38: Chapter 38 Above the High-Rise

Zhao Yue remembered that day.

It wasn't the day the zombie outbreak began—that day had been too chaotic, with the streets full of screams and bloodstains, and he had only wanted to flee with his wife, remembering nothing else. What he remembered was the third day after the outbreak, when he stood in his own living room, holding a kitchen knife, watching Li Wanqing curled up in the corner.

She had been bitten.

The row of tooth marks on her left forearm had already turned black, and black veins were spreading from the wound toward her shoulder, digging into her skin like tree roots.

She was huddled in the corner, trembling all over, and her mouth emitted a low growl that didn't sound like something a human could make. Her eyes were still her eyes, but a layer of gray-white film had covered the area around her pupils.

Zhao Yue was not a combat-type ability user.

The ability he awakened was called "Flesh Growth." It sounded like some kind of powerful self-healing ability, but in reality, it was a joke. He could grow new flesh quickly after being injured, and that was it.

No attack power, no defensive power, no crowd control. While everyone else was awakening fire, ice, lightning, or strength enhancement, his ability felt like a malicious joke.

But at this moment, this useless ability came in handy.

Wanqing was hungry.

On the first night after she mutated, Zhao Yue heard her making sounds like a beast in the living room; what was squeezed out of her throat wasn't words, but a low, continuous roar.

He hid in the bedroom, locked the door, and listened to the sounds coming from outside, curling up in the corner of the bed like a frightened animal.

At three in the morning, the roaring stopped.

Zhao Yue thought she had left. He opened the bedroom door and saw Li Wanqing collapsed on the living room floor, her body curled into a ball, her fingers clawing bloody marks into the ground.

She had lost a lot of weight; after just two days without food, her cheekbones were already protruding. Her lips were cracked, and her skin was gray, like a corpse slowly dehydrating and drying out.

She opened her eyes and looked at him.

There was still something he recognized in those eyes—not the emptiness of someone who had completely turned into a zombie, but a look of seeking help, of begging, like a drowning person desperately clutching at the last straw.

"Wanqing?" Zhao Yue squatted down, his voice trembling.

Li Wanqing opened her mouth, and a very soft, short "Uh" came from her throat, then her gaze fell on his arm.

Her pupils contracted suddenly. Behind the gray-white film, those eyes stared fixedly at his arm, like a wolf that hadn't eaten for three days seeing meat.

Zhao Yue was so scared he fell to the floor, scrambling back into the bedroom and slamming the door shut with a bang.

He didn't come out again that night.

But he heard her sounds in the living room all night long—not roaring, but crying. Low, suppressed sobs that seemed to be squeezed from her chest, one after another, intermittent, lasting until dawn. His wife was crying.

After dawn, Zhao Yue opened the door.

Li Wanqing was still lying on the floor, her fingers no longer clawing at the ground, just lying there listlessly, like a ragdoll drained of all its strength.

Her eyes were half-closed, and a thin layer of frost had formed on her eyelashes—some kind of gray-white substance oozing from her body. Her lips were completely split open, revealing the blackened gums inside.

"Wanqing." Zhao Yue called her.

Her fingers moved once, just once, as if it were a final response.

Zhao Yue broke down, rushed into the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and cut a piece of flesh from his own left forearm.

It hurt! Not just ordinary pain, but the kind of pain that drills out from the bones. His ability, "Flesh Growth," started working the moment he cut the meat; pink new flesh grew from the edges of the wound, spreading outward at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The new flesh grew quickly, but the nerve endings hadn't healed yet. The open wound was exposed to the air, and every breath felt like someone was poking his bones with needles.

He trembled as he placed the piece of meat by Li Wanqing's mouth.

Her nostrils flared twice, then her mouth opened, took the meat in, and swallowed it.

Like drinking water, she swallowed the whole piece.

Then she became quiet; the roaring stopped, and the trembling ceased. The gray-white film in her eyes receded a little, revealing more of her brown pupils.

She looked at Zhao Yue, a trace of uneaten blood on the corner of her mouth, but she didn't lunge at him or bite him again. She just looked at him, as if asking: Are you okay?

