Five days had slipped by in a flash.
The rain was still falling, but compared to the first day its intensity had visibly shrunk so much that it felt like it might stop at any moment.
Su Jin stood by the window, his face drained of color, as though he had been through a serious illness.
Five days under extreme pressure, snatching only fragmented sleep, had worn his mind to exhaustion.
Down below, zombies that had wandered in from who-knows-where already numbered nearly twenty.
These past few days had brought both good news and bad.
The jar in which he had collected gray rain — the gray substance inside it had dissipated over the five days.
The remaining water, once tested, had lost its ability to infect.
Moreover, the changes in the rain's intensity did not match Fu Qingdai's dream at all.
This showed that the Company did not actually foreknow the future completely; it had merely predicted this disaster, and much of it could not be called precise.
Fu Qingdai's dream was simply something the Company had woven together and "pushed" into her.
The current situation looked a good deal better than what Fu Qingdai had dreamed.
The disaster's reach was far broader than expected, yet its difficulty was not as high as he had imagined.
But the residential building across the way had already seen several bloody incidents — ones he had witnessed with his own eyes.
Someone had a zombie appear in their home and, driven into a corner, jumped to their death, only to be torn apart and devoured at the foot of the building.
Someone else managed to fight back... and in the end chose to hang themselves.
There was even cannibalism among the living — a husband and wife dug out their own son's organs with their bare hands and gulped them down in great bites... too horrific to watch.
The wailing from the floors above and below had not stopped for a single day...
Faced with all of this, every last sight gnawed at the nerves of ordinary people.
Su Jin's state of mind — already badly worn and tense, stretched to its limit — was made all the worse by it.
His greatest hope now was to wait for the rain to stop and for the army to appear and come to the rescue.
It should not be long before this disaster took a turn for the better.
Yet what kept him deeply afraid was... ever since the last broadcast, there had been no more broadcasts — as though the entire country had fallen silent.
There was no reassurance for the people at all, which struck him as highly abnormal.
Weary and despondent, Su Jin turned and walked toward the bedroom.
No matter what, all he could do now was wait.
He hoped the rain would stop soon and the army would come out sooner; he never wanted to live through anything like this a second time in his life.
Time slipped by, and it was already five in the afternoon.
Under the influence of the gray rain, the sky was much darker than usual.
From outside, the occasional roar of a zombie or the pounding of fists against doors could be heard.
On the bed, Su Jin stared blankly at the ceiling without a trace of expression.
Suddenly, the radio crackled to life.
At that moment, the static sounded to him like heavenly music!
Su Jin jolted up out of bed, snatched up the radio, and turned the volume knob that was already cranked to the maximum.
Leaning in close with immense anticipation, he listened intently.
A slightly noisy but mournful, panicked voice came from the radio.
"...wa—... all... citi... zens... national functions have ceased. Fight on your own, save yourselves and survive. Do not trust...."
A shrill scream, and the broadcast cut off abruptly.
The anticipation on Su Jin's face froze in place... his mind went blank, and every sound in the world seemed to vanish from within his head.
"Wooooooo——!" An air-raid siren suddenly went off, like a mournful wail tearing through the heavens.
Su Jin's whole body shuddered, and he hurried toward the living room.
At the sight before him, his pupils instantly dilated, and even his legs began to shake.
At the far edge of the horizon, in the direction of the core city district,
more than a dozen unidentified flying objects, seemingly missiles, trailed white exhaust flames as they leapt skyward from the core city district, slicing across the firmament like meteors in reverse.
Once the "missiles" vanished, a powerful shockwave became clearly visible.
Then dark clouds began to swell and spread on a massive scale at the point of detonation, surging like ocean waves.
"Vmmmmm——!" A tremendous boom, like an iron hammer smashing into the vault of the sky.
The entire building where Su Jin stood seemed to hang in midair, violently yanked.
The windows moaned and the glass rattled wildly, and for an instant it was as if the human world had crashed and frozen.
The apocalypse... at this moment was no longer the gray rain, but a fully materialized calamity descending in savage fury!
