There were many roaming zombies on the road, and when they heard the sound of the trucks coming, many of them gathered around. The crashing sound of the trucks hitting the zombies was endless and with the corpses on the ground, the trucks were shaken badly.
Gu Ning and the adults were used to it, but not the children. It was unsure whether they were scared by the zombies coming at them or was the truck moving too bumpy which made all their faces paled, while some even vomited through the window.
After about two hours of intermittent driving, the road ahead was blocked. Gu Ning peeked out of the window and saw at least 30 to 40 abandoned cars in front of them.
“it’s blocked up ahead, so we’ll have to go around.” Brother San said: “I’ve met a car accident when I went to Zhongnan previously, we just have to back up a bit and there’s a little road near there. It just goes around it and was just a slight detour. There’s nothing we could do about it now.”
Listening to what Brother San had explained, all three trucks made a turn and drove back.
It took about 20 minutes to find the small road that Brother San had said and it was only big enough for two cars to cross at the same time.
The road was also paved with concrete, but in many places, it had been crushed by the overloaded large trucks that usually pass by it. The road was full of potholes and sinkholes that test the driver’s skills. Fortunately, this side of the road was off the usual traffic and there were very few zombies on the road. It took no more than 20 minutes of driving before they encountered a zombie walking around in the field, and they had driven away before it could even catch up to the road.
It was almost noon when the weather, which had been sunny, suddenly started to rain. In a short while, raindrops as big as beans were beating on the roof of the trucks, and the sky was covered with dark clouds, accompanied by thunder and lightning. They had to find a village to stop in for the time being for safety reasons.
Daishui village was a small village surrounded by mountains and rivers. Before the apocalypse happened, there were about a hundred families with a population of about four to five hundred people.
Gu Ning found a house at the entrance of the village. One of the walls of the house was covered with vines, the colour of which was very green that looked slightly special as compared to other plants which were already preparing to enter winter.
After alighting from the trucks, Luo Long knocked on the door for a while but no one answered. Thus, he just banged the closed door of the house opened.
The stench of rotting corpses came hitting them.
There were two corpses on the floor of the living room.
The corpses looked very strange, their bodies were unusually dry and thin, with only a layer of wrinkled human skin wrapped around their bones. Their clothes look empty on top of the corpses, seemingly without any flesh or blood on their bodies. One of which was facing the doorway, hands outstretched toward it. The fear of the moment still seemed to linger on its face, yet, there was no visible blood around either of them, not even bite wounds from the zombies……
Luo Long and the rest had seen lots of horrible and disgusting corpses, but when they saw the two corpses on the ground, they inexplicably felt extremely frightening and terrified, and chills ran down their backs.
At the urging of Brother San, the two corpses were wrapped in a blanket from the bedroom and buried in a hole in the back courtyard.
After making sure that there were no other corpses in the house before they let everyone else in the trucks enter.
The wall behind the sofa had a picture of the family hanging on it. They only found the corpses of two people in the house, and judging by the clothes they were wearing, they must have been the middle-aged couple in the photo but the girl in her twenties standing between them was nowhere to be seen.
It was a well-off family, with the house fully furnished with all the electrical appliances and nicely decorated.
It was just about noon, so they started cooking, hoping that the rain would stop after they had finished their meal.
After finishing and washing their dishes, the rain showed no sign of stopping. It had gotten heavier with lightning and thunder striking nonstop. The wind was howling so strong that the windows were clanging.
“It looks like we’ll have to spend the night here today.” Brother San decided after taking a look out of the window: “How come it’s raining so heavily just like that.”
The sky was dark as though it was five or six o’clock in the evening.
The clattering rain mixed with thunder gave an inexplicable chill down the back, especially when a lightning bolt filtered in through the window. It instantly illuminated the whole room with a flash of brightness, then those furniture cast weird shadows before plunging back into darkness immediately.
Luo Long rubbed the goosebumps on his arms and asked Huang MengYao to send two fireballs out to illuminate the room.
She had to be back by 6 am on that side of the world, which meant that she could only stay over here until 8 pm at most.
