Chapter 7

At that moment, Lin Tu had no idea someone was racing toward her tiny shop. She sat in the small pickup parked not far from "Combatants," trying to steady her breathing once more.

She'd been so cheerful when she set out this morning—which made her current dejection all the more pitiful.

Ever since that ornamental bird worth a mere 0.5 points had stabbed her in the back, Lin Tu had been extra wary of any place that might harbor pets. Just now, peering through the gap in "Combatants'" door, she'd spotted a whole pile of dog bowls the size of washbasins inside!

Who in their right mind keeps twenty-plus dogs to guard a shop?!

From behind the tightly shut gate of "Combatants," a muffled whimpering drifted out. Whether it was her imagination or not, she caught a glimpse of a massive shadow flitting past the crack in the window.

Lin Tu didn't look back. She bolted out of the courtyard at what could generously be called a hundred-meter sprint pace.

Only after slamming the car door shut, the sheet metal sealing off that bone-chilling dread behind her, did her heartbeat finally settle enough for her to think about how to deal with those hounds.

Zombie dogs outclass ordinary humans in both speed and strength, and with dozens of them in there, a head-on fight was absolutely out of the question. After much deliberation, Lin Tu concluded that she could only outsmart them.

But she knew nothing about the building's layout, and she had no read on the zombie dogs' exact size or strength. Sitting here racking her brains wasn't going to produce a solution either.

That said, Lin Tu wasn't the type to sigh and give up just because she hadn't cracked it yet. She turned her thoughts back to the man's handgun she'd seen at the apartment building two days ago. If she could get her hands on a gun, she'd have the confidence to take on those dogs.

Besides, from a certain angle, a man was much easier to deal with than a pack of dogs.

The apartment building was two blocks to the north, and the route marked on the butler's map had no roadblocks, so Lin Tu simply drove over to check it out.

The frustration churning in her chest evaporated the moment she laid eyes on the apartment building.

"Huh?" Lin Tu pulled the car closer.

To her surprise, the horde of zombies that had been gathered around the building's entrance was gone. The front door had been smashed open, and in the pale morning light, shreds of torn flesh and clothing hung from the broken frame, swaying in the breeze.

Lin Tu immediately deployed her drone to investigate. On the third floor, the door to the mother-and-daughter's apartment stood wide open. Large splashes of blood stained both the floor and the walls—a scene where warmth and horror coexisted in equal measure.

With that much blood, someone must have died. Lin Tu was certain of that.

Unfortunately, she had no way of knowing who. From the first floor to the third, not a single living person or zombie remained inside the apartments, which disappointed Lin Tu, who had been hoping to find the middle-aged man.

"Ah!" Just then, a loud crash followed by a scream echoed from the rooftop.

She flew the drone higher and saw a sharply divided scene on the rooftop. On one side, the mother and daughter huddled in the corner farthest from the door. They had rigged up a makeshift bed from clothes drying on the line, clearly having been up there for quite some time.

On the other side was the object of their constant dread during all those deadly hours—the rooftop door. Although it was locked, a large number of zombies were still ramming against it day and night, trying to break through.

The sound Lin Tu had just heard came from the lock. It had finally given out under the strain, snapping halfway off.

"Sweetie, climb up." The wide-open rooftop carried sound well, and from the ground floor, Lin Tu could clearly hear the mother say firmly. The woman's English had a regional accent, but to Lin Tu—who had scored full marks on the English section of the college entrance exam and spent three years in a foreign company—it wasn't hard to understand.

"Mommy, I'm scared..."

"Don't be afraid. This is just a game for the brave. Mommy promises she'll protect you. We've reached the pivotal moment of victory now. Don't give up, okay?" The mother pushed her daughter toward the sloped roof of the water tower room.

The girl, maybe ten years old, sobbed as she scrambled and grabbed hold of the roof ridge. Behind them, the lock was on the verge of completely breaking. Several bloody, fleshless hands were already poking through the crack in the door, intermingled with guttural snarls.

"No wonder there were no zombies on the ground floor—they've all gathered on the rooftop." Lin Tu retracted the drone while recalling the number of zombies she'd seen downstairs two days ago. Based on the building's size and the volume of snarling, she estimated there were about thirty to fifty zombies behind that rooftop door—

"Maybe the middle-aged couple is among them." At that thought, Lin Tu slipped on her motorcycle helmet, grabbed her crowbar, and headed straight for the apartment building.

Lin Tu had run experiments before: zombies were most sensitive to sound, but once lured by noise and then presented with a fresh stimulus, there was a high probability they would abandon the sound source and chase after the new "prey." What she needed to do now was take advantage of the zombies' fixation on the mother and daughter on the rooftop, drawing them out in small numbers to dispatch them one by one.

It was undoubtedly a risky plan. One slip and she'd be surrounded and swarmed by zombies. But she seemed oblivious to the danger as she gripped her crowbar.

In the stillness, while she still had time to back out, the crowbar suddenly slammed hard against the iron handrail of the stairs.

"Clang-clang!" The sound seemed to reverberate straight through bone and marrow, enough to make one's soul shudder.

