It didn’t matter if you didn’t know the Thunder Squad. Now that you had joined the number one squad of the apocalypse, anyone who didn’t get along with them automatically became an enemy of the zombies.
Drawing on the boldness she had learned from Ye Hui, Qin Zhen grandly prepared to rescue the other party—and humiliate them with her superior strength.
It was a fine plan. Unfortunately, she ran into trouble the moment she stepped outside.
The central hospital wasn’t especially far from the place where they were staying. By car, it would take only about three hours. Unfortunately, there were no sanitation workers anymore, and the snow on the roads had gone uncleared, piling up into a thick layer. There was no way a car could get through.
Qin Zhen had gone to the trouble of putting on heavy makeup. Dressed in a black coat, knee-high leather boots, and a pair of oversized sunglasses, she looked incredibly cool as she led the way.
She made it less than twenty meters before a branch hidden beneath the snow caught her foot. She tripped and plunged headfirst into a snowdrift.
As luck would have it, a zombie was buried beneath the snow. It wriggled as it tried to crawl out and eat her.
“Zombie Sis is hungry?” Fu Qi dispatched the zombie with a single slash, then bent down to help her up. “Even if you’re hungry, you can’t eat zombies. Zombies are full of viruses. You’ll mutate if you eat one. You’ll turn into some ugly thing with a crooked mouth and nose, and then you won’t be able to call yourself Xi Ye Feixue anymore.”
“…”
Qin Zhen punched him in return.
Fu Qi hissed. “That punch was really heavy.”
He deserved it.
After composing himself, he helped Qin Zhen retrieve her sunglasses, which had flown off, and put them back on her face. “This won’t do. It’s too dangerous.”
It was cold, and the weather wasn’t suitable for staying outdoors for long periods. The snow was also too deep. It would be fine if there were only branches buried underneath it, but what if she accidentally stepped on a zombie’s head? The meal would be delivered straight into its mouth.
“Dead weight!” Zombie Sis shouted.
When he was traveling with her, Fu Qi really had become dead weight.
Not wanting to hold Zombie Sis back, Fu Qi went around the village and found some wooden boards and bamboo strips. With them, he made a simple pair of skis.
After testing them out in the yard, he found that they worked quite well. They were fast, too, and perfectly suited for the wilderness buried beneath the heavy snow.
More importantly, they were cool and stylish.
The zombie wanted them badly!
Unfortunately, the zombie didn’t know how to ski.
She felt not the slightest bit guilty about it. Instead, she clenched her fists and glared at Fu Qi, waiting for him to say those two words she had taught him.
Fu Qi raised his hands in surrender, making it clear that he absolutely would not say those two words. He even took the initiative to make Qin Zhen a pair of skis and supported her as he taught her little by little.
Now that she had something fun to do, the zombie was in a good mood. Holding on to Fu Qi’s arm, she practiced while asking, “Sweetie, how do you know how to do everything?”
He could identify human remains, infer the circumstances of a tomb’s owner from the objects arranged inside, operate a hang glider, fight, shoot with remarkable accuracy, make skis, and even repair vehicles when one broke down.
“Can’t be helped,” Fu Qi said. “Before the apocalypse, competition in human society was so fierce that you had to work seven jobs a day just to survive. I was a hang-gliding instructor as well as a martial arts instructor. At night, I worked at an auto repair shop. In my spare time, I worked as a private detective solving cases and studied whenever I could. Otherwise, how could I become the number one—”
“Get lost!”
Not a single word of it was true.
Qin Zhen said, “Why didn’t you, you moonlight as a, a crosstalk performer too?”
“Because stand-up comedy was popular back then…” Fu Qi said. “A blind spot in your knowledge?”
It was indeed a blind spot.
But the zombie refused to admit defeat. “Then you were also a, a foot masseur!”
“…I was.” Fu Qi admitted it. Since he had only done it once, the memory hadn’t made much of an impression. “I forgot.”
The zombie won a small victory and was delighted.
Skiing was fun, but falling was unavoidable. Zombies didn’t feel pain, but after falling too many times, she grew irritated. “Couldn’t you, you make a sled and pull me?”
“No,” Fu Qi said. “I’m a human, not a sled dog or a reindeer.”
