Chapter 3 - Stolen Clothes
"Hurry… There're too many zombies… Watch out on your left!"
"This side is blocked… There's no way through…"
"Ah!"
"Lin Yu..."
"Don't go over there! Lin Yu's hand has been scratched by zombies..."
"Don't come over! Captain! Don't let me turn into a zombie… Hm… Kill me now… I… Captain..."
"Lin Yu! Lin Yu!"
On the other side, the battle situation had now changed. The result of the battle was tipping in favor of the zombies as some human squad members had been wounded.
"Captain… Take care of my… sis-sister… for me..."
...
"No! Lin Yu! You hang in there! That's an order! What would Lin Yan do if you died?"
Lin Qiao didn't hear these conversations with her ears. Instead, the words just appeared in her mind. In addition to these, she had also been hearing other voices, some of which were repeating two words over and over.
'So hungry… So hungry… So hungry…'
These voices were like tiny hammers that had been ceaselessly pounding her brain. Because of them, Lin Qiao suffered a splitting headache once again. She bared her teeth in pain, slowly twisting her body to struggle.
"Captain… you go! I have got your back! I'll save a bullet for myself! You go now!" Lin Yu gripped his gun with both hands and blew a zombie's head off with a bullet each as he shouted at Captain Li Zheng.
However, Li Zheng wasn't swayed. "No! Lin Yu, we must return with the same number of people as we came out with. I can't leave you here alone!" He insisted.
Lin Yu shouted hysterically, "Captain! There are too many zombies! We can't all leave! Someone has to stay and cover the rear. I'm already infected by the virus! I'll become a zombie whether I make it back or not! Let me do this!"
For some reason, Lin Qiao felt a jolt of recognition when she heard the name 'Lin Yu'. However, the piercing pain in her head stopped her from thinking clearly, making her tumble on the ground while screaming and pounding her head with her hands.
"Roar..."
Waves of pain distorted her perception of the surrounding environment. By the time she recovered, another day had passed away.
She lied on the ground while gazing at the sky. She had no idea how long she had lain there. The only sensation available to her right now was hunger. She was so starving!
However, when she covered her stomach with her hands, her stiff hands only found a hole.
She was speechless.
'Damn it! I don't even have a stomach! How could I still be hungry?'
Lin Qiao wanted to stand up, but she immediately realized that her body would not obey this command.
Why wouldn't her knees bend? How was she supposed to stand up like this?
After struggling on the ground for a while, Lin Qiao finally got up.
'Damn it! The life of a zombie is so hard!' She was starving, but what could she do? She wanted to eat so, so badly! Even though she wanted to find her family, she needed to fill her 'stomach' to give herself the strength to look for them!
Lin Qiao raised her nose, sniffed around and sensed a faint, sweet aroma.
She lowered her head to look at her stomach and chest, then raised her stiff arms, trying for some time to bend her finger joints and pull at her ragged clothes.
'Hmm, these rags can't cover my body.'
It seemed that she needed to find some decent clothes to cover herself with first.
She was now a zombie. How was she supposed to live her life hereafter? What should she do when she was hungry? Eat human beings? That wouldn't be possible! But, would she starve to death if she didn't eat human beings? She could always replace human beings with other living things, right?
Lin Qiao moved her feet and tried to walk forward, but she found that her extra heavy legs were as stiff as her arms. Thus, it was extremely hard for her to walk normally.
She could only move slowly toward a shopping mall step by step.
In this apocalyptic world which had been deserted for five years already, Lin Qiao had no idea why didn't she wake up until now, neither did she know if her family survived the destruction of the old world, or if they were even alive right now.
She should at least go back to her hometown and try finding them. However, finding a way back seemed to be a little difficult under the current circumstances! The internet had been paralyzed in the city, and telecommunication was already impossible. The ruins lay everywhere, making Lin Qiao feel awfully disturbed. She watched the zombies shamble all over the place, and even wondered if she should feel lucky for becoming a conscious zombie. After all, it would be much more convenient for her to move around like this.
To go back to her hometown, she needed to find a car first. She could only go back once she had transportation. However, at this moment, finding some clothes was a more pressing matter. However, even after putting in quite a lot of effort in searching through the entire shopping mall, she failed to find any wearable clothes, or even suitable fabric!
Even more annoyingly, the search had exhausted her highly disabled body. 'Strange! Why would zombies feel tired?' She wondered.
Lin Qiao sat by the front entrance of the shopping mall while struggling with this question. She raised her head and glanced at the sky, finding that it was noon already. She then glanced across the zombies lumbering around and suddenly had an idea.
She could borrow clothes from those zombies, couldn't she?
