When the apocalypse came, the densely populated city instantly became a hell. Both sides of the streets were littered with wrecked vehicles, billowing smoke and flames. The Living Dead roamed back and forth, and mutilated corpses were scattered all over the road.

Shop doors were wide open, shattered glass covering the ground. The shelves looked as if they had been swept by a tornado, and the walls were covered with splattered bloodstains and blackish-red handprints.

Ahead, someone lay on the ground, his limbs still twitching reflexively, but his torso was already ripped open, guts spilling out. A few Zombies surrounded him, tearing at the flesh of his arms and legs, scooping up his organs and gulping them down, blood pooling on the ground.

A silver Camry sped past. The Zombies smelled the scent of a living person and had just staggered up to give chase, but the car had already vanished in the distance.

The young man looked at his rearview mirror. In the distance, on top of the prison building, an armed helicopter was roaring as it took to the sky, flying over the devastated city toward a distant horizon of billowing black smoke.

He averted his gaze and slightly adjusted the rearview mirror, then saw something in it, his movement pausing for a moment.

It was a pair of cloudy, grayish-white eyes.

Quietly, right behind him.

The young man slammed on the brakes. Amidst a screeching sound, he turned his head and saw, in a blind spot in the back seat, a little girl strapped in by the seatbelt. She was curled up quietly, perhaps only two or three years old, not much bigger than a cat. She had little pigtails in her hair and was hugging a doll.

Her entire face had already turned black. Her mouth opened and closed, purplish-red blood trickling from the corners of her lips down to her neck. She stared blankly at the young man, and beside her lay a woman's handbag spattered with blood.

The young man gently closed his eyes.

He could imagine the scene. A husband, unwilling to abandon his infected wife and daughter, drove to escape the city, searching for rescue along the way, only to be bitten to death in the driver's seat. Then, his zombified wife opened the back door and fled.

He opened his eyes and raised his gun, aiming at the spot between the little Zombie girl's eyebrows, but his index finger couldn't pull the trigger.

The Zombies on the street crowded around the car, numbly pounding on the windows with dull thuds. After a long moment, the young man lowered his gun, reached out and grabbed the little girl's neck, snapping it with a crack. The body slumped softly onto the back seat.

He didn't throw the little Zombie out of the car. After looking at her for a moment without a word, he stepped on the accelerator and drove forward.

A kilometer ahead, next to a parking garage building, the yellow sign of a pharmacy was unusually conspicuous amid the smoke.

·

At the same moment, on the second floor of the parking garage.

In the huge space, a dozen or so cars full of bullet holes were parked sporadically. Dead bodies and severed limbs littered the ground, and car alarms blared one after another. The stench of gunfire and rotting flesh from the fierce battle mixed together, harshly assaulting everyone's nerves.

“We're surrounded by a horde of Zombies,” Yan Hao said hoarsely, lowering his binoculars. “The back alley is a dead end, and the front entrance is blocked by a tide of Zombies, estimated to be several hundred strong. The adjacent buildings are a hospital, a school, and a supermarket pharmacy—they're red-level-one danger zones. We can't cross with grappling hooks, and our ammunition is about to run out.”

Beside an armored hazmat vehicle, several team members were quickly organizing their gear. Hearing this, they all turned in unison to look at a certain figure in profile.

Their harsh, long-term training prevented them from immediately losing control, but the faint current of despair flowing through the silence was unmistakable. In the stiflingly oppressive air, the wails and the sounds of pounding from downstairs grew even clearer.

“Captain…” Yan Hao mumbled.

Zhou Rong was leaning against a blood-stained wall. As the focus of everyone's attention, he looked up but didn't speak. Instead, he flicked his wrist, throwing a cold glint of light—at the same time, twenty paces away, a Zombie hiding behind a concrete pillar took a knife to the skull, buried to the hilt, and collapsed with a thud.

“Pack your gear. Prepare to break out.”

Zhou Rong stood up and walked a short distance away. He was nearly 1.9 meters tall, dressed head-to-toe in a black protective suit. His expression was hidden against the light; only his deep and stern voice could be heard. A team member, as if realizing something, shot to his feet. “Rong-ge! Where are you going?!”

Zhou Rong found an Audi sports car, one side of its body riddled with bullet holes. Under everyone's watchful eyes, he shattered the front window with a single punch, fished out the spare key from the glove compartment, opened the door, and got in.