Qin Zhen could only continue practicing.
After a while, a zombie came sniffing over. She suddenly had an idea. “What if we get a zombie to pull me? Tie a sled to, to a zombie. You ski in front while it chases you, and I’ll sit in the, the back.”
“Good idea,” Fu Qi said honestly. “To tell you the truth, the base once tried this method. It worked for generating electricity, but not for pulling people or transporting goods. After all, zombies don’t have brains. They don’t understand teamwork.”
The zombie didn’t care. “Let’s try it!”
She couldn’t get hurt anyway!
Besides, the members of the Thunder Squad had been out of contact for several days. In the depths of winter, at a city hospital packed with zombies, every extra day of waiting meant another day of danger.
They couldn’t afford to waste time.
Fu Qi hesitated, but Qin Zhen insisted. “Why are you, you dragging your feet? Can you just get on with it?”
Fu Qi said, “…Fine.”
The two of them split up. Qin Zhen went out to catch a zombie. To get to the hospital as quickly as possible, she deliberately chose one that was big and burly, the kind that looked very strong.
After tying it up, she saw the “sled board” Fu Qi had made—a large, bright-red plastic basin of the sort commonly found in the countryside.
“You really didn’t do this on, on purpose, did you?” The zombie glared at Fu Qi.
“How would I dare make fun of Zombie Sis?” Fu Qi said. “It was ready-made, and it’s waterproof. That way, your clothes won’t get dirty.”
That hit the zombie right in the heart.
The plastic basin was indeed convenient. It was just that the sight of a cool, aloof woman in sunglasses sitting inside one while being dragged through the snow by a zombie was ridiculous no matter how she looked at it.
Seeing her hesitate, Fu Qi said, “If you’re worried about your image, we can keep practicing.”
Qin Zhen hesitated for a moment before saying, “I’m not that, that vain!”
With that, she put on her sunglasses, strode over with an icy, arrogant air, and climbed into the large red basin. Gathering the hem of her coat, she carefully squatted down and settled herself inside.
Once she was seated, she hugged her knees and looked up at Fu Qi.
Through her brown-tinted sunglasses, Qin Zhen saw that Fu Qi initially looked completely relaxed. Gradually, however, his expression tightened. A few seconds later, the corners of his mouth began to twitch.
When Qin Zhen gave him a puzzled look, he finally couldn’t hold it in anymore. Covering his eyes with one hand, he turned away.
Qin Zhen: “…”
She leaped out of the plastic basin and pounced on Fu Qi, pounding him with her fists.
Fu Qi no longer had to hold back. He laughed so hard he couldn’t stop, attracting several zombies.
Since he had already laughed at her—and no one else had seen it—Qin Zhen stopped caring. After beating Fu Qi, she calmly climbed back into the basin and urged him to set off.
Fu Qi had laughed himself tired. He pressed a hand to his forehead and took a moment to regain his composure. Then he cut the rope tying the zombie to the tree and turned toward the vast, snow-covered road ahead.
Freed, the zombie let out a roar. It charged madly after the delicious food, dragging Qin Zhen, seated in the large red basin, swiftly across the snow.
Fu Qi moved with the agility of a leopard as he skied ahead, skillfully avoiding every obstacle.
The zombie behind him, however, was not nearly as nimble. Several times, it ran straight into trees or tripped over roots, causing Zombie Sis to flip over and tumble into snowdrifts.
If Qin Zhen had been human, the zombie would have pounced on her. But she was a zombie herself. Even when her head was buried in a snowdrift, the zombie paid her no attention.
Every time this happened, Fu Qi would stop, tie the zombie up first, and then pull Qin Zhen out of the snow. As he brushed the snow from her hair, he would desperately try to keep the corners of his mouth from lifting—but he could never control them.
And he would inevitably get beaten again.
Even while being beaten, he laughed.
Fortunately, the little stumbles eased once they left the village behind.
Fu Qi glided swiftly at the very front, while a zombie named Five-Three by Qin Zhen chased after him in a frenzy. Bringing up the rear, Qin Zhen faced the cool, gently falling snow and felt wonderfully exhilarated.
Every so often, more zombies joined in, stumbling along at the very back.
