Forecasting Natural Disasters for Novel Natives - Chapter 20 Part 2

Chapter 20: The Zombie World Part 2

Crash—

The sound of breaking glass came from the volunteer base.

Tan Feng’s eyes snapped open. He sat up on the bed.

Just like his previous life, everything went black, and he knew nothing.

Checking the time, he had been unconscious for four minutes.

Bang! Bang!

He went to the window and looked. The man opposite had turned into a zombie, bashing its head against the glass.

Thump! Thump thump!

He looked up. The person upstairs must have turned too. Normal people wouldn’t make that noise.

His phone kept vibrating. He opened it. The group chat was already counting off. He added his name to the list and sent a voice message: “Room 8, 3rd Floor, Tan Feng, alive.”

The list grew rapidly. Soon, the group admin sent a voice message: “Comrades, so glad you’re alive. Based on current reports, Room 4 and 11 on 1st floor, Room 15 on 2nd floor, Room 7 on 3rd floor… Room 8 on 4th floor… these nine rooms haven’t checked in. Probably… unfortunately…”

“Others, carefully come out of your rooms. Be extra careful when passing these rooms. Don’t approach windows. We’ll assemble at the entrance courtyard.”

Tan Feng opened his instrument case, took out the short blade to hold in his hand, and strapped the long blade to his back.

He cracked the door open and tossed something out to make noise, then waited. No sounds came from outside.

Only then did he emerge.

Other people also came out of their rooms.

Each floor had 20 rooms for 20 people. The third floor had three rooms that didn’t respond, leaving 17 people.

When the 17 emerged, the hallway suddenly felt crowded.

Everyone looked at each other with lingering fear and barely contained excitement.

Alive! They were all still alive! Who could understand this feeling of survival?

Xiao Min approached, looking at Tan Feng happily: “I said you had protagonist’s luck—sure enough, nothing happened to you. I’m fine too, haha. I wrote that farewell letter for nothing.”

An old woman nearby patted her. “How can you say you wrote it for nothing? You can’t talk like that!”

Xiao Min scratched her head. “I’m just happy to be alive—it’s wonderful.”

She looked toward Room 7, where the zombie inside became very agitated seeing so many people in the hallway, accelerating its window-slamming.

“That’s a zombie?” Everyone looked at it fearfully, feeling horrified, both terrified and regretful. “Such a nice young man, and in an instant he became like this—too frightening.”

“What the Sky Screen said was true. Fortunately we isolated ourselves, or we might be in grave danger now.”

“We really must thank the Sky Screen.”

“What should we do now?”

The old woman, being the most senior, said, “Let’s go downstairs first, then decide.”

Everyone headed downstairs, carefully hugging the opposite wall when passing rooms with zombies, quickly darting past while rubbing their arms, getting goosebumps.

This was truly terrifying.

Tan Feng walked at the back. Looking at the zombie in the room, he saw the window shaking violently under its impacts. This dormitory had been empty for a long time—the windows didn’t look very sturdy.

They should really kill these zombies, or they’d be a disaster waiting to happen.

But while the country allowed killing zombies, it required at least two people present with full video recording, or there would be trouble.

While thinking this, he suddenly realized something—the sound of breaking glass he’d heard when waking up, where had it come from?

At that moment, on the second floor, people had also emerged from their rooms.

Since only Room 15 on the second floor hadn’t responded and everyone else was fine, people were relatively relaxed.

Room 15 was at the end of the hallway, and the stairway was also there, making it everyone’s necessary route.

Some people nervously hurried downstairs, while others couldn’t resist taking a peek at Room 15 before descending.

“Did the person inside really become a zombie?”

“It’s true, I saw it myself,” said the person from Room 16 across. “Earlier they smashed right through the window glass—terrifying.”

A bold male student approached: “What do zombies look like? Are they really like in the Sky Screen? Eh? Where is it?”

He leaned closer to the broken window.

“Be careful,” others warned.

“It’s fine…” the male student said, leaning closer. Suddenly a corpse-face burst from the glass window. The student screamed as a hand shot out, grabbing his face, sharp fingernails digging deep into his flesh.

“Ahh! Ahhhhh!” The male student screamed frantically.

Others were instantly terrified, crawling and rolling down the stairs without looking back, or running to the other end of the hallway and slamming doors shut behind them.

“Ahhhhhhhhh!” The student exploded with the greatest strength of his life, struggling backwards frantically. The zombie gripped him tightly, fingernails even hooking his facial bones, using this leverage to drag itself out of the window.