“I'm going to lure the Zombies at the front to the back door. After you break out, drive southeast. The target shelter is thirty kilometers away, underground in the city center.”

He started the ignition, and the bullet-riddled sports car let out a roar: “Once I get away, I'll catch up and meet you. If I'm not back before you arrive, Yan Hao will take over as captain. Transmit a positioning signal to the base.”

“Captain!” Yan Hao instantly roared. Several team members rose to their feet at the same time, unable to accept it. “No way, Rong-ge!” “Stop!”

Zhou Rong stuck his head out of the car window and narrowed his sharply and beautifully shaped eyes. “Hm?”

When Zhou Rong wasn't smiling, his features combined to create a cold, arrogant, and intimidatingly hostile aura. Even the angle of his eyebrows and his slightly constricted pupils silently proclaimed the fact that 'this person is extremely difficult to handle', enough to make an observer completely overlook his own handsome features.

Years of accumulated, intimidating authority made the team members choke back their words reflexively. Yan Hao then lost his composure and took a few steps forward, but just as he was about to speak, Zhou Rong pointed a finger at him. The weight of the undeniable command in that gesture made him stop dead in his tracks.

Then Zhou Rong smiled—and as soon as he did, that hostile aura vanished. The corners of his lips quirked up, and his eyes crinkled slightly, giving him a kind of roguish charm instead.

“You guys are whining like a bunch of girls.” He pointed to each of his team members' faces in turn and grinned. “Wait for Rong-ge to meet you at the shelter. Now scram.”

The team members tightened their grips on their submachine guns, looking at one another, despair showing in their eyes.

The sports car signaled and reversed, sliding into a neat J-turn over the rotting corpses on the ground.

“Wait… Wait, Captain!”

Yan Hao's eyes were fixed on the world outside the window when he suddenly saw something and said in disbelief, “Someone… Someone's coming!”

—At the front entrance of the parking garage, a dense, countless mass of Zombies was mechanically pounding on the door. On the road behind them, a silver Camry came to an abrupt stop, then reversed and rolled down its window.

...

'Are there survivors in the parking garage?'

The young man sized up the eight-story building. Every window in sight was shattered and spattered with blood, making it impossible to see inside. Only through a window on the second floor facing the street could he vaguely see someone leaning against it, perhaps a civilian who had fled into the building in a panic when the outbreak happened.

The parking garage's own electronically controlled gate was sealed, but under the endless pounding of the Zombies, the hollow iron gate had already dented inwards into a terrifying arc. It was only a matter of time before it was breached.

The young man's brow furrowed slightly, and he hesitated for a moment.

He looked toward the pharmacy with its wide-open doors not far away. There were only a few male Zombies there, wearing middle school uniforms, limping and wandering aimlessly. They must have run out from the nearby school after the infection broke out.

Although he had temporary amnesia due to excessive stimulation, a head injury, or some other reason, he still retained his basic common sense. He needed a Pheromone Inhibitor to disguise himself as a Beta. Now that the survivors had drawn away the large horde of Zombies, it was entirely feasible to make a dash for the pharmacy.

But the fragile electronically controlled gate probably wouldn't last more than a few minutes.

'And what if the tide of Zombies follows me into the pharmacy after I go in?'

The young man took a deep breath, his gaze falling on a motorcycle twenty meters away, where its rider had crashed into a tree and died. After silently counting to three, he shoved the car door open.

The roar of a motorcycle engine suddenly resounded through the street, like a horn announcing that dinner was served.

On the second floor of the parking garage, Yan Hao's voice was extremely soft and full of surprise. “This person…”

“Is he… is he helping us lure away the tide of Zombies…?”

Zhou Rong strode over, took the binoculars, and looked down at the street. In the focus of the lens, the young man was straddling a motorcycle, his face and neck completely hidden by a helmet, the zipper of his leather jacket pulled up to his chin. The motorcycle's exhaust pipe spewed fumes along with the low rumble of the engine.

More and more Zombies were drawn by the sound. They stopped pounding on the door, turned around, and charged toward the motorcycle in droves.

Twenty meters, ten meters, five meters…

Just as the Zombies on the road had almost swarmed the front of the motorcycle, the number of Zombies in front of the parking garage finally dropped to below thirty. The rider raised his left arm and made a gesture to those up high.

