Apocalypse Invasion: Survival on the Infinite Train
At that moment, Ming Chu hated her exceptional twenty-twenty vision.
There were streetlights along the city streets, and standing on the second floor, under the glow of the lights, she could clearly see the flesh and blood hanging from a zombie's sharp teeth, as well as the rotting skin of its cheeks.
She could even clearly see the zombie's throat swallowing.
She refused to think about what the zombie was swallowing.
Shaking, Ming Chu thought that this would be better off as rabies; at least while rabies was infectious, you could always find a rabies vaccine to suppress it, or with the vaccine around, it would be easier to develop a new rabies treatment.
But what about the zombie virus?
This sort of thing used to only exist in movies and television shows!
Calm down, she needed to calm down.
Hiding behind the curtains, Ming Chu saw the zombie raise its head and look around, and a chill ran down her spine.
Wait, her curtains were wide open, and she hadn't turned off the lights!
However, the zombie's eyes, filled entirely with whites, looked left and right, sniffed the air, lowered its head again, and began to gorge itself.
Though it took a while to describe, it actually only lasted two or three seconds.
Ming Chu certainly wasn't the only one who heard the screams and the sound of breaking glass; someone in the building opposite angrily flicked on a light, pulled open the window, poked their head out, and cursed, "So noisy! Why are you screaming in the middle of the night? Ahhhhh, what the hell is that thing?"
The zombie, hearing the sound again, grew excited, and Ming Chu watched as it howled, abandoned the woman still twitching on the ground, and lunged across toward the opposite building.
The good news was that the opposite building had no windows on the ground floor facing this side, and the zombie clearly hadn't unlocked the wall-climbing skill, so the people upstairs were temporarily out of danger.
However, zombies were tireless creatures that didn't know how to turn corners; it just kept scratching at the base of the wall, and the more frightened the people upstairs screamed, the more excited it became.
Ming Chu pressed a hand to her chest, her heart still pounding with lingering fear.
Suppressing her terror, she forced back her nausea and carefully observed the zombie.
The zombie probably lacked vision, because quite a few people had poked their heads out to look just now, but it only attacked the base of the wall directly beneath the person making the sound.
Therefore, it possessed hearing—yes, the only reason it looked up earlier was because of the sound of shattering glass.
It tore into human flesh, and combined with the information Ming Chu had acquired, this zombie was definitely infectious.
One only had to look at the woman on the ground who had been mauled; after gasping out her final, agonizing breath, she actually began to crawl back up, shakily joining the ranks of the zombies.
She didn't know how good a zombie's sense of smell was, but Ming Chu didn't dare get close enough to test it.
Hugging herself by the window, she soon spotted an armed vehicle driving past.
Yes, it was an armed vehicle, not even a police officer's cruiser.
Five or six armed police officers descended from it, equipped with riot shields and riot forks. Working in teams of two or three, they first knocked the zombie down to the ground with their shields, pinned it firmly with the forks, and finally bound it tight with iron chains.
The entire sequence of movements was smooth and practiced.
It was obvious that this wasn't the first case.
They scooped up the person and drove off immediately, not even leaving behind a single word.
Once the vehicle departed and the surroundings plunged back into silence, Ming Chu realized that her phone had been recording the entire time.
Pausing the recording, Ming Chu sat down on the edge of the bed with trembling hands.
Even though the doomsday countdown hadn't hit zero yet, she had witnessed a zombie firsthand, and at such close range.
This was like the torrential rain in the mythological legends of Noah's Ark, or the beasts fleeing before an earthquake; it was an omen.
The fact that information regarding zombies was still being tightly suppressed in this world proved that the upper echelons intended to quietly resolve the issue.
Yet the doomsday countdown proved that their actions were futile; this outbreak of the zombie virus would erupt all the same.
Ming Chu no longer had any inclination to sleep; she forced herself to endure her nausea, opened the video she had just recorded, and watched it carefully from beginning to end three times.
After three viewings, she grew somewhat numb to the horrifying appearance of the zombie, and concurrently, she managed to gather some useful information.
For instance, a zombie's speed was actually roughly comparable to a normal person's brisk walk. They possessed a certain sense of smell, though it wasn't particularly keen, and their hearing fell within the normal range. Their limbs were somewhat stiff, but their strength was formidable.
To summarize: low sensitivity, high strength.
Ming Chu pinched her own scrawny arms and legs, deeply regretting that she hadn't taken sports more seriously in the past.
If nothing else, had she learned long-distance running, wouldn't her safety margin in this world have increased by eighty percent?
The sky gradually grew light, and the sounds of pedestrians began to drift in from outside.
Hesitating for a moment, and looking at her last thirty-five yuan, Ming Chu tentatively unlocked the door and stepped outside.
Right next door was a flour shop. Ming Chu ordered a portion of dumplings for seven yuan, a bowl of shredded pork noodles for six yuan, and spent the remaining twenty-two yuan entirely on fried dough sticks at two yuan each, buying eleven of them in total.
She had everything packed to go.
She had tested it yesterday; her storage space neither retained heat nor preserved freshness—it was exactly the same as the outside world, except that it maintained a constant temperature of twenty degrees Celsius, so there was no point in buying much cooked food.
With all her purchases packed up, Ming Chu didn't linger outside and quickly returned to her guesthouse room.
She locked the door securely, carefully fastening the security chain as well, before she finally felt at ease.
The quality of the guesthouse door looked quite decent; it was a security door rather than a plain wooden one, meaning that even if there really were zombies, it would be difficult for them to break through.
After eating the shredded pork noodles and half the portion of dumplings, Ming Chu lay back down on the bed.
She set an alarm for four hours later, which corresponded to twelve-thirty in this world's time—half an hour before the doomsday outbreak.
Whether it was because she had seen a zombie last night or not, during this four-hour nap, Ming Chu dreamed repeatedly of zombies chasing her and trying to bite her backside, and when she woke up, her clothes were soaked with sweat.
Limp and weary, she carried her clothes to the bathroom and took a quick shower and hair wash, after which Ming Chu felt truly alive again.
Her suitcase as a returning college student contained spare clothes, so she changed into a clean outfit, instinctively scrubbed the clothes she had just taken off, and had just hung them up in the room when she noticed it was raining outside.
wisps of rain drifted against the glass window, leaving faint reddish watermarks behind.
Ming Chu shivered, pulled out her phone, and stared at the countdown.
"13, 12..."
The countdown hit zero.
The reddish rain ceased instantly, the sky cleared up in a split second, and brilliant sunlight spilled across the earth and sky.
Countless people who had been looking up at the rain transformed from human beings into zombies in the span of a single moment.
They lunged at the nearest people beside them.
"Ahhhhh!"