just had a baby, Lin Tu thought. They were about to start a new life when the apocalypse hit. What rotten luck.

But that didn't stop her from gleefully emptying the rolling kitchen cart nearby and loading all the formula into her own cart. Then she pushed her slightly heavier load toward the cabinet.

The cabinet held about twenty cans of convenient food. Judging by the pictures on the cans, they were venison stew, pickled cucumbers, pea soup, and a few cans of king crab meat. Beside the cans were several boxes of instant coffee and a few unopened bottles of seasoning—chili sauce, ketchup, and condensed milk. Lin Tu neatly arranged them all into her cart.

This family, probably because their child was young, had very few snacks. But some long-shelf-life emergency foods, like cheesecake, still had a full half-box left.

Lin Tu felt an unprecedented joy. She quickly forgot what had happened earlier, fully immersed in the delight of stocking up, sweeping everything usable and edible from the living and dining areas into her cart, hoarding supplies for a beautiful retirement life.

Just as she was enjoying her free shopping spree, a hoarse "wah" suddenly echoed through the silent room.

In this desolate place, who else could be alive?! Lin Tu's hairs stood on end, goosebumps breaking out all over. Instinctively, she gripped her crowbar tightly, her heart rate spiking.

But when she looked in the direction of the sound, she saw no zombie. The cry just now seemed like a hallucination, vanishing eerily into thin air.

The air hung still for a full five seconds. Just as Lin Tu was puzzled, she suddenly felt a gust of cold air brush against the back of her head.

The reflexes she'd developed over these past days kicked in. She immediately lunged forward. The next second, something shot over her head like a cannonball, crashing into the floor with a stench of rotting flesh. Lin Tu's heart pounded as she looked up—

It was a bird!

Lin Tu immediately remembered the broken birdcage in the house. Looking closer, the bird scrambling back up on the floor was indeed an ornamental bird. But its beautiful feathers had mostly fallen off due to rotting skin. With little flesh to begin with, all that remained was a layer of black, decayed skin clinging to stark white bones.

Thank goodness it was just an ornamental bird. The thin layer of ice formed by dried blood on it also restricted its movement—otherwise, Lin Tu might already have a gash somewhere on her body.

"Are you insane?! Ambush me?!" Abandoning all pretense of decency, Lin Tu cursed. "Can't you see someone's busy? Did you grow those eyes for nothing?!"

Without waiting for the zombie bird to get up, she grabbed a can from the cart and hurled it at the bird with force that was hard not to interpret as carrying personal grudges.

Unfortunately, as an amateur pitcher, Lin Tu's aim wasn't great. The can hit the ground and skidded past the bird, flying off into the distance.

Realizing her aim was off, she steadied herself against the cabinet and stood up. She gave up on the thin crowbar and grabbed a frying pan from the shelf.

It was at that moment the zombie bird lunged at her again.

Lin Tu didn't dodge. She raised the frying pan and, the moment the bird got close, swung it upward toward the ceiling like she was playing tennis. In a way, a racket hitting a ball has a better chance of success than a bat hitting one.

The zombie bird slammed into the frying pan with a loud "thud," the force of Lin Tu's swing sending it flying toward the stairway, its entire wing bent at a ninety-degree angle.

It let out a hoarse screech. Now unable to fly, it had basically lost its threat to Lin Tu.

Lin Tu walked over to finish it off, but she noticed the bird struggling to its feet. Instead of showing any aggression, it crawled desperately up the stairs.

The zombie bird had actually lost interest in her... Now Lin Tu was the one who got interested.

That interest lasted about five minutes, until she watched the zombie bird climb two flights of stairs, nearly exhausting her patience. She scooped the bird up with the frying pan and tossed it onto the top step.

"And now?" she muttered to herself.

Then she watched, wide-eyed, as the zombie bird pecked at a piece of rotting flesh on the floor—source unknown—carried it into the nursery, tried to place it in the crib, failed, then laid it shakily on the ground nearby. It spread its wings toward the window, as if trying to fly out of the room. But clearly, it failed.

It slumped in place, gradually showing aggression toward Lin Tu again.

Before it could act, Lin Tu gave it its second death with one swing of the frying pan.

"So it was you... but why?" Lin Tu stared thoughtfully at the crib full of rotting flesh, suddenly realizing something. She used the frying pan to push aside the maggot-ridden flesh on top, peeling it away like an onion. Layer by layer, the contents of the crib gradually revealed their true form.

Sure enough... Lin Tu frowned. There was something in here.

A frail infant—more precisely, a frail zombie infant. Otherwise, it couldn't possibly have survived till now. Its dry, blackened hands still clutched two chunks of rotting flesh, which it kept stuffing into its mouth to chew. Seeing the plump maggots squirming out of its mouth, Lin Tu nearly vomited again.

She quickly disposed of the zombie, then went to the window to check the passage the zombie bird used to come and go—she didn't want another bird popping out mid-work.

The gap to the outside was very narrow. Lin Tu leaned in to inspect its source and found it was caused by a loose wooden board sealing the window. She was about to pull her head back when her gaze inadvertently caught what lay beyond the gap—the backyard.

From the outside, the house did have a backyard. But the courtyard gate was locked from the inside, and the door leading to the yard from the house was locked from the outside too, so Lin Tu had never known what was in there.

Now she knew—it was—

A white pickup truck?!

Lin Tu's eyes lit up. She quickly wedged the board back into place, dashed down to the first floor as fast as she could, and pried open the door to the backyard with two swift crowbar strikes.

The pickup sat right in the center of the yard. There was a zombie in it, looking like the male owner of the house. His keys were already in the ignition, but he'd been bitten and turned into a zombie right in the driver's seat.

Talk about rotten luck, this family really had it all, Lin Tu thought.

While musing, she opened the door, dispatched the zombie, and naturally claimed the truck and its keys as her own.

After a quick clean-up of the vehicle, she continued collecting supplies. With a truck, gathering supplies became much simpler. Lin Tu no longer had to worry too much about whether items were portable by volume or weight—she just loaded everything into the truck.

She stocked up on food and clothes. Fighting zombies inevitably got bloodstains on her clothes, and in this frozen wasteland, washing was a hassle. She collected all the wearable clothes she could find for easy rotation. She also grabbed tissues, medicine, toothpaste, and other daily necessities.

Filling a little over half the trunk, Lin Tu drove the pickup slowly out of the backyard. Looking at the dozen or so remaining houses along the main road, she felt an unprecedented satisfaction.

This isn't the apocalypse at all—this is paradise!