Because the walker had its back turned, Han Xue suddenly let out a shout—who knows where she got that burst of strength from—and before it could react, she rushed forward and kicked it hard in the back.
The blow sent it crashing face-first to the ground, almost knocking me over as well since I was right in front of it.
I staggered back two steps, then the moment it hit the floor, I rushed up and stomped down hard.
Flesh and gore splattered instantly.
I stomped it a few more times until it finally stopped moving completely.
After confirming both walkers on the ground were finished, I let out a long breath and gave everyone a victory sign.
“See? It’s not that hard. Let’s keep it up.”
Then I paused and said to Han Xue, “Tough girl—next time, watch it. Don’t take me down with them.”
Han Xue gave me an apologetic gesture, then turned around and repeated the process with the others.
This time, they misjudged it—four walkers rushed in at once.
But after the first fight, everyone’s morale had shot up.
After I knocked down two with my bat, Lili and Taozi stepped in and smashed their heads with the book-clubs.
When that wasn’t enough, they gritted their teeth and copied me, stomping down hard until the skulls were crushed.
It took some effort, but all four were taken care of without any real danger.
It turns out people really can get carried away in a fight.
When the third batch of three walkers was let in, I didn’t even need to step in—Taozi, Han Xue, and the “handsome guy,” who had been waiting behind the door, each kicked one down from behind.
Then Sister Hua, Zhang Ting, and Lili rushed in to smash their heads.
Zhang Ting didn’t seem to have enough strength—after hitting it a few times, the walker on the ground actually twitched and sat back up.
I was just about to step in when Chen Jiaojiao suddenly rushed forward.
In two quick steps, she grabbed the walker by the hair and yanked it down so hard she nearly tore off half its scalp.
The walker collapsed back onto the ground, and before Zhang Ting could react, Chen Jiaojiao stepped forward and stomped down hard.
The walker immediately went still.
…
That sudden move stunned all of us. We looked at each other, then Chen Jiaojiao wiped her shoe—smeared with brain matter—against the ground and glanced at me. “Like that?”
I nodded, unable to stop myself from giving her a thumbs-up.
“Girl… you’re the real man here.”
After that, we worked together smoothly.
People are like this—when they haven’t faced something before, they come up with countless excuses to avoid it, convinced they can’t handle it.
But when they’re forced to face it, they realize it’s not as impossible as they imagined.
As long as there’s a way out, people tend to rely on it too much.
It’s a common flaw—call it a lack of drive, even if that term doesn’t quite fit the situation.
By the time more than a dozen walkers lay dead in the room, only a few scattered growls remained outside.
I signaled to everyone, and the cabinet was pushed aside.
I yanked the door open, and the few walkers pressed against it immediately stumbled in.
There were only five or six left.
With one swing, I knocked down two standing side by side.
The handsome guy smashed one’s head with his stone, while Lili stepped in to finish the other.
Chen Jiaojiao and the others were still hesitant to face them head-on, so I took the lead, knocking them down, while they followed up to finish them off.
After a chaotic fight, when the last walker finally went still, the entire sixth floor fell silent again.
We didn’t dare waste time.
I gestured to everyone and rushed out first.
As I ran past, I glanced at the neighboring room—the door was still tightly shut.
There were still four people inside…
After a moment’s thought, I called out in a low voice, “We’re leaving. If you want to come, come now.”
Aside from the handsome guy, no one understood why I suddenly said that—they didn’t know about the people in the next room.
When we passed the fifth floor, I paid special attention.
In the distance, I saw a few walkers wandering around, but no sign of the security guard.
On the floor lay the mutilated body of a young girl—only a few years old—so badly torn apart it was almost unrecognizable.
The guard had rushed out so recklessly when he heard that scream… could that child have been his?
There was no time to think.
At the escalator leading to the fourth floor, we ran into two walkers staggering up.
I knocked them back down with a swing, and we rushed down the adjacent escalator.
When we reached the fourth floor, the two walkers had already gotten back up.
We knocked them down again, and Lili and Taozi each stepped forward and stomped their heads to pieces.
The mall on the fourth floor was locked.
