The Undead

Chapter 3

Index | Chapter 2

“Surname ‘Zhou’. Given name ‘Rong’ as in ‘warhorse’ (戎), not ‘Rong’ as in ‘yellow bean paste’ (容).

“We’ve been camping out here in T City for over half a month. Not a cent of compensation pay and our ammo and rations are getting low. It’s just adding fire to the flame.

“You think this virus is some mutated rabies or something? Or do you think it’s some biological warfare from the Americans? You know, I’ve been following the news these last few days and just last night the TV station signal and radio just stopped. It’s so sad. Up until then I hadn’t missed an episode of ‘In The Name Of The People’. Oh, but the worst thing…”

Zhou Rong lit his cigarette and took a drag. Then he turned to find his squad mates sitting timidly behind him, the car’s window wide open and the wind blowing in.

“He’s… he’s gone,” one guy said. “Out the window…”

“When?”

“At ‘following the news’.”

Zhou Rong was silent a moment, then said with regret, “A pity. I was about to recommend him about season eight of ‘The People’s Reform’.”

The majority of the zombie hoard had been lured to the south-east so there were only a few dozen still milling about when the young man nimbly slipped into the pharmacy.

Above him the incandescent lights flickered on the blood splattered walls. Under the collapsed glass counter were a few broken corpses hinting at the terror of those last moments.

Following the rising support for gender equality, Omega pheromone suppressors had become more widespread and the ban of them in many countries had been removed. Naturally, they became a highly controlled prescription drug.

The young man took his rifle and used the butt of it to sort through the rubble. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the familiar packaging. Without wasting any time, he ripped it apart and injected himself with the suppressor.

The pharmacy had likely been looted prior but there were still some things like protein powder and energy drinks and the like. He took a bloody canvas bag from the corpse and stuffed it, making sure to include two bags of a water purifying agent.

He looked up when he finished and fond himself staring at a broken mirror. Staring at himself.

A motorcycle helmet, a rust smelling jacket, dirty jeans, and ankle high boots lathered with dried, rotten flesh.

He seemed to notice something and tugged at his collar. Around his neck he found a pendant hanging there.

It was a normal looking brass locket, neither big or small. Opening it, he discovered a photograph. It was a photograph of a smiling young couple holding a boy of about five or six. The wife was white with flaxen hair and amber eyes. Even with the limited quality of the photograph her beauty was still evident. The husband, on the other hand, was completely Asian with an elegant, scholarly air. His face looked incredibly familiar.

It was the young man’s own.

The young man shut his eyes and gasped for breath as images flickered in his mind like a damaged film roll: a shaking airplane cabin, screams, bodies, flying ammunition, the light glittering on a pair of handcuffs…

Suddenly his vantage point became wider. Under a gloomy, cold, morning sky, military boots pounded the grass and frost as a shout echoed in the ears of all the soldiers:

“…No tomorrow, no hope, no back up. There is no redo…”

“You all are the earth’s last soldiers left in this war against the undead!”

The young man shook his head. He raised a hand to his face but instead hit against the hard helmet.

“Careful!”

A body slammed into him and pressed him to the ground. The young man’s instinct was to throttle this surprise attacker’s neck, but before he could a shot rang out!

A flurry of bullets rained into the door to the storeroom, destroying the door, and revealing the now twitching remains of a number of zombies behind it.

Zhou Rong lowered his gun and spat out a cigarette butt. He extinguished it with a foot. “You two okay?”

The young man pushed his ‘surprise attacker’ aside, turned, and sat up, a severe pain throbbing between his eyebrows.

“Hello. We just came in and saw the zombies about to come in…” Yan Hao stood up and offered a hand to the young man who took it, stood, and took off his helmet.

“Thanks.”

Yan Hao: “…”

“?”

The handsome Yan Hao quickly looked away, a red tinge on his white cheeks. He coughed. “No… No problem.”

Zhou Rong found this quite interesting. He stroked his chin, then grinned. “Looking for food?”

If there was a vote in this apocalyptic world on the worst pick up lines, that one would definitely make the top ten.

The young man didn’t respond. Instead he picked up and strung his bag over his right shoulder, while holding the rifle he’d taken from Yan Hao directed at the ground. Then he walked around the other two and headed for the door.

Unexpectedly, when he passed Zhou Rong, the latter reached out and grabbed his arm: “Hey…”

“You’re following me?”

They were standing close. Around them were the ruins of the pharmacy. Tension was in the air. After a while, Zhou Rong smiled.

“What are you on about? What a waste of my feelings. Clearly we’re here to protect the lives and property of the average citizen,” he modestly replied.

The young man looked Zhou Rong up and down again. Perhaps he’d gotten it wrong. This guy didn’t seem to be from the local military, rather, he seemed more like a wily old fox who’d gotten expelled and was still using their military equipment.

“No need to keep looking. Come with us. No one will fight you over a few biscuits.” Zhou Rong flicked a stray bit of flesh off of the young man’s shoulder, and without a hint of embarrassment said, “We’re headed to the underground shelter to meet up with our teammates, then signal for the helicopters to come pick us up. Tomorrow T City’s getting nuked clean. Right, here’re my credentials.”