The zombie crashed to the floor and bit off a piece of the student’s face, chewing while turning toward others: “Roar!”

The third-floor people were coming down just then, only a few meters from the zombie.

When the student started screaming, those in front wanted to turn back, but with people behind them, they couldn’t move quickly.

Unable to retreat, the front people rushed downstairs.

Those in front rushed down while those behind desperately squeezed upstairs.

“It’s a zombie!”

“Run!”

“Go back!”

Faced with two paths, the zombie chose—stairs up led to a group of terrified people, stairs down led to fleeing backs.

Perhaps not yet adept at climbing stairs, the zombie chose to pounce downward.

“Roar——” The zombie lunged, tackling someone and tumbling together to the landing between second and first floors.

“Ahhhhhhh——”

Chaos erupted in the stairwell.

Tan Feng arrived just then. Third-floor people were fleeing upward in panic, with fourth-floor people crowding the stairway entrance, delaying him momentarily.

Seeing the zombie attacking from above, he vaulted over the stair railing above everyone’s heads, landing behind the zombie in two bounds.

Drawing his blade, he severed the zombie’s head with one strike.

The zombie’s head flew off, rolling down to the first floor.

Everyone screamed hysterically like terrified sheep.

Tan Feng looked down at the person who’d been bitten and paused.

It was Xiao Min.

Blood gushed from her neck. She lay in a pool of blood, and her lower eyelids and lips were visibly turning blue.

“Kh, khhh… s-save… me…”

She spoke with difficulty, blood continuously flowing from her mouth.

People upstairs cautiously poked their heads out. People downstairs also looked up nervously.

“Ah, it’s Xiao Min! Poor child!”

Everyone generally had a good impression of Xiao Min.

The older woman pushed through from upstairs. “Xiao Min! Oh my God, Xiao Min!”

She tried to touch Xiao Min, but Tan Feng raised his blade to block her. “Don’t touch her blood.”

The older woman froze completely, only able to watch Xiao Min while tears streamed down: “How could this happen? She was just fine… It’s my fault. If only we’d come down later!”

She helplessly sought Tan Feng’s help: “What do we do now? Is there any way to save her?”

Tan Feng said nothing.

Someone asked fearfully, “People bitten by zombies turn into zombies. Is she going to become one?”

“Should we tie her up?”

Tan Feng looked at Xiao Min. Her complexion was already turning blue.

He said, “No need.”

Xiao Min’s body began trembling. “Am I… going to… die?”

The older woman sobbed.

Xiao Min opened her mouth:. “My… volunteer… hours…”

Such a shame—all that accumulated time wasted.

She looked at Tan Feng. “Kill… me…”

She didn’t want to become a monster. Didn’t want to die looking so hideous. She feared that if she became a ghost, she’d be ugly too.

She hoped that in life’s final moment, she’d still be a normal person.

But Tan Feng only looked at her, then looked away.

If this were his previous life, he could have given her a quick end. But now, he couldn’t kill a living person who still had consciousness and rationality.

Xiao Min opened her mouth, wanting to say more, but her gaze began to scatter and her body convulsed.

Everyone stepped back in unison, watching this scene in terror.

Tan Feng said, “Big Sister.”

The older woman stood dazed. “What?”

“Open your phone. Record this.”

The woman paused, understood, and opened her phone with shaking hands.

Soon, Xiao Min fully zombified, roaring as she opened her mouth. Tan Feng raised his blade and thrust it down.

“URGH!”

Someone vomited.

Someone screamed.

Someone’s legs went weak.

Zombies! This was a zombie!

One second a living person—the next moment transformed into a zombie, and they could only watch helplessly as it happened.

Even though they’d seen many terrible scenes on the Sky Screen, when it actually happened before their eyes, it exceeded imagination.

Too terrifying. It was truly too terrifying!

If earlier, seeing zombies locked in rooms, they’d felt no real sense of it, now they finally understood what the apocalypse’s arrival meant.

A feeling cold to the bone, as if falling into a bottomless ice cellar, filled with despair and cruelty.

Xiao Min’s disfigured and horrifying face seemed to silently tell them—Welcome to the cruel apocalypse.

Everyone stood in a daze when suddenly they shouted loudly: “Behind you! Behind!”

Tan Feng pulled out his blade, turned around. A zombie with a mangled face staggered out from the second floor. He walked upstairs step by step and calmly swung his blade.