Lin Tu sensed zombies running down. She rolled her neck left and right, finally breaking into a smile of pent-up frustration being released—

"Come on, every zombie in this building better not run away. I refuse to believe... I can't find that gun!"

Any ordinary person would have turned tail at such a massive horde. But Lin Tu was different. Her obsessive determination to find a gun and score those points had reached the level of a fixation.

In her logic: someone on the third floor was dead, and since the mother and daughter were alive, the dead must be the middle-aged couple—or one of them. That meant the man's room on the third floor, or the zombie horde gathered on the rooftop, very likely held what she wanted.

The risk was high, but she'd take it anyway.

Watching the few zombies stagger down the stairs, Lin Tu casually twirled her crowbar with practiced ease, met them head-on, and brought it down precisely on the lead zombie's face.

"Squish-bang!" Flesh flew, fluids splattered.

Lin Tu was in such high spirits that she even found the stench less unbearable than usual. She cheerfully inspected the zombie's clothes, hairstyle, and outfit, confirmed it wasn't the middle-aged man, and then met the next one.

Cracking a zombie's skull with a crowbar was like flipping a pan while cooking—sounded tricky, but once you got the hang of it and put in the repetitions, it became second nature. Lin Tu quickly made it up to the third floor, with a dozen or so zombies piled up on the stairs behind her.

The apartments were small, four units per floor, all with their doors standing open. Lin Tu quickly identified the mother-and-daughter's home and, recalling that the man's place was next door, pinpointed the adjacent unit—the middle-aged couple's home.

"BANG!"

Just as she was hesitating whether to go in and take a look first, a tremendous crash sounded from above. A chaotic scramble of footsteps followed, and the excited snarls that had been circling the stairwell suddenly receded into the distance.

The rooftop door had broken through!

Startled, Lin Tu grabbed the railing and looked up. Sure enough, where the stairwell had been dim, natural daylight now poured down from above. The zombies that had been packed behind the door had already surged through.

Lin Tu, who had already stepped toward the man's apartment, withdrew her foot.

"Ah, what a pain." She shook her head in irritation, tightened her grip on the crowbar, and headed upstairs.

A few more terrified screams rang out.

Lin Tu stepped onto the rooftop, and the view opened up before her.

Roughly thirty-odd zombies were crammed against the far side of the roof. The sloped roof was high, but they piled on top of each other, with several even half-climbing onto its surface.

"Damn it, die!" The girl's mother sat on the sloped roof, desperately kicking at the zombies trying to climb up.

"Mommy! Mommy!" The girl cowered behind her mother, frantically tugging at her clothes, begging her to get out of danger. But it didn't help the situation one bit—a zombie had already latched firmly onto her mother's pants, even sinking its teeth into her shoe.

"Get back!" The woman shoved the girl away in panic, completely unaware that another zombie was nearly fully onto the sloped roof.

The zombie moved sluggishly, but it had gained a solid foothold on the incline. Its livid black hand was about to grab the woman's shoulder.

"Watch your back!" Lin Tu shouted just in time.

The woman didn't catch Lin Tu's words, but she turned around instinctively and nearly jumped out of her skin. Her fierce protective instinct kicked in, and she savagely kicked the zombie away. The girl nearly burst into tears on the spot, grabbing at the loose tiles under her and hurling them at the zombies.

Because of her shout, about half the zombies turned and charged at Lin Tu. This was the first time she'd faced such a large group head-on, but Lin Tu didn't panic.

She met the lead zombie with a kick, sending it crashing into several others behind it. Then she whipped her crowbar around and slammed it into a nearby zombie's head. The creature toppled over, its dull, lifeless eyes staring blankly.

"To your side!" The woman's terrified cry came out almost as a shriek.

Lin Tu sidestepped just in time, and sure enough, a zombie that looked like a child had crept up beside her without her noticing. She drove the crowbar down from above, then with a heel kick and a yank, the bar ripped free of its skull. After dispatching the one beside her, Lin Tu didn't linger. She turned and ran along the edge of the rooftop.

"Mommy, there's a big sister! Big sister's here to save us!" The girl's excited, joyful voice lasted only a few seconds before turning into worry. "They're chasing her! What do we do... Big sister, watch out!"

Lin Tu didn't display any particularly dazzling combat skills—after all, she was just an ordinary person who could throw a punch.

She kept a safe distance from the zombies while seizing opportunities to take out the stragglers. Unfortunately, that wasn't a foolproof strategy. The zombie count far exceeded what one person could handle, and more than once Lin Tu nearly got caught. It was nothing short of dancing on the blade of death.

The mother and daughter watched with their hearts in their throats, barely daring to make a sound, yet terrified that if they did nothing, Lin Tu would truly fall.

"Hey, miss! Here!" The woman suddenly remembered something. She frantically fumbled in her pocket and pulled out a pitch-black object, holding it high in the air.

While weaving through the zombie horde and scanning for the middle-aged man, Lin Tu glanced over... It was...

Not sure! Let me look again!

She hastily retreated two steps, kicked away a zombie charging at her, and looked up once more—

It was a familiar, standard-issue handgun.