Ch 24 : Confirm the new shelter

Mei Jing gave an unnatural smile and didn't say anything more.

After a moment of silence, she pointed towards the room and said, "I'm going to sleep now."

"Mm, get some good rest."

....

Early the next morning, after Shu Guang gave Rongrong an IV, Suo Tian and the others had breakfast and then set off.

I saw them off downstairs, watching as they entered the alley.

I couldn't calm down, fearing they might encounter some danger.

At this point, we couldn't hide the matter of the alley and the car from Li Jianguo and the others anymore.

Back upstairs, I first went to the third floor to check on Lili.

Yin Shangtang, Jun Di, and Shu Guang were on the fourth floor, looking after Rongrong.

The third floor only had the couple.

Although they were trying to hide their feelings, I could still see the deep unease in their expressions.

It was the kind of helplessness and confusion about the future, about tomorrow.

I chatted with them for a while, but seeing Lili forcing a smile, I didn't want to stay longer.

I stood up and went back to the fourth floor, where Shen Xue and the others were playing with Rongrong.

Yin Shangtang and Jun Di were bickering nearby.

I don't know what Jun Di said, but suddenly everyone burst into laughter.

Yin Shangtang gave him a sidelong glance and said with a smile, "Enough, you silly kid, with your short forehead, you look like a short-lived ghost. Who knows, tomorrow you might get chopped up and eaten by those walkers outside..."

At this point, Yin Shangtang seemed to suddenly realize something, and abruptly stopped speaking.

The laughter abruptly stopped.

That's the thing about fear.

When you think it's far away from you, it has already transformed into the air that fills your life, subtly making you realize that there's no escaping it.

"What are you talking about, why are we talking about being chopped up? I think you all are just hungry," I said with a smile as I walked into the room.

"Did they leave?" Shen Xue asked when she saw me enter.

"Yeah," I replied, walking over to the bed to feel Rongrong's forehead.

It was cool to the touch, and she wasn't running a fever anymore.

"Sis Chen, do we really have to move out?" Jun Di asked.

I looked at him and nodded. "Yeah, for now, it seems we have to move. Hiding here, the space is too small. If something happens, we'd be too passive, and we wouldn't even have room to escape."

"Maybe we won't be discovered."

"Maybe is a very dangerous word. How can we risk the lives of so many people on something uncertain? What we need is 100% safety, after all, we only have one life."

Jun Di nodded. "Yeah, you're right."

Little Rongrong, who was lying nearby, smacked her lips and looked up at me, asking, "Auntie, why do we have to move?"

She didn't know about the walker horde.

She was still such a young child—who would have the heart to scare her like that?

I bent down, patted her little head, and said with a smile, "Because there's more yummy food over there."

"Really?" Her eyes instantly lit up, sparkling with excitement.

After glancing carefully around the room, she stole a peek at Shu Guang and asked me cautiously, "Then… once we get there, can I stop getting injections?"

"Keep dreaming!" Before I could answer, Shen Xue flicked her forehead and pointed a finger at her sternly.

"Once we're there, you'll get two shots a day! The kind that hurts a lot!"

Jun Di burst into laughter beside us. "Xiao Xue, look how scared you made her."

"Xiao Xue?" I looked at Jun Di and Shen Xue, puzzled.

If I remembered correctly, Shen Xue was three years older than Jun Di.

That was quite an intimate way to address her.

Noticing my look, Shen Xue immediately cried out, "You! You! You! What are you looking at, Chen Yang? What's with that expression on your face?"

"What expression? This is just my natural look…" I said, shrugging innocently.

"Probably the same look I had," Yin Shangtang chimed in from the side, giving me a knowing smile.

I grinned mischievously and gave him a nod.

"Can't be bothered with you guys," Shen Xue said, blushing as she turned her back to us, refusing to engage further.

We didn't cook lunch—everyone just had some biscuits or whatever else was on hand to fill their stomachs a bit.

Rongrong's IV drip had been removed, and Shu Guang and the others had gone back to the third floor to rest.

The room suddenly felt empty.

Rongrong sat on the sofa, flipping through a comic book, her little face showing a mix of confusion and interest.

Shen Xue and I stood out on the balcony, watching for any movement downstairs.

Suo Tian and the others had been gone for quite a while, and they still hadn't returned.

We craned our necks, peering down toward the alley, but there was no sign of them.

The area was unusually quiet.

Even the wandering walkers that occasionally roamed nearby were nowhere to be seen today.

As each minute ticked by, my heart tightened more and more.

A flood of pessimistic thoughts raced through my mind.

Just as I was about to lose my patience and head out to look for them, I finally heard the sound of footsteps.

Moments later, Suo Tian and the others appeared downstairs.

I rushed down to open the door for them.

The moment the door opened, I was struck by the sight of them—all of them were covered in blood.

I jolted, eyes scanning frantically for Yangyang's figure.

But after looking around… I didn't see him.

