The hospital pharmacy was near the main entrance. Once the flashlight was switched off, only a scant offering of natural light remained at the doorway, illuminating the pharmacy’s cabinets in indistinct silhouettes that looked almost ghostly.
The zombies’ howls grew fiercer. Bullet holes pocked the glass windows, while filthy blood and severed limbs splattered across them, creating a horrifying scene worthy of a bloody horror movie.
“Crash—”
The spiderwebbed windows finally gave way. Like a line of dominoes, they shattered one after another.
A beam of light swept into the pharmacy, accompanied by a fierce burst of gunfire.
The light skimmed across the medicine cabinet directly in front of Fu Qi. The bullets struck the metal cabinet, sending sparks flying into his face. He turned sideways, held his breath, and remained utterly still.
Two people from Country A exchanged a few words in a foreign language. One continued firing while the other walked toward the ambulance.
The moment the man with the gun opened the ambulance door, Fu Qi fired. He and Qin Zhen had been helping transport the medicine all along, and anyone who had seen the markings on the road could have figured out where they were headed. It was hardly surprising that these people from Country A had accurately predicted their arrival at the hospital and set up an ambush inside.
What Fu Qi couldn’t understand was this: Xu Feng, Lei Ting, and the others had been keeping a close eye on these people from Country A, while Chen Xiang often mentioned them during their communications. The latest news was that the group was still four or five days away from them. How had they suddenly appeared right beside them without making a sound?
Fu Qi had no answer, nor did he have time to think about it. The ambulance contained all the medicine they had collected.
The moment those two people from Country A saw what was inside, they would know for certain that he was here.
“Bang!”
The bullet struck his opponent with a dull thud. At the same time, the other man opened fire toward Fu Qi’s position. Fu Qi swiftly rolled aside, and a line of bullet dents appeared on the metal cabinet behind him, following him like a shadow.
Fortunately, there were plenty of obstacles in the pharmacy for Fu Qi to use as cover.
Unfortunately, the difference in firepower between them was too great. After several exchanges, Fu Qi had almost run out of ammunition. Worse still, the sound of gunfire had drawn another large wave of zombies to the pharmacy entrance. They roared as they climbed and leaped through the medicine window.
“Not fair.” Fu Qi hid behind a medicine cabinet and spoke first. “You’ve got plenty of ammunition, body armor, and zombie repellent. I’ve got nothing.”
One of them answered in stiff Chinese. “Where, things? Hand over. Then not die.”
Fu Qi said, “We’re all adults here. Why bother with the kind of lie you’d tell a child?”
Given the way these people operated, they would kill him even if he handed over the thing.
After being exposed, the man showed no embarrassment. Instead, he threatened him. “Zombies already, come inside.”
Fu Qi sighed. “Then I’ll just have to die.”
The other side fell silent.
In the dimness, only the zombies’ howls and the sounds of their jostling bodies forcing their way inside remained. They felt no pain. Their feet dragged over the shards of broken glass scattered across the floor, producing a shrill scraping sound like fingernails dragged across a blackboard.
Light had no effect on zombies. They found people by scent. So Fu Qi stopped trying to hide. He pointed his gun upward, raised both hands, and stepped out into the open.
The two guns immediately trained on him.
He calmly placed the gun at his feet and said, “Since I’m going to die anyway, could you be kind enough to tell me how to use that thing? I have no idea what I’m doing, and I’m afraid I’ll damage it if I try.”
“You really found it?”
Fu Qi said, “If I said I hadn’t, would you believe me?”
The two men could get no more information from him, and neither answered.
As they faced off, two zombies pushed past the men from Country A and rushed toward Fu Qi. One of them was already right in front of him, its foul-smelling jaws snapping toward his face.
Fu Qi didn’t dodge at all. He faced it calmly.
The next moment, two gunshots rang out. One zombie collapsed in front of him, while the other fell onto his body before slowly sliding to the floor.
Fu Qi took a small step back. Looking down at the filthy blood splattered across his shoe, he said, “If you don’t want me dead, could you shoot a little sooner next time? This is disgusting.”
