Did I kill someone?
Lin Yuan retreated non-stop, lost his footing and fell to the ground. Fortunately, he wasn't too far from the buffer platform and landed on flat ground.
Cold sweat trickled down his forehead and back, his body trembling uncontrollably. Besides fear, there was also a hint of excitement from killing.
Because all of this had a premise: this was the apocalypse, she had attacked first, and she had intended to kill from the start.
Remembering that there was still someone next to him, Lin Yuan quickly crawled over.
How was Wu Tian!
He saw her curled up in pain, clutching her stomach, her face pale.
This scared Lin Yuan to death. It was over.
"Wu Tian, are you okay?"
He thought Wu Tian might be dying after being stabbed so many times, but he didn't expect her to still be able to speak.
"I'm fine. I'm wearing a stab-proof vest. It just hurts a bit from being stabbed several times in succession, like being hit hard with a stick."
Stab-proof vest?
Hearing that Wu Tian was fine, Lin Yuan breathed a sigh of relief and quickly helped her to sit against the wall.
"Not bad. I didn't expect you to be so well-equipped, not only with a recurve bow but also a stab-proof vest. How influential is your family?"
Wu Tian slowly adjusted her breathing and rolled her eyes at him. "I don't have any background. My dad is the director of the Public Security Bureau. He bought me this stab-proof vest before because he was afraid of retaliation. He even wanted to buy me a bulletproof vest, but I refused because I thought it was too flashy. Later, when I went to college, the place was far away, and I didn't bring the stab-proof vest with me. I was going home to handle some procedures this time and encountered this situation."
"No wonder. Did you learn your combat skills from your dad? And your bow?"
"Are you the 'Ten Thousand Whys'?" Wu Tian couldn't stand his barrage of questions, but she still answered, "I learned my combat skills from my cousin. She's a special police officer in Yuezhou, and I also went to college in Yuezhou, so I learned it there. I learned archery from the university's archery club. I'm the vice president, and our president is a retired archer. He had nothing better to do, so he started a club at school."
"Awesome! You're practically the female lead in an urban novel."
"Stop talking. How can I be the female lead in an urban novel when I can barely survive? Sigh, after saying all this, I still have to face reality." Wu Tian pointed at the woman lying on the stairs.
Lin Yuan knew he couldn't escape this reality. He walked up to the madwoman's corpse and stood in silence for a long time.
It wasn't until the corpse began to mutate that Lin Yuan was jolted back to reality: there was zombie blood on the knife!
He quickly delivered another stab and then dragged the corpse to throw it down.
"This is the apocalypse. We're in an infected zone, and rescue won't come for a long time. You need to adapt to these situations." A hand reached out to help him grab the corpse.
"Then how did you adapt? It's only been less than two days, right?" Lin Yuan turned his head and retorted.
Another period of silence. "My mother, she also turned into one of these things. I put her to rest with my own hands, for my sister, and for my father."
Wu Tian squeezed out this sentence through gritted teeth, using all her strength to keep herself from crying.
Lin Yuan fell silent, merely sighing. He pulled the corpse on the ground towards the railing, and Wu Tian also helped, though her tears were about to fall at any moment.
"This damned apocalypse!"
...
The rooftop, clear water gushing from the faucet. Fortunately, the water plant was still operating, indicating that the power outage had not affected it.
"I didn't notice there was a laundry basin here!" Lin Yuan squeezed out some "Moon Catching Laundry Liquid" that could wash bloodstains and rubbed his hands.
"That saves some trouble. By the way, why was the stomach of that little boy zombie so big and fat?"
Hearing this, Lin Yuan thought of the trail of blood he had seen earlier, and a bad thought surfaced in his mind, making his stomach churn again.
Suppressing the urge to gag, he didn't mention that the madwoman wanted to kill them and feed them to her son. "Who knows? Maybe it's a mutation of that C virus."
"That Type C mutated strain is not just a virus," Wu Tian said after washing her hands and face, hanging the two cloths on the newly erected drying rack.
In the apocalypse, the cloths for washing faces and hands had to be separated. After all, the mucous membranes of the eyes were also infection pathways. If there were bloodstains on your hands, it was best to be careful.
The laundry basin was already piled with dirty clothes and pants. To avoid being bitten, both of them wore two layers of clothes and pants, so there was no need to be shy. They undressed on their own.
