Lu Dongnuan leaned against the shelf, struggling to focus and maintain control over the crab, as waves of burning pain and exhaustion swept through her.
She listened to Scarface’s description, her heart growing heavier and heavier.
Scarface spoke rapidly, his voice trembling and distorted from fear: “Tang Jie… she’s not afraid of zombies, just like her.”
He jerked his chin toward Lu Dongnuan and continued, “She was originally a high school student from our area. They say she was always top of her class in every exam, but then, one day—” Scarface paused, his tone taking on a storytelling, almost spooky lilt.
“She started skipping classes, smoking, fighting teachers, and stopped taking exams altogether!”
Lu Dongnuan’s head spun even more as she listened.
“Uh, she must’ve been led astray by some street punk…”
“Ah, don’t be impatient, let me tell it all in order.”
Lin Mo smacked him with a slap and asked, “Get to the point.”
“She became a delinquent girl, always leading fights, her strength suddenly got freakishly strong, and somehow she picked up martial arts from somewhere—she could take on a dozen people alone.”
“That’s it? What else?”
Scarface’s vision sparkled from Lin Mo’s slap, but he didn’t dare complain and hurried on even faster: “Yes, yes, the main point… the main point… Tang Jie really isn’t afraid of zombies. Wherever she is, zombies either avoid her or act like they can’t see her. But she seems a bit different from this lady over here…”
Scarface racked his brain for words, “We’ve seen her walk straight into a small group of zombies—those zombies acted like they saw a ghost, howling and fleeing. There was another time, a reckless mutant lunged at her, and she punched the thing’s head in. Really, just one punch!”
“Where’s her base?” Lin Mo pressed.
“It’s that high school to the north—Bei High.”
“Bei High?” Lin Mo repeated, his gaze sharpening.
“Yeah, Bei High—the only key high school in the Old City up north.” Scarface nodded quickly, his swollen jaw twisting his expression.
“The school’s got high walls, sturdy gates, several buildings—gym, lab building, dorms, that kind of thing. Tang Jie took over the main teaching building and the lab building beside it and turned the place into a fortress.”
“How many people? What defenses?” Lin Mo tapped the shelf with his fingers unconsciously as he asked.
“Regulars, including us who go out for supplies, around a hundred or so. Men and women, mostly survivors who joined Tang Jie later, but also some who were already students or teachers there. Now they all listen to Tang Jie.”
Scarface tried to remember.
“Front and back gates have been reinforced, piled up with sandbags and abandoned cars, iron wire strung along the walls. I heard they rigged up electricity from who-knows-where, with generators, and people keep watch day and night. There are lookouts on the roof. Coming and going is strictly checked—they’re afraid of bringing zombies in, and…”
He stole a glance at Lin Mo and said, “Afraid outsiders might sneak in.”
Lin Mo nodded, then asked, “What about supplies? Food, medicine, weapons?”
“Food… mainly from scavenging. The school cafeteria had some reserves but not much. Medicine’s always short, that’s why we came out. Weapons are even more random—fire axes, steel pipes, machetes. Tang Jie herself has a really good long knife, don’t know where she got it. Oh, and there are some homemade crossbows.” Scarface rattled off the details.
“Honestly, life’s tough, but Tang Jie’s amazing—so long as she’s there, the base is safe from zombies, so everyone just follows her.”
“Where does Tang Jie stay? The teaching building?”
“No, no, she stays in the principal’s office—it’s got a bed.”
“One last question,” Lin Mo stared at Scarface and asked, “What’s Tang Jie’s attitude toward survivors from ‘outside,’ especially those with special abilities, like us?”
Scarface hesitated, clearly weighing how to answer for his own survival.
“Tang Jie… she doesn’t really trust outsiders. There’ve been a few groups wanting to join or just passing by. Some were chased off, some… never came out again. As for people with special abilities…”
He glanced at Lu Dongnuan and the frozen monster behind her, swallowed hard.
“I’ve never seen anyone else like this lady here… but Tang Jie herself is special enough. If she found out there were others… people like her, I’m afraid…”
He didn’t finish, but the meaning was obvious: either be subdued, or be destroyed.
Lin Mo nodded, unsurprised by the answer, then turned to Lu Dongnuan.
“That’s enough.”
Lu Dongnuan’s eyes suddenly glowed a strange, eerie red in the dim pharmacy, fine red lines like veins spreading from her eye corners.
Lin Mo’s “That’s enough” hadn’t even faded.
The frozen crab monster’s massive claw, covered in dull keratin, moved without warning.
It wasn’t the slow, controlled motion of before, but a gray flash, shrieking through the air!
“Whoosh—!”
A sickening, bone-grinding ripping sound echoed at the same moment.
The faces of Scarface and his two companions froze in terror, desperation, and confusion, before being splattered with hot, scarlet red.
Three heads burst like watermelons smashed by a hammer, bone and meat spattering across the messy floor and shelves with a dull, horrifying thud.
The headless bodies twitched violently against the ropes, then went limp, blood gushing from their necks and pooling rapidly across the ground.
The heavy stench of blood overwhelmed even the dusty air and spread out everywhere.
Everything happened too fast, too suddenly.
Lu Dongnuan remained in her position, supporting herself on the shelf, the red glow in her pupils flickering wildly, then suddenly extinguished and the vein-like lines vanished.
She seemed utterly drained, her body swaying, a sharp, almost suffocating gasp escaping her throat, then a violent fit of coughing, bending her over as if she would cough out her lungs.
“What the—?” Lin Mo was clearly startled, “Why’d you kill them?”
Lu Dongnuan finally stopped coughing.
She lifted her pale, sweat-drenched face, eyes unfocused, looking at the three headless corpses in disbelief and horror, then at her own trembling hands.
“I… I didn’t mean to…” Her voice was hoarse and broken, filled with confusion and dread.
“They didn’t have to die…” she murmured.
Even though reason told her letting Scarface and the others live to report back might bring greater trouble, the idea of killing without her own clear will left her with a deep sense of fear and filth.
“In the apocalypse, hesitation and unnecessary kindness just get you killed faster.” Lin Mo walked over, picked up a blood-smeared children’s vitamin bottle from the floor, wiped it off with his sleeve, and handed it back to Lu Dongnuan, trying to comfort her.
Then he added, “Of course, we agreed before: if there’s killing to do, I do it. You can’t kill.”
Lu Dongnuan trembled at Lin Mo’s words.
He glanced at the worsening blizzard and the fading daylight outside.
Lu Dongnuan took the small bottle, the cold plastic clearing her head a little.
She gripped it tightly in her palm, nodded, and straightened herself, though her legs still trembled.
Lin Mo said no more, he quickly packed up the canvas bag and Lu Dongnuan’s old medicine bag, slung them over his back.
He walked to the pharmacy door, carefully checked outside for a moment, then signaled to Lu Dongnuan.
The two of them, one after another, quickly left the pharmacy, thick with the stench of fresh death.
The wind and snow instantly swallowed their figures, and the building behind soon became a blur in the snowy haze.
The three gradually cooling corpses, along with the mutant deep inside the pharmacy that had died long ago, were left behind in the silent ruins—just another few bricks in the endless walls of this apocalypse.