One of the two men from Country A cursed. While firing at the zombies lunging toward Fu Qi, he muttered a stream of unintelligible words. After a brief exchange, the blond man asked, “What do you want? Anything.”
Fu Qi said, “I don’t really want anything. But I have a friend who might be willing to become your president.”
The red-haired man across from him spat out a sharp “Fuck,” raising his gun from the zombies to Fu Qi’s forehead. The blond man shouted at him, and he reluctantly lowered it again.
The two men couldn’t come up with a solution. They also didn’t look like people with the authority to make decisions. The blond man opened his watch to contact his superiors, while Redhead unwillingly held his gun and shot the zombies one by one whenever they tried to bite Fu Qi.
The zombies in the city center were as inexhaustible as seawater. Once one wave was killed, another quickly took its place. Redhead deliberately tried to intimidate Fu Qi, allowing the zombies to surround him and waiting until one was about to pounce before shooting it dead.
Because he had been injected with zombie repellent, Redhead didn’t have to worry about being attacked. He strutted proudly among the mass of zombies, firing as he went and raising his brows arrogantly at Fu Qi in challenge.
After being splashed with filthy blood yet again, Fu Qi stared at him, his brows drawn tightly together.
Redhead looked smug. “Changed your mind?”
Fu Qi took a small step forward. “No. I was wondering how long your zombie repellent lasts.”
Redhead continued shooting the zombies. “Longer than yours. Two hours. No problem.”
“Never had any accidents?”
Redhead sneered. “You think it’s some knockoff your country made?”
Just then, a slender, blue-black hand reached out from the side.
Redhead had complete confidence in his zombie repellent and paid no attention. He continued concentrating on shooting the zombies around Fu Qi—until that hand clamped around his neck.
Redhead’s expression changed dramatically. He tried to turn around, but before he could react, he was dragged backward and thrown to the ground.
The moment he fell, the zombies behind him trampled him underfoot.
The blond man, who had been speaking on the phone nearby, was equally shocked. He hurriedly raised his gun, but the instant that blue-black little hand moved, Fu Qi had already hooked the gun at his feet up with his toe and caught it in his hand. He raised it and fired. The bullet struck the blond man directly between the eyebrows, ending his life instantly.
“Get out of the way!” he shouted.
The person who had reached for Redhead was Qin Zhen. Hearing Fu Qi’s warning, she shoved away the zombies in front of her and charged forward, silently counting down in her mind.
When she finished counting to three, there was a bang. The watch on the blond man’s wrist exploded like a miniature bomb, knocking several nearby zombies off their feet.
Fu Qi had already turned and vaulted onto the medicine cabinet. From his elevated position, he found Redhead attempting to fight back amid the mass of zombies and cleanly shot him dead.
With both men dealt with, the zombies had already surrounded the medicine cabinet where Fu Qi was crouching.
Fu Qi bent one knee and crouched there, looking down at the zombies being shoved back and forth by the crowd. “Didn’t I tell you to go back first?”
Qin Zhen was furiously shoving away a male zombie that had nearly knocked her over. She looked up and glared at him. “I’m not an idiot!”
After all, she had traveled so far with Fu Qi and encountered so many people along the way. She had gained some understanding of this world.
For example, humans have learned their lesson and know to stand united; they follow a sustainable development policy, never greedily hoarding up all seeds or food in one go; and they never damage existing buildings for no reason, not even an abandoned tile hut by the roadside, because these places can all become makeshift safe houses when needed.
It makes no sense at all that the search and rescue team that came for the medicine was so frantically shelling the hospital that they nearly collapsed the pharmacy.
Qin Zhen was still furious that Fu Qi had tricked her into leaving earlier, thinking he looked down on her. She huffed and held up two fingers, saying, "This is the second time I've saved you!"
Fu Qi said, "Then I'll have to trouble you to save me one more time... there should be a zombie disruptor in that Redhead's backpack."
