ZCLDH Chapter 1

Fu Erdie laid on the board and drew. When the details of the final draft were finally finalized, she realized that a day had already passed.

She got up and stretched out her hands. Fu Erdie felt a sticky feeling on her back. The white tee she was wearing was already filled with sweat. She hurriedly rushed to the bathroom to take a light shower.

It is a hot day in the month of June, when it should not be the peak heat season. Fu Erdie plugged in the working blowing fan to be comfortable, which was quite perfect for the weather. She continued her work for the rest of the day.

After painting for almost the whole day, Fu Erdie stopped painting and found out that the heat was a bit outrageous. She looked at the temperature display on the purifier. It was 30 degrees, five degrees higher than earlier noon.

Fu Erdie did not think much about it. She took a shower again and had dinner. She heated up the chicken breast that she had not eaten yesterday. After eating, she took the dog out for a shopping spree.

Fu Erdie lived in C-City. It is a second-tier city that is not as fast-paced as other cities.

With the support of her parents and grandmother, Fu Erdie owned a small house with two bedrooms and one living room. It is an hour or two’s bus ride from the city center and could be reached by taxi in half an hour.

She usually went out to walk the dog. The day seemed normal. Everything was happy and lively, despite the heat. But the weather was hot today. She roamed her eyes, and there were only a few people walking after eating dinner.

Fu Erdie held the dog’s leashes and led the dog. They walked slowly and leisurely. After walking for less than ten minutes, she also felt a little uncomfortable in the heat.

She opened the weather information on her phone. The outdoor temperature is 32 degrees. The weather was getting hotter and hotter.

In the blink of an eye, she felt raindrops on her arms. It was starting to drizzle. It was strange. The temperature had been increasing since noon.

She waited for her dog to finish his food, just as she also waited for the rain to stop. They went home after. When she got home, she hurriedly turned on the air conditioner to feel a little better.

A group message alert rang. She picked up the phone, and her group of friends was complaining about the sudden increase in temperature that happened today.

Zhao Xiaolu: [Wearing long sleeves earlier in the morning almost made me faint after I got off from work!]

Cen Xiyang: [:) I have not gotten off work yet. By the time I get out after work, it should be dark and the temperature will drop.]

Zhao Xiaolu: [Hahahahaha.jpg]

Cen Xiyang: [smile] [smile] [smile]

Fu Erdie saw the conversation and laughed along.

Fu Erdie and her friends, Xiaolu and Xiyang, grew up and studied together in elementary school and middle school.

It feels like only yesterday that they met each other. A lot has happened in the past. Who would have thought they would reach this far? The three of them have been friends for more than a decade.

Fu Erdie fed the hot chicken breast bibimbap to the dog. She reminded herself that the first thing she needed to do was take a shower again. The extreme heat made her take a shower more than twice today.

She liked to listen to songs every time she took a bath. The sound was soothing and calm for her when connected to the bathroom stereo, along with the sound of water that was pleasant to her ears.

She vaguely heard outside noise, like the lowered and threatening growl of her dog, because the stereo dominated the sound outside. She ignored it and hummed along with the song coming from the speaker.

She also vaguely heard a burst of movement from the road outside, like the screeching sound of tires rubbing from the car’s sudden brakes.

Her song paused for a while, and she continued to lather her hair.

Bang!

A big explosion happened, which made a shampoo bottle slip, and a large 1000-mL bottle fell to the ground, making a surprising noise. And her dog barked crazily and wildly outside.

Fu Erdie reacted and quickly wiped off the water and bubbles on her eyes. She went to her dog and calmly petted it as she picked up the bottles that fell earlier. “It’s okay. Something fell. Don’t bark, ah. Everything is okay.”

In her mind, it was nothing serious. She somehow got flustered and panicked. When the dog stopped barking, she put it down and went again to the bathroom to quickly wash the remaining bubbles off her body. She put on a night robe, covering her whole body, and wrapped the absorbent turban around his hair. She also turned off the speaker, which stopped a song. She came out of the bathroom and checked the outside.

The dog calmed down but was still worried about what had happened. Gouzi anxiously wandered around the house and made guttural sounds. The dog did not know what to do but only felt danger and nervousness.

Fu Erdie snuggled her dog into her lap. She patted the dog’s head and asked, “What’s wrong?”

Gouzi made a glance at her, lowered his growl, and rubbed his head aggressively on Fu Erdie’s hand, caused by stress. The dog whimpered continuously, showing his fears.

