Chapter 38: They Evolve Quickly
Chapter 38: They Evolve Quickly
The chocolate box is tied with a ribbon, and a small card is attached to it. The card reads: “I know life is short; marry me, and let my brief life become rich and vast.”
It’s a marriage proposal card. The words have nothing to do with Anran, but for some reason, they make her eyes well up with tears. She feels a pang of emotion, as if she has witnessed a love story and seen a regret.
No wonder the nurse who received the chocolates would bring them to work. She must have been overjoyed to receive this box of chocolates and had sweetly awaited becoming someone’s bride. However, she never expected that before she could even eat the chocolates, the apocalypse would come.
So, what about the man who proposed? Did he become a zombie, or is he still waiting for his future bride?
Maybe neither; maybe he simply chose to turn around and run away.
Anran feels very sad. She continues down the restroom, passing through several doors, and eventually reaches the back door of the intensive care unit. She realizes that this seems to be a dedicated internal passage that might circle the neonatal department on the fifth floor.
There should be a door here that connects directly from the internal passage on the fifth floor to the safety stairs. Isn’t that how hospitals are usually designed? Various passages interconnect; even if they don’t connect to safety stairs, this passage must connect to another route down, as a precaution for emergencies like fires, to quickly relocate the babies. Anran just hasn’t found that door yet.
She doesn’t dare to venture further, afraid that if she goes too far, Doll and Chen Jiao’s son will start crying. So Anran turns back and, upon reaching the outside of the blue light room, finds a sliding door on the other side of the hallway. Inside the door is a fairly large compartment.
The compartment contains rows of cabinets, which hold clothes for the babies. On one wall of the compartment is a transparent wall, separated by a sky-blue curtain. Normally, when parents want to see their children, the nurse would bring the babies here so that the parents could have a look.
Anran pulls back the curtain and looks at the zombies wandering outside the transparent wall. She can’t help but tremble inside, unsure if it’s fear or satisfaction. She can see them, but they seem to be ignoring her.
Then, Anran observes the zombies in the neonatal department very carefully from behind the transparent wall. When she entered the neonatal department, there didn’t seem to be as many zombies with fangs, but now, there are many more fanged zombies than when she went out to grab the fruit basket.
They evolve quickly, but what causes their evolution? Do they need food like humans, or light and water like plants?
These questions can only be answered by someone smarter in the future. Anran is too simple-minded; she only wants to keep her two children alive.
Understanding her environment makes Anran feel a bit more at ease. She moves Doll and Chen Jiao’s son to the doctor-nurse restroom in the hallway. The two children can’t stay in the blue light room forever. Then, she removes the black cloth from their eyes and goes to the partition to find their little clothes, changing them into fresh clothes.
In early autumn in Xiang City, it’s getting a bit cold, but the hospital hasn’t lost power, and the central air conditioning is still running, so there is no need to dress too warmly here.