Qin Zhen made a gesture that looked half like a three and half like an OK sign, pushed her way through the crowd of zombies to reach Redhead's corpse, and was jostled by another zombie as she tugged at the backpack, nearly falling and getting trampled.
Luckily her efforts paid off. There were indeed several syringes in Redhead's backpack. Fu Qi opened it to confirm, rolled up his sleeve and injected himself. In less than half a minute, the zombies that had been roaring and ramming at the medicine cabinet he was hiding in quieted down, and began wandering off dazedly in all directions.
He straightened his clothes, jumped down from the cabinet, and said, "You really have gotten a lot smarter. Back when you first came out of the tomb, you would have been outside lying around playing dead right now."
Qin Zhen was upset that he teased her about how silly she used to be, but also proud of how much more capable she had become. She said, "I'm better than you. If it weren't for me, you would have gotten kidnapped and taken away!"
"Sure thing, my lady," Fu Qi said.
As he talked to her, he walked over to the ambulance, gave it a quick check, and said, "I'll pay you back later. We need to leave as soon as possible now..."
This hospital was a random pick for them, so there was no way the others could have known they would come here ahead of time. The only explanation was that those people from Country A had guessed he would head to a hospital, and set up traps in every hospital across the city.
The blonde guy just made a phone call, so backup would be arriving here any minute.
"You have to pay me back properly," Qin Zhen mumbled as she followed beside Fu Qi. "A drop of kindness deserves a tomb made of gold..."
Fu Qi was just about to get into the driver's seat, facing Qin Zhen and the outdoor light. He smiled at her words and was about to reply, when his peripheral vision swept past her shoulder. His pupils narrowed instantly, and he threw himself at Qin Zhen, tackling her to the ground.
Qin Zhen felt the world spin all at once. Before she knew what was happening, she was pinned under Fu Qi on the ground. It was only when she felt sticky, warm liquid that she realized two shots had been fired right behind her.
Someone had been hit.
She thought the blood was her own at first, and didn't pay it much mind. She pushed at Fu Qi to get him to move, only to remember that if she had been shot, she wouldn't be losing this much blood, and the blood wouldn't feel that warm against her.
If it wasn't hers, it had to be Fu Qi's.
Humans were fragile. If they got hurt, they could die.
Fu Qi's old warning from right after she first came out of the tomb echoed in her mind. Her heart jolted, her mind went completely blank in an instant, and her limbs stiffened, unable to move an inch.
She stood frozen for who knew how long before she remembered she needed to check Fu Qi's injuries. But his body was heavy on top of hers, and she couldn't push him off, only smearing more hot blood all over her hands.
The blood was scalding hot. She ran her hands over it in a daze, and felt a strong, steady heartbeat through his clothes, thumping right against her palm.
Fu Qi was still alive, but why wasn't he moving?
He wasn't moving, and he wasn't talking. One of his hands was still tucked firmly under the back of her head to protect her, and the other was wrapped tight around her waist, so tight that... it tickled a little.
Her "zombie eyes" snapped open, and she reached out to scratch at him, but he caught her wrist.
She was about to struggle again when she heard, over the chaotic shuffling of the zombies, a new heavy, steady set of footsteps. It was clearly another living person.
The person stopped right next to them, babbled something in a foreign language, and started searching Fu Qi's body. When he reached Fu Qi's back and tried to flip him over, Fu Qi used the momentum to twist his body, bend his long legs, and kick hard. His foot hit the man's arm dead on, and the gun in the man's hand went flying with a snap.
The man was no fool. He reacted fast, his fist swinging through the air right at Fu Qi.
Fu Qi blocked the blow by turning his body sideways, and the two men started fighting right there in the middle of the horde of zombies.
Fu Qi even spared the time to tell her, "Go check if there are more of them outside."
There was no time to think. Qin Zhen yelped "okay" and rushed outside. She scanned the area, and saw no other burly foreigners around apart from the newly gathered zombies, so she ran back in a hurry.