Sister Hua led us to a small office in the corner and found the key to open the main entrance.
Large malls like this rarely have solid doors—and even when they do, they’re almost always glass.
After we got inside and locked the door, we didn’t stay near the entrance, worried that passing walkers might spot us.
We quickly swept through the entire mall to make sure it was safe, then found a row of shelves that blocked the outside view and collapsed onto the floor, gasping for breath.
Sister Hua grabbed a few bottles of mineral water from the shelves and handed them out.
After gulping down a big mouthful, I felt a bit better—after all that chaos, sweating it out actually made my head feel less heavy.
After resting a bit longer, I looked around and, based on what I’d seen earlier, headed toward the kitchenware section.
There were kitchen knives there.
I grabbed one for each of us and brought them back to where everyone was resting.
The mall was full of snacks—Taozi gathered a bunch and munched away happily.
The rest of us, still sickened by the blood and brain matter on us, couldn’t bring ourselves to eat.
We just watched Taozi with a mix of admiration and disbelief.
After handing out the knives, I found some paper and a pen and asked Sister Hua—who knew the mall layout well—to describe all the possible routes.
She gave a rough overview: where the emergency stairwells were, where the storage rooms were.
When she mentioned a warehouse on the first floor, she suddenly slapped her thigh and said, “There’s a small side door inside that warehouse in the corner. If we go through it, we can get into the courtyard behind the mall. The east wall of the courtyard leads out to an open area—we can escape from there.”
“But we don’t know how many walkers are on the first floor,” Taozi said.
“That’s fine. I’ll go down and scout it out after I rest a bit,” I replied.
Just as I finished speaking, there was a sudden, violent banging at the main door.
Everyone jumped in shock and grabbed their knives.
I signaled them to stay quiet and peeked through the shelves toward the entrance.
Not a walker…
It was a middle-aged woman, covered in blood, wearing a sales clerk uniform like Sister Hua’s.
Through the glass door, we could only vaguely hear her shouting in a shrill voice as she frantically pounded on the door.
“She’s alive,” I said, just as Sister Hua peeked out and exclaimed, “Second Sister-in-law?!”
She immediately ran toward the door, and we rushed after her.
Just as she reached for the door to open it, I grabbed her arm.
“What are you doing? That’s my second brother’s wife—we have to let her in!”
Outside, the woman saw Sister Hua and collapsed halfway to the ground, pressing herself against the door, pounding on it and screaming for help.
I glanced at the chunk of flesh missing from her shoulder and arm, blood still pouring out, and said, “She’s been bitten.”
Sister Hua froze, finally noticing the wound.
The hand she’d been about to use to open the door slowly withdrew.
Seeing this, the woman outside began pounding even harder, her screams turning raw and desperate—pure howling now.
Maybe it was anger that we wouldn’t save her.
The sound was sharp and piercing.
“What do we do, Chen Yang? If she keeps screaming like that, she’ll draw all the walkers in the building,” Han Xue said, frowning—there was pity in her eyes, but more concern for our own safety.
“Can you stop yelling?!” Taozi snapped, getting irritated.
But the woman didn’t stop.
She just kept screaming at the top of her lungs, venting everything in raw, desperate noise.
Realizing we wouldn’t open the door, she gave up pounding and just sat there, screaming.
I clenched my jaw tightly.
Looking up, I saw several walkers from the fifth floor already staggering toward the escalator, drifting in our direction.
The others noticed too.
Even Zhang Ting spoke up nervously, “What do we do? They’re coming.”
Seeing the walkers approach, the woman outside grew even more frantic.
Her will to survive, which had been fading, suddenly surged.
She sprang to her feet and began slamming herself against the door, banging so hard the glass shook violently.
Glancing at the walkers almost down the stairs, I stepped forward and opened the door.
The moment I did, the woman froze—her screaming and pounding stopped as she stared at me in shock.
I didn’t pay her any attention.
The moment the door opened, I rushed out.
Letting her in had never been my intention.
Han Xue and the others followed me out, charging straight at the approaching walkers.
If we didn’t deal with them now, even if they tore that screaming woman apart, their roars would only draw in even more walkers.
— The end of the Chapter–
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