Night of Unseen Dangers

36

Worried about Chris's condition, I pushed myself up.

He had successfully climbed up the edge of the 8th-floor balcony and was untying the rope around his waist. Behind him, the wooden ladder lay shattered.

Anne went to the hallway to open the door for Chris, leaving me to clean up the scene.

Logically, it was impossible for me to have held up two grown men on my own.

I noticed the end of the rope was wet and realized that the panting security chief at my feet was the real hero of the night.

I patted KK's head, deciding to reward it with chicken breast tomorrow.

Soon, the two of them came inside one after the other. Chris had several scratches on his neck, and his clothes were torn.

"Don't worry," he said, noticing my concerned look. "I'll treat it with iodine later."

"What exactly happened?" Anne chugged a glass of water. She still seemed a bit dazed.

Chris explained that he had been knocked over the railing by a leaping zombie.

The zombie was incredibly strong, and he struggled to break free from its grip, finally escaping by breaking its wrists.

Zombies had lost all sense of pain, and nothing could stop their hunger for food.

"The zombies are getting stronger," Chris observed.

Indeed.

They seemed to have regained the ability to vocalize.

Previously, zombies were silent hunters, which allowed us to outmaneuver them when encountering a few. But now, a new signal for gathering had emerged within the horde.

Our room for maneuver was shrinking, leaving us with little choice but to flee.

I wasn't sure how the zombie upstairs had detected us. Their senses had undoubtedly become sharper.

"What could be causing their increased strength?" I wondered aloud. "It can't just be KK's barking that triggered it, right?"

That didn't make sense logically.

In the early days of the virus outbreak, plenty of survivors were chased and cornered by zombie hordes, their screams far more prolonged and harrowing than KK's bark.

"I've been pondering this too,"

Chris broke the brief silence.

"The sound isn't the cause; it's more of a result."

"Rather than the noise strengthening the zombies, it's revealing their true state."

"They've been stronger for some time; we just hadn't realized it until now."

I grasped Chris's point.

Temporal causality doesn't imply logical causality.

We hadn't engaged with them for a long time.

It seemed the zombies had strengthened after the last rescue mission, but the actual mutation might have occurred even earlier.

"Thud."

A dull sound came from outside the window.

No need to get up and check; we all knew the source of the noise.

After tonight's incident, the neighborhood would soon become lively again.

The discussion on the cause of the mutation remained inconclusive.

We shifted our focus to analyzing the zombies' behavior patterns.

Aside from being more sensitive to sound, the duration of their gatherings was also increasing.

The first time was beneath Chris's building, where the zombies congregated for about three days.

The second time, it took nearly a week for them to disperse.

How long would this time last?

"Their abilities are not only getting stronger; their behavior is also changing," Anne wrote the conclusion in her notebook.

I couldn't help but think of that upside-down face.

At this time, they shouldn't be so active.

"What I'm most worried about is that they'll eventually disregard all rules and descend into complete chaos and rampage. We're already seeing signs of this,"

Chris suggested the worst possible scenario.

"In the future, they might no longer follow any schedule."

"When that day comes, the zombies will wander day and night, not only with sharper senses but also coordinating their hunts through calls."

"Thud."

As if in response to Chris's concerns, another zombie fell onto the 2nd-floor balcony.

"The houses can no longer contain them," Anne frowned. "They want out."

If all the lower-level zombies poured into the neighborhood, the density of the horde would increase dramatically.

Moreover, the presence of other survivors was equally worrying.

Although it seemed we were the last holdouts in this community, I still didn't let my guard down.

"I'll take KK and sleep on the 2nd floor for now. If anyone approaches, at least we'll be able to react immediately,"

Chris said as he packed his things.

"And, I'm concerned that zombies falling from the balconies might not immediately lose their mobility. If they invade the hallways, it'll be troublesome."

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