She got back just in time to see the blonde, blue-eyed man from Country A land a punch right on Fu Qi's stomach. Fu Qi's brows knitted slightly, but he caught the man's arm, twisted his body, and flipped the man over to slam him face down on the ground with a heavy thud.
He pressed his knee hard into the man's lower back, and the pain made the A-country man's face contort. The man used his free hand to flick a knife out of his sleeve, stabbing it backward toward Fu Qi.
Qin Zhen saw this and didn't have a second to think. She threw herself forward, holding a shard of broken glass she had picked up from the windowsill, and drove it straight down.
With a wet squelch, the sharp glass shard cut right through the man's side of the neck like a sharp blade.
She pulled the shard out, and the scalding blood from the severed artery spurted out like a fountain, splattering all over Qin Zhen and Fu Qi.
Fu Qi had just wrestled the dagger out of the man's hand, and he froze at the sight. The dying man from Country A, who was so close, had clearly gotten a good look at Qin Zhen's bluish face. His eyes bulged out as he stared at her in disbelief, his throat twitching like he was trying to say something.
But blood was pouring nonstop out of his carotid artery, so he couldn't make a single sound.
Qin Zhen was completely stunned. She was still clutching the shard of glass, covered head to toe in blood, staring blankly at the dying man on the ground.
"He's a bad guy," Fu Qi said. He released the now limp foreigner, walked over to Qin Zhen, pried the glass shard out of her hand, looked her straight in the eye and said, "He's a bad guy. He was the one who shot at you first, trying to kill you."
Qin Zhen was still staring blankly, looking at the blood on her hands with no idea what to do.
"They tried to kill you first, don't you remember? You got shot twice right after you first came out of the tomb. If you had been an ordinary person, you would have died under their guns a long time ago."
Fu Qi said as he lifted her chin with his blood-stained hand, making her look right at him. He said in a low, steady voice, "Besides, even if you hadn't stepped in, I would have killed him after I took the knife away."
To prove he was telling the truth, he turned Qin Zhen's face to the other side.
The other two men from Country A were lying there, both shot through the brain so they didn't even get the chance to turn into zombies, and zombies were stepping over their bodies every now and then.
Fu Qi was about to say more when he saw Qin Zhen's lips twitch.
After a long while, she stammered out, "W-will I... g-go to jail?"
That question broke the heavy tension. Fu Qi laughed and said firmly, "No, you won't."
"W-will that c-cause... i-international... trouble?"
"Not a chance," Fu Qi said with a soft smile. "Even if it does, I'll take the blame. I'll go to jail for you. After all, I've killed way more people than you have."
Qin Zhen stared at him blankly for a moment, pursed her lips, then nodded firmly. "Mm!"
"..." Fu Qi was both exasperated and amused. "You really have no shame just going 'mm' like that? Not even being polite for a second?"
This zombie was not being polite at all, and even asked him if it would be better to sign a formal pledge of some sort.
"We'll sign it later," Fu Qi said, taking her hand. "Let's get out of here first."
He laced his fingers through Qin Zhen's hand again, and she quickly squeezed his hand back. Once she felt the sticky dampness on their palms, she looked closely and realized both of them were covered in blood.
But the blood on Fu Qi—apart from that belonging to the man from Country A—must have been his own as well.
The black combat uniform did not show the bloodstains clearly, and it took Qin Zhen quite a while to spot a large dark, soaked patch spreading across his left shoulder.
Fu Qi noticed her gaze and said in a low voice, "It's just a graze, no big deal. Hurry back, if we don't leave now, we might not be able to later."
Qin Zhen quickly followed him onto the ambulance. As the vehicle drove away, she saw that the man from Country A whose neck had been pierced by a shard of glass was already ashen-faced, and he stumbled dazedly to join the horde of zombies.
On the way back, Qin Zhen drove, while Fu Qi gave his injury a quick preliminary treatment. They sped all the way, and once they got back to their temporary safe house, they immediately boiled water to clean and disinfect the wound.
Disinfectant and gauze were all ready to hand, and the wound was indeed only a graze on the surface. But the bullet the man used was custom-made, so the injury was far from minor.