Get ready—

“Yan Hao, get in the driver's seat!” Zhou Rong abruptly tossed the binoculars aside, raised his rifle to aim, and yelled, “Get in the vehicle! Everyone, get in and prepare to break out!”

With several bangs, bullets shattered the window glass. In the distant tide of Zombies, the heads of the few closest to the motorcycle exploded.

It was as if that was the signal to act. In that same second, the motorcycle's engine roared to life, and it shot forward!

“Go, go, go, move!” “Hurry!”

The team members quickly leaped onto the armored vehicle. Yan Hao yanked the steering wheel with one hand and tossed his own magazine out the window with the other. As if he had eyes in the back of his head, Zhou Rong didn't even turn around, snatching the magazine out of the air. He snapped it in with a click, rested the gun barrel on the windowsill, and unleashed a torrent of ammunition!

Amidst the hail of bullets, the motorcycle used its high speed to break out of the Zombie tide, crushing countless Living Dead into rotten flesh before speeding toward the intersection.

The Zombies staggered after it. From a high vantage point, one could see that even the Zombies from several nearby streets had been drawn by the noise, gathering in ever-increasing numbers until they formed a spectacular, long line.

Those with severed hands and broken feet, those bleeding from all seven orifices, those who died with their eyes open… The dense, endless tide of corpses was a horrifying sight. However, in this life-or-death moment, no one had time for fear. At the intersection, the rider made a sharp turn and roared into Southeast Avenue!

With a loud rumble, the parking garage gate finally, slowly rose. The hazmat vehicle ran over several Zombies that failed to dodge in time.

“Captain—” Yan Hao yelled.

Up on the second floor, Zhou Rong braced himself on the windowsill with one hand and leaped down, landing heavily on the roof of the vehicle with a “BOOM!”.

·

Five hundred meters away, at the other end of the intersection.

The motorcycle fishtailed to change lanes, then came to an abrupt stop.

Another tide of corpses had suddenly appeared ahead, scrambling over each other to press forward!

The long-range sniper cover from Zhou Rong had stopped. Now blocked by Zombies from both the front and back, the scene was suddenly quite spectacular. From behind his helmet, the young man glanced at his rearview mirror. At the street corner behind him, a fork in the road led to East Avenue.

His fingers, resting on the handlebars, tightened, veins bulging, then relaxed. He took a deep breath and turned the front of the bike—

“ROAR—”

The motorcycle shot across the road like a meteor, brushing past the sharp teeth of the Zombies beside it as it charged for the fork. The bike went airborne, brazenly smashing through the floor-to-ceiling glass wall of a corner bookstore, exiting through the other side and landing amidst a shower of glass!

Two male Zombies ahead were knocked flying by the impact to their chests, their half-rotten organs bursting all over the ground. A third Zombie reached out and grabbed the handlebar. Just as it opened its mouth to lunge forward, a bullet whistled past and blew its brains into the sky.

The young man looked up.

—Two hundred meters away, a silver-gray armored vehicle was rampaging forward. Zhou Rong was lying prone on its roof with his rifle, one eye narrowed, his thin lips curled slightly, as if greeting him from a great distance.

The next bullet grazed his helmet and blew the top off the skull of a middle-aged female Zombie next to the motorcycle.

“Ten meters behind the corner bookstore on East Avenue, two o'clock position. Prepare for rescue.”

Zhou Rong's voice came through the headset. Yan Hao nodded in acknowledgment, then his eyes swept over the satellite map. “Not good.”

“What is it?”

Yan Hao stomped on the accelerator. “East Avenue is a dead end.”

The armored vehicle roared as it accelerated, but it was already too late. Zhou Rong's brow twitched. He saw the motorcycle start up, break through the tight encirclement of Zombies, and charge into East Avenue with no other choice!

“Take a detour to intercept! Find the best route!” Zhou Rong yelled amidst the flying shell casings. “Prepare to turn around!”

In the driver's cabin, the route on the GPS screen changed, and Yan Hao cranked the steering wheel hard in response.

Meanwhile, on East Avenue, the rider leaned his upper body down as far as it could go, speeding like the wind through a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood. Then, a solid row of black hydraulic roadblocks appeared ahead!

At this moment, the motorcycle's speed had reached a terrifying 200 km/h, and the roadblock was barely three hundred meters away—a distance that would be covered in less than six seconds.

What did six seconds mean?