With this thought, she fixed her eyes on a female zombie in a long dress and stood up immediately, walking toward it.
"Roar… Roar… oar!"
What she had said was, 'You! Stop!'.
The female zombie stopped moving and turned her already-broken neck while tilting her pale face at an impossible angle toward Lin Qiao.
"Roar?"
Lin Qiao stared at the female zombie's pale gray eyes with her own pure black ones and continued roaring, "Roar… roar… roarrrrrr!"
'Lend me your clothes,' she said.
"Roar?"
Clearly, this zombie wasn't intelligent, and was having trouble understanding her.
Lin Qiao stopped roaring, walked straight up to the female zombie, and raised a hand to rip her clothing.
"Roar!" The female zombie suddenly went crazy and raised her zombie claws to scratch Li Qiao's face when she saw the latter trying to rip off her clothes. Lin Qiao instinctively tilted her head and dodged the claws while slapping the female zombie's face at the same time.
Crack!
This female zombie's head, which was tilted on her neck, was slapped off clean by Lin Qiao and fell onto the ground.
'Hmm? Eh?? Damn it! How could it just fall off? Was it no more than a piece of skin that was holding her neck and head together before?'
Lin Qiao was astounded, gazing at her own claws. Had she grown stronger? Or, was the head falling off already?
'This zombie should have followed my words while I was being nice! How dare it attack me first?' Lin Qiao raised a foot and angrily kicked the headless zombie.
Thud!
The zombie fell onto the ground.
Lin Qiao slowly moved toward the female zombie and tried to squat down beside it…
'Damn it! I can't even bend my knees!'
In the end, she directly sat on the ground.
She bent down from the waist and ripped off the female zombie's clothes. Fortunately, her fingers were still agile.
With more than a little difficulty, she finally managed to put on the zombie's gray, dusty dress. She then crooked her stiff hands, buttoned up the dress, and dusted it off. Finally, she looked a little more respectable now.
At this moment, Lin Qiao again caught a whiff of the attractive aroma and followed it slowly.
She was so hungry! She needed to find the source of that aroma and figure out if it were edible.
After pondering briefly, Lin Qiao moved her stiff legs and followed the aroma step by step. However, her movements were agonizingly slow. She had no way to speed up, because her legs wouldn't allow it. If she forced them, she would just end up falling face down on the ground.
These zombies were all slow in reacting, so they barely responded to Lin Qiao's roars. Only when Lin Qiao roared a couple more times with a very strong repelling vibe did these zombies move aside. As she roared, they moved slightly, and as she roared again and again, they moved further bit by bit.
The closer she got to the aroma, the more zombies could be seen gathered around. When she arrived at a closed warehouse, she sensed that the aroma was coming from inside. However, a swarm of zombies was sticking themselves on the door.
One step, two steps, three steps… Without a watch, she had lost track of time, so she could only count her footsteps while walking very slowly.
When she had walked for about five-hundred steps, she suddenly realized that the zombie crowd around her had grown quite dense. She didn't like to be touched by these zombies, so she bared her teeth and roared at them as she walked.
"Roar! Roar!" She roared at the zombies to try and make them go away while squeezing through the crowd. 'Damn!' She couldn't get through as her limbs again refused to work according to her will.
She felt irritated and burst into a great roar, "Roar! Roar!"
'Piss off!' She tried to say.
After she uttered this last roar, the zombies around her all paused and then turned to look at her. Perhaps, her voice had made them feel provoked.
"Roarrrr!" Unexpectedly, all of them roared back at Lin Qiao.
'Damn it! Do they want a fight?' Lin Qiao wondered.
Lin Qiao looked at these completely defaced zombies and stopped roaring. Then, she raised a hand and jabbed her claws directly into the head of a zombie beside her.
For some reason, the movement of her hand was like a conditioned reflex and some kind of instinct once she intended to attack. By the time she realized what was happening, she found her fingers sticking straight in the zombie's head.
'Damn it! Have my fingers somehow turned into steel or stone? How can these fingers penetrate a zombie's head?' Lin Qiao pulled out her fingers and raised them in front of her, staring at them in shock.
"Roarrrr!" The other zombies all began drawing back as if they had received some kind of danger signal when they saw Lin Qiao piercing a zombie's head.
Lin Qiao stared at her fingers. To reconfirm, she reached out her left arm and gripped a zombie on her left side, which had just taken two steps backward. Amidst the zombie's howls, she raised her right hand and fiercely stabbed her fingers into its head.
Puff!
As expected, she penetrated the zombie's skull easily. Then, she put forth her strength with her arms and fingers.
