Rebirth in the Apocalypse: The Peach Blossom Debt Chapter 5

This was an old-style apartment building: two units per floor, no elevator, most households fitted with heavy iron doors that looked old and rusted from the outside.

Of the seven people who went upstairs, five had awakened abilities: Liao Feifan’s ability was fire, Sun Ling’s was speed, Tang Ke’s was ice, and the two security guards possessed strength and water abilities respectively. The remaining two male classmates had no abilities at all.

When they reached the 6th floor, they forced open one of the doors. Luckily, no one was home. It wasn’t clear whether the residents hadn’t made it back after the apocalypse began, or if they had left before everything started but the place was clean. After searching thoroughly, they found only a few bottles of juice in the refrigerator, two bundles of noodles, and several packets of pickled vegetables.

They continued on to the other unit on the same floor. Even before opening the door, faint noises could be heard from inside. People who had awakened powers had sharper hearing than normal, and Sun Ling, walking in front, raised a hand to signal everyone to be quiet. He drew out a metal rod used in construction and shot a look at the heavier security guard. They had scavenged the rod earlier from a construction site on their way out of the university. The heavyset guard, gifted with strength, wedged the rod into the door crack and pried hard. The lock gave way instantly.

As soon as the door opened, a stench of rot and decay assaulted their senses. In the middle of the living room lay a corpse so decomposed it was impossible to tell whether it had been male or female. Half the face was gone, parts of the body still had bits of rotting flesh, and others had been stripped to bare bone. Maggots crawled everywhere. With no windows open, the air was thick and foul, unbearably so.

“Ugh…” Sun Ling, the first to charge in, was also the first to double over vomiting. Soon, the others followed suit, the sound of retching echoing one after another.

The noise they had heard came from a room beside the living room. On the way to that door lay a severed foot and a few finger-like things scattered near the doorway. The weather outside had turned dim and overcast. It was late afternoon, the skies gray, making the scene even more eerie and chilling.

Tang Ke walked ahead of the others and lightly pushed open the door with his machete. Inside, a child zombie was gnawing on a severed arm. Two more bodies, one large, one small, lay nearby. The larger one, likely the child zombie’s mother, was in much the same condition as the corpse in the living room, appearing to have been dead for days. The smaller body, perhaps the zombie child’s younger sibling, three or four years old, was still fresh, as though it had died only a day or two ago.

Too cruel.

Had it… raised the child only to devour its mother first, then slowly its own little brother or sister?

The small zombie appeared about seven or eight years old, its body still intact, likely turned on the first day the meteor fell. It was still wearing a school uniform. It reacted swiftly, pouncing the moment it heard them. Tang Ke kicked it into a cabinet near the door, retreating quickly into the hallway. The room was too cramped for a proper fight or use of abilities, it had to be drawn out into the living room.

The others joined the attack. This zombie was clearly unlike the ones they’d fought before: stronger, faster. It sprang out of the room, tackling the heavyset guard and pinning him to the floor, jaws snapping toward his throat. Luckily, the guard’s strength ability allowed him to hold the metal rod in front of him, keeping the creature at bay. Tang Ke rushed forward, raised his blade, and struck cleanly, one slash to the skull. The head rolled toward the doorway, and Liao Feifan immediately burned the remains with fire ability.

Even separated, the zombie’s hands still clutched the guard’s metal rod so tightly that, despite his strength, he couldn’t pull it free. In the end, he had to abandon it. Everyone was drenched in cold sweat. No one spoke, but they all understood the same thing: the zombies were getting stronger.

The zombie virus spread through blood, traveling to the brain from the point of infection. It disrupted cell replication, destroyed tissue, and eventually stopped the body’s vital functions. The heart would cease beating, and the infected person would “die.” But the brain remaining dormant would mutate, transforming brain cells into a new organ that could function without oxygen. Once the transformation completed, the host became a zombie: a new organism with physiology only faintly resembling that of a human corpse. Some functions died out, others evolved, and the process ended with this horrifying rebirth.

In short: to kill a zombie, you must destroy its brain.

The fifth floor’s two units were both empty. They gathered two large bags of supplies, food and other essentials. On the fourth floor, one household’s two residents had turned and were easily dispatched. The other apartment held survivors: a family of four: two middle-aged parents and two children. The son was around seventeen or eighteen, the daughter a strikingly pretty woman of about twenty. When they saw the door burst open and realized it wasn’t zombies entering, they all clung together, trembling and sobbing. They insisted on leaving with the group.

The third floor was the first apartment they had entered earlier, uninhabited. The unit across from it belonged to Qi Yue.

Qi Yue’s door was solid, much sturdier than the rest, and it took the group a good amount of effort to try to pry it open.

Inside, Qi Yue was smoking, taking several deep drags before flicking the cigarette to the ground and grinding it out. Looks like there’s no hiding anymore, he thought. The zombies drawn by this group downstairs were too many for him to handle alone. Might as well join them, they seemed to have quite a few ability users, after all. Better to share the risk.

With that, Qi Yue fetched the katana he’d bought before the apocalypse, tucked it into his waistband, and moved the sofa and wardrobe blocking the entrance. Then he unlatched the iron door.

Outside, the group was still struggling with the lock when the door suddenly opened from inside. They all froze in surprise.

There, leaning lazily against the doorframe, stood a youth in a black tracksuit, eyes half-lidded as he looked at them sideways. He appeared about sixteen or seventeen, stunningly beautiful, pale skin, long peach-blossom eyes, lips as red as blood. His voice, when he spoke, was clear and pleasant, almost musical, effortlessly drawing people’s favor.

From the back of the group, Tang Ke eyed the boy up and down, clicking his tongue softly. Tch… this little thing really makes your heart itch.

Qi Yue was the first to speak. “Why are you trying to break into my home?”

“We’re students from nearby S University,” one of them said quickly. “We were escaping from zombies and came here by accident. We didn’t know anyone was inside, really sorry about that.”

Yeah right, Qi Yue thought coldly. By accident? You’ve been kicking down doors and luring half the building’s zombies here and that’s supposed to be unintentional?

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