The violent churning of the clouds did not stop; as they rolled furiously, lightning began to flicker within them.
Downbursts formed, and columns of cloud descended like tornadoes, pounding against the earth.
Wherever the downbursts struck... the land froze over.
Su Jin's pupils quaked; gripping the edge of the windowsill, he stared into the distance, his teeth chattering.
The Cold Canopy missile system... large-scale cloud movement and the use of temperature and airflow to generate attacks were the typical hallmarks of this weapon.
This nation's ultimate weapon! With no warning at all, it had actually been fired at its own capital!
Am I... going to die?!
What on earth was happening?! Maybe tomorrow the rain would stop and the army was supposed to come out — so why was this happening?!
A surge of extreme terror and nausea rose in his heart.
Su Jin quickly covered his mouth and nose and ran, hunched over, toward the bathroom.
But he had barely reached the living room before he vomited a mouthful of sour fluid onto the floor.
An intense sour-bitter taste filled his mouth; Su Jin coughed until tears spattered from the corners of his eyes, his heart as if crushed in a single squeeze by reality!
Why was a country that had already entered the modern industrial age so fragile, so easily shattered?
The core logic of a state apparatus was to maintain order; directly declaring its own demise would only lead to total social collapse, the scramble for resources, and military mutiny.
No matter how vast the area of zombie infection, they had no reason to announce to the people that the nation had perished.
Over the problem of zombie infection alone, the highest command had carried out a devastating lockdown on the capital... and for days, he had not glimpsed even a trace of the army.
If a nation that vast could be shattered so easily, then what was I worth?!
A double calamity; in the current situation, every personal plan was as fragile as a blank sheet of paper.
Perhaps there was a problem with the highest decision-makers, or perhaps their understanding of this infection was incomplete... but Su Jin no longer had the heart to analyze it. He had completely lost his composure, his mind in chaos.
His body rigid for a long while, he then inexplicably rushed into the bedroom, grabbed one of the radios, and demanded furiously, "Do not trust what... do not trust what?! Say it! Speak!"
The next second, the radio was smashed to pieces.
The apocalypse... deep down he had reached his conclusion long ago; a being like the Company had already passed judgment on this world, and there was no need for further doubt.
Yet all along he had actually been harboring a fantasy, waiting for the army to rescue him.
In his heart he had always clung to a shred of luck, but now his entire plan had collapsed; there was no way out before him, and he would die a stranger in a foreign land... all that was left for him was the bloody reality.
The city's core district was still taking the brunt of the downbursts, while cold winds had long since swept across the whole city and dark clouds blanketed the sky.
Shrill screams and cries pierced through the cold wind and reached Su Jin's ears.
Su Jin stumbled to the living room window, only to see that people in the building across from him had already climbed onto the window ledges, crying out and leaping down.
In the neighboring residential building, too, people were crying loudly and killing themselves by flinging themselves from the upper floors.
The cries seemed like the summons of death; one suicide after another began to play out before Su Jin's eyes.
Until, on the sixth floor across the way, a woman holding a swaddled infant climbed onto the windowsill, shaking her head at Su Jin again and again through her tears... and then leapt down with her child.
"No, no, no... don't! Don't jump! Don't jump!!!!"
Frantic, Su Jin stamped his feet and shouted, eyes wide.
Watching the horde of corpses about to tear apart and devour the bodies of mother and child, he could no longer think of anything else.
He yanked the window open and raised his hand to fire!
Bang, bang, bang... after nine shots, only the hollow click of the trigger remained.
Su Jin mechanically pulled the trigger, watching helplessly as the mother and child were ripped to shreds by the horde, until in the end only a spreading stain of red was left, rippling on the water.
When a person watches someone else get an injection, they often instinctively feel a pang of pain, as if the needle were piercing their own skin.
And now, trapped in the same desperate straits with such a tragedy of life and death before him, Su Jin felt for the first time, on account of another's suffering, an unprecedented, piercing pain.
Su Jin's trigger finger finally stopped. His stomach cramped, and a heavy taste of rust rose in his throat.
