Two people were clearly not enough to satisfy that cruel, disgusting horde of walkers.
Before long, they noticed us upstairs.
With mouths full of shredded flesh, they bared their teeth and let out greedy roars in our direction.
Those damn beasts that are never full!
Staring at those grotesque, nauseating faces, a sudden surge of fury welled up inside me.
It burned so hot that I began to tremble all over.
Suo Tian yanked Shen Feng and me back into the living room in one swift motion.
He let out a sharp "tsk" sound, clearly regretting that we hadn't hidden sooner—leading to us being spotted by the walkers outside.
Images of their rotting faces kept flashing through my mind—how they had just torn apart two living, breathing, thinking girls.
How many warm bodies had they shredded before that?
How many people, who were once striving to live their lives, had been devoured alive by them?
God knows how much I wanted to rush out and hack those demons into pieces!
Chop them straight to hell—never to be reborn!
Everyone in the living room must've heard the commotion just now, because they were all standing there, looking at each other in silence.
The atmosphere suddenly turned heavy again.
"Big brother, I'm hungry…" Rongrong, unaware of what had just happened, rubbed her sleepy little face and walked out of the room, her face still full of pillow marks.
Yangyang walked over and picked her up, whispering a few words into her ear.
Her once-confused expression instantly turned into one of fear.
She cautiously glanced at the front door.
Her tiny hands gripped tightly around Yangyang's neck.
Her lips quivered—on the verge of tears but too afraid to cry.
All she could do was look around at all of us with a pitiful expression.
Rongrong's sudden appearance cooled a lot of the rage I had been feeling.
In its place rose a deep sense of helplessness.
No matter how furious I was, no matter how much hate burned in me, I had to face the truth: against the endless horde of walkers outside, I was completely powerless.
The only thing I could do… was hide in this house.
Shen Xue and Mei Jing walked over and gently took her into their arms, carrying her back to the room to comfort her.
"How much longer can our food supply last?"
As soon as Rongrong returned to her room, Suo Tian immediately asked.
It was clear he wasn't like me—so emotionally driven.
Suo Tian knew that when necessary, you had to act immediately to solve the problem at hand, instead of just waging an internal war with your own emotions like I was.
"Conservatively, enough for a little over two months. If we ration, maybe even longer."
I answered absentmindedly.
The words those two women shouted before they died kept replaying in my head, each time hitting me hard.
"What about water?"
"A week. You know how much we use for cooking and drinking. But we still have five boxes of milk. If we're careful, we might stretch it to half a month."
"Last time, I brought back a few backpacks. Pack those supplies into them separately. We need to be ready to evacuate at any moment."
"Is that really necessary? They might not even be able to get in," Shen Feng asked.
"It's necessary! Did you not see what it looked like down there? Do you have any idea how many of those things there are? If they don't leave, how long do you think that broken gate downstairs will hold? Once they break into the yard, all we can do is wait to die."
Suo Tian spoke with a blank expression, as if none of this concerned him at all.
"But even if we pack everything now, the place is swarming with those things. We still can't get out," I said.
"When the front gate downstairs is about to give out, we'll jump from the second floor to the back of the building. I checked—it's connected to the next building by a narrow walkway, just wide enough for one person. We can use that to get around the horde."
I had to admit, Suo Tian had the calmest and sharpest mind out of all of us.
It was like he was made for surviving the apocalypse.
Honestly, the best decision I've ever made in my life was choosing to keep him with us back then.
"Alright, let's split up. Shen Feng, go tell Shen Xue and the others to pack up—just make sure you don't scare Rongrong. Suo Tian and I will head downstairs to check the situation."
Shen Feng nodded, told us to be careful, then went into the closed bedroom.
Now it was just Suo Tian and me left in the living room.
He glanced at me with a questioning look.
I raised a hand and patted my cheeks, trying to snap myself back to focus.
Then I smiled at him to show I was okay.
This wasn't the time to get sentimental.
First, we had to keep everyone alive.
Everything else could wait.
After quickly weighing the pros and cons in his mind, Suo Tian had already opened the door.
The two of us, weapons in hand, rushed down to the first floor.
Hearing the groans of the walkers up close was far more terrifying than from upstairs.
Right now, only a thin iron door separated us from them.
All the anger and frustration I'd felt earlier instantly vanished, replaced by an overwhelming sense of fear and dread.
My hand gripping the dagger trembled slightly without me even realizing it.
