Sci-fic 1
Bai Xiaofei put a foot outside.
It was an empty corridor, with the doors of either side closed. There was no queer sound but a little bit heavy breaths of Bai Xiaofei owing to his nervousness. Not a sound was heard from the apartment building.
On the right hand was the door of the female neighbor.
It was half-open, and the floor was stained with some blood, of the footprints being dragged.
Bai Xiaofei reached for a tennis ball from his pocket. Then he bit the tongue tip which was hurt when he killed the Zombie Brother last night, only drawing some fresh blood. He spitted at the tennis ball with the blood and rolled the ball into behind the half-open next door, quietly.
Still not a sound was heard. If there were a Zombie Brother, it would have been attracted by the blood in the tennis ball. No sound meant no Zombie Brother.
Bai Xiaofei held the knife close to his chest and flashed into the door.
What came to his eyes was a corpse in the bed, a male one.
The dead man was in hand and feet cuffs cushioned by furs respectively on the two sides of the bed, with a whip, a candle, a vibrating egg, a clamp and the like.
Nerve as Bai Xiaofei he was, he could not help curling his mouth at this sight. "Screw you. Playing Sadism & Masochism, huh? "
No wonder the female neighbor finished her boyfriend so easily when she turned into a Zombie Brother. The guy was experiencing agony and joy at the same time. A deadly strike was made by the mutated girlfriend during the intercourse. With hands and feet tied up, he could barely struggle, not to mention fighting back.
"Dude, I do hope you will make some adjustment to your sexual lifestyle if there is an afterlife."
Bai Xiaofei checked the body. The genitals were gnawed, entirely. That might explain the scream at midnight. He got a deep hole in his chest. His ribs were broken and his viscera, such as the heart, spleen and stomach, were gone and presumably digested in the stomach of the Zombie Brother. The blood soaked in the whole sheet and the yet-to-clot blood was still flowing over the ceramic bricks, wetting the bottom of Bai Xiaofei's shoes.
Well, there was neither other wounds found, nor any mutations.
What a relief for Bai Xiaofei. Social hearsay and official announcement remained true to one fact that mutations did not produce chain reactions. Otherwise, the dead body would be a "dick-less" Zombie Brother.
Bai Xiaofei dropped the body, and searched closely every inch of the room for food. As expected, the Zombie Brother did had a bunch of snacks. Potato chips in original flavor, little biscuits with chopped green onion, peanuts, dried melon seeds, pastoral thin chips, egg rolls with cream, raspberry, salt-soaked grapes, and dried sliced peach. "Well, it was a supermarket rather than a home, if I may say so."
To his most excitement, Bai Xiaofei found several bottles of mineral water, some intact and others half empty and kept to the corners.
Bai Xiaofei checked the date of manufacture. All the water was bottled prior to the mutation of the Zombie Brother. Nowadays, even the mineral water was not without its safety concerns. For Bai Xiaofei had heard it before that some mineral water plants would fill in the bottle with tap water to save costs.
What if some wicked asshole bottled the tap water that was infected with the virus of Zombie Brother. Still, the mineral water bottled previously would be absolutely safe. Even the modification of the date of manufacture would be forward nor backward. There was no such thing like putting forward the date, as people would seek to prolong the warranty period.
More luckily, after his ass-lifting efforts, he managed to find a more powerful weapon than his fruit knife, a watermelon knife.
"Oh, my lord. Finally, I level up. I got rewarded with an equipment for slaying a monster. A watermelon knife is a standard configuration for street fights. It outweighs a fruit knife either in length or killing effects.
Bai Xiaofei was now holding a heap of food and water, with the watermelon knife mounted to his waist. He flashed back to his room, re-blocked the door and left him the private time when he could grab a large bite of the biscuits. He felt more than refreshing when the cool mineral water ran through his throat.
For an entire day, Bai Xiaofei confined himself to the room. In addition to eating, drinking and sleeping, he spent the whole day looking through the information on his computer. Then he drew a route on a crumpled tourism map of H City.
That was a route extending from Bai Xiaofei's apartment building to Wei's house on the other side of the city, one that ran through the larger half of the infected zones that had been officially recognized.
The route designed by Bai Xiaofei was not a straight line, but broken lines joined by another. He selected purposefully the scarcely trod tracks that were far away from the large residential areas, office buildings, bus lines and metro lines, so as to avoid the Zombie Brothers.
Despite the fact that Bai Xiaofei managed to slay a Zombie Brother, he knew it perfectly well that it was sheer accidental. Luck played a decisive role. And the confrontation with any other Zombie Brother would only render the watermelon knife useless.
His mission was to save Wei and not to court death.
News kept circulating online, hence the constantly modified route of Bai Xiaofei. It was not until 5 o'clock in the afternoon that he put a final touch to a relatively safe route.
There were some pieces of news that added to Bai Xiaofei's confidence in his adventure. Several troops of elite special forces had been assigned by the government in reinforcement to the regular armies, so as to boost the efforts of purging the Zombie Brothers. The gunshots still heard from outside the window indicated the tense struggle between the massive Zombie Brothers with the special forces. Meanwhile, there were several newly-explored helicopter evacuation points. And a large number of citizens had gathered in the evacuation points, ready for the getting out of H City under the protection of the army.
They were really pleasant to hear for Bai Xiaofei. Be it the special force or the massive citizens in their retreat, a large bunch of Zombie Brothers would be distracted and move to attack and go after them, which facilitated the secret action of Bai Xiaofei. Mean as it might sound, a saying put it right, "Let he die if he will and let me survive if I can". Bai Xiaofei was not a great hero to rescue the millions. He was just a pathetic loser with a sole attempt to save his girlfriend.
Half past 5 o'clock, the night fell.
Rumors had it online that Zombie Brothers had poor sights. So a dark night will be a lot safer.
Bai Xiaofei put on a brunet jumper, worn his glove, and painted the knife black with the ink of the pens lest the life-safeguarding watermelon knife should reflect the light. He put it onto his back as if fondly cherishing it.
He glimpsed at the blocking bed and writing desk behind the door and shook his head gently. Going downstairs would be the last resort. Given that he lived on the fifth floor, with there being 12 rooms on either side of the corridor, God would know how many Zombie Brothers were inside. It would only mean death if some Zombie Brother popped out and got he cornered in the aisles, if he chose to walk the stairs.
Bai Xiaofei opened the glass window and crawled out. On the right side there was this water pipe that ran to the height of the building. It was made of old-fashioned cast iron, not PVC materials. It was solid, indeed. Bai Xiaofei once locked himself outside the room and the house owner would not bother to open the door for him. On the impulse of anger, he climbed to the window with the help of the pipe and got himself inside.