In the dead of night, a battered jeep sped forward in a panic, pursued by trembling, slow-moving zombies.
Lin Zhuoran casually shot a few zombies that had clung to the car window, their faces rotten. A hint of solemnity hid on her dusty face.
"The zombies have been unusually active lately, as if stimulated by something."
"I also feel something is wrong. The survivors in this city should have mostly converged with us. Logically, these zombies shouldn't have any new movements."
Yu Qin glanced at the zombies outside the window, then withdrew her gaze and continued to focus on driving.
"Sister Zhuoran, do you think new people might have arrived in our district?"
Lin Zhuoran remained silent, concentrating on dealing with the zombies constantly trying to climb onto the car.
As soon as the words left her mouth, Yu Qin realized she had said something foolish.
It was almost the second year of the apocalypse, and everyone had more or less figured out the patterns of natural disasters and zombie outbreaks.
Not to mention that survivors who could live through this time were no simple folk. With the apocalypse, agriculture gradually disappeared, people lost their sources of cultivation, and food became even scarcer.
Although they had fortunately found an underground fortress, due to the scarcity of supplies, they still needed to venture out constantly to find supplementary food.
And the scarcity of resources led to competition among people.
Therefore, at this time, the appearance of new survivors was hardly good news for them.
"Damn it, these zombies are endless." Yu Qin, tired of fleeing, no longer thought about it and focused on driving.
Lin Zhuoran, on the other hand, had not spoken a word from beginning to end.
Sometimes, time truly changed a person.
Ever since parting ways with Xu An a year and a half ago, she had gone to the neighboring city to find her sister, but she was still too late.
By the time she arrived, her sister's school had already been sealed off, and most of the people inside had turned into zombies.
She hadn't thought about rushing in regardless, but reality was that facing those hideous faces separated by fences, she faltered.
Many student parents, lovers, and friends wanted to rush into the school to rescue people at that time, but looking at the rotting, mutated faces of those sealed within the campus, everyone froze in place.
However, Lin Zhuoran did not give up. She found a hiding spot near the school, holding onto the last sliver of hope in her heart, wanting to wait and see.
But one day while looking for food, she saw a female zombie wearing a blue pleated skirt and a gray-blue outfit with a jade pendant necklace on her chest, wandering in front of the school gate fence.
She rushed over like a madwoman, almost getting scratched by the close-by zombies. Her eyes were red, staring intently at the necklace on the female zombie's chest.
How could she forget? It was the jade ruyi she had given her sister for her eighteenth birthday.
May you have good fortune every year.
But in the end, her sister did not get her wish and instead turned into this ghastly appearance.
Lin Zhuoran lost the courage to look back at her sister. Just as a zombie was about to approach her at a critical moment, she was rescued by Yu Qin's team.
Before the apocalypse, Yu Qin was an avid outdoor camper, and most of her friends also enjoyed novel and unique things.
Among them was a rich second generation named Hao Cheng, who liked to build strange underground castles, saying he could hide in them when the zombies arrived.
When the natural disaster struck, he took his family into the fortress and later accepted some survivors.
However, although Hao Cheng looked honest and simple, his mind was sharp. In the early days of the apocalypse, he knew how to hide himself.
He didn't accept everyone; at first, he only accepted close friends, and later, it required exchanging supplies.
Hao Cheng's rescue of Lin Zhuoran was also a coincidence.
Later, Lin Zhuoran exchanged her car and two large barrels of gasoline given by Xu An for a military sleeping cot that could accommodate one person in Hao Cheng's fortress.
Even so, Lin Zhuoran was already very happy.
Before the apocalypse, she was a car salesperson, so she understood the performance of every car. Not only that, but she also knew some martial arts, and what surprised everyone even more was that Lin Zhuoran could repair vehicles. Thus, Lin Zhuoran gradually established herself in this small underground city with her own skills.
Speaking of which, Hao Cheng's underground fortress was truly something.
As his name suggests, Hao's father's wish for his son was to follow in his father's footsteps, and he was naturally not stingy with money.
Since becoming obsessed with doomsday games, Hao Cheng often liked to play doomsday survival games with his friends. He accidentally discovered a civil defense tunnel here.
As he had nothing else to do, he spent nearly three years building an underground fortress covering over 10,000 square kilometers, costing nearly 100 million yuan. This was due to Hao's father's doting on his son; otherwise, who could spend such a huge fortune and time on building such a useless thing for their son?
But when the doomsday finally arrived, Hao's father felt that his son might be a chosen one, otherwise, why would the doomsday crisis erupt in the year the fortress was completed?
However, all this was in the past.
When Lin Zhuoran first entered the fortress, she was astonished. The original civil defense cave had undergone large-scale renovations, extending the entire cave by nearly ten meters. The entire fortress was like an underground palace, with three floors and all sorts of buildings and facilities.
Upon seeing this underground fortress, Lin Zhuoran gave up the idea of finding the lighthouse. In her mind, no matter how good the lighthouse was, it would probably be comparable to the current fortress.
Moreover, she had wasted too much time here looking for her sister and could not reach the lighthouse within the stipulated time.
Lin Zhuoran knew the importance of the lighthouse and remembered Xu An's instructions. Therefore, even after going through several life-and-death experiences with the people in the bunker, she never revealed the matter of the lighthouse to the public.
She wondered if Xu An had safely reached the lighthouse and how he was doing.
What Lin Zhuoran didn't know was that among the land survivors, many were aware of the existence of the lighthouse.
However, they all tacitly agreed not to reveal this matter.
This included those who had young children unable to leave and those with elderly family members who had difficulty moving.
After all, not everyone was willing to abandon everything just to survive.
Yu Qin drove faster and faster, but the zombies seemed to surge from all directions like a tide, with no end.
"Sister Zhuoran, what should we do? We can't shake them off."
Lin Zhuoran cursed in a low voice. She had only come out for a routine patrol this time and hadn't brought much ammunition. Now, with her ammunition depleted, she was also struggling.