Shocked, I'm the Favorites in the Survival Game - chapter 10

Are there still survivors?

She glanced at the location. It wasn’t far. “Teacher Lu, should we go take a look?”

Lu Qingyuan leaned back in the passenger seat, eyes closed, resting. “Up to you.”

On the third floor of a small villa on another street, there really was someone alive.

His name was Huang Zhide, the owner of the house.

When the zombies appeared, he was lucky enough to be asleep in his room and survived the initial chaos, but his wife and children had all turned into zombies.

Those three useless people-even after they turned, they ended up blocking him at the door of this small room. Since last night, he’d been hearing the sounds of people passing by outside.

He’d wanted to call for help, but any noise would excite the zombies outside. All he could do was watch helplessly as several cars sped past on the street opposite.

To his surprise, the van that had left in the morning actually came back! He immediately thought of burning something, hoping they would see the smoke and notice him.

The car really did stop in front of the house.

Huang Zhide was so excited that he stood on the balcony, waving frantically at the vehicle below. Then he hurried back inside, packing up all the valuables in the room as he waited for rescue.

But Chu Yian simply pulled the van over to the side of the road.

“Come over here!”

Seeing the van stop by the roadside, Huang Zhide grew anxious and couldn’t help shouting toward it.

His shout provoked howls from the zombies locked outside his door.

Chu Yian rolled down the window and wrote a few large characters on a sheet of white paper with a pen: “Come down by yourself.”

They had no idea what the situation was inside. After all, they were strangers-helping out in a pinch was one thing, but risking their lives was another. If he could make it down, giving him a ride to City X was already the greatest help she could offer.

“Damn it!”

Seeing those words, Huang Zhide’s temper flared.

There were three zombies outside his door. If she didn’t come in and kill them, how was he supposed to get out?

His face turned bright red as he waved furiously at Chu Yian, cursing under his breath, “Damn it, hurry up and come over!”

Chu Yian couldn’t hear him and kept writing:

“If there are zombies inside, find curtains, bedsheets, or something sturdy to climb down from upstairs.”

But before she could even show him what she’d written, an empty beer bottle came hurtling down from the third floor toward her.

“All you ever do is write! Don’t you know how to save people, damn it!”

Huang Zhide, having just finished his last beer that morning, lost his temper completely. He grabbed seven or eight empty bottles and hurled them one by one from the window at Chu Yian below.

“I told you to save me! Get over here, you little bastard!”

Chu Yian, who had originally been willing to help, instantly darkened. Her expression changed as she drew her pistol and aimed it at Huang Zhide on the balcony.

Lu Qingyuan, in the passenger seat, opened his eyes and watched her pick up the gun.

Bang-

She really did fire.

But she missed; the window glass shattered.

Huang Zhide, who had been shouting just a moment ago, staggered back several steps, so startled by Chu Yian suddenly pulling a gun on him that the bottle slipped from his hand.

The gunshot was much louder than the sound of the window glass shattering. The zombies in the small town, attracted by the noise, began to gather toward them.

Chu Yian didn’t hesitate-she started the car and sped out of the town.

“Hey, hey!”

Huang Zhide stood on the balcony, watching helplessly as the van drove away, while more and more zombies gathered around his house.

The three zombies pounding on his door outside kept at it, and the noise began to draw in the horde downstairs, who had already lost track of their previous targets…

##

The vehicle was back on the road.
Chu Yian spoke even less than before.

She gripped the steering wheel tightly, thinking about what she had just done to that man in a moment of anger, and couldn’t help but glance at Lu Qingyuan sitting beside her.

Would he think she was a ruthless person?

Would the small team they’d just formed fall apart?

Chu Yian had always been a law-abiding citizen. This was the first time she’d ever done something like this, and she couldn’t help but overthink it.

“Do you need to switch drivers?” Lu Qingyuan suddenly asked.

“Huh?”

She was stunned for a moment.

Lu Qingyuan said, “I’d feel more at ease driving myself than having you distracted behind the wheel.”

Chu Yian understood what he meant and pulled the car over to the side of the road. The two switched seats.

Once the vehicle started up again, Chu Yian realized that overthinking wasn’t helping, so she decided to ask directly, “Teacher Lu, I just ignored someone in need. Do you…”

Before she could finish, Lu Qingyuan suddenly floored the accelerator, pushing the car to its maximum speed. Just as she wondered why he was speeding up, they passed a stretch of road where several cars had crashed into each other.

A few young men ran out from one of the cars, waving desperately at them because they couldn’t stop the van.

“Wait!”

“Hey, wait!”

Lu Qingyuan didn’t pay them any attention, not even blinking as he drove over the corpses on the ground and sped away down the highway.

“Damn!”

“Screw you!”

The young men who failed to get help flipped off the departing van, then climbed back into their wrecked car.

“It’s all your fault for wanting to race. Otherwise, I’d have left here ages ago.”

“Who the hell suggested we look for excitement last night?”

The survivors were, in fact, yesterday’s street racers.

Play with fire and you get burned. Their antics had attracted a lot of zombies along the way, and out of more than a dozen people, only four had escaped, left stranded by a crash at the roadside.

Now, with the road ahead blocked, they began to blame each other.

##

In the small van, having shaken off the street racers, Lu Qingyuan glanced at Chu Yian.

“What were you about to say?”

“Uh… nothing.”

Chu Yian thought of how Lu Qingyuan had just ignored those men asking for help, and figured he probably understood her actions, too.

Still, she felt a bit uneasy about Teacher Lu’s silent ruthlessness. What if he abandoned her mercilessly in a dangerous situation?

“Teacher Lu, our alliance is pretty solid, right?”

Lu Qingyuan shot her a look. “If you have time to worry about that, you might as well check the map and see how much farther until we hit the highway.”

At his words, Chu Yian took out her phone and zoomed in on the map she’d just photographed…

An hour later, they finally navigated from the Village Path onto the highway.

At the highway entrance, a large truck had overturned, spilling gasoline everywhere, with several zombies milling around. Hearing the sound of the approaching vehicle, the zombies quickly turned and charged at the van.

Bang, bang, bang-

The van shook violently from the impacts.

The glass beside Lu Qingyuan cracked into a bloody spiderweb.

Chu Yian gripped the handle above her head tightly, clutching her pistol in the other hand. She aimed at a zombie about to break through the window and shot it in the head.

The gunshot made the zombies even more frenzied.

Even zombies farther away, hearing the noise, began to sprint toward the van.

“Hold on.”

Lu Qingyuan floored the accelerator and jerked the steering wheel.

The battered little van broke through the zombie encirclement and finally sped onto the highway toward City X…