The night soon arrived and by 6 pm, it was raining lesser and just drizzling. However, it was already too dark so they stayed overnight, had dinner, and played cards for a while. After washing up, they laid on the floor with the quilts Gu Ning had taken out from the space. It was strange that all the windows in the house were mostly broken and vines were poking in. Jia DaoZhang grabbed a vine and even joked about it: “It’s quite an elegant house.” As it was not raining too heavily, they spread on the floor some distance away from the window. After blocking the front and back doors, they all lay down to rest and get ready for the journey tomorrow.
This time Gu Ning had a room on the first floor to herself for the convenience of leaving. The window in this room was also broken, and vines were poking in through the broken window.
After locking the door behind her, Gu Ning went back to the space with a thought and then crossed over to the other side of the world.
It was still 6 am on the other side of the world, so she changed her clothes, then pulled open the door and walked out.
It was 1 am in the middle of the night in the post-apocalyptic world.
The temperature plummeted at night because of the rain during the day. Yet, they didn’t have to worry about freezing as both underneath and on top of them were wrapped with thick quilts. Most of them who had gone through the bumpy ride during the day were already in a deep sleep. Luo Long lay with his eyes closed under the warm blanket, but his mind uncontrollably remembered the two corpses in the living room during the day. No matter how much he tried to hypnotise himself, he couldn’t sleep and the rains got heavier again.
While Luo Long was being annoyed, he suddenly heard a rustling sound —— a small sound that he would never have heard if he had been asleep, but it was so late into the night while the slightest sound would be amplified, and surprisingly he was still awake ……. At first, he thought it was someone who had rolled over, but he couldn’t help and hold onto his breath and listen tentatively …… swish …… There was a sound of something scraping against the ground, faintly and vaguely from time to time. Luo Long’s heart thudded, then he opened his eyes. It was late at night, the sky was glooming with dark clouds that covered the moon. Without a trace of light, nothing could be seen.
Right at that moment! A bolt of lightning streaked across the sky! With a flash! The whole sky was illuminated including the room ——
At the same time, it also illuminated the pale face of Luo Long.
The empty room had somehow been covered with those vines that grew outside of the house, crawling over half of the ceiling …… on the walls …… on the floor ….. everywhere except where they were sleeping! —— In that flash of light, Luo Long even saw that a vine was slowly poking its way over!
The lightning flashed for just a moment, and the house was instantly plunged back into darkness.
Luo Long even wondered if he was dreaming that he even pinched himself so hard that he almost screamed out in the darkness. Under the huge shock, Luo Long was almost scared half to death, just desperately gritting his teeth to keep himself from screaming out and then shaking Zhang XiaoBai madly, who was sleeping beside him.
Zhang XiaoBai was sleeping soundly when he was suddenly awakened from his dream by the violent shaking. He opened his mouth to curse, but before he could curse out, a hand was pressed over his mouth.
Luo Long’s very light shush came into his ears, making Zhang XiaoBai instantly realize that something was going on.
Luo Long moved closer and whispered to Zhang XiaoBai with a shiver: “Xiao, XiaoBai …… those vines seem to have changed, like mutated …… all, all over the house……”
Zhang XiaoBai couldn’t really hear what he was saying and only vaguely heard about what mutation and the house……
Before he could figure out what Luo Long had said, a sudden shriek sounded from the other side!
It was the post-apocalyptic world! Everyone’s nerves were not completely relaxed even in their sleep, and such a shriek instantly woke everyone up!
Zhang XiaoBai instantly got up from the ground, then raised his hand, in which lightning twisted around him and illuminated the whole room at once! Then everyone was at a loss for words as they looked at the scene before them in shock.
Jia DaoZhang stammered: “What, what’s going on here?!”
As far as they could see, all the open space except for their quilts were covered with strips of vines, and those verdant leaves looked extremely eerie at the moment!
The vines that were still in motion seemed to be startled by the sudden appearance of light, and after a strange pause, the vines started moving!
The ceiling with an uncountable number of vines suddenly spread rapidly towards them!
Luo Long suddenly linked everything in his mind as he pointed at the fast-moving vines and shouted in horror: “It’s these things! These are the things that did to the two corpses in the living room!”
At the same time as Luo Long shouted these words, the sound of children screaming in terror suddenly rang from the room next door where Huang MengYao, Gao Yue, Hong Jie, and more than twenty children slept in!