BC Chapter 9
by VolareAs for why Lu Ziming could guess, seeing the plastic bag full of daily necessities at her feet and the slippers on her feet, she knew. The bag even had the name of the 24-hour convenience store downstairs printed on it – Juxin Supermarket.
Lu Ziming was only stunned for a moment. Once she understood the situation, she ignored Duan Xiaomin, who was crying hysterically and staring at her blankly, and walked straight out the door.
The image of Duan Xiaomin as a capable and strong woman that she had built up in her mind completely collapsed. It turned out that her early departures and late returns were not because of work, but because she was staying at her boyfriend’s house? It was ridiculous. She thought she lived next door to a female powerhouse, but it turned out that she was just a weak woman with a tough exterior.
“Hey! You, stop!” The voice came from behind Lu Ziming. Lu Ziming was about to push the door open. She paused her hand for a moment but ignored the shout and continued to walk out the door. Her impression of Duan Xiaomin worsened – didn’t she know to use a better tone when asking for help? What ‘hey’?! Her name wasn’t ‘hey’!
“Hey, I’m talking to you, stop!” Seeing that Lu Ziming had no intention of paying attention to her, Duan Xiaomin became anxious. Her voice, filled with sobs, unconsciously rose several degrees as she shouted at Lu Ziming.
Tsk tsk, she was ordering people around. Did she really think she was still the darling of the company’s sales team, the boss’s precious treasure? Lu Ziming’s stubborn temper flared up. She didn’t care if you were male or female, old or young, or on the verge of death. What did it have to do with her? This wasn’t a game where you leveled up by taking a newbie through the levels to gain experience. She didn’t need to take a weak burden with her. She had only dealt with that man because she needed to enter her room to pack her survival tools. The woman’s pitiful state and life or death had nothing to do with her. She didn’t even know when she would die at the hands of those mutated zombies. Where would she find the mind to be a hero and rescue a beauty? Besides, she wasn’t a hero, and Duan Xiaomin wasn’t a damsel in distress waiting to be rescued.
For Lu Ziming now, the most urgent task was to figure out what percentage of the city’s population had been infected and mutated by the virus, which areas were unaffected, and where it was still safe.
The area where Lu Ziming lived belonged to the Wutong District of Qingshui City. Most of the people who lived here belonged to the middle class of the city, meaning people whose jobs were satisfactory and didn’t have to worry about their daily needs. However, there were also many young people like Lu Ziming who were used to living paycheck to paycheck. But these people were still different from the poor who pinched pennies to survive. Those poor people who were struggling on the poverty line lived in the Lutan District of Qingshui City, because it was close to the factory area designated during the planning of Qingshui City, and it was the place with the lowest land price in the entire city.
However, because of this, the population there gradually became dense. Many middle-class people saw the potential for profit and deliberately bought properties there for rent. The building where Lu Ziming lived was actually one of them. Although the property was located in Wutong District, it was infinitely close to the edge of Lutan District. Moreover, the building Lu Ziming rented was among the earliest batch of low-rent housing built, including the old buildings in Lutan District, so the balcony was built so carelessly.
But Lu Ziming didn’t care. What she valued was the low rent, the fact that she had her own independent space, and that a woman lived next door. That was all.
To the west of the building where Lu Ziming rented was Lutan District. It was densely populated, and if the unknown virus outbreak spread among the population, the consequences would be unimaginable. For Lu Ziming at this time, that was a dead end. What she had to do was stay far away from it. That’s right, she was not the culprit of the virus outbreak. She had no obligation to bear any responsibility. A large crowd would lead to riots. Even if countless people died or were injured, it was not something she should worry about at this moment. So, the route was to go all the way east from here. She couldn’t count on transportation anymore. Even if she could drive, there were no cars for her to drive. Public transportation was even more impossible for Lu Ziming to take. From now on, her route would be to bypass all densely populated areas while ensuring food and freshwater supplies, and head east, leave Qingshui City and go to Linfeng City on the east side, hoping that Linfeng City had not yet had any cases of virus infection.
The first thing to do was to withdraw money. She believed that although she had encountered such a thing, most people definitely didn’t know what was happening, so for now, money was still necessary.