Zhao Yue sat on the floor, the wound on his left forearm slowly healing as layers of new flesh covered it. He had lost a lot of blood, and his face was as pale as paper, but he was smiling.

Because when Wanqing looked at him, her eyes were alive.

From then on, Zhao Yue began his feeding.

Every day, he would cut a piece of meat to feed Li Wanqing. He cut his arms, his thighs, his abdomen. His ability allowed his flesh to grow continuously, but the growth speed couldn't keep up with the speed at which he cut.

He grew thinner and thinner, his weight dropping from seventy kilograms to forty. His ribs protruded one by one, his cheeks were sunken, and his eye sockets were hollow, looking like a walking skeleton, but he didn't care.

Li Wanqing's changes were obvious.

She no longer roared, no longer trembled, and no longer clawed randomly at the floor. She began to sit quietly, leaning against the corner, occasionally turning her head to see what Zhao Yue was doing.

Her skin no longer rotted and peeled like an ordinary zombie's but maintained a pale, almost transparent texture, like bleached silk.

Her features were still Li Wanqing's, only without the color of blood, like a statue carved from white jade.

Once, when Zhao Yue was cutting meat, he accidentally cut too deep and severed an artery; blood sprayed all over the floor.

Li Wanqing's pupils contracted sharply. She stood up from the corner. For the first time in a year, she stood up on her own, walked over to Zhao Yue, lowered her head, and licked the wound on his arm with her tongue.

Her saliva was cool and had a faint, fishy smell, but the hemostatic effect was surprisingly good. Under her licking, the wound stopped spraying blood and slowly clotted.

Zhao Yue looked up at her.

She looked down at his wound, her face expressionless, but her movements were very gentle, so gentle that it seemed as if she were afraid of hurting him.

That night, Zhao Yue brought her to a high-rise building in the City Center.

It wasn't because he wanted to hide; it was because he realized Wanqing's power was growing. Her strength was increasing, and her speed was getting faster. Sometimes, before he could even put down the knife after cutting the meat, she had already swallowed it.

She began to react to sounds from outside; distant gunshots, explosions, and the roars of zombies would make her restless. She was no longer content to stay quietly in the living room.

Zhao Yue chose a sixty-plus-story office building, welded the stairwell door shut from the inside, and sealed the windows with steel plates. He laid out quilts on the twenty-fifth floor, stacked mineral water, and brought up all the supplies he could. This became their home, and also her cage.

He did not weld all the windows shut.

He left a gap in the innermost window on the twenty-fifth floor, just enough for him to look out. Sometimes he would stand by the window, watching the city ruins in the distance.

A year ago, this was the City Center, with towering buildings and bustling traffic, where he and Wanqing had first met at the coffee shop on the street corner. Now, there was only a gray-white silence, where even the wind couldn't be bothered to blow.

Li Wanqing was curled up on the quilt behind him, as quiet as a cat.

She had never attacked him, never once. In the past year, she had eaten hundreds of pieces of his flesh, drooled hundreds of times, and been restless hundreds of times, but she had never bitten him. She just looked at him with those gray-white eyes, waited, and then calmed down.

Sometimes, Zhao Yue wondered if she still remembered him.

Not the kind of remembering that meant "this person feeds me meat," but the kind that meant "this person is my husband." He didn't know the answer. But he noticed that whenever she became restless, if he called out "Wanqing," she would slowly calm down. Not immediately, but she would.

"Wanqing." He called her.

She moved, sat up from the quilt, turned her head, and looked at him with those gray-white eyes.

Zhao Yue walked over, sat beside her, and reached out to wrap his arm around her shoulders. Her body was cold, like a block of ice, but she didn't push him away; instead, she leaned her head on his shoulder.

Zhao Yue closed his eyes.

Outside the window, in the distant ruins, people were fighting. Gunshots, explosions, and the roars of zombies drifted over intermittently. More people had come; more people wanted to rush into the City Center.

They would all die, Zhao Yue thought. The City Center was no place for humans to survive.

He hugged Li Wanqing tighter.

Her fingers curled slightly, her nails brushing against his arm, then she immediately pulled back, as if afraid of scratching him.

Zhao Yue smiled.

"It's okay," he said. "It doesn't hurt."