Chapter 2: Nightmare Beginning (ii)

Zombies: a type of undead creature with an instinct to hunt down humans. The theme had become so overused in games and movies that everyone knew of them.

“Though I don’t want to admit it, we’ve been forced into a difficult situation. This building, the entire school, and perhaps the entire city is filled with zombies now.” After leaving the dormitory building, that man stood under the lamplight and stared intently at the bloody fruit knife in his hand. “Our misfortune could probably be sorted into the fiction genre. Right, I’m called Song Hanzhang by the way. I’m in my fourth year of clinical medicine. You?”

“Lin Jue, landscape design, second year.”

Song Hanzhang nodded.

Lin Jue knew he was nodding purely out of politeness and had no interest in his actual answer. His attention had been focused on their surroundings and the sound of a plastic bag rustling in the wind had made him move immediately into a guarded position.

He was a calm and cautious man, and Lin Jue held extremely mixed feelings towards him. On one hand, he wanted instinctively to get closer to the person in the same unfortunate position as him, but on the other hand, he was afraid of him—— he had yet to forget how cold his voice had been when he ordered Lin Jue to kill.

Not far away from the dormitories were the school walls. The teaching area and the dormitory area of University A were integrated and the dorms were separated into northern and southern parts. The building they were in was in the outskirts of the northern area and they would be able to reach the outside by flipping over a wall barely two meters high, but… 

“It looks like we won’t be able to leave this school anytime soon. As I said, tonight’s situation belongs to fiction.” Song Hanzhang pushed up his glasses and pointed at the distant wall.

Lin Jue finally realized that what was originally less than two meters in height had somehow become a tall, unclimbable barrier.

The sudden, unbelievable change stunned Lin Jue. The appearance of ‘zombies’ could still be explained away by viruses like in the movies, but what about the wall? Just ten minutes ago when he was walking back to his dorms, it was the same as normal!

“It seems we’ll have to believe in that phone call.” Song Hanzhang took out his phone from his pocket and eyed it. “There’s no signal.”

Lin Jue took a look at his phone as well, also without signal. The time was 20:10; even though only ten minutes had passed, it felt like a century.

“Did you get a phone call from a girl? Something about a game?” Lin Jue asked.

“It looks like we both received that phone call. It seems somewhat safe here right now, so let’s exchange some information first.” Song Hanzhang played with the fruit knife and slashed it down heavily on a nearby camphor tree as if trying to release his uneasiness, even though Lin Jue didn’t feel any unease from him.

Lin Jue had no objections and briefly went over how he skipped class, returned to the dorms, and met Song Hanzhang on level one.

Song Hanzhang listened to him quietly and said, “My experience was similar to yours. I first thought that it was some sort of prank but I realized there were problems with my memory. When the phone rang, I was sitting in front of my computer writing an essay and the time was 20:00. I had written down the last line exactly five minutes ago; I had taken a look at the computer clock which was 19:55 at the time. For an entire five minutes, I hadn’t been able to remember what I was thinking or what I was doing, as if I was just staring at my computer. From what I know of myself, that shouldn’t be possible so those five minutes of blankness are an obvious memory gap, a very unusual thing.”

Lin Jue suddenly remembered himself standing baffled in the corridor as well when the phone started ringing. Now that he looked back, he realized that there was a blank space in his memories as well.

“I had a roommate who was receiving a call on the balcony outside the room. When my call hung up, he started slamming himself onto the glass door to attack me like he was mad,” Song Hanzhang said.

Lin Jue remembered the sound of glass shattering.

“I managed to get away from him, grabbed a fruit knife, and went downstairs. I took a water bucket with me on my way as well because I wasn’t sure if there were other people showing altered behaviors; that way I would be able to trap their heads to prevent any biting.” Song Hanzhang’s voice was calm. Perhaps it was because he was studying medicine that he wasn’t afraid of the zombies, but there was a light tremor in his voice that exposed his confusion at the current upheaval. “Afterwards, I met you downstairs. All in all, our luck hasn’t been too bad. Everyone’s either in their rooms or in class right now so the traffic’s not horrible, otherwise we would have been trapped inside.”

Song Hanzhang’s analysis was gradually able to calm Lin Jue down. He carefully went over everything that had happened today and became more and more puzzled. Why was it that only they had received a phone call and everyone else had become zombies? Why did their school walls suddenly grow taller and trap them inside? Who was the person that had called them and what was their purpose?

The autumn night wind brought with it a sliver of coldness, curling up the fallen leaves.

“Today’s Halloween, right?” Song Hanzhang looked around and asked pointedly.