Zhou Rong used a gloved hand to carefully pull out a leather envelope. He flipped it open and inside really was a red stamped, armed forces issued letter of introduction.

With great pride, he wiggled it in front of the young man’s face then carefully put his treasure back into his vest. “You’re not getting anywhere by yourself. Acting a lone-hero’s not going to work. Might as well just accept the help, right? What’s your name?”

There was a moment of silence as the young man’s gaze dropped to the ground. Next to his foot lay a box of medicine with the words “XX City Si Nan Pre-prepared Chinese Medicine Ltd (Y2011XXXX)” stamped on it.

“…Si Nan,” the young man said in a hoarse voice. “‘Nan’ as in ‘North South’ (南)”

Half an hour later.

“Their bodily fluids are highly toxic. One bite and it’s guaranteed infection and death. The time it takes for someone to turn varies. From what we’ve seen, the shortest period of time was fifty seconds from the moment the infected person’s heart stops to complete transformation. Longest is twenty four hours, so about the same amount of time it takes for rigor mortis to set in for a normal corpse.”

Si Nan raised an eyebrow. “Who did you observe?”

“My former squad mates,” Zhou Rong replied, then took a gulp of water.

Along the sides of the car cabin sat seven or eight special forces soldiers, their poses made awkward by the continually jolting car as it barrelled through zombies.

Zhou Rong was leaned to one side. Next to him, Yan Hao pulled out a bag and offered it to Si Nan.

Inside it were some high protein chocolates and sea biscuits.

Si Nan pushed it back then pointed at his own bag. He already had some. He turned to Zhou Rong. “Are you from the local garrison?”

“At the beginning of the breakout, some experts thought it was some kind of rabies so got the first infected people to be sent to the military for a looking over. ’Course, that just meant they got thoroughly annihilated.” Zhou Rong spread his hands in a gesture indicating polite despair, then said, “Right now, if you went to the barracks, you’d probably find a few thousand heavily armed zombies all squished in together… A real claustrophobia nightmare.”

“Why did you come to T City?”

“For a mission,” Yan Hao quietly replied.

Si Nan glanced at him and saw that he had his eyes trained on the shaking floor of the cabin, his lips held tightly together.

“We come to do a mission and our luck’s just bad. We arrive just when the outbreak started. Right now our mission’s to protect the innocents,” Zhou Rong added. Then in a seemingly indifferent tone asked, “What about you, xiao-ge?”

Si Nan did not reply and instead asked, “What was your mission before?”

He guessed this squad’s mission and that Tang Hao’s mission should be the same: rounding up all the Omegas in the area, their so-called precious strategic resource. Who knew Zhou Rong would instead sigh deeply then say in a melancholic voice, “Ugh… We just have no luck… Our mission objective died which means eating some punishments once we get back…”

“They may not have died,” Yan Hao said suddenly in a low voice.

Everyone looked at the pair of them as Zhou Rong rebutted him. “Try freefalling nine thousand feet in the air and see if you survive.”

Yan Hao fell silent.

“Rong-ge!” Si Nan called from the front. “The road conditions have updated. Come look at the map!”

Zhou Rong rose and went to the front of the car. He clapped Yan Hao on the shoulder as he passed.

Si Nan had realised that each time he spoke with Zhou Rong, Yan Hao would always pop up and point something out or change the subject, or just say something to get himself noticed.

Why?

Yan Hao coughed into his fist, then offered over a box of cigarettes. “Do you smoke?”

Si Nan’s overall appearance was mostly Asian looking except for his eyes. Those were amber, like his mother’s, and when he stared at people they gave off an inorganic, cold feeling.

He stared in this way at Yan Hao for a full ten seconds, then shook his head. “I don’t. Thanks.”

“…”

Yan Hao laughed nervously and took one for himself but finding himself without a light, he just played with it in his hand. This movement seemed to help settle him.

After a moment, Zhou Rong came walking back into the cabin, this time with a bag of equipment. He sat and began fishing through the bag. “Ah… it’s really not looking good. It’ll take us at least two more hours to get to the shelter and who knows what it’ll be like there. In a moment I’ll get up on the roof with the machine gun and do a few sweeps. You guys take the chance to sleep for a bit… What is it, xiao-ge? Why are you staring at me?”

Zhou Rong had opened a compartment of his gun, taken out a ruby earring and clipped it to his right earlobe.

Si Nan: “…”

He sat across from them and so now looked from Zhou Rong’s ear to Yan Hao’s ear. The two earrings were a matching pair and they glimmered in the gloomy car cabin.

In that moment, Si Nan felt he had finally realised something.

“Sorry,” he apologised as he rose and patted Yan Hao on the shoulder before going directly to the front and getting into the front passenger seat.

Yan Hao: “…???”

The cabin fell into a strange silence.

Feeling full of benevolence, Si Nan nodded to the driver, then closed his eyes to have a nap.

(Note: it’s my guess that the ‘T City’ in this story is Tianjin in the Northeast of China.)

Chapter 4