Fifty-eight: The Old Soldier Never Dies - 1

Fruit knives are familiar to everyone. Their most common use is peeling apples, which is why their lethality lies mostly in the edge, not the point. Sheng Qingru actually did not understand this. Even though she had killed people with a knife, the blade she used was only a utility knife blade. But that could not stop her from going mad the moment the administrator shouted the two words. She threw her own neck straight against the tip of the blade.

That soft, tender, snow-white neck jammed hard against the cold silver point of the knife.

After subduing Sheng Qingru, the drunk did not relax his guard. But before the outbreak, he had only been an ordinary man, far inferior to the streetwise old thug who had long since cut people enough to have experience, like Old Honest Niu. So his hand remained clamped around the fruit knife, his arm trembling slightly from the tension in his muscles. Sheng Qingru suddenly threw all her strength toward the blade, and the drunk had no time to react. His hand had been strained for too long to even make a reflexive motion, much less turn the knife in a slicing motion. He could only let Sheng Qingru’s neck tilt the blade off course, watching helplessly as the fruit knife drew a line of blood under her throat, while her pink lips and white teeth bit down hard on his wrist.

For reference: an adult woman’s front teeth have an average bite force of more than twenty-seven kilograms.

The searing pain instantly numbed half the drunk’s body. The moment Sheng Qingru broke free, Pablo squeezed the trigger in his hand. The assault rifle rattled off a burst in the cramped space, and the gunfire jolted everyone’s eardrums with stabbing pain. The administrator’s skull, along with half his face, was blown open by the bullets, and flesh, brain matter, nose bones, and eyeballs sprayed everywhere!

Wang Chen did not hesitate either. Even with half his body splattered in shredded flesh, it did not slow him down. Clutching his pistol, he lunged at Sheng Qingru and the drunk, intent on pinning down the drunk, who had fallen and was still wrestling with Sheng Qingru, as quickly as possible.

The few meters vanished in an instant, but Sheng Qingru, in the struggle with the drunk, ended up between Wang Chen and him. It was precisely those few seconds of delay that gave the drunk a chance to strike back. The bastard actually yanked out a small pistol from his coat.

In Wang Chen’s eyes, it all seemed to happen in slow motion. His hand had clearly grabbed the drunk, yet the drunk’s muzzle was already aimed at Wang Chen’s chest.

Bang! Bang!

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The one thing most often mocked about that little pistol was its lack of power, but no matter how weak a gun was, if it fired almost against your chest, no one could endure it.

Wang Chen felt as though his chest and abdomen were hammered repeatedly by a giant mallet. His hundred-odd pounds of body seemed to lose control, instantly going numb and crashing to the floor. Then the tearing agony brought on by that violent shock began spreading through his entire body, making even breathing feel difficult.

Damn it, I’ve been shot again!

No one knew whether the drunk was lucky or whether Zero-Eight Squad was simply cursed to have their first mission go badly. Pablo, who had rushed in behind Wang Chen, did not escape unscathed. Of the five shots the drunk fired before and after falling, the first two were taken by Wang Chen, and the last three, because of recoil causing the muzzle to rise, struck Pablo twice. The final shot flew into the ceiling.

“Wang Chen! Wang Chen, are you all right?!” Seeing Wang Chen get shot, Sheng Qingru was practically beside herself. She let go of her mouth, stopped clawing with her hands, and scrambled over in a panic to kneel beside Wang Chen and grope at him. Only after confirming that neither shot had penetrated his bulletproof vest did she finally breathe a little easier. With a knife at her throat, she had forced herself to ram the blade’s point without shedding a single tear, yet now her eyes were red and tears spilled down in a constant patter.

While Sheng Qingru cried, Wang Chen, struggling to breathe after being shot, wanted nothing more than to curse aloud. It wasn’t that he lacked romantic sensibility, but if you were going to cry, couldn’t you at least choose the right moment? That drunk bastard had not been taken down yet. If she kept hugging him and crying now, they would be keeping company on the road to the underworld soon enough.

The situation reversed. The drunk staggered up to his feet and even casually picked up Wang Chen’s NP22, which had fallen to the ground. After fiddling with it for a moment and finding it satisfactory, he tossed aside the pistol in his hand, then pointed the muzzle at Pablo, who was trying to draw his gun now that some strength had returned to his hands and feet. That obvious gesture made Pablo slowly move his hand away from the holster at his thigh. He could only mutter a bitter curse and dare not act rashly again.

Knowing things were bad, Wang Chen took two hard breaths to ease the crushing pain in his chest and abdomen, then rasped, “W-what exactly do you want?”

“What do I want? Of course I want to keep you alive, cut off a couple of pieces to eat each day. If you don’t want me to smash your arms and legs, you’d better not move around.” The drunk brandished the NP22 in his hand, utterly unconcerned that blood was still flowing from his wrist, and answered with a ferocious grin.

The way he spoke about cannibalism with such pride made Wang Chen finally confirm that the three of them had truly run into a madman, the kind who was as insane as a normal person.

What kind of madman was the most dangerous? The one whose madness ran so deep that he seemed normal.

“If you’re short on food and drink, you can restrain any one of us and let the other two out to find supplies for you. I guarantee we’ll bring back plenty of food.” As Wang Chen spoke nonsense, his mind was already racing over how to escape, whether Yang Xiaohua had also been ambushed, and what sort of questions he should ask to get this mental case to spout his twisted reasoning nonstop so they could buy time.

Better that the bastard bleed to death.

There are similarities between the mentally ill and villains. Villains come in two kinds: the sort who babble away in films, wasting time, only to be happily beaten by the protagonist in the end; and the sort in reality who waste no words, kill the target first and only then explain why, or even leave immediately, too lazy to waste breath on a dead man. They make sure you die with unresolved resentment. Real-life madmen also come in many types, and those who like killing people come in two varieties as well. One is like the villains in movies, possessing an uncontrollable urge to perform. If you ask the right question, most of the time the lunatic will enthusiastically explain just how correct his theory is, and only then will he begin tearing you apart. Even while doing so, he can still deliver a long speech to prove why he cuts a corpse starting from the toes. Of course, if you meet the other kind, the kind of mentally ill person who is as silent and cold as a real-world villain, and you just happen to be in his hands, then all you can do is pray for a less painful death.

In misfortune, there was a blessing: Wang Chen and the others had encountered a talkative lunatic, and he had asked exactly the right question.

“Do you think I’m short on food and drink? Hah! You think I want to eat human flesh? Isn’t it all forced on me by heaven! Forced on me by this damned world! If I want to live, I have to eat people!”

Wang Chen dutifully displayed a look of confusion.

That expression was a winning bet too. The drunk switched on his endless-talk mode.

“You see, our logic is very simple. We want to survive and not be eaten by zombies. If we don’t want to be eaten by zombies, then either we have a completely secure hiding place, or we do our best to assimilate with them, walk among the zombie horde, and be treated as one of their own. Right now, we don’t have a safe hiding place, so naturally we have to choose assimilation with the zombies first. That’s very simple logic, isn’t it?”