Chapter 6: 1 VS. 3

1 VS. 3

A dark pillar of smoke rose up, filling the air in this apocalyptic atmosphere, coloring the bleak sky. The thick smoke rose out of Zhang Xiao Qiang’s vision, he knew something had happened there. Curiosity like a cat, was pulling at his heart. Looking at this watch, its was 3:40pm. It was less than 2 hours from dark, so there was enough time for him to go to roof and find out what it was.

Zhang Xiao Qiang held the army knife and stored it in the sheath. The laces beneath the sheath was firmly secured onto his thigh, and after taking 2 steps, making sure it does not affect his movement, he picked up his shield, spear and binoculars and headed out.

He carefully climbed up the stairs. Zhang Xiao Qiang stayed on the 2nd floor. The roof was above the 8th floor. He carefully took slow steps up the stairs. Reaching the third floor entrance, he tried to open the security gates of tenants of the third floor, but as he thought they were all deadlocked. At least he doesn’t need to worry about zombies rushing out of the house.

Zhang Xiao Qiang slowly continued up, trying the door handles on each level, all the way to the eighth floor. This allowed him to relax, the apartment he lives on is secure, all the zombies are locked into the houses. When he went past the houses he could hear the zombies scratching at the doors. His smell caused the zombies to more aggressively scratch the doors. The sharp claws scratching the metal doors made a sharp scraping sound, which made him feel uncomfortable.

The owner of the eighth floor sealed the floor of with iron railings. The locked iron gate could only fit one person at a time. Zhang Xiao Qiang tried to use the spearhead to pry open the gate, but it didn’t work. He carefully checked under the iron gate, there was a lot of rust at the edge of the gate, and it was locked really tightly. At the side of the lock you could only fit something the thickness of an ID card.

Zhang Xiao Qiang grew anxious, he was considering whether he should go downstairs to look for more tools. Looking at the gate, he knocked on it with his hand, and realised that the iron gate was very thin. The owner wanted to save materials, so he used a sheet of galvanized iron and soldered it onto a triangular steel frame to make the gate, there weren’t many solder points! He breathed a sigh of relief, this is going to be easy!!!

He pulled out the army knife and stabbed it into the iron sheet pulling it outwards,

“Tah…”

One of the sheets corners had been released. He continued to use the knife to cut, until he created enough space for him to enter.

Zhang Xiao Qiang entered the roof on the top floor, there was construction materials scattered across floor of the roof; bricks, sand, cement, various types of PPR pipes, and PVC tubes. Looks like the owner of the 8th floor was trying to secretly build another room on the roof as there was a row of red brick wall that was half built.

Three zombies suddenly emerged from behind the wall, 1 in the front and 2 behind. They were facing Zhang Xiao Qiang and rushed towards him, the one in front was even holding a tile knife!

“FUUUUCK!!” Zhang Xiao Qiang yelled, he left without burning incense, bad luck.

He turned and ran for 2 steps, and then stopped with both legs!!!

“If I run now, what will I do next time, there are only three, what is there to be afraid of!!!”

Blood rushed to Zhang Xiao Qiang’s brain stirring him up. He turned to face the first zombie that was running towards him. His left hand desperately holding onto the shield, the right hand holding the spear. His was mouth taking deep, rapid breaths, and his eyes were fixed on the figure of the zombie.

He saw that the zombie had skinny cheeks and an exaggerated mouth. Upon making contact with the zombie, his right hand tightly gripped the spear and thrust it in an arc, suddenly, hitting the zombie’s calf.

“Kaca…” the sound of breaking bones rang out

“Kathump…” the zombie had fallen to the ground

Zhang Xiao Qiang didn’t bother with the fallen zombie. He started jogging towards the remaining 2 zombies that were rushing towards him. 2 zombies, one of the left and one on right, they were 5 to 6 metres away from each other. He rushed towards the zombie on the left. The palms of the hand holding the spear started to sweat, his heart was beating violently, making it difficult for him to breathe.

