hsntnovel Chapter 4 Retreat to the Isolated City
Chapter 4 Retreat to the Isolated City
For the rest of the day, Zhang Xun didn't let Lin Xiaotang step out of the shop again.
He drove the BYD he borrowed from Lao Liu and filled every possible gap in the road like he was filling a crack—expansion bolts from the hardware store, iodine bandages from the pharmacy, and even the last few cases of bottled water from the supermarket next door that closed early.
Everywhere he went, he could feel the tension in the air: the shelves of the pharmacy were half empty, and the lines in front of the cashier were silent and anxious; the hardware store owner was pulling down the roller shutter halfway, and when he saw him come to buy nails, he just waved his hand and said, "Take it, take it, you can't sell it anyway," but his eyes kept glancing at the black bread truck parked on the street corner.
Lin Xiaotang sat by the phone on the counter, sending countless messages to her grandmother in Cuiping Mountain. Message after message was sent, and eventually all of them stopped next to the small gray "sent" text, with no "read" mark ever appearing again.
She tried dialing that familiar number, but all she heard was a busy tone, as if the call had been abruptly cut off by an invisible wall. When the roller shutters closed in the evening, the warehouse was crammed full, with flour, rice, canned goods, and compressed biscuits piled up to waist height in the corner, but her grandmother was still nowhere to be found.
---
At 11 p.m., Zhang Xun finished checking the doors and windows one last time. The walkie-talkie lay quietly beside his pillow, tuned to the frequency Qin Wei had mentioned. The street outside was eerily quiet; even the convenience stores that usually stayed open all night were dark.
Lin Xiaotang was curled up on the sofa on the second floor, clutching a rabbit plush toy, her phone screen lit up. Zhang Xun walked over, gently took the phone from her hand, and touched her cold fingers: "Sleep for a while, I'll watch over you."
"Brother Xun," her voice was hoarse, her eyes red and swollen, "Could Grandma... already...?"
"Communications are under control," Zhang Xun interrupted her, draping his coat over her shoulders and tracing the furrowed brow with his fingers. "I'll think of something tomorrow morning. Maybe the higher-ups have cut off all external communication. I'll ride my bike to the foot of the mountain and check it out when it's light."
Suddenly, a very light knocking sound came from downstairs—three knocks, a pause, then two more.
Zhang Xun tensed up, signaling Lin Xiaotang not to move. He went downstairs and grabbed a baseball bat from beside the counter. He walked to the door and looked through the peephole.
Su Nian stood in the darkness, her short hair disheveled by the night wind, a large hiking backpack slung over her shoulder. She wasn't wearing a uniform, just dark casual clothes, but the outline of a gun holster at her waist was faintly visible, and her right hand remained pressed against her side.
Zhang Xun opened the door, and she slipped inside, her movements as swift as a shadow. She gently closed the door behind her, the sound of the latch locking so soft it was almost inaudible.
"Su Nian?" Zhang Xun was somewhat surprised. "What brings you here?"
Su Nian didn't respond immediately. She first looked around the store, then lowered her voice to a whisper, "Zhang Xun, you must remember what I'm about to say."
Zhang Xun's heart tightened: "Go on."
"Starting tomorrow, the city will be gradually locked down. By the evening of the day after tomorrow at the latest, all transportation within the city will be suspended." Su Nian's tone was calm, but her eyes were chillingly steady. "I can't say the exact time, but the situation is more serious than you imagine."
"Why is this happening?" Zhang Xun pressed.
Su Nian remained silent for a few seconds, as if suppressing extremely complex emotions, before slowly speaking: "Because... it's out of control. The patients in the hospital are no longer just suffering from the common flu."
Zhang Xun felt a chill run through his body. Although he had never seen what a true mutant looked like, he had personally witnessed people being forcibly taken away and placed under control. He had long harbored uneasy suspicions, and now that Su Nian had confirmed them with her own words, he felt an icy chill spread throughout his body.
Su Nian then placed the hiking backpack on the counter, unzipped it, and revealed a composite bow and arrows, the fletching gleaming coldly in the dim light.
"I can't use the ones issued by the government; these are my private stash. Twelve arrows, the shafts are made of carbon fiber. Remember—"
She looked up at Zhang Xun, her tone precise and calm, "Don't shoot the heart, and don't hit the spine. Shoot directly in the head, destroy the brain. Only when the brain is destroyed, and the central nervous system is completely disabled, will it stop moving for a moment."
Zhang Xun took the bow, his fingertips tracing its cool hilt, and asked in a deep voice, "What mission are you on?"
"It's an escort mission," Su Nian replied simply. "I can't go into details."