With nothing better to do, Qin Zhen scooped up handfuls of snow from the ground, packed them into balls, and hurled them at the zombies behind her. Every time she hit one, she let out a cheer. Her sunglasses slipped down beneath her nose, but she did not care in the slightest, completely abandoning the image of a cool, domineering big sister.
Fu Qi glanced back from time to time, the corners of his mouth practically never dropping.
When you were in a good mood, no journey—no matter how long or monotonous—could feel boring. Zombies, a zombie, and a human moved forward together in harmony until they stopped near the edge of the city.
Naturally, stopping meant they could not avoid taking another tumble.
Qin Zhen’s neatly tied ponytail had long since become a tangled mess, with several branches caught in it. She casually wiped the snow from her face, then strode forward like some high-ranking leader and patted Five-Three on the shoulder.
“You did very well,” she said solemnly. “Zombie Sis will remember you. Keep up the good work from now on.”
To make Five-Three easier to control, Fu Qi had fastened a rope harness around him. At that moment, he was hanging from a tree, futilely clawing at the air toward Fu Qi, who had gone off to kill the surrounding zombies.
Qin Zhen pressed down his arm and said, “Here’s a lucky charm. Remember to car-carry it with you. From now on, Zombie Sis and Sweetie… won’t hit you when we see you.”
With that, she opened her shoulder bag, squatted down in the snow, and very seriously wrote out a lucky charm. Rising onto her tiptoes, she solemnly stuck it to the back of Five-Three’s head.
Fu Qi had just finished dealing with the zombies closing in around them when he happened to see the scene. He wanted to laugh again, but the moment he moved the corners of his mouth, his cheeks ached.
He had smiled all the way through the biting wind until his face was practically stiff.
After finally managing to hold it in, Fu Qi plucked the branch caught in Qin Zhen’s hair and brushed the snow from her back.
“Who is this?” he asked. “Where did our cool, handsome, wildly overbearing Zombie Sis go?”
Qin Zhen shot him a look. “Stop misguiding me. We can still pre-pretend once we get to the hospital!”
Fu Qi wanted to laugh again. The amusement hid in his eyes, and when the zombie caught sight of it, she found it utterly baffling.
But she was used to him by now. Ignoring it, she turned to walk into the city, then stopped and asked Fu Qi for his phone.
“What do you want it for?”
“To look at the map.”
The zombie’s mind had already improved by leaps and bounds. She now knew to study the layout of a city before taking action and make plans for getting in and out.
More importantly, she could not allow outsiders to discover her zombie identity. They had to plan the rescue method in advance.
After emphasizing this point to Fu Qi, she scratched her cheek and said, “And I’ll play with it for one minute while I’m at it, to boost morale!”
Fu Qi handed her his phone.
After studying the map seriously, Qin Zhen raised her eyes to look at Fu Qi. She was just about to speak when she noticed that he was laughing again. Her face immediately went rigid.
“Fu Xiangxiang, we’re carrying out a mission. Could you please have a more se-serious attitude?”
Fu Qi looked at her wild, disheveled ponytail and her stern little face, her makeup smeared all over it. He coughed once and said, “All right. I’ll be serious right away.”
That was what he said, but he still looked anything but serious.
The interruption also made the zombie forget what she had wanted to say, which irritated her.
“I told you, people with a low la-laugh threshold can’t be captains…” She stopped halfway through, a flash of inspiration lighting up her mind. “That’s why I’ll command this mission! I’ll be the a-acting captain!”
Fu Qi lowered his head and teased, “So that was your plan all along.”
Qin Zhen said sternly, “Get your attitude in order before you criticize your team members!”
After being scolded repeatedly, Captain Fu backed down while suppressing a laugh.
“All right, I’ll reflect on my behavior. Captain Zombie, I’ll listen to you this time.”
It was the first time she had been called that. Captain Zombie felt her face grow a little warm, along with a thrill of excitement.
She had secured the position of acting captain. Becoming the official captain could not be far behind.
She put on a slightly reserved air and said, “Ahem. You’d better still call me… Captain Qin!”
Fu Qi laughed again as he did his best to repent, feeling that his sense of humor really was getting more and more easily amused.
