CHAPTER 5

The next unit was a rental unit. The last tenant moved out last month. Until now, they still had not found a new tenant. It was an unoccupied unit.

The unit was a relatively spacious three-room apartment. However, there was one more room than Fu Erdie’s house. Each room is larger than her room, with a total of about 100 square meters, which was twice the size of her small house.

Every room had a door and a lock. Fu Erdie tried to lock and open the knob of each door which were all working normally.

She gently opened every drawer to find the key and managed to get the key to every room, and even got the spare key for the door.

Fu Erdie wrapped the key with a prepared cloth and put it in her arm bag without making a sound.

She quietly opened the door and left a small opening. The door handle was connected by a line that leads directly to the bedroom where Fu Erdie was hiding.

Her home surveillance camera could also be monitored and displayed on the mobile phone in real time through Bluetooth. Fu Erdie looked at the mobile phone. After she waited for 20 minutes, she got a chance when the small zombie came near to the door alone.

She gently pulled the rope that made a creaking sound.

The little zombie was attracted to the sound and looked up into the house.

Her position was just right to see the face of the zombie.

It was a little boy who usually raised his head. He was a thin and behaved type of kid. He was also very polite and never ran up and down the corridor to disturb people.

Fu Erdie’s hand holding the bedroom door slightly clenched.

Her movement caught the attention of lao zhong zombie. But when he looked back, he did not see anything even a human figure or smell human’s blood. So, he walked away.

Only the little zombie walked in chaotically, and went to the balcony along the path that Fu Erdie had set out on the sofa.

When they were far away, she ran out immediately. She locked the door, made a noise on purpose to attract the little zombie, and quickly fled in the opposite direction.

The little zombies were naturally attracted and ran over upside down.

Fu Erdie entered the kitchen, flexibly hiding in the suspended ceiling through the reserved hole. She waited there for a while before she saw the little zombie chasing after her.

She counted secretly.

“Five seconds.”

She observed that the small zombie was much slower than the old zombie yesterday.

If it was, the zombie could rush over in two seconds.

In other words, the action qualities of different zombies were really different from each other.

The zombies outside of the building as well as those in the corridor were indeed the same, as she saw their movements are much slower.

Fu Erdie breathed a sigh of relief, and took out the hammer she had prepared. She jumped down from above, and hammered the little zombie’s head.

“I’m sorry.”

The little zombie’s head exploded. The blood and some brain tissues flowed all over the place, splashing on Fu Erdie’s face.

She opened the faucet.

The water that came out of the faucet at the beginning was a little rusty red because no one had lived in the unit for more than 10 days.

She let the rust-like water flow from her hands.

When the water became clean, she washed her face and neck with water to remove the blood all over her. She looked at the surveillance monitor and saw that there were no zombies in the corridor. She dragged the little zombie’s body out.

She felt that the feel of zombies was really awful. When she touched it directly, it was a little stiff yet it still had the feel of human skin.

Perhaps, that was the kind of touch a corpse had when a person had just died.

Fu Erdie forcibly endured the skin while she dragged the little zombie out, and placed it near the old zombie with a hollowed-out skull in the corridor.

That time, she was not frightened when she saw the old zombie.

Because they are not as fast as she thought.

She calmly returned to the neighbor’s house and locked the door.

The temperature was very high. She estimated it was the same as last night, between 35 or 36 degrees.

She sat relaxed in the corner of the living room. She listened to the sound of zombies scratching at the door, her face was expressionless.

She did not realize she was crying until the hot water dripped on her knees and calves.

She stared blankly and more tears dripped from her calf down to the floor. Fu Erdie finally could not help it. She hugged her knees and cried silently. She mourned like someone close to her had died. She was a weak person. Because she knew to herself that she could not handle that kind of situation.

Why? She was a person who was afraid of flying insects like cockroaches and mosquitoes, afraid when hitting moths, and now she had to swing a hammer at the zombies who were still human yesterday?

In her mind, “The zombies are sickening. Corpses are disgusting. Death is scary. Then, why do all of the people I need to face this?!” She was talking to herself as if she had someone telling her feelings. She was all alone in the beginning and she started to feel loneliness every second.

When she returned to her own home from the balcony, Fu Erdie had slightly calmed down.

Her own home still looked the same as before the apocalypse happened, quiet and comfortable.

She took a bath and blow dried her hair. She turned on the air conditioner. She ate rice and pickles. She also fed her dog and cleaned its bed

Everything is in order, nothing was different from before.

But Fu Erdie knew that it was different.

She put the cleaned garbage into a bag and put the cardboard box where the ornamental plants were placed yesterday. She remembered that she planned to hang it downstairs with the plants at dawn.

When she finished transferring the plants, the box was half empty. She sighed out of frustration. Then, she decided to fill it up with more things in a few days before throwing it away.

She stood up and was satisfied to see her balcony cleaned and neat.

As for those ornamental plants that were supposed to be released yesterday, she thought it irresponsibly. There was no difference between downstairs or on her floor because it also had a sidewalk floor tile which was no soil or or a thing she could place the plants on.

After a night of chaos, the traffic outside was no different. Hence, there was no change too.

Everyone knew that no one could move the car that was involved in the accident. If there would be more car accidents, it would be difficult to move them apart.

If someone tried to enter the road, they would not be able to grab the road because of the jam packed vehicles. If someone blocked it, no one would be able to leave.

Moreover, like Zhao Xiaolu, there were many people who chose to drive away the car whose owner died after being blocked.

From the balcony, Fu Erdie saw 10 of the same incidents. However, only three groups of people got on the bus successfully. The others were left behind on the road in the middle of day in the clear sky and blocked by other zombies like they found food to share. The scene was extremely bloody.

The other survivors on the ground floor saw the scene. They wanted to help those people but they could not do anything because they possibly could have been eaten by the zombies too. All they could do was pity them. They thought, if they wanted to survive, they had to save themselves and learn from that experience. They chose to act at night when the zombies’ vision has a poor view

Fu Erdie stood upstairs. She looked at the busy crowd on the road as if she was looking at the passers-by.

She knew that when her water and electricity were cut off, she would be like the countless people below who were begging for their lives, who were trying to be tough because those people were also trying to survive.

The scene on the road was not the same every day. There were also different situations in every corridor of the building.

On the first day, most people were like Fu Erdie. As long as they did not turn into zombies, they would either find a car to escape or stay at home.

At the time when the zombie outbreak happened, the corridors were mostly filled with elderly and children, or office workers who left work early.

There were only a few people and many of them were also waiting for their family members to come and meet them.

The next day, people who could not contact their close friends or relatives, or who were abandoned by their family members, began to call on everyone to fight the zombies.

After what happened in the past two days, she could not do anything but to think of all possible solutions to survive the apocalypse. Since, the zombies were not fast. She thought it would be a good idea to clear out her corridor on her floor and help those survivors to kill those affected.

Fu Erdie planned and observed the fight going around in the building for a few days.

But these days, people have been scratching one after another. Even if they did not die on the spot, they turned into zombies that kept scratching or banging on the door, or knocked the door of every unit to find their food to eat which was human flesh. If not, they would wander outside or in the corridor.

Gradually, fewer and fewer people dared to come out to fight zombies. The symptoms of stress increased. Survivors who saw their bitten high-spirited accomplices before turning into monsters became timid. They cried and dared not to come out anymore. As each day had passed, they became scared and terrified. They felt the hunger even more as well as the will to survive.