BC Chapter 30

Lu Ziming and Zhou Yuanyuan climbed up the tree a few branches higher, until they were basically hidden in the newly grown branches and leaves, for fear of being noticed by individual zombies with better eyesight.

The green off-road vehicle that had just sped past attracted the attention of the two on the tree. Because their height in the tree allowed them to see over the surrounding wall, they took the opportunity to look through the transparent windows of the off-road vehicle and clearly saw the figures inside.

There were two men and one woman. The woman had a long ponytail and seemed to have dyed her hair. The two men were sitting in the front passenger and driver seats, and the woman was in the back.

Watching the off-road vehicle drive past, heading towards the route Lu Ziming and Zhou Yuanyuan had planned, the two on the tree felt very complicated. Seeing their carefully laid plan being easily achieved by others, and the free ride happening right under their noses, it would be a lie to say they weren’t feeling frustrated.

The opportunity to escape safely had been so close, yet they could only hide in place, watching it fly away.

Stopping the car was simply unrealistic. Seeing how fast the off-road vehicle was driving, it was clear they had no intention of stopping. Looking at the zombies approaching behind the off-road vehicle in fits and starts, stopping the car for even a moment might not bring five people the chance to escape the city alive, but more likely the cruel reality of being trapped and killed by the sea of zombies.

Lu Ziming and Zhou Yuanyuan sat on the branches with their respective bags, neither of them speaking. Their eyes unconsciously turned to the zombies constantly passing by on the street.

It had been so many days since the zombie crisis broke out, and this was the first time Lu Ziming had observed a large number of zombies so directly and discreetly.

Those following the off-road vehicle were undoubtedly the zombies that had been young people. They moved quickly, and perhaps because many days had passed, their movements were no longer as difficult and sluggish as at the beginning. Many were approaching the running posture of normal people. A small number of the stronger ones ran like mentally ill lunatics, most with their mouths open and ferocious expressions, a few with their tongues hanging out, dripping secretions of unknown color. But these zombies ran even faster than ordinary people, so they were at the forefront of the zombie horde.

Following these super-speed zombies were zombies running at a speed close to that of normal people, and further behind were some jogging, thin zombies and some zombies that had been teenagers. Bringing up the rear of the entire zombie horde, staggering along, were the slowest-moving elderly zombies and zombies that had been sick or disabled.

From time to time, fragile individuals would be knocked down on the street by the main force, and then zombies would step on them without even looking. Before long, those on the ground would be crushed and eliminated by the zombie horde themselves.

After watching for a while, Lu Ziming gained a better understanding of the current zombies. If classified by speed, zombies could be divided into four categories: super-speed, normal, weak-speed, and slow-speed. Currently, the smallest number in the zombie population were the super-speed zombies, with fewer than ten appearing in about a thousand zombies. That is to say, a group of a hundred zombies might not even have a single super-speed zombie, but if the number of zombies rose to two or three hundred, there would be a high probability of a special super-speed zombie appearing.

The number of normal zombies was also not large, with about one hundred out of every thousand, which is close to a ten percent probability. The vast majority of the rest were weak-speed and slow-speed zombies, which were less of a threat. These zombies were slow-moving and relatively thin, so as long as their weak spots were targeted, they were relatively easy to deal with.

However, if only looking at the zombie horde that had been attracted and gathered by the off-road vehicle in front of them, Lu Ziming estimated that there must be at least a thousand zombies on the street.

Not to mention dealing with them, just looking at them made one feel cold all over and utterly hopeless.

Lu Ziming waved to Zhou Yuanyuan. The two brought their heads closer in front of the tree trunk, and Lu Ziming told Zhou Yuanyuan the conclusions she had come up with in her mind, and asked if Zhou Yuanyuan had noticed anything else.

“According to what you said, from my observation, those so-called super-speed zombies are not only faster than normal people in terms of speed, but also have more strength. Whenever they pass through the slower zombies, they usually grab the slow zombies’ clothes and throw them aside. That pulling force is not something ordinary people can exert.” Zhou Yuanyuan said to Lu Ziming while holding onto the tree trunk and turning her head to stare at the zombie horde still heading west on the street.

Zhou Yuanyuan was different from Lu Ziming. She had been obsessed with games since she was a child, and she was very talented. Whether it was operation-based games or plot-based games, she could roughly figure out the entire routine of the game in a very short period of time. Despite her current appearance as a rebellious girl, she was once a top student in her grade, but after her adolescence, her family also underwent changes, which greatly changed her personality.

So, while Lu Ziming was preoccupied with analyzing the zombie horde below, Zhou Yuanyuan’s mind, while also watching the street below, was not idle either. She had also played survival games in the past, which is why she had told Lu Ziming earlier that scissors and hand-cranked flashlights should be useful. Moreover, games and movies have plots about viruses mutating after combining with different species. Just like the avian flu that people often come into contact with, the virus structure experienced during this period and the next period is likely to be inconsistent, because viruses will evolve. So she guessed that the appearance of those super-speed zombies was caused by the virus mutating. After all, at the beginning, there were no such terrifying zombies on the street.

“And… I have a bad guess…” Zhou Yuanyuan withdrew her gaze from the zombies on the street, swallowed, her tone somewhat hesitant, and her eyes flickering, “I… I seem to be infected with the virus…”

When Lu Ziming heard this, her heart shook, and she suddenly turned her head to look at Zhou Yuanyuan on the tree trunk, her eyes full of unbelievable surprise. She subconsciously looked at the parts of her body that were exposed. But after calming herself down, she remembered that Zhou Yuanyuan was unlikely to have been injured by a zombie. If she had been injured, it was impossible that she wouldn’t have mutated into a zombie by this time, so she felt a little relieved.

Seeing Lu Ziming begin to examine her whole body, Zhou Yuanyuan blushed uncomfortably for a moment and said, “I’m not talking about the kind of infection from being injured by a zombie.”