He staggered and bent over, dry-heaving a few times, but nothing came up.
After standing in silence for two seconds, he suddenly turned and slammed the handgun to the floor, sending it bouncing off the wall.
"Where are you people from the Company?!" Su Jin collapsed to his knees, his gaze searching all around, howling at the empty air, "What can I do? I'm just an ordinary person! Why did you have to come for me?!"
"I can't even save my own life — who could I possibly save? Why don't you save them yourselves?!"
"I came here to find a job — what on earth do you people want?!"
Su Jin cursed and struck out, venting the fear and rage in his heart; the hand pounding the floor was already drenched in blood.
But each blow landed weaker than the last.
In the end, Su Jin slumped against the wall, covering his face, weeping bitterly.
And in the end, only choked sobs and murmurs remained.
Hope had been utterly shattered.
Within the residential complex, one suicide after another was still occurring.
The cold wind howled, and cries drifted on the wind...
"Zhang Wan! Zhang Wan! Wake up, quickly..."
In the Fu family's bedroom, Fu Hu was dizzy and reeling, forcing himself to prop up Zhang Wan and calling out to her again and again.
Ever since they had received the text message, the two of them had been completely beside themselves; then the Cold Canopy erupted, and witnessing the mass suicides had directly shocked Zhang Wan into fainting from fright.
Fu Qingdai stood in the doorway, her pretty face deathly pale, her hand clutching the door frame... she did not dare look out the window, but even just hearing the sounds left her unable to stand steadily.
Fu Hu called out twice more, then turned and said, "Qingdai, go get some water, quick!"
Fu Qingdai hurriedly answered, turned to ladle a bowl of water from the bucket, and carried it back to the bedroom.
Seeing that her father was still performing first aid on her mother, Fu Qingdai was overcome with panic and heartache, and more frightened than ever.
After thinking for a moment, she quietly pulled the door shut.
She turned to search around the living room, and her eyes fixed on a chair.
Gritting her teeth, she hoisted the chair and smashed it hard against the door handle!
"Qingdai, what are you doing?!" Fu Hu shouted from the bedroom.
Fu Qingdai paid him no mind, gritting her teeth and continuing to pound the door.
In one careless swing she missed, and because she had used too much force, her finger struck the door handle and scraped off a patch of skin.
Blood welled out along the wound.
After several more blows, the door handle finally came loose; Fu Hu happened to emerge from the room at just that moment, staring at his daughter in shock and anger.
"What are you doing?!"
"I want to go out."
"You are not allowed out now! You stay right here and behave — your mother is in a state like this and you are over there making trouble!"
Fu Qingdai lowered her head and nodded.
Once Fu Hu turned and hurried back into the bedroom, she immediately pulled the door handle open.
With a rattle of the door lock, Fu Qingdai cautiously pulled the door open.
The door opened a crack, and a thick, pungent smell of smoke immediately crept into her nose.
"Zzzt... zzzt... zzzt..." A harsh sound kept ringing out.
The electric lights in the room were flickering... the power grid was already unstable, on the verge of collapse.
Outside the window, the cold wind was still howling without end.
With her heart in her throat, Fu Qingdai slipped past the entryway; she had meant to speak, but at the sight before her, the words caught in her throat.
"Shhk... shhk... shhk..."
Blood was smeared everywhere on the floor. Su Jin sat on a stool, both fists wrapped in bandages, a heavy red seeping through them.
His muscular bare torso was slick with sweat, and under the flickering light the contours of his muscles were rimmed with gold.
Su Jin cast a sidelong glance, and Fu Qingdai immediately flinched, clutching her hands to her chest.
She had never seen such a look in his eyes... only hatred and fury, like a wild beast.
"Shhk... shhk... shhk..."
Their eyes met, and Fu Qingdai, her voice trembling with tears, spoke shakily, "Brother... I'm scared..."
The lights went out, and inside the room only the red glow of a cigarette tip flickered.
The red point dimmed, and the harsh scrape of a blade being sharpened stopped short.
"...Don't be afraid. Brother is here."
Chapter 25