That’s how the world was. The upper echelons cut off the flow of information at the first instance, under the guise of protecting the public, but in reality, they were disrespecting the public’s right to know. Like this time, except for that one reckless report in the morning that seemed like a corpse rising from the grave, no more news had been released. There might be some real-time breaking news on the internet, but the mainstream media had become blind and mute, which indirectly turned the uninformed public into fools.
Lu Ziming and her colleagues at the company were well aware of how shocking it would be if today’s events were revealed to the entire city’s population. This kind of news was indeed not suitable to be reported, but it seemed that at least 30 percent of the people had already witnessed the power of the zombies.
Could the news that living people were infected with the virus and turned into zombies still be covered up?
……
Lu Ziming got up from the down quilt, covered the mother and son who were not sleeping very peacefully, and then realized that the coat that she had dirtied and damaged by the zombies outside had been taken off and thrown into a distant corner by Dai Qianya.
She frowned unconsciously as she looked at the sleeping faces of the two, one large and one small. She had no intention of saving people, let alone escaping with two burdens. She knew her own situation best. Her agility was entirely due to her old hobby of rock climbing, but protecting the two of them from hordes of zombies was a pipe dream.
Lu Ziming might lack other things, but she never lacked self-awareness. She knew exactly how capable she was. The result of her escaping with Dai Qianya and her son would only be that all three of them would not survive. Unless… there was another person or two to help…
No, no, her original plan was to act alone. She couldn’t change her original intention just because Dai Qianya had taken care of her twice. Moreover, she hadn’t completely ignored the two people’s lives and deaths. Precisely because she was thinking of their safety, she couldn’t take them away casually. She didn’t have the ability to protect them. At least, she couldn’t harm them by sending them to their deaths with her. If they hid here and she went to find food twice more, it would be enough for them to survive here for a few days, and when someone came here to rescue them, they would be saved.
Yes, that was her original plan. It was the mother and son who insisted on sticking to her and seeking her protection. She had done everything she could, and there was nothing to feel guilty about.
Lu Ziming sighed unconsciously, turned away from the mother and son by the wall, and walked back to her backpack. As soon as Lu Ziming turned around, Dai Qianya, who had been sleeping with little Jin Shengzhe in her arms, slowly opened her eyes. Naturally, she had heard Lu Ziming’s almost inaudible sigh just now, and she could guess what Lu Ziming was thinking. She wasn’t stupid, on the contrary, she was very smart, which was why she had followed Lu Ziming, who remained calm and composed in the chaotic crowd, and sneaked into the warehouse of this building through the fire escape door on the third floor of the shopping mall.
She knew Lu Ziming’s worries and could roughly guess Lu Ziming’s decision. Originally, they were strangers to each other. In the end, Lu Ziming was the one who found this refuge. Now that she and her son could take refuge here, it was already thanks to Lu Ziming. Where did they have the right to protest?
No matter what decision Lu Ziming made later, she could only obey. This was the greatest gratitude she could express to Lu Ziming – to no longer be a burden to her.
In fact, Lu Ziming didn’t expect the virus infection to spread so quickly on the first day. When she took an elective course in pathology at university, she had learned some basic pathological knowledge, but she didn’t know much about the characteristics of various viruses. However, she knew that the basic principle was that virus infection required a medium. If a single virus did not have a medium to parasitize and rely on, it would be difficult for it to survive on its own. Once it had a medium and successfully parasitized and invaded, the speed of reproduction, proliferation, and devouring the host would be fast. But a medium was not easy to find, was it?
No, that wasn’t right. In this country, other things were hard to find, but there was definitely no shortage of people. The biggest medium for the virus outbreak now was the human body. As long as there was no shortage of people, there would never be a shortage of mediums. And it seemed that this virus had the same characteristics as the AIDS virus and could be cross-infected through blood.
Lu Ziming was still squatting next to her backpack when she finally understood this point. She belatedly patted her head – how stupid, why did she only understand this now.
There must be many people like Lu Ziming who had not yet understood the essence of the matter, but that didn’t prevent some people who were strong but not smart enough from showing off their machismo by fighting the zombies bravely. This was probably one of the reasons for the rapid spread of the virus. A graze was injury, and injury was zombification.
Thinking of this, Lu Ziming couldn’t help but feel a chill in her heart. Thinking about how she was able to escape unharmed from the encirclement of zombies yesterday – she should burn incense for her ancestors for that luck. Although she lost a coat, she got a life in return. No matter how she looked at it, she had made a great profit.