At this moment, Wu Tian spoke up proactively, "I'll wash the clothes. I'm afraid you're not used to washing by hand since you're accustomed to washing machines."
Lin Yuan was speechless. He really wanted to say, "Don't underestimate me," but then he remembered that back in school, his clothes had indeed always been washed by the washing machine. So, he let her have her way.
He nodded, "Alright. Then I'll go down and get my mom's motorcycle helmet for you. The mask is still better protected by a helmet. Be careful when you wash the clothes."
As he had guessed, Wu Tian was a great beauty when she took off the mask. In normal times, if not a whole reinforced company, at least five or six people would be chasing her.
"Okay, thanks."
Lin Yuan extended a fist, signaling Wu Tian to fist bump. "We're not just allies anymore; we're teammates."
"Heh heh, still not lusting after my sister's beauty?" Wu Tian also reached out and fist-bumped.
He didn't refute, only saying, "Thank you. You just saved my life."
Wu Tian didn't look back, focusing on washing the clothes. "It's nothing. You saved my life too. Oh dear, you should go back and tidy up. Aren't you going to dry the meat?"
"How did you know I was going to dry the meat?"
"Brother, I could smell your meat from the other building. You should be glad zombies don't like braised food."
"Hahaha, I didn't expect it to be so potent. I'll go now, I'll go now."
Lin Yuan threw down a sentence and slipped away. Not only Lin Yuan but also Wu Tian was surprised. In just a few short hours, the two of them had forged a bond of life and death. Just as it was said on the radio, unity is strength. To survive alone in the apocalypse, unless you were like a character in an anime with cheat-like abilities and various superpowers.
Wu Tian was also very happy to have such a teammate.
Returning home, Lin Yuan poured all the meat into a clean basin, grabbed an iron hook, and put on a helmet before heading up.
The cat wanted to follow, but Lin Yuan stopped it. He didn't dare to let the cat out. What if it mutated after curiously licking the zombie blood on the ground?
Zombies were already troublesome enough. If there was a zombie cat, it would truly be a live-action remake of Resident Evil.
After successfully luring it to stay at home with two pieces of meat, he locked the door.
He still had to hurry; it wouldn't be easy to operate at night during a power outage.
On the rooftop, Lin Yuan stretched his sore right arm. Over twenty pounds of meat was quite heavy.
He placed the helmet next to the laundry basin, called out a greeting, and ran off to dry the meat.
He began to set up a tripod. There were ready-made wooden boards, strips, and broken ropes on the rooftop. He found suitable wooden strips and then disassembled the short ropes into individual small ropes, tying them together to form a long rope. He arranged the wooden strips into a tripod shape and tied the intersecting parts with the rope, securing them firmly. A simple tripod was thus made.
There were no suitable remaining wooden strips. Lin Yuan looked around, went down again to get the toolbox and hammer, and nailed several wooden strips and boards together to make a rectangular prism with no opening at the top or bottom. He measured the height and then used a hand saw to cut the wooden block to the appropriate length. He then sawed V-shaped notches at the top to place the bamboo poles.
For stability, he inserted the wooden block into the ground and used spare broken bricks to press down the surrounding soil. Only then was a support frame for the bamboo poles made.
He hung the bamboo pole and checked that it wasn't tilted. Then he began to hang the meat. He threaded the braised meat strips onto the bottom of the S-shaped iron hooks, and the upper hooks onto the bamboo poles.
With 60 strips of meat, Lin Yuan filled one pole and still had 32 strips left. He had no choice but to make another one. There was only one clothesline, and it was made of rope. If it was too heavy, it would sag in the middle, which was not suitable.
After a period of hammering, banging, and piecing together almost all the miscellaneous items on the rooftop, he made two new supports for the wooden sticks, and only then did he hang all the meat.
By this time, Lin Yuan was sweating all over from exhaustion. He raised his hand and checked his watch. It was already 11:13. Strange, time passed so quickly when he was busy, and so slowly when he was in danger.
Wiping the sweat from his brow, Lin Yuan walked to the laundry basin, washed his hands, and said to Wu Tian, who was drying clothes, "Old Wu, don't you have any meat? Why don't you bring it up to dry too... Hey, what the hell are you hitting me for?"