She assured her dog by saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay, baby.”

Fu Erdie had a strange feeling as she saw her dog frustrated. While staring and patting the dog’s head, she remembered a special moment.

The dog was picked up two years ago, when she had just graduated from college. She stopped when a puppy caught her eye. It was an ordinary, small, bony, thin, dirty, dark-colored fur dog that was abandoned on the side of the road.

The store owner next to her suddenly said that the little dog had been abandoned here for a few days.

He told her that its original owner lied and told it to wait here, “I’ll come pick you up after I go to the supermarket to buy something.”

The dog was well behaved, as if he understood his owner, and sat still. But the dog’s owner did not go to the supermarket. Instead, he turned to that corner and ran away, where the dog could not see him.

“The dog should have found out,” Fu Erdie said sadly, looking back again at the dog. She sighed. The store owner continued to say, “It stood up then ran a few steps in the direction of the original owner, but when he saw his owner running away, the dog did not chase. Maybe he was believing in his owner’s words and waited for every single day in that place for his owner to come back, or maybe he knew that his owner abandoned him and accidentally watched how his owner left him.”

Fu Erdie pitied the dog and sighed again. The store owner also added, “He was just waiting here since that day. He did even have the courage to move and go anywhere. If he was hungry, he would just pick up some garbage to eat.”

She felt sad and worried as she heard about what happened to the dog. She could not bear to hear those stories again. She immediately walked towards the dog and took him home.

She fostered him for two years.

For the past two years, Fu Erdie has been drawing illustrations full time at home, and the dog has been accompanying her every day. Ever since, they have been happy together.

The dog is kind and obedient. Gouzu never roared unless there was danger, a threat, or outsiders approaching the door. She thought that it was the first time he had barked and growled like this.

She also got curious about what Gouzu was barking at. Then she also decided to check every corner of her small house. She went to her room and other rooms. She inspected and scanned everything suspicious.

There was nothing unusual. There was no sign of rats or cockroaches. Everything was fine.

“Should I be scared by the shampoo bottle?” She swallowed her own saliva in nervousness. This time, she was uncertain about what was happening outside.

The phone suddenly rang. It was one of her friends, Zhao Xiaolu’s call.

“Hello?” Before Fu Erdie had time to speak, she heard a barrage of soldiers over the phone and the heavy breathing of her friend.

“Zombies! There are many zombies outside!” said Zhao Xiaolu in a gruff and panicked voice.

Fu Erdie subconsciously told her to calm down, but she instinctively rushed to the balcony and looked outside.

She lived on the 16th floor, facing the road from the balcony. The road she was facing was just a connecting road to the main road. She observed her surroundings. There were a few cars that were coming and going, but their speed was fast, like they were escaping from something dangerous. This scenario gives her an idea of what was happening.

She got curious, and at the same time, she felt nervous. She stretched out her head to see the direction of the traffic.

From Fu Erdie’s location, she saw a car accident and smoke on the main road.

Her heart rate increased. Fu Erdie suddenly remembered that the sound of the bottles falling down when she took a bath earlier could be that loud. The explosion.

It was the sound of the car accident outside!

Fu Erdie’s house has a good sound insulation effect. Because the air conditioner was turned on as well as the speaker, and the doors and windows were closed, she did not hear any outside noise or explosion. She made this feature of her house because many noisy sounds from outside, like whistles, screams, shouting, and many more, made her head extremely painful and buzzing.

In her mind, a car accident could not be that rowdy. She thought that the noises might be made by zombies.

Her mind was fighting. In the end, she worriedly said, “No, not likely, right…?”

She remembered her friend who was calling, “Zhao Xiaolu, where are you at this moment?!”

Fu Erdie carefully listened to the noise from the phone. Zhao Xiaolu was panting over the phone. She was hurriedly fleeing from work. She did not have enough time to explain the situation. It was really an emergency call.

Zhao Xiaolu did not answer. Fu Erdie thought about where her friend might be. It is the industrial park that is three stations away from Fu Erdie’s house. Zhao Xiaolu might have gotten off the bus midway, and now she is coming to Fu Erdie’s place.

Xiaolu answered, “In…uh…”, She was a little out of breath and reluctantly said, “Half an hour away from your house. I will run as fast as possible!”

Fu Erdie immediately said, “I will come and pick you up!”

“Pick up my ass, are you crazy?! You are a scumbag and now you are picking me up?!” Xiaolu yelled at her and added, “When I come to your house, I will call your name before you open. So, you will know that it was me! Did you understand?!”

