Chapter 5: Empty City.

“Huh…huh…”

Endless nights, endless running, a hunger deep within the body that entangles all thoughts like a vine, and the urge to bite.

Shu Lan's mind kept telling her: I'm hungry, very hungry, find something... find something...

As if she smelled a strange aroma of meat, she was involuntarily attracted, her body driven by desire, and she ran towards the aroma.

It was a building that exuded an overpowering aroma that was difficult to resist. She followed the figures around her and rushed forward, using all her strength to smash the doors and windows and crawl in through all the entrances that could get close to the aroma.

The one that smells of meat is a living person...

Shu Lan's rationality only lasted for a moment. Like a person who had been hungry for dozens of days and suddenly saw a sweet cake in front of him, he was completely unable to suppress his body's instinctive impulse and rushed towards the food hiding in the corner, roaring.

no!

Shu Lan opened her eyes suddenly. The strong desire to eat and the resistance to hurting her own kind were fighting in her mind. Her heart felt like it had been hit hard and was a dull pain.

She gasped for breath, closed her eyes and silently digested the discomfort of suddenly waking up from a nightmare.

Was it because the trauma of yesterday's narrow escape from the zombies was too deep that I dreamed of turning into a zombie myself...

Shu Lan opened her eyes tiredly. Her stomach was empty and she continued to feel hungry. Her mouth was also dry. However, unlike the irrational impulse in her dream, the hunger and thirst now were normal needs and she could endure them.

She sat up and what caught her eye was the empty syringe lying on the ground.

Oh yeah, she used the damn thing on impulse last night and it hurt so much she thought she was going to die.

Fortunately, I am still alive and living as a healthy and normal person.

Shu Lan touched her lower abdomen. It didn't hurt or feel hot. She didn't feel anything.

Did the bet pay off? I don’t know.

She kicked the empty syringe away and stood up from the sofa.

Let’s talk about it later. I’m almost starving. Let me find something to eat first.

Shu Lan lay on the door and listened carefully to the noise outside. She grabbed a fish knife that she kept in the office, turned the door lock, and opened the door little by little.

It was quiet outside, but the stench that hit me in the face was so strong that I could hardly open my eyes.

To be honest, Shu Lan couldn't stand staying in this place any longer. It was too smelly. Fortunately, there were no flies around, otherwise Shu Lan wouldn't want to come in.

She held a knife in one hand, pinched her nose with the other, bent her waist, and walked out of the seafood store cautiously and vigilantly like a little mouse peeking out.

There was no one on the street, but there were black spots of coagulated blood and fallen human tissue everywhere on the ground.

She pricked up her ears and listened for a while, making sure there was no sound nearby. She quickly ran across two streets. The ground was littered with corpses of people with broken arms and legs, or with heads pierced through. It was impossible to tell which were humans and which were zombies.

It seems that after she fainted from the pain last night, a wave of zombies passed through Ci'an and massacred the survivors in the city.

Strangely, Shu Lan didn't hear any movement at all.

Maybe it was because she ran too far last night, but Shu Lan's legs were so weak from hunger that she almost knelt down in front of the familiar grocery store.

She looked around, wary of any remaining zombies that might suddenly appear, while patting the tightly closed shutter door of the hawker shop and whispering hoarsely, "Lao Dai, Lao Dai, it's me, Xiao Chu!"

Lao Dai is the female owner of a small shop who often provides food to Shu Lan. Her husband and children were the first group of zombies that Ci'an had to clear out, and she is the only survivor in her family.

No matter how hard she knocked, there was no response from inside the shop. Shu Lan had a bad feeling and went around to the back of the house from the alley next to it.

Sure enough, the windows on the first floor were broken and the security nets had been violently removed. From the open window, one could see a bitten and unrecognizable female corpse lying on the ground with a fruit knife stuck in her chest.

It was Old Dai who told Shu Lan that the Jiangzhou base was recruiting female workers. She asked Shu Lan to tie her hair into a low ponytail, saying that it would make her look younger.

