By noon, all the steel pipe frames in the stairwell had been completely dismantled.
When Su Jin stepped out of Fu Hu's home again, he was already holding a roster in his hand.
Its contents were, naturally, information on the residents living in this stairwell.
Fu Hu was familiar with basically all the residents in this unit, with the exception of a few tenants.
After a quick scan of the list, Su Jin had a clear picture in mind.
The proportion of elderly residents in this community who had served in the military or government systems seemed quite high.
Right now, what they lacked most was fighting power; they needed to bolster their security forces.
The resident on the fourth floor across from him—right opposite his storeroom—was a former soldier named Wang Song.
A bit younger than Fu Hu, he was in his early forties.
By common logic, a soldier possessed high discipline and combat capability, and someone in his forties should still be in decent physical shape.
Starting his recruitment with this man couldn't be more fitting.
Grabbing the adhesive remover, Su Jin went straight to the fourth floor and began spraying.
After waiting about a dozen minutes, he knocked firmly on Wang Song's front door.
There was always a chance someone inside had undergone zombification, and simple sounds would be enough to identify it.
Yet despite knocking for a long time—to the point where people downstairs were starting to cry for help—there wasn't the slightest response from Wang Song's apartment.
After a moment's thought, Su Jin took out the Silver Spear.
He had already tested this gun last night.
Once all nine bullets were fired, it would automatically reload after half an hour.
The item provided by the Company was truly extraordinary; this golden finger was ridiculously powerful.
Aiming the gun at the peephole, he fired a shot!
The peephole was punched clean through, its fragments spraying into the apartment.
Su Jin stepped back and peered through the hole into the interior.
A dark, congealed pool of blood covered the floor, and two corpses lay there, both covered with white sheets.
Just as he prepared to inspect further, a faint voice came from inside.
"I'm your neighbor. Are you Wang Song? Are you hurt?" Su Jin darted aside onto the stairs, pressing against the wall beside the door with both hands gripping the gun.
"Does it matter whether I'm hurt? Just leave."
The two corpses inside had likely been killed after being infected; judging by the blood, they had been dead for some time.
The man was still rational; even if suspected of being infected, the current safety level was still relatively high.
With that thought, Su Jin shifted his aim toward the door lock.
The Silver Spear was immensely powerful, and with no need to worry about ricochets, just two shots shattered the lock mechanism.
Pulling the door open gently, Su Jin slipped inside sideways, mimicking what he had seen in movies, his gun sweeping left and right.
"Wang Song, are you in here?"
"Who the hell are you? How do you have a gun?"
Hearing the voice coming from the bedroom, Su Jin slowed his steps and moved toward it.
Stepping into the bedroom, he couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.
A middle-aged man in his forties was sitting on the windowsill, looking as though he were hesitating on the verge of jumping.
Su Jin shut the door behind him and lowered his gun.
"Calm down, Wang Song. Don't jump."
Wang Song turned his head on the windowsill. Almost frozen stiff, his face deathly pale, his teeth chattered as he spoke.
"You... have a gun? You're not my neighbor. Who are you?"
"Who I am doesn't matter! Get down right now, close the window, and don't give up hope. We can talk this through!"
Wang Song's face was etched with grief. "What hope is there left? The country is gone... It's raining all over the world. Do you really think this world can be saved?"
"Where there is a home, there is a country. As long as we're alive, there's hope. Come down first, and then we'll talk," Su Jin urged patiently.
"Home... Home is gone too. You must have seen them. My mother... and my wife turned into monsters. My son is out of town... There's probably no hope for him either." Wang Song's voice was faint and choked with sobs. "Just go. Don't worry about me."
"I have to worry about you. Plenty of people have lost their families right now, just like you—and just like me." Su Jin pressed his back against the wall, watching him closely. "If you won't come down, fine. When your family turned into monsters, did you get hurt? I can find you some medicine."
Wang Song turned around shakily, lifted his shirt to reveal a torso wrapped in bandages, and gave a bitter smile. "Three days ago..."
A gunshot rang out. Wang Song's bitter smile froze on his face as his body plummeted toward the ground below.