Crack!
The zombie's head was split into two pieces, which then fell onto the ground.
Following a silvery noise, Lin Qiao lowered her head and saw a fingertip-sized, white-colored, prismatic crystal piece fall out of the zombie's head. She glanced at this crystal piece with surprise, wondering if she should squat down to pick it up.
She hesitated because her knees wouldn't bend at all! Fortunately, her waist was a little more flexible now, and allowed her to stoop down.
She tried to stoop and then reach down her hands to pick up this crystal piece. She managed to stoop a little, but felt some difficulties when she bent her waist to ninety degrees. She gritted her teeth and at last managed to pick up the crystal, straightening back up and then sighing in relief.
What she didn't notice was that after she picked up the crystal shard, the surrounding zombies had moved even farther backward.
She pinched the crystal piece and sensed a faint warmth coming from it. She didn't know that if she were just an ordinary zombie, she would have been incinerated by this crystal piece without leaving even a single piece of bone.
However, she held it with her claws and nothing happened.
She intended to take a closer look at this tiny crystal piece while pitching it with her fingernails to find out exactly what it was. However, a beam of black light suddenly flashed across her nails and the crystal piece first turned to vapor, disappearing slowly. It had vaporized, leaving nothing but a wisp of smoke.
Lin Qiao felt nothing else but a warmth flowing through her body for a moment.
'Eh? What happened?' She stared at her black fingernails in bewilderment. She observed them on both sides for quite a while, but failed to find an answer. So, she gave up trying.
She turned her head again toward the door, from where the aroma was coming. At this moment, she suddenly found that the area was already vacated. Moments earlier, this place had been crowded with zombies. But now, all the zombies had retreated back seven to eight meters away from her.
She glanced at these zombies with confusion, then slowly walked toward the door. She raised both hands to push the door, but was unable to even budge it.
The door was made from aluminum alloy. She scratched the door with her fingernails and caused a squeaking noise, then raised her hands while wondering if her claw was stronger or the door.
Glancing at the door lock, she realized that she would have to do things in a smarter way if she couldn't break the door.
She walked over and bent down, then began studying the door lock.
A zombie was studying a door lock… If a living person were to see this, it would make them raise their eyebrows or even have their eyeglasses falling off.
Lin Qiao dug into the keyhole and scratched, but still failed to unlock the door. As a result, she got angry and violently poked her fingers into the crack of this tightly closed door.
Crack!
She actually penetrated the door!
'Even that worked?'
She moved her fingers in the crack and put forth her strength to push the door aside. However, nothing happened until she held her breath and pulled the door with all her might. The door was distorted a bit due to her strength, showing a small slit which allowed her to reach her hands in and unlock the door from the inside.
Once the door opened, the aroma filled up her nostrils as she pushed the door open and walked inside. Although it was all dark inside, she found that she could see everything clearly.
She looked at the source of the aroma. However, the moment she saw it clearly, her face darkened.
And that was because it was a person!
It was a person lying on the ground, but she couldn't tell if the former was alive or not.
She walked over while realizing that the aroma being emitted from this person was like that of grilled pork, making her feel exceptionally hungry!
She stooped down beside this person like an old man. She felt that she was drooling and her claws had reached out to this human being while she was sensing this person's aroma.
However, just as her claws were about to pierce into this man's head, she suddenly realized what she was doing and immediately withdrew her claws.
Damn it! Was she eating people now?
She straightened up, but then stooped again to poke this man's face with her nails. She could sense a faint warmth being transmitted through those nails.
She drew back her claws and looked at this man with shock.
He was not dead!
However, from what she could see, he had been infected with the virus already, hadn't he?
Lin Qiao looked at his face. His skin hadn't changed much, but his lips had already turned blue.
While Lin Qiao was wondering what to do with this man who was about to turn into a zombie, she was suddenly inflicted with a headache so sharp that she felt that her brain was exploding.
"Roar!"
She raised her head and screamed in pain. She opened her dark eyes as wide as she could and bared her sharp teeth. It seemed that her pair of canine teeth had grown especially long.
In the next second, Lin Qiao's body tilted sideways and she fell onto the man's body.
All of a sudden, a wave of green light flashed across her vision, then both of them disappeared. The warehouse was left empty, without the slightest trace of any living things.
Lin Qiao's head still ached dully when she woke up, only to be dumbfounded once she opened her eyes.
'What the hell? What is this place? Why am I in a strange place every time I wake up and open my eyes?'
Lin Qiao widely opened her black eyes and hurriedly lowered her head to check her body. However, she discovered with disappointment that her broken body hadn't changed, neither had her dress.
However…
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