Su Nian walked to the door and slowly turned her head.
Zhang Xun took a step closer, his voice tense: "Is it very dangerous?"
"It's very dangerous."
She paused, then glanced around the shop: "Are you... all alone here?"
"And Xiaotang. She works at the dessert shop next door and is staying with me these days," Zhang Xun answered hesitantly.
Su Nian frowned: "A woman?"
Zhang Xun nodded.
Su Nian was silent for a moment, then spoke coldly and directly: "More people means more hearts, but at times like these, human nature is the least trustworthy."
"Are you warning me?" Zhang Xun looked at her.
"I'm just telling you the truth," Su Nian said calmly. "Zhang Xun, I admire you, and I don't want to see you die."
As soon as she finished speaking, she paused slightly, her gaze sweeping across the recurve bow poster on the wall before quickly looking away and pushing open the door to disappear into the deep night.
Zhang Xun stood there, watching the direction her figure had disappeared in, motionless for a long time. Outside the window, the night wind howled, rustling the plane trees lining the street.
He hid the compound bow within easy reach of his bedside, then lay down, unable to sleep. Su Nian's words kept echoing in his mind—out of control, hitting the head, danger. These words were like a curse, repeating endlessly in his ears.
---
At 4:17 a.m., Zhang Xun was awakened by a loud knocking on the door.
It wasn't a roller shutter door, it was the back door—the iron plate door leading to the narrow alley—being violently pounded by some desperate force, accompanied by a suppressed, tearful female voice: "Zhang Xun... Zhang Xun, open the door... please..."
It's Qin Wei.
Zhang Xun rushed to the back door. Lin Xiaotang also woke up with a start, clutching her rabbit doll and hiding at the bottom of the stairs. Zhang Xun checked through the peephole and suddenly pulled open the door—Qin Wei stumbled in, her white coat stained with mud and suspicious bloodstains, her hair disheveled and plastered to her cheeks, clutching a backpack tightly in her hand.
Without hesitation, Zhang Xun turned around and closed the door, locking it with a click, and then quickly pulled down the bulletproof latch on the back door.
"The hospital... has fallen," she said, leaning against the wall, her body trembling, her voice low and barely audible, as if squeezed out between her teeth. "The emergency room wall was broken down, and those things... they poured out of Zone 3, biting anyone they saw. I managed to squeeze into the ventilation duct in the chaos, and after crawling for quite a while, I escaped through the back door. They chased me for three blocks."
Lin Xiaotang ran downstairs and, seeing Qin Wei's disheveled state and bloodstains, covered her mouth in shock: "Dr. Qin! You..."
"Were you bitten?" Zhang Xun pressed down on Qin Wei's shoulder, staring into her eyes.
"No," Qin Wei shook her head, trembling as she pulled a first-aid kit and a blood-stained protective suit from her backpack. "I grabbed this from the ward... and these medications too. But it's completely chaotic inside. The SWAT team is on the ground floor, but they can't stop them... they can't stop them at all. I saw with my own eyes a patient... who clearly had no heartbeat, stand up and bite people..."
She looked up at Zhang Xun, then at Lin Xiaotang, tears welling up suddenly, but she bit her lip to keep herself from crying out loud: "I've been a doctor for so many years... and in the end, I can only run for my life."
"Don't say that," Zhang Xun's voice was steady as he took the things from her hands. "It's good that you're alive. You taught me first aid before, now it's my turn to protect you. The three of us will get through this together."
Qin Wei looked at him, then at Lin Xiaotang beside her, whose eyes were red but who was nodding firmly. Finally, she loosened her bitten lip and slowly nodded. She clutched the backpack containing the glass bottle tightly to her chest—it was a gift from Zhang Xun the year she graduated. She had never opened it, yet she had always carried it with her.
A tense silence fell over the shop.
Qin Wei stopped crying, but her shoulders were trembling. The bloodstains on her white coat had dried, turning into a dark brown crust. Lin Xiaotang was still clutching the fruit knife, standing at the top of the stairs, until Zhang Xun came over, took the knife from her hand, and gently placed it on the counter.
"There's room for two people upstairs," Zhang Xun said to Qin Wei in a low voice. "Go upstairs and change your clothes first."
Qin Wei looked up at him, her gaze unfocused for two seconds before sharpening. She nodded, leaned against the wall to stand up, and followed Lin Xiaotang upstairs. The stairs creaked, as if they might break at any moment.
Zhang Xun didn't sleep. He moved a chair behind the roller shutter, a baseball bat across his lap, listening to the sounds outside. The streets were no longer deserted in the early morning; occasionally, hurried footsteps would rush by, accompanied by suppressed gasps, followed by the sound of shattering glass in the distance.
