Chapter 35: How to Survive
Chapter 35: How to Survive
The zombies intending to trap Anran are inevitably drawn away by the sound of coins hitting the wall. Anran, with the fruit basket in hand, steps over the zombie corpses wedged in the door gap and successfully enters the hallway leading to the blue light room.
This time, she is more cautious. After running into the blue light room, she glances back and notices that a zombie is not following the usual route towards the coin sounds but is instead following the noise of the fruit basket's wrapping paper.
In fact, this zombie was originally standing by the edge of the blue light room. When Anran approaches with the fruit basket, it naturally follows her and heads straight towards the blue light room’s door gap. If Anran had paused for even a few seconds, the zombie would have grabbed her shoulder.
She turns around and waits for the zombie to chase into the door gap. Watching it fall onto the corpses of its kind, Anran raises her hand and decisively kills the zombie. Then, she glances at the fruit knife with a curled edge, hides behind the heavy sliding metal door, and breathes heavily, waiting for the surrounding zombies to disperse on their own.
It seems that, as time passes, these zombies, initially rigid in their movements, begin to become more agile. Their walking posture, once resembling that of a mobility-impaired person, now allows their limbs to bend. Their hearing, tuned to the sound, seems to sharpen.
Even the faint sound of the plastic wrapping is not missed by them.
Anran’s heart sinks. She realizes that zombies can indeed evolve and is relieved that she has dealt with the small zombies in the blue light room in advance. At the same time, she feels anxious. As the survival crisis grows increasingly severe, how can she, alone with two children, manage to survive?
After a while, the zombies outside the metal door scatter as they lose their target. Driven by her maternal responsibility, Anran pulls herself together. She can’t afford to falter; her death would mean not just one life lost, but three!
Her heart races as she enters the blue light room with the fruit basket. This round trip doesn’t take much time. Doll and Chen Jiao’s son remain asleep. Between the blue light room and the metal door, there is a thin door with what seems like a long hallway in between. In this hallway, the sound of unwrapping the plastic bags cannot be heard by the zombies outside. Anran enters, leans against the door, and begins to unpack the fruit basket.
The fruit basket is large and filled with fresh fruits for the doctor from a patient’s family. It contains apples, pears, bananas, and a cantaloupe, along with scattered lychees, longans, avocados, and so on. Although these fruits are from different seasons, it doesn’t matter. With modern agriculture, it is easy to fill a fruit basket with fruits from various seasons.
Without washing her hands, Anran uses her dirty hands to select some fruits. Feeling hungry after so long, she decides to eat some fruit for a quick boost. She picks an avocado, peels it, and eats it.
One avocado isn’t enough, so she eats another. By the time she has eaten half of the second avocado, she feels full. Holding the remaining half of the avocado, Anran yawns, lies down on the ground, and falls asleep from exhaustion.
Outside the hospital, the night is marked by intermittent heavy rain. By around 6 p.m., the sky begins to brighten with a fish-belly white hue, gradually becoming brighter.