“2 metres, 1 metre, now!!!”

Holding the potlid in his left hand tightly on the left of his chest, he used his shoulder up against the pot lid to bash into the zombie. An enormous force went from his shoulder to his wrist, it felt like fire spreading along his hand. The pot lid was extremely dented and it was no longer recognisable.

There was no time to think, taking the opportunity that the zombie was on the ground, Zhang Xiao Qiang threw away the damaged iron pot lit, and gripped the spear with both hands, rushing at the remaining zombie nearby. The left leg of the zombie bent forwards. revealing the nasty stab wound from the spear.

“Poof…”

The triangular spearhead stabbed into the zombies throat, going through his neck and out the back of his head. Zhang Xiao Qiang rotated the spear left and right, the spearhead mincing the flesh and bones of the zombie’s neck region and was pulled out easily. A hole was left where the spear stabbed. What was left of the skull, flesh and bones was dangling at the back, and fell to the ground.

“puff…” Zhang Xiao Qiang let out a breath of air, he aimed at the brain, but hit the neck? this skill is still too weak!

Zhang Xiao Qiang stepped away from the zombie falling, then ran behind the zombie with the broken leg. He mustered his strength and stomped his back to preventing further movement. Using his arm strength, the spear entered its brain from the back from its head, he turned the spear to release it and the zombie no longer moved. The spearhead was covered with smelly yellow brain juice.

“There is still one left.”

Zhang Xiao Qiang turned around and the last one rushed towards him. He wanted to test out an idea, to try to find other weaknesses of the zombies other than the head, so he walked around the zombie, leading it around, then took the opportunity to break both its arms.

The zombie was repeatedly stabbed by the spear in the body, the zombie’s clothes have already been reduced to cloth scraps, and the dry black body was littered with holes; heart, liver, lungs, have all been punctured to a pulp. The zombie ignored all of this and continued, like a mad dog he used both his broken arms to try and chase him and bite him. Experiment complete, the spear stabbed the stench producing big mouth, pulling out the teeth in his mouth. He got out tissues from his pocket and wiped the sweat off his face, he was calming down.

“Fuck, 1 versus 3, he actually did it, he really did it, 5 days ago facing even 1 made him deathly afraid. Today he killed exactly 10, of those 3 were face front on with no fancy tactics!”

Zhang Xiao Qiang felt a wave of relief: “who said being a recluse was useless, I’m alive, and I will continue to live on, and I will live even better” he told himself.

His excitement slowly become calmness, Zhang Xiao Qiang looked at this watch, its was now 4:31. Climbing the stairs took around 10 minutes and unlocking the door took around 20 minutes. Killing the zombies, doing the experiment, and finding the core brain didn’t take longer than 10 minutes, even though there wasn’t much other than brain fluid in the skull of the zombies.

He remembered the reason he came up the stairs, so he went to walls of the roof, bringing up the 10x magnification binoculars and looked to where the smoke was. Its been around 30 minutes, the smoke had thinned. In the lens of the binoculars he could see an overturned medium sized van, there were hundreds of zombies gathered around the van. The front of the van crashed into the flowerbed, the van was still on a weak fire. In front of the truck there was a bus and a medium sized truck that crashed together, and there were many small cars behind the van, two car frames and many cars were scattered along the road,

Once everything was clear, a van rushed out of the city filled with survivors trying to escape the city. Due to how the road was blocked and the van was travelling at high speed, so the van probably rolled when braking, some survivors burned to death in the car, the others were thrown out of the car to become zombie dinner.

Seeing all this, Zhang Xiao Qiang felt some nausea. This is a zombie apocalypse, all the survivors are like hungry mice trying to earn themselves a ray of light under stressful conditions. At least he was lucky, the food in his home is enough for another 2 months. As to what will happen after 2 months?

“Lets just get through these 2 months, I’ll cross the bridge when I get there”

Zhang Xiao Qiang shook his head, and with the typical mindset of a recluse he went back downstairs calmly. When he went downstairs the sky began to rain!!!