When Fu Qi took off his clothes, his face had gone pale from blood loss. Even in that state, he did not forget to tease her, "You can only look, no random touching."
Qin Zhen retorted, "I'm not that kind of zombie!"
"I know," he said. "You have the heart to, but not the guts."
If he was not the one who took the bullet for her, and who had also promised to take the blame for her as a zombie, Qin Zhen really would have loved to jab his wound hard.
And while his clothes were off, his muscles were well-defined and his waist was firm as could be, no matter how good a body looked, once it was all covered in blood, there was no mood left to admire it.
Qin Zhen fussed over him, wiping him down and disinfecting his wound, running around in circles the whole time.
In contrast, Fu Qi sat there without making a single sound, a mobile phone still in his right hand. If Qin Zhen had not noticed that his entire body was tensed up the whole time, she might have thought he had no sense of pain at all.
The sight made the zombie a little envious, and she even thought to herself that it would be nice if she was the one who got hurt, so that she could openly play with her phone just like Fu Qi was doing right now.
Fu Qi was contacting Chen Xiang, asking him to alert the nearby base to be cautious of those men from Country A.
Chen Xiang was shocked by how fast those people had moved. He got a rough idea of the situation and went off to dig for information, and when he came back, he was completely stunned.
"They have a helicopter!"
"Some people said they saw a helicopter a few days ago, and thought they were seeing things!"
"If they really got ahead of you, the only way they could have done that is by helicopter! How dare they have a helicopter? That's cheating!"
Everyone was living in the same apocalyptic world. Weren't they all supposed to conserve bullets, scrimp and save, and only use basic land vehicles?
How could someone take such a shortcut?
"Are they out of their minds!"
Those men from Country A were clearly not out of their minds. That only meant the item Fu Qi had taken from them was extremely important, so important that they were willing to burn through what little remaining resources they had left in the end times for it.
"What exactly did you take from them?" Qin Zhen had finished treating Fu Qi's wound and was about to bandage it up when she heard Chen Xiang's shocked outburst, and grew curious too.
Fu Qi said, "I don't know."
"You don't know?" Qin Zhen blinked. "Then you were talking back and forth with them, even asking how to use it?"
"I was just trying to get information out of them," Fu Qi clarified.
Those people were far too alert, and he had not managed to dig anything out.
Fu Qi emphasized again, "Besides, I never crossed the national border after the apocalypse broke out. Even if I did find whatever it is they're looking for, it belongs to this country, not to—ah, easy there."
Qin Zhen had no experience bandaging wounds, and she had hurt him. She did not dare get distracted again after that, and fumbled carefully to wrap the bandage around his wound properly.
Fu Qi did not show it, but he must have been in a lot of pain. Luckily, they had just come from a hospital, so all kinds of medicine were available.
He seemed completely used to getting injured, and skillfully picked out the pills he needed to swallow, then told Qin Zhen to stay alert to their surroundings before closing his eyes to wait for the medicine to kick in.
As a zombie with nothing to do, Qin Zhen kept going back and forth: one moment she would go outside to check if anyone was chasing them, the next moment she would flip open her notebook to try to continue writing her story. She made so many trips that no danger turned up outside, and not a single new word got written in her notebook.
Before she knew it, night had fallen. Qin Zhen did not turn on the flashlight, and sat in the dark for a while before tiptoeing over to Fu Qi's side.
The moonlight was bright that night, and the curtains in the room were only half drawn. Qin Zhen could clearly see Fu Qi's pale face and his faintly furrowed brows.
After watching him quietly for a while, she reached out her hand, carefully moving it towards his face.
Her movement was so gentle, but the moment her fingertips brushed against Fu Qi's cheek, his eyes flew open and he woke up abruptly.
Fu Qi locked eyes with her in the moonlight, and asked calmly, "Are you finally planning to take advantage of my injured state to force yourself on me?"
Qin Zhen: "..."