Su Jin slid down against the wall, clutching his chest and gasping for breath.
I killed someone... I killed someone... It's fine, it's fine, I killed a zombie!
No, he hadn't mutated yet. But he was going to commit suicide anyway, and he didn't dare jump... So I helped him.
I... I actually saved him?!
After consoling himself for quite a while, Su Jin pushed himself up against the wall and, with lingering dread, stepped forward to close the window.
Then he went back to the living room, found a mop handle, and used it to lift the shrouds covering the corpses.
Seeing the wounds on the corpses, Su Jin's throat bobbed. He jabbed the mop handle in and stirred it around twice.
Being attacked by a zombie might not carry a hundred-percent chance of infection, but right now was definitely not the time to test that theory.
So Wang Song had to die.
These two zombies on the floor had clearly fought with Wang Song; their clothes were torn to shreds.
There were knife wounds all over their necks, chests, and bellies.
Yet the most prominent was a deep, severe wound on the chest... That was the fatal strike!
Combined with the earlier rat experiment, it turned out that a zombie's weak point really was the heart!
This trip hadn't been an entirely fruitless endeavor after all.
With that thought, Su Jin took a deep breath and found a quilt in the apartment.
Wrapping the corpses in the quilt, he scooped them up and tossed them out the nearest window.
Having thrown out both bodies, he returned to the stairwell with lingering terror.
Picking up the roster again, Su Jin locked his gaze onto the sixth floor.
This experience had truly been a bit terrifying; he hadn't been cautious enough.
He wouldn't look for the young and vigorous for now. Two old men lived on the sixth floor. According to Fu Hu's description, both had done research in the past and served in the military.
Judging by their age, they were pushing seventy; even if zombification occurred, the danger wouldn't be very high.
After all, no matter how much they mutated, their old bones were still fragile.
Sun Ya in Room 601 was an elderly man living alone; better to practice on an old man first...
Reaching the sixth floor, he repeated the process: adhesive remover, then knocking on the door.
Su Jin waited quietly with his gun ready.
Before long, a voice came from behind the door: "Who are you?"
"A neighbor from downstairs."
"My door was sealed, and from what I heard, the people downstairs were sealed in as well. How did you get out... Are you hurt?"
Hearing this, Su Jin raised an eyebrow.
The old man in this apartment was no ordinary person—his awareness was exceptionally sharp!
"I was the one who sealed the doors, and they can be opened now. I'm not hurt. What about you?"
Following that question, the sound of the door unlocking answered him.
It seemed the door had been nudged from inside, slowly swinging open on its own.
Su Jin stepped forward slowly, but the moment he saw what lay behind the door, his entire body froze stiff!
Amidst the pitch darkness, a faint candlelight flickered.
Behind the candlelight, a lean, wiry old man stood holding a shotgun, glaring hawkishly right at him!
"Don't move. Stay right where you are."
"Don't shoot," Su Jin said, raising his hands and forcing himself to stay calm. "I mean no harm. I came to save you. There are still many people in this building, and I just want to bring everyone together so we can huddle for warmth."
"Fu Hu downstairs told me about you. You're Old Mr. Sun, right?"
"Huddle for warmth?" Sun Ya gave a bleak laugh, looking exceptionally sinister in the candlelight. "The country is gone. The world is beyond saving. What warmth is there left to huddle for?"
"How do you know it's beyond saving? What's most important right now is organizing to fight the enemy outside. If we give up on ourselves now—"
"Shut up!" Sun Ya snapped, though his tone instantly turned stifled and heavy. "There is no chance of turning this around!"
"That rain didn't just infect humans—it infected animals too. The infected creatures are driven by instinct to attack living things."
"Almost all the major military districts are stationed in the wild. The wild is full of animals, and lights at night are blindingly conspicuous. On the night of the rain, military districts all over the world must have been attacked by infected creatures. With small animals getting indoors, the troops couldn't mount an effective defense, and once they stepped outside, they had no choice but to get soaked by the rain, making the situation even worse."
"The first to be hit weren't the cities, but the military! The military was probably wiped out from the very start!"
Chapter 28