Chapter Two: Fleeing the Town

The woman who suddenly appeared had a deathly pale face, her eyes lifeless and rolling back in their sockets. Her hair hung in disarray over her shoulders, matted with thick, black, viscous fluid, resembling the bedraggled head of a chicken. But this was not the most horrifying aspect—her lower lip had long since decayed away, lost to some unknown place. The teeth exposed were missing several, and with his keen eyes, Xie Han could clearly see fat, wriggling maggots crawling in and out between them.

As she emerged, countless others—bodies rotten to the core—came flooding out behind her, stretching as far as the eye could see.

"Is the Resident Evil crew filming here? But I haven’t heard a thing about them shooting a fourth movie, let alone in China," Xie Han’s mind managed only this one bewildered thought before, from behind him in the Agricultural Bank, there came a soft, rustling sound. At some unknown moment, two security guards had appeared in the once-empty bank lobby and were now walking toward him. Their uniforms had long since turned pitch black, their abdomens split open and leaking ropes of dark, decaying intestines that dragged along the floor, leaving behind long, black, oily trails.

In an instant, Xie Han understood the origin of those trails he’d seen earlier. But there was no time for speculation. No matter what was going on, real or not, the two security guards had already reached him, jaws gaping with rows of blackened teeth, lunging to bite.

Instinctively, Xie Han threw himself aside with all his might, dodging their snapping jaws. A suffocating sense of imminent death pressed down on him—he could not believe this was just a film set. Though Xie Han was only a civil servant, he trusted his own intelligence; if this were really a shoot, the director would have called cut the moment an outsider like him blundered in—there would be no reason to go on. What truly convinced him, though, was the way these zombies were closing in—no prop could ever look so real, let alone move like that without external force.

He had no idea how he suddenly possessed such strength and agility, but with a burst of energy, Xie Han dashed away, leaving the two guards behind. He was just an ordinary man, living a mundane life untouched by crisis, and now these movie monsters were alive before his eyes, making his face blanch with terror, his body tremble uncontrollably like a leaf in the wind.

Seeing the two guards miss their bite and continue to lurch toward him, black fluid dribbling from their mouths, Xie Han was struck by a sudden realization. He turned to the street, and in the moment the guards attacked, he saw the road already teeming with a packed crowd of zombies, stretching endlessly into the distance. His scalp prickled with fear. Even though he’d only spent two uneventful years at the Bureau of Statistics, he knew that a small town with seven or eight streets must house at least thirty thousand permanent residents.

That number made his knees buckle, nearly sending him to the ground. He struggled upright, glancing at the two security guards lunging at him again, and in a panic, he sprinted toward another street at the crossroads—one where no zombies had yet appeared. These creatures moved slowly, and in moments, Xie Han had left them far behind. But he knew he could not afford to stop; if he did, they would soon catch up.

Xie Han was no stranger to Resident Evil and was well aware of just how deadly these zombies could be. Unarmed as he was now, he stood no chance in a direct confrontation; even a scratch would mean that, within a few hours, he’d become one of them. He didn’t know how he’d ended up here or how the world had come to this, but one thing was clear—if he were infected, he too would become a zombie.

In his panic, Xie Han didn’t even notice that his speed had surpassed the terrifying mark of a hundred meters in five seconds. At the end of the street, at another intersection, more than a dozen abandoned cars blocked the road, as though some disaster had exploded into chaos and forced everyone to flee on foot.

It wasn’t the abandoned cars that drew Xie Han’s attention, but the dozen or so zombies moving among them—that was what brought him to a halt. The scent of fresh flesh, irresistible to the now keen noses and ears of the undead, was the most enticing thing in this world. Any living human was their target. As Xie Han stopped in his tracks, the cluster of zombies surged toward him.

Cold sweat streamed down his face. Pursued from behind and blocked ahead, Xie Han was plunged into despair, already picturing himself being torn apart, his neck gnawed, his flesh devoured piece by piece. He’d appeared here inexplicably, without the slightest understanding of what had happened. He hadn’t even confessed his feelings to the senior he’d long admired—how could he possibly die like this?

A fierce refusal to submit surged within him, setting his whole body ablaze. He fixed his gaze on the dozen zombies closing in and kept repeating in his mind, “If I can just get past them, it’s clear road ahead. I can escape this damned place.” What stood in his way wasn’t only the zombies, but also the line of abandoned cars.

As the undead drew nearer, Xie Han felt the chill of death radiating from their decaying forms. He took a deep breath, recalling scenes from the martial arts films he’d watched, and in a flash, he launched himself forward. Seeing fresh meat rushing straight at them, the zombies grew even more frenzied, surging forward relentlessly.

Behind Xie Han, the massive horde pursued. Cars at the roadside were overturned by their inhuman strength, swarming after him like locusts. His breathing grew ragged and heavy. When he was barely a meter from the lunging zombies, he gritted his teeth and leapt, spinning through the air in a series of flips before landing with a clang on the roof of a car. The sheer force of his landing left two faint imprints on the metal. Ignoring the pain in his legs, he gathered himself and, with no chance to build up speed, sprang again, vaulting to the next car.

The zombies he’d just leapt over were not about to let their prey slip away—they turned and gave chase. But with no more obstacles ahead, Xie Han was not about to give them the chance. With all his strength, he fled, finally breaking free from the terror-stricken town.

(P.S.: This is a new novel by Rainwater—please support it! There might be some typos or formatting errors that escaped my notice. If you find them, please point them out in the comments, and I’ll award highlights. Thank you all!)