I forced myself to suppress the discomfort, biting down hard on my lip—the pain helped keep me grounded in reality.
Carefully, we moved toward the iron gate, not daring to make a single sound.
The noise from outside was deafening, making my head buzz.
We checked the base of the door thoroughly.
Good—so far it still looked solid.
Suo Tian then twisted another piece of wire around the latch bar for extra reinforcement.
On our way back upstairs, we also dragged the electric bikes that had been tossed aside earlier to block the stairwell entrance.
If the walkers broke in, this would barely serve as a second line of defense.
The second and third floors had already been opened last time by Li Jianguo and the others—who knows what method they used.
We went back down to the second floor again to make sure the narrow path Suo Tian mentioned was well-hidden and safe.
Suo Tian was extremely cautious.
To prevent any clueless walker from stumbling in over the next few days, he even found some bedsheets in the house, tied them together, secured them to the window frame, and slid down.
His movements were clean and efficient.
I found some cardboard boxes in the room and used the sheet rope to quietly lower them down.
He used the boxes to block off both entrances to the path.
Unless the walkers spotted "food," they typically wouldn't enter spaces that had visible obstacles—this was a conclusion I came to by combining scenes I'd seen in movies with our real-world observations.
After Suo Tian swiftly checked and confirmed that the escape route wouldn't be sealed off, he quickly climbed back up to the second floor.
For now, we didn't plan to abandon this shelter unless absolutely necessary.
Because once we left, it would be extremely difficult to find another suitable place in the next few days.
And during those days, whether we'd survive or not… was a complete unknown.
Also… your own home just feels a bit safer.
We rolled up the bedsheet rope and left it on the second floor—so that if we really had to run one day, it'd be ready to grab and use immediately.
Back on the fourth floor, almost the entire rest of the day passed in complete silence.
Everyone was busy with their own tasks.
Suo Tian and I went downstairs every so often to check the stability of the main door.
The others were packing supplies.
Rongrong sat off to the side, hugging a can of cola, watching them work with a serious expression—so mature for her age.
That night, all of us gathered in the living room.
The whole room was pitch black—we didn't dare turn on any lights.
In our current situation, turning on a light at night was as good as suicide.
It'd be like sending out a signal to every walker near and far: "There's fresh meat here."
Outside, the crowd of walkers was still bustling and restless.
They howled tirelessly, their cries hammering at all of our hearts.
Rongrong lay in Suo Tian's arms, nodding off to sleep.
Just like us, she hadn't said a word all day.
Yangyang was fiddling with the TV remote.
After glancing around at everyone, he spoke softly, "I think instead of just staying here, we should go out and find someplace safer."
"Someplace safer? You think that's easy to find?"
I leaned back against the couch, rubbing my pounding temples.
"But are we really going to live like this—day and night—too afraid to even rest?"
"If you're tired, go sleep. No one's stopping you."
I was in no mood to hear anyone speak such defeatist nonsense.
Yangyang had meant well, but after I snapped at him, he immediately got upset.
"Unbelievable," he muttered bitterly.
Tossing the remote onto the couch, he turned and stormed back to his room.
Beep—the TV turned on by accident.
Shen Feng bent down to pick up the remote and turn it off when—
"Shelters have been set up in every province and city. They are stocked with ample supplies and guarded by well-armed military forces.
Survivors—if you can still see this message, if you're reaching your limit—please come to the shelters as soon as possible.
We need everyone's help. This chaos… has already changed the world."
The sudden voice caught everyone's attention.
The TV… had a signal again?
On the screen, it was the same elderly man in military uniform from before—but his features looked much more aged, as if he had been worn down by exhaustion.
His face was full of fatigue.
He spoke just a few brief words.
Then, the broadcast switched to a satellite map, which carefully marked the exact locations of all the shelters across the country.
Those little red dots on the map probably represented the shelters.
I roughly counted—there had to be at least a dozen or two.
So satellites still worked.
I stared hard at the map.
Normally, I didn't even look at basic world maps.
Now, trying to understand this one? I had no clue what it meant.
"We will use every means possible to restore peace to this world."
The old man repeated these words over and over, his tone firm and unwavering.
Suo Tian quickly grabbed pen and paper, and began sketching out all the marked locations from the satellite image.
His expression was serious and focused.
No one spoke to interrupt him.
In the living room, the only sound was that of the pencil scratching against the paper—
a faint noise that subtly stirred the hearts of everyone present.