—No time to turn back, no time to swerve. Both sides of the road were packed with Zombies. A collision with the roadblock would mean certain death and destruction.

The rider's pupils constricted to pinpricks. At the same time, the needle on the dashboard shook violently, hitting its limit, and the exhaust pipe roared as if an enraged beast was trapped within.

“He's going to charge the blockade…” Yan Hao said softly.

Like the staff of Moses parting the sea, the motorcycle broke through the layers of Zombies and, in an instant, charged up the steel plate of the roadblock—

Time froze. Even the sound of the wind suddenly ceased.

In mid-air, the motorcycle did a 360-degree flip, tracing an arc of fire across the sky.

Zhou Rong threw out a grappling hook. “Catch—”

In the rushing wind, the young man extended his arm. The rope with its iron hook wrapped precisely around his wrist. He then kicked off the motorcycle, flying through the air toward Zhou Rong.

The heavy motorcycle spun wildly and plunged headfirst into the tide of corpses, followed by an earth-shattering explosion!

BANG! With a heavy thud, the young man crashed onto the roof of the armored vehicle. Inertia sent him rolling toward the edge, but Zhou Rong grabbed him around the waist, kicked open the roof hatch, and the two of them tumbled into the cabin with a loud clang.

“Rong-ge!” “Captain!”

The team members rushed forward, all helping to pull the two to their feet. Even Yan Hao in the driver's seat set the vehicle to auto-drive, signaled a teammate to take over, and quickly ducked into the rear cabin. “Captain, are you okay?”

“Hiss, hiss, hiss…” Zhou Rong grimaced as he got up. “My old back…”

Behind him, the young man dodged the hands trying to help him up with lightning speed, retreating to a corner and straightening up.

From behind the motorcycle helmet, he stared at the men before him without a word.

'This is a special forces team,' he thought.

But unexpectedly, this team of lean and powerfully built soldiers were all Betas. In the confined space of the cabin, there wasn't a trace of the extremely aggressive scent of Alpha Pheromones.

“Here,” Yan Hao said, kindly offering a bottle of water. “Thanks.”

The cabin gradually fell silent. Under everyone's gaze, the young man neither spoke nor made any move to take the water.

“…” Yan Hao gestured again. “It's for you.”

Yan Hao had the kind of looks that, if he hadn't joined the army, would have definitely gotten him into film school. He was as tall as Zhou Rong, with broad shoulders and long legs, elegant brows and clear eyes. A single ruby earring stud on his left ear glinted slightly, giving him the air of a melancholic male lead from a campus romance drama.

So many years of training so strict it bordered on perverse hadn't left a single mark on his fair skin; his natural beauty was truly hard to hide.

However, the rider in front of him was not appreciative. His attitude could even be described as indifferent or wary.

“This brother…” another team member began to say, but the rider finally moved.

He ignored the bottle of water, reached out, unslung Yan Hao's fully automatic carbine, and shouldered it himself.

“Hey, you—”

Zhou Rong turned around while drinking his water, stopping the team member. He grinned at the young man, showing his teeth. “What should we call you, brother?”

The young man didn't speak.

“Want something to eat?”

No response.

The atmosphere in the cabin gradually changed. In the cramped space, a kind of tension was slowly brewing in the silence.

Zhou Rong stroked his chin, looking the young man up and down. He was completely wrapped in a tight motorcycle jacket and dark jeans, his face completely hidden by his helmet. He reeked of having rolled through a pile of Zombies and looked to be in a very sorry state.

But his figure was lean and sharp, and his wary stance was like a knife.

A military dagger, mostly unsheathed, gleaming with a grim, cold light.

“Friend,” Zhou Rong asked with a smile, acting as if he noticed nothing amiss, “where are you headed? We can give you a ride.”

A full ten seconds passed. In the cabin, besides the long and short breaths of its occupants, there was only the faint wailing of the Zombies outside the steel plates.

“…Back to the parking garage.” In the almost suffocating atmosphere, the young man finally spoke, his voice hoarse from dryness. “To the pharmacy.”

Zhou Rong nodded in an extremely friendly manner, turned and went to the driver's seat in the front, and patted the driver on the shoulder. “Back to the Southeast Avenue parking garage.”

Then he leaned down and said softly, in a volume only the two of them could hear, “Find a place to stop. I'm going to follow him and see what he's doing in the pharmacy.”