Professor Wang's skull cracked the tempered glass, fissures spiderwebbing outward as Chen Mo dragged Su Qing toward the window. Her mint perfume drowned in the stench of blood. A stiletto heel jammed into a floorboard crack, sending her sprawling.
"Kick them off!" Chen Mo yelled.
Three stories below, Zhao Qiang had already clambered onto a drainpipe, leaping onto an AC unit. "Move! They're coming up!" He pointed at the stairwell—five twisted figures surged upward, joints bending backward like broken puppets, teeth buried in something fleshy.
Lin Wei splashed rubbing alcohol under the door. "Fire! Who's got fire?"
"Here!" An e-sports club boy raised a trembling Zippo. Blue flames roared to life as the spark hit alcohol. Scorched flesh and chemical fumes filled the air. Scratching turned to bestial shrieks outside.
"Won't hold long!" Lin Wei shoved the remaining alcohol into her pack. "Heat hurts them, but pain response is blunted."
Chen Mo tore down curtain ropes, lashing them to the window frame. "Su Qing! Rappel down!"
"I—I'm scared of heights!" Her nails dug into his arm.
"Scared of heights or being eaten?" He forced the rope into her hands. Zhao Qiang's curses echoed below—a janitor zombie lunged at his AC perch!
Instincts honed by history texts flared. Chen Mo snatched a stapler from the lectern and hurled it through the window—
CRUNCH!
It buried deep in the zombie's eye socket. The corpse tumbled.
Su Qing's eyes widened. She finally swung her legs over the sill.
"Your turn!" Chen Mo pushed Lin Wei toward the window.
"Wait!" Lin Wei dropped, scalpel flashing. She slit Professor Wang's lab coat pocket, retrieving a blood-smeared USB drive. "Professor Zhao's data… can't lose it."
The fire barrier flickered. The door exploded inward! Burning, Professor Wang crawled through, charred fingers grasping for Lin Wei's ankle—
Chen Mo swung the fire axe.
His first intentional strike at something that had once been human. The axe whistled through the air, intercut with memories of his father's Arctic bear-defense training: "Hesitate, and you're meat!"
THWOCK!
The blade lodged in cervical vertebrae. Black ooze sprayed Chen Mo's face, cold and rancid. The thing kept gnashing its teeth, biting at the axe handle!
"Spine isn't critical!" Lin Wei screamed. "Destroy the brainstem or prefrontal cortex!"
Chen Mo braced a foot on the corpse and wrenched the axe free. A horizontal slash with all his strength—
The skull split like a coconut. Gray matter pulsed within, threaded with inky filaments—a neural network soaked in crude oil. Professor Wang finally stilled.
"Go!" Chen Mo shoved Lin Wei out the window. As he grabbed the rope, the fire wall died.
Zombies flooded the room.
Leading them was a boy in a basketball jersey, left arm stripped to bone, a pencil jutting from his right eye—Zhou Kai, the team's star forward. Three days ago, Chen Mo watched him dunk the championship-winning shot. Now a guttural growl rattled in his throat as he charged.
Chen Mo let go.
Wind screamed past his ears. A second-floor clothesline hook snagged his backpack, slowing his fall. He crashed into thorny bushes, branches clawing his face. Above, Zhou Kai leaned out the window, rotting jaw unhinging to unleash a howl that shook the building—
ROOOAAAAARRR—!!!
"Coordinating!" Lin Wei paled. "They're using sonic signals!"
As if answering, howls erupted across campus. Zombies stopped mindless charging, forming cordons blocking the gymnasium!
"Here!" Zhao Qiang kicked open a bubble tea shop's back door. Five survivors crammed into the storeroom. Chen Mo barricaded the door with a freezer. Su Qing retched amid spilled tapioca pearls.
In the sudden quiet, Chen Mo wiped black sludge from his cheek. It burned faintly, leaving ghostly gray tracery on his skin.
"You're infected?!" Su Qing scrambled away.
Lin Wei gripped his wrist. "Not bloodborne. Look at the traceries… neurotoxin exposure?" She swabbed a sample into a vial. "If you develop fever or hallucinations within 48 hours…"
"Let's survive 48 minutes first." Zhao Qiang hefted a meat cleaver from the freezer. "They're hitting the door!"
The freezer shuddered under impacts. Outside the glass door, a dozen rotting faces pressed flat. Beyond, a worse sight—
Smoke billowed from the gymnasium! Makeshift barricades burned at its blast doors. Survivors fought with baseball bats and axes, but zombies were scaling the walls like ants, clawing toward second-floor vents…
"Gym's lost." Chen Mo's hope died.
Zhao Qiang smashed the cash register. "Plan B! Bomb shelter entrance in Lab Building B1—janitors' hookup spot." He pocketed coins. "But we gotta cross the central garden. Zombie central."
"Why trust you?" the e-sports boy whimpered.
"Cuz my cousin's a janitor!" Zhao Qiang kicked open a floor drain. "Maintenance tunnels below. Leads straight to Lab B!"
Rot wafted from the drain. Nails scraped concrete in the darkness.
"Down there too…" Su Qing sobbed.
Chen Mo pressed against the cold glass. Zombie eyes gleamed like dirty marbles, yet locked onto living prey. He noticed a pattern: when the shop's neon sign flashed red, their movements stalled for a half-second.
"Sensitive to intense light." Chen Mo yanked the power breaker. "On three, Zhao Qiang smashes the sign's circuit box. Flash blinds them. Rest of us run."
"Suicide! Thirty out there!"
"Staying is death!" Chen Mo offered Su Qing the fire axe. She recoiled.
"C-can't lift it…"
"Then take this." Lin Wei thrust a bottle of citric acid concentrate at her. "Blinds on contact."
Chen Mo took a shuddering breath. His father's voice boomed in his skull: "In the abyss, hesitation kills faster than any virus."
"Three!"
Neon tubes flickered.
"Two!"
Scraping echoed underfoot.
"One!"
Zhao Qiang's cleaver shattered the circuit box!
Blue-white electricity arced like angry serpents. Zombies froze, eyeballs vibrating wildly!
"RUN!" Chen Mo burst through the door.
They sprinted into the blood-drenched twilight.
Chen Mo's foot slipped on a severed hand. He looked up—and locked eyes with a figure crouched behind the rose bushes.
It had once been human.
Now it was pure predator.
Muscle-cabled hind legs coiled. Claws ripped through the air.
The Sprinter had arrived.