Shu Lan also promised Lao Dai that if she had the chance, she would help her steal some vegetables from the experimental base, or find a person with special abilities to be her next husband.

Shu Lan closed her mouth, and the curve of her lips slowly drooped, forming a downward half bracket.

After running back from the base, she was too scared to stay outside for a second and hid as soon as she returned to the city.

If I had known earlier, I should have come to find Lao Dai first and taken her to hide in the seafood store. Maybe I wouldn't have...

The dead cannot be resurrected. Shu Lan was sad for a while, then she swept away the broken glass on the windowsill and struggled for a while with her thin arms and legs before she finally climbed in.

She pulled off the bed sheet, covered Lao Dai's body with it, and pulled the knife out of the woman's chest.

——"If I meet zombies one day, I will definitely kill myself before the virus takes effect. People eat each other, it's so disgusting."

These are what Lao Dai said exactly. He must have stabbed himself with the knife.

When Shu Lan drew her sword, she suddenly discovered something that made her feel something was wrong.

Old Dai likes to wear all kinds of floral dresses, such as deep red, crimson purple, and sky blue, which are beautiful and generous.

Without electricity, it was very troublesome to boil hot water, so no one would take a shower or change clothes unless it was necessary. Even Lao Dai’s favorite beautiful dress was changed every three days.

Shu Lan remembered that when she went to the base yesterday, Lao Dai was wearing a sky blue skirt, and it was her first day wearing it. According to her habit, she should also be wearing a blue skirt when she died.

But what Old Dai is wearing now is an orange-yellow skirt.

Thinking of the hellish scene outside, Shu Lan frowned, opened the door and walked into the store. There were few things left on the shelves. Behind the counter hung a paper calendar with an "X" drawn on the number "23".

On October 23rd, the day she went to the base for an interview, Lao Dai's calendar clearly only had October 20th marked on it.

This X might have been drawn by Old Dai yesterday or even earlier. After Shu Lan came back and injected the liquid, she slept in the store for at least three days, and slept until Ci'an was massacred by zombies.

Shu Lan was still in shock, and her legs went completely limp at this moment.

She asked why she felt inexplicably thirsty and hungry after waking up, and how it was possible that zombies could have wiped out a city with only tens of thousands of people left overnight.

It was incredible that she could avoid the zombies in her sleep and wake up before starving to death.

There was mineral water stored under the counter. Shu Lan took out a bottle and drank half of it. After drinking enough water, she felt much calmer.

She searched the grocery store and found a bag of oatmeal in the cupboard. She tore open the bag and poured it into her mouth, then swallowed it with water, allowing it to soak directly in her stomach.

Old Dai didn't have much food left, so Shu Lan gave up sharing her food and went to that ghost base to try her luck.

She searched the entire room and found a second bag of oatmeal, fourteen packets of instant noodles, seven bags of dried noodles, and two bags of dried vermicelli...

In fact, there are some canned meats, sausages, and edible supplies such as animal oil in the store, but they may contain zombie viruses, so Shu Lan dare not touch them.

She ate a pack of instant noodles to fill her stomach, and packed the remaining mineral water and food in her suitcase so that it would be easier to take them away. She then took out the key to the rolling shutter door in front from the counter.

Before leaving, he thought for a moment, put down the fish knife and suitcase, returned to the bedroom, wrapped Lao Dai in a bed sheet, and carried her to the bed despite the stench of the corpse.

"Even though you asked me to call you Lao Dai, I still want to call you sister. Sister, I'm leaving now. I hope I can live longer in this world."

Shu Lan picked up the fruit knife, wiped it clean, found the sheath, put it in, and took it away.

If one day Shu Lan is infected with the virus and is about to turn into a zombie, she will use this fruit knife to make the same choice as Lao Dai.

After staying in the dim room for a long time, the moment the shutter door was opened, the sunlight suddenly shone on her face, and Shu Lan subconsciously squinted.

The streets were still quiet. Perhaps there were still survivors and zombies in places she didn't know about. In any case, there was no movement at all.