In that instant, it felt like a muffled thunderclap exploded right above my scalp.

My mind went completely blank.

My whole body started to tremble uncontrollably.

I stood dazed in the doorway, watching them.

Suo Tian grabbed my arm and led me upstairs.

The others followed right behind.

On the fourth floor, Suo Tian, Shen Feng, and Mei Jing quickly changed out of their bloodied clothes.

Li Jiaqiang and his few men stood off to the side, not sitting on the couch.

I clenched my fists, my lips trembling as I didn't dare to ask where Yangyang was.

Shen Xue glanced around at everyone suspiciously and asked, "Where's Yangyang?"

In that moment, my nerves went taut—I felt like I could sense every subtle shift in the air from how tense I was.

"Yangyang, he…" Shen Feng hesitated for a long while before finally speaking.

I lowered my head, bracing myself to hear the rest.

I was holding my breath on purpose.

"What happened to him? Just say it already!" Shen Xue snapped impatiently.

"He… we left him at the school. We found a few surviving students in the kitchen behind the cafeteria—they were terrified and needed someone to calm them down. We couldn't bring everyone back at once, so we had no choice but to leave Yangyang there for now."

The moment Shen Feng finished speaking, I finally understood the true meaning—and real experience—of the phrase "heaven one second, hell the next."

Knowing that Yangyang was safe, I let out a deep breath, and the blank haze in my mind slowly came back under control.

But then I suddenly asked them, "Why did you leave him there? What does he even know? If something happens, he wouldn't be able to handle it!"

Suo Tian picked up a biscuit from the table. "It was his own request."

"Even if it was his own request, you still shouldn't have agreed! Don't you know his limits?"

"Calm down," Shen Feng tried to reassure me.

"We already searched the place thoroughly—cleared everything out. Yangyang and the students are safe there, trust me. We only didn't tell you right away because we were afraid you'd get mad."

"Let's get back to the main issue," Li Jiaqiang reminded from the side.

Main issue? What issue? I looked at Shen Feng, confused.

"Oh, our vehicles ran out of gas. Starting tomorrow, when we begin moving into the school, the cars will need to make a lot of trips back and forth. So today, shouldn't we go fill them all up first?" Shen Feng explained.

"So that means we've officially decided to move into the school?" I asked.

"Yeah," Suo Tian nodded. "It's a relatively good place."

The county's Experimental Middle School—I usually just passed by its front gate and had never paid attention to its internal layout.

After all, who would've thought there'd be a day we'd have to treat it like a shelter?

But since Suo Tian said it was safe, it probably was a decent hiding spot.

"Alright," I nodded. "As for refueling, you guys rest for a bit first. We'll head to the gas station later."

"But those places need an employee card to activate the pump," Li Jiaqiang said.

"Where are we gonna find staff at a time like this?"

I froze for a second.

Honestly, I hadn't even considered that.

Since the county's small, I usually just commuted on my little electric scooter, and it had been ages since I'd needed to think about how refueling worked.

I lowered my head, thinking through all kinds of options, but ended up drawing a total blank.

I finally turned to Suo Tian. "What do you think we should do?"

"For now, we'll just siphon some fuel from other cars. We'll figure out the rest later."

Suo Tian finished the last piece of his biscuit, dusted his hands off, then looked at Mei Jing.

"Can you still come with us in a bit?"

Mei Jing, who had been staring at the floor deep in thought, suddenly snapped out of it.

She looked at me and Suo Tian, then nodded. "I can."

"Then I'll go with you guys too." …

After resting for a bit, I handed out some food and water.

Once everyone had taken a short break, we headed out again.

During that time, Shen Feng gave me a brief rundown of what had happened at the school.

It turned out that when they arrived, the school gates had been left open, and quite a few walkers were scattered throughout the premises.

They had cleared all of them during their sweep.

Eventually, when they got to the school cafeteria—the last area to be checked—they found a few students hiding in a corner of the back kitchen.

Those kids had been surviving on whatever they could find in the cafeteria.

One of them, apparently a little girl, was already mentally unstable.

She kept giggling to herself, lost in some delusion where she imagined she'd become a walker too.

Shen Feng and the others had originally planned to bring all of them back, but the students were so traumatized they refused to leave no matter what.

With no other option, Yangyang had volunteered to stay behind and help calm the students down.

After all, we were planning to move into the school within the next couple of days anyway.

When Shen Feng and the others left, they found the main gate key in the guardhouse and locked it up.

The school was now relatively secure.

But with a few more students, it also meant more mouths to feed.

After discussing it with Suo Tian, we decided to go back to the mall's warehouse tomorrow and bring back more supplies.

I'd already taken most of the frozen meat from that big freezer, so this time we planned to bring the rest.

No matter how good the freezer's cooling was, after all this time, the meat probably wasn't going to stay fresh much longer.

Rather than letting it go bad, it was better to bring it back now and eat it while we still could.