She did not feel like bickering with him. Propping her elbow on the edge of the bed, she lay down next to him and said, "Sweetie, I'm feeling a little off."
"What's wrong?" Fu Qi asked.
"My heart feels weird," Qin Zhen said.
Fu Qi pressed, "Weird how?"
Qin Zhen could not put it into words. Her mind was all tangled up with messy thoughts: one moment she remembered the sadness she had felt when Fu Qi had shielded her and fallen to the ground, and she had pushed him as hard as she could but he did not respond at all; the next moment she remembered the sight of blood flowing down Fu Qi's shoulder, even though his first instinct was to comfort her and say those men from Country A were the bad guys.
Thinking on it more, she also remembered the earliest days, when she had been so scared of Fan Xu and his brother that she had run away secretly, and how tired Fu Qi had looked when he finally found her. And how he had said he was a stubborn old-fashioned man who would never let her eat grass...
So many memories of everything that had happened between them lately were swirling around in the zombie's head that Qin Zhen started to wonder if she was getting old.
Aren't only old people fond of reminiscing about the past?
She wanted to tell Fu Qi all these thoughts, but for some reason, she felt too shy to say it out loud.
After fidgeting awkwardly for a while, Qin Zhen's fingers tugged at the edge of Fu Qi's blanket, and she whispered, "That foreigner is dead. When the news gets back, do you think those foreign vampires and mummies will... come after me for revenge?"
"No need to be scared," Fu Qi said. "You have a peach wood sword. A zombie with a peach wood sword—one is a traditional Chinese supernatural creature, the other is an ancient sacred artifact for vanquishing evil. Even the two of them teaming up would not stand a chance against you."
"You're making fun of me again!" Qin Zhen huffed.
"I'm obviously praising you."
"No you're not, you're teasing me!"
"Cough—cough!" Fu Qi coughed hard a few times, and said in a weak, hoarse voice, "I'm a wounded patient. Do you really... really have to argue with me about this?"
He was copying the way she used to feign weakness.
Oh no, her usual trick of pretending to be frail had backfired on her now.
Qin Zhen held in her breath, huffed twice, then lay down sullenly next to him.
She rested her head right beside Fu Qi's shoulder, so that Fu Qi only had to glance down to see the top of her round head. She had no idea what she was thinking about, but her eyes blinked slowly over and over.
Fu Qi wanted to reach out and pat her head, but the second he moved, the muscles around his wound pulled and sent a sharp jolt of pain through him.
He frowned and stopped his movement, then asked, "What are you thinking about now?"
"I'm thinking about my husband," she said.
"Daydreaming about your husband right here with me? Is he that interesting?" Fu Qi said, "Go on, tell me how the two of you usually chat. I'd love to learn a thing or two."
Qin Zhen rolled her eyes at him and retorted, "How are a pile of bones supposed to chat?"
"No chatting?" Fu Qi feigned a sudden realization, "No wonder problems popped up between you two. You even ended up sleeping in separate coffins."
Qin Zhen: "..."
There were moments she really did not want to spare him a single word!
Qin Zhen grumbled to herself that she found Fu Qi annoying. She lay there glumly for a while, but soon could not resist talking to him again.
This time, she hesitated, too sheepish to voice the question lingering at the bottom of her heart, "Sweetie... why did you jump in front of me to... to take that bullet?"
Fu Qi fell silent for a short moment.
The whole incident had happened so abruptly. By the time he realized Qin Zhen would not have been hurt even if the bullet hit her, he had already shielded her under his own body.
How was he supposed to explain this to her?
She would never get it anyway. That little airhead zombie could never pick up on what people really meant between their lines.
Fu Qi paused for a beat, then asked with a playful smirk, "Aren't you touched?"
Qin Zhen shook her round little head. "No, it's just that I think you... um..."
She stumbled over her words, trailing off into repeated "um"s several times before she mumbled softly, "...you seemed kind of stupid back there."
Fu Qi: "..."
Oh no, she really was getting smarter. He had tried so hard to steer this little zombie's attention off the whole incident, but she still managed to connect the dots.