After what she said, she hung up the phone.

Fu Erdie flustered when she just heard the tone of hanging up. She did not even have time to reply to her friend, which made her overthink.

The community Fu Erdie’s lived in had fully occupied units. There will be many people coming into her building. Those people were on their way from work and had not arrived home. Though there are not as many people as there are at night, there are also many elderly people, especially in the lower part of the building. A few people who came out for a walk today did not only mean that there were only a few people who came out to see the situation after the accident.

According to the laws of nature, elderly people were easy to worry about. If they came out after the car accident, there must be more people coming into their building than on a normal day.

If there were really zombies, there would be a group of infected people coming later. Can Zhao Xiaolu successfully pass and get home safely with so many infected people arriving at home?

If there were many elderly people, who would be worried about them? She looked down and tried to see the windows. She saw the figure of an old woman. Fu Erdie could not see properly on the balcony because of the plant. She ran inside her home and got a hammer. She used her other hand to lift the hammer and beat the soil on the side of the flower bed. There was a grandmother looking for help a few floors away from her unit. She called her, but she could not notice Fu Erdie. She held the phone in another hand and dialed the number of the grandmother, and she rushed downstairs.

While she was running and rushing to call her floors away from her unit, she got a busy signal and a no answer. She sent text messages and Weibo messages to her parents.

The little gray circle that went round and round when sending a message turns into an exclamation point, which means it could not be sent out.

She turned to call Cen Xiyang, as well as her sister-in-law and family members.

Despite living on the 16th floor, she was afraid of elevator accidents. The reason she always took the stairs.

But when she was just two floors down from where the grandmother lived, she faced an old man with a blue face.

His pupils were cloudy, the whites of his eyes were blurred, and his walking posture was very strange, as if his joints were dislocated and upside down. But as soon as he saw her, the old man immediately twisted his posture and quickly jumped over. The speed was so fast that he looked like a strong man!

Fu Erdiei turned around and ran upstairs desperately.

There were two stairwells in this building. She sensed that her speed was not as fast as the man’s, so she faked her run by going the other way. She went up again when the old man rushed over in the other direction, and she continued to go upstairs. She relied on a very flexible route, which barely opened the distance, and returned to her unit, 16-1 Residence.

She typed her PIN door password. but it did go through due to the wrong password.

The zombie old man went up to the floor. The sound of a doorbell running echoed in the hallway, and each sound was a sign of life.

Fu Erdie forcefully thought, calmed her hand, and typed in the PIN on the screen.

Suddenly, the infected old man turned a corner, where he found Fu Erdie and rushed towards her.

The door lock opened.

Fu Erdie strongly pulled the security door, which left a distance between her and the infected old man. She quickly moved to her place and let the man enter the unit. After the collision, she could hear that there was a muffled sound.

Fu Erdie hid behind the security door outside the unit near a broken fire hydrant beside her, where she accidentally slammed her waist against the lower edge of it.

She heard Gouzu. He had been barking all the time at home, which also gave him a chance to bite the ankle of the infected old man.

When the man saw he was about to be bitten, he kicked away the dog and slammed it against the anti-theft door of another unit, diagonally opposite the security door, and fell to the ground.

She heard something that slammed and fell to the ground. She was going to peek at the entrance of the door when she was surprised by what she saw. It was her dog. It was her whimpering and whining that made her angry. She readied herself, tightly gripped the security door handle, and slammed the old man into the door frame, which allowed the old man to regain strength, and half of his head came out to the door. She added pressure and pressed the door into the man as much as she could.

She did not know if fate was on her side or if she was only lucky. The door frame pressed against the infected old man’s head. The skull made a cracking sound that made a person’s teeth tingle. Blood flowed, and bones were all over the place.

Fu Erdie was frightened and felt nauseated. She wanted to let go of her hand to avoid gazing at the blood.

She was afraid that if she released her hand on the door, the zombie would not be completely dead and would regain more strength than before. She would not handle that anymore.

But she was more afraid of that situation where the man was not a zombie and things were not as bad as she thought, but she had killed someone by mistake. And all of what happened was only a prank.

Her hand, which was holding a phone, trembled slightly. She was very terrified. She was afraid and nervous. She slightly moved the door, and the old man fell to the ground. It was not moving. She hurriedly ran towards her dog and picked it up. She kicked the old man’s body outside. She closed her door and locked the anti-theft feature in a swift move.