Lin Jue attempted to squeeze a smile from his frozen face. “Don’t tell me this was some kind of Halloween prank… I’ve never seen anything worse than this.”

A prank… the phone call… a female voice on the phone… an easter egg.

Lin Jue’s heart skipped a beat and he felt his stomach convulsing.

“I see you’ve also come to a conclusion,” Song Hanzhang commented.

“The easter egg! That girl! During lunch, there was a girl giving easter eggs out in front of the canteen!” Lin Jue was stunned. That clear memory was dyed a faint red by the terrifying night, the movements of that sweet-looking girl replaying constantly in his mind. What was supposed to be a pleasant voice with a touch of flirtatiousness now brought him ceaseless shudders. That sweet voice was like boiling water, hypersaturated with sugar; his throat felt like it was being scorched and dried by it.

“She said that it was a Halloween club activity and she made me sign my name on this booklet! I was first and… there were altogether… thirteen easter eggs. Yes. There were twelve in the box and she held one in her hand. That’s thirteen.” Lin Jue tried to speak as calmly as possible, but his hands twitched oddly.

He was still remembering that girl’s smile, full of naive sweetness but with a hint of something strange that he hadn’t understood. Now that he thought about it, what a malicious look it was, just like a child causing destruction with an ignorant smile; crushing ants with their fingers; hanging cicadas with a rope; using salt to draw out all the moisture in a slug to watch it shrivel and die. They would never realize their cruelty because they would never have any empathy.

The fruit knife fell to the ground. Song Hanzhang frowned, bent down, and picked it back up, but he no longer kept playing with it.

That man’s not as calm as I had imagined, Lin Jue couldn’t help but think.

Their calmness had brought onto Lin Jue an unseen pressure; after all, they had both gone through the same turn of events but the contrast of his panic to their analytical understanding was impossibly frustrating. Now seeing Song Hanzhang reveal a more human side, he couldn’t help but find him more amicable.

We’re all just normal university students, Lin Jue thought.

“I was somewhere in the middle, but I have a rather deep impression of the person in front of me… If I could choose, I would rather not meet him under these circumstances.” He sighed quietly, arousing Lin Jue’s curiosity, but Song Hanzhang didn’t appear to be interested in continuing and asked, “Do you still remember what was written on your egg? Mine said ‘Eating is instinct’. I didn’t understand what it meant then but I do now.”

“Mine was different from yours,” Lin Jue replied. “Mine said ‘Dawn is hope’.”

Song Hanzhang was stunned for a moment, then showed a relieved smile. “Then that’s probably the best news I’ve heard all night.”

“You’re saying…” Lin Jue looked at him in wonder.

Song Hanzhang nodded lightly. “Even though I’m not sure how everything is happening, it looks like everyone who received an easter egg will have been forced to enter this ‘game’. The phrases on the easter eggs are hints, so the nightmare will likely end if we survive until daylight.”

Lin Jue let out a long sigh, his heart relaxing slightly.

“Let’s follow the instructions from the call for now and go to Time Plaza. The other survivors will probably listen as well and meet up there, that way we’ll be able to get some more more information before we think of our next step. There will probably be other dangers on the way there though so we’ll need to find a weapon first. Follow me. The administrator should have some knives in her kitchen.”

Song Hanzhang strode towards the dormitories. Lin Jue looked up at the crescent moon above him, glowing its ominous faint red. He frowned, clenched his teeth, and followed Song Hanzhang’s footsteps.

“Our building’s administrator’s surname is Tong; she’s divorced with a single child at primary school age. She came out from the kitchen just now and the bedroom door is locked, so the child is most likely within the bedroom. There’s no need to provoke him, we can find what we need in the kitchen.” Song Hanzhang said everything to Lin Jue like an explanation and pushed open the narrow kitchen door.

The light opened with a ‘pa’. Lin Jue entered the kitchen after Song Hanzhang and immediately set his eyes on the knife next to the cutting board. The feeling of cold metal in his hands was somehow able to give him some confidence.

“If I were you, I would choose that spare pipe over there,” Song Hanzhang’s cold voice sounded. “You saw it just then; the zombies are different from us and vital points like the heart are pointless to aim for. The human skull is far too hard, so unless you stab through their eyes or up their jaw, it will be difficult to use it to kill them in one go. Snapping their spine is another option, but the knife is too short and if the blade gets stuck, it’ll be even easier to get bitten. For safety’s sake, you should take the pipe.”

Even though the pipe didn’t look as promising as the knife, out of trust, Lin Jue picked the almost meter long rod up, looked at it carefully, and nodded his assent.

Song Hanzhang picked up the abandoned knife casually. “Let’s go. It’s time we head to the plaza.”

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