---
At eight o'clock in the morning, the sunlight seeped in through the gap in the curtains on the second floor, appearing as a murky yellow.
Zhang Xun went upstairs and saw that Qin Wei had changed into a dark outdoor work outfit—one that Lin Xiaotang had found in Zhang Xun's inventory, a size too big, with the cuffs rolled up twice. She was sitting by the window, mechanically wiping something repeatedly with a clean cloth. Lin Xiaotang was curled up in the corner of the sofa, hugging a rabbit doll, her phone screen still lit up.
"Look." Qin Wei didn't turn around, but simply pointed to the gap in the curtains with her chin.
Zhang Xun walked to the window, only revealing half of his eye.
The streets have gone mad.
Across the street, the line outside the convenience store was scattered, people scattering in all directions. A man in a tracksuit was grabbing another person's shoulder, not to help, but to tear at them. Blood splattered on the glass window, like a bucket of red paint. Further down the street, several cars had collided, billowing black smoke, and people were climbing out of the car windows, their movements contorted, limbs bent at impossible angles.
"They are sensitive to sound," Qin Wei's voice was hoarse, but she had regained the calm of a doctor. "They run fast, but turn clumsily. They seem to have no sense of pain."
Lin Xiaotang crept closer, but after just one glance, she shrank back abruptly, her face turning deathly pale. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out; she simply hugged the rabbit in her arms even tighter.
"Grandma..." she murmured.
Zhang Xun didn't speak. He turned and went downstairs, dragging out the composite bow Su Nian had brought the night before from behind the counter, and checked the bowstring. Then he started moving the shelves—the heavy metal shelves were dragged behind the roller shutter door, propped up in a triangle, and piled high with bags full of rice. Qin Wei followed him down, silently helping to reinforce the gaps in the glass door with tape. Lin Xiaotang also came down, carrying a wooden board, and following Zhang Xun's instructions, blocked the peephole at the back door.
"Will we die?" Lin Xiaotang suddenly asked. She stood in the shadows, still holding the un-nailed plank in her arms.
Zhang Xun stopped what she was doing. Qin Wei also looked at her.
"I don't know," Zhang Xun said, his tone as calm as if he were stating the weather, "but we will live. Today, tomorrow, as long as possible."
He walked over, took the plank from Lin Xiaotang, and nailed it to the window. The sound of the hammer echoed in the empty street, and immediately a few roars responded from afar, like wild beasts smelling blood.
Qin Wei suddenly walked behind the counter, pulled out paper and pen, and began writing a list: "Antibiotics, iodine, bandages, glucose. I need to prepare a first-aid kit and put it on the first floor where I can easily reach it."
"There are two more boxes upstairs," Lin Xiaotang said, her voice soft but clear. "I brought them up yesterday. They're behind the oven."
Zhang Xun glanced at her and nodded.
The three fell silent. The sounds of hammering, ripping tape, and rustling paper mingled in the cramped space, creating an eerie stillness. Outside the window, screams grew closer, sirens gradually thinned, and finally disappeared completely, leaving only that inhuman, sawing scream that echoed through every corner of the city.
After nailing the last plank, Zhang Xun leaned the composite bow against the wall, within arm's reach. He walked to the window and looked out through the last remaining crack.
The sunlight was obscured by thick smoke, and not a single living person could be seen on the streets. Only those swaying figures dragged along in the morning light, like puppets on strings, slowly filling every vein of the city.
He drew the curtains and turned to look at the two women behind him.
Qin Wei had already packed the first-aid kit, slung it over her chest, and held an outdoor knife in her hand. Lin Xiaotang stood by the shelf, clutching a hardcover notebook filled with inventory records, her knuckles white, but she stood very straight.
"Say it if you're hungry," Zhang Xun said. "Sleep if you're tired. But don't fall asleep at the same time."
Lin Xiaotang suddenly walked over and stood beside Zhang Xun without saying a word, just very close to him. Qin Wei also walked over, and the three of them stood in the dimly lit shop.
The roars from the street grew louder, like a tide overflowing a dam, soaking every inch of the concrete. The roller shutter blocked the view, but it couldn't block the footsteps—dragging, staggering, chasing, mixed with the occasional sound of shattering glass, spreading in all directions from the end of the street. The shop was quiet, so quiet that you could hear the beating of each other's hearts, heavy and stubborn, striking out the final rhythm in this crumbling city.
The city is dead at this moment.
And they are still inside, alive, breathing, waiting.
[End of Chapter Four]