*

Not long after, two security officers arrived at the volunteer base. Working together with Tan Feng’s help, they quickly eliminated the zombies in the rooms.

The two officers looked at Tan Feng with admiration. “Brother, you’ve got good skills. Interested in joining us to fight zombies together?”

Tan Feng asked, “What’s the situation in the city now?”

One officer’s expression turned grave. “Not good. Though everyone isolated as much as possible, just like the accident here, many other places had problems too. I heard one industrial area—somehow many people got bitten, and now it’s full of zombies.”

The other officer added, “And many citizens—we told them not to open doors if they noticed family members acting strange, but many couldn’t resist checking and got bitten. Others had zombies appear at home and fled recklessly, releasing the zombies too. Some people got scratched and didn’t even realize it, stayed with others, and then…”

“That’s just the city situation. We still don’t know what’s happening in the towns and villages below.”

As they spoke, a helicopter passed overhead, followed by several drones.

“Look, that’s heading to fight fires. We’re desperately short-handed. We really need more people to join us.”

His phone rang. After answering, he said, “Zombies are trying to escape from the isolation point at Starlight Cinema. We need to head there now. You coming?”

Tan Feng nodded: “I’ll come. I’m joining.”

Only by joining them could he legitimately kill zombies, and experiencing more life-and-death crises would help trigger ability awakening.

Both officers looked pleased. “Get in the car. We’ll explain some precautions on the way.”

Tan Feng said goodbye to the older woman and got in the police car.

Watching the police car leave, people’s expressions were complex.

In such a short time, some had died forever, while others had already adjusted and thrown themselves into this brand new world.

And these people were still in a state of shock.

The older woman took a deep breath and said to the others, “Put on the raincoats and gloves we prepared. Let’s drag out the zombies. The corpse transport vehicle will be here soon—bodies need to be incinerated as quickly as possible.”

Unless absolutely necessary, burning zombie corpses on-site wasn’t recommended, out of concern that the smoke might carry something harmful.

Everyone’s faces went pale. They strongly resisted this work.

The older woman said, “We need to learn to adapt to this world. If we don’t even dare move corpses, what will we do when we encounter zombies ourselves? You heard just now—the situation isn’t good. Zombies have escaped and are hiding somewhere unknown.

“You can leave our volunteer team if you want, but if you stay, we all need to pull together.”

Leave? Right now, if they left, they wouldn’t know where to go or how to survive. Being alone would be even more dangerous.

But staying with the group—having just faced life and death together, they’d formed a kind of bond. Whatever happened, they could face it together. When danger struck, like just now, one phone call brought security officers to handle it.

So after a brief hesitation, people put on raincoats and went upstairs to drag down the zombies.

The older woman went to collect the belongings and farewell letters of the eleven deceased.

When she got to Xiao Min’s things, she couldn’t help choking up. This child had already survived the initial danger, but who knew…

Those selected to become zombies—that was bad luck, and no one could do anything about it. But Xiao Min had not needed to die. Such regret made the heart ache even more.

The woman deeply regretted it. Why had she said “let’s go downstairs”?

If only they’d gone down later—just half a minute or a minute later—everything would have been completely different.

This was something she could never forgive herself for.

But she discovered that the recipient on Xiao Min’s farewell letter was actually her own name.

Everyone else’s recipient was a family member’s name with an address. But Xiao Min had written her name, with no address.

The woman’s heart skipped a beat. Slowly she opened the envelope.

The first line read:

[Application to exchange volunteer hours for resurrection time]

After a large blank space, at the very bottom appeared another line:

[If not possible, then forget it]

The woman burst out laughing through her tears.

There was content on the second page:

[Sister Han, I lied to you. My family members have all passed away. No one is waiting for me to return. Originally I thought if I could survive this time, with my volunteer hours and the small contributions I made, I should be able to establish roots in Yongcheng and get a good job assignment later. Now it seems that won’t happen.

Thank you for taking care of me these past two days. I still have some savings in my card—I don’t know if this money will still be money in the future, but if it can be used, please donate it. Also, if you have the chance to meet my faculty advisor, please tell her thank you for all her care these past years. This volunteer work she introduced me to was really quite good. It’s just my luck that was bad.

I hope everyone who survives can live well.

After all, your today is the tomorrow I could never hope for.

—Xiao Min’s final words]

Sister Han pressed the letter to her chest, leaned against the table, and slowly collapsed to the floor, sobbing aloud.