Arc 2, Chapter 10
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When Yu Qiu said those words, Hong Sheng froze.

Then, he burst into action.

He shoved the documents into his bag, and when he pulled out his hand, it held a metal canister. Hong Sheng twisted and turned the canister around too fast for Yu Qiu to see. He threw the canister on the ground, and as Yu Qiu watched it roll beneath the desks and cabinets, Hong Sheng hurried out of the room and seized Yu Qiu’s arm. “What should we—” Yu Qiu asked as Hong Sheng pulled hard and dragged her away.

Yu Qiu shut her mouth. She ran quickly to keep up with Hong Sheng’s pace as he guided her through the labyrinthine halls, wincing at the pressure put on her twisted ankle. Hong Sheng only stopped to rattle the door handles of rooms they came across, only to find that they were either locked, or had no lock at all.

Whatever Hong Sheng had done seemed to have bought them time. The zombies had beelined to the room they had been in before, and Yu Qiu listened to them tearing apart the room, howling as they failed to find human flesh.

While searching for a place to hide they took so many turns that Yu Qiu’s head spun. All she knew was the sound of their two pairs of footsteps slapping the ground, and the sound of zombies shrieking behind them.

How did they get in? Why did the zombies notice them so quickly? Without a leader to boost their ability, zombies like the ones out in the cave weren’t smart enough to open doors or to notice them from so far away!

They had taken too long and still hadn’t found a place to hide. A loud screech sounded behind them. A speed zombie dashed on all fours, crashing into the wall right behind them from the intersecting hall. It opened its mouth in a snarl. Yu Qiu screamed, and she threw a fireball right at the zombie’s face. Lit on fire, the zombie collapsed to the ground as it screamed—but it was only a temporary pause. That little bit of fire wasn’t enough to kill it, and soon it’d be chasing after them again.

They were running out of time. The rest of the zombies would be coming after them soon, and fast. Hong Sheng’s hand was cold and clammy, his breathing quick as he overexerted himself from running.

It was then that Yu Qiu’s leg gave out; the pain was burning in her ankle, and she collapsed against Hong Sheng’s back. She could hear the zombies getting closer. The scrabbling, shifting, shrieking sounds of the hellish monsters were right around the corner. She couldn’t help but sob, “They’re right behind us.”

All the hope she had when Hong Sheng brought her to the secret base now disappeared like smoke.

Hong Sheng’s grip on her hand tightened painfully, and then, as if he’d come to a tough decision, Hong Sheng grabbed her and slung her over his back. He shuddered, cringing as Yu Qiu wrapped her arms around his neck, but he kept his grip steady as he ran the opposite direction.

Hong Sheng was noticeably slower and clumsier carrying someone on his back. It would have been smarter for him to leave Yu Qiu as bait and save himself. Yu Qiu cried, grateful and guilty in equal proportions.

Up ahead in the hall was a double-doored entryway, and there didn’t seem to be any locks on it. Hong Sheng barreled through the doors. Through her tears, Yu Qiu could barely recognize that they had entered a kitchen.

It was a large room cluttered with counters, metal racks, and stoves. It was a setup for a communal kitchen meant to be used by several people. It hadn’t been used in a while: dust and grime had started gathering on the surfaces. Carrying Yu Qiu the entire way, Hong Sheng dodged between the counters and racks, head swinging back and forth as he looked for another doorway. Eventually he made his way to the back of the room.

A large, sturdy door with a heavy-looking handle stood in the corner.

It must be the cooler.

Scuttling noises sounded behind them; some of the zombies had broken away from the group and had started chasing after them again. Yu Qiu desperately gripped Hong Sheng’s shirt collar, and Hong Sheng, who had been hesitating for a moment, dove towards the door.

Hong Sheng pulled the cooler door open, revealing that it was as thick as a thumb’s length. A wave of cold rushed over the two of them. Yu Qiu blinked her eyes at the dimly-lit cooler room, which held several racks of frozen goods, boxes, and even slightly rotting carcasses dangling from hooks. Yu Qiu shuddered in fear. She couldn’t recognize the meat, and for a moment, she wondered if some of them were human—but before she could wonder more, Hong Sheng ran inside and shut the door with an ominous thud.

“Hong ge?” Yu Qiu couldn’t contain her terror and whispered his name. Hong Sheng didn’t answer. He walked through the freezer, past the shelves and boxes. They looked together at the frozen goods, dated several years ago, and at the animal carcasses. A heavy thud sounded on the wall behind them, making both of them flinch. The snarls were loud enough to be heard even through the thick refrigerator walls.

They had to hide.

Where should they go? Behind the shelves? In a box? Yu Qiu bit her lip so hard it nearly tore. Her eyes whirled around the area, but she couldn’t find a place to go. Where? Where? Where?

And then, Hong Sheng turned his head toward one of the walls and hustled over. Yu Qiu looked at the approaching shelf, wondering what Hong Sheng saw. She noticed that the metal wall behind the heavy industral shelf filled looked strange, unlike the other walls in the freezer. Hong Sheng rounded behind the shelf, and from here Yu Qiu saw that it was actually a partition to another room, a sliding heavy door. Hong Sheng gripped the handle and slid the door open. The air blasted even colder when Hong Sheng opened the door, and Yu Qiu saw icicles and frost forming around the edges of the doorway.

Hong Sheng entered this room and shoved the door shut behind them. Just as he did, booms sounded from not far away. The zombies were breaking into the cooler. Hong Sheng quickly backed away from the door, and with Yu Qiu, he ran to a corner between some large white buckets and squatted there. He finally released his hold on Yu Qiu, but she didn’t leave him; on the contrary, she clung to him harder, shivering from the freezing cold temperatures around them.

The room was tiny, horribly cold, and cramped, and it reeked pungently of seafood. There were several boxes, buckets, and styrofoam containers lining the racks on the wall, and when Yu Qiu peered over into one of the nearby buckets, she saw what seemed like fish—only it was so frozen solid that it was covered entirely in frosty white ice. For some reason, it was this that made Yu Qiu realize no one had seemingly been in here for a very long time. Otherwise, all of the food they had passed earlier would have been ransacked.

The air was so cold that every breath Hong Sheng and Yu Qiu took puffed white in front of their faces, and the moisture turned into frost on Yu Qiu’s eyelashes. It felt like she’d been dunked into ice. The temperature was far below freezing point, and it made her want to burrow against Hong Sheng’s body heat.

Just beyond the door, the screeches culminated with a booming thud. The zombies had broken into the cooler, and Yu Qiu heard the frenzied footsteps of multiple bodies swarming into the room. She shuddered and gripped Hong Sheng’s arm so tightly that he pursed his lips in pain. She saw that Hong Sheng’s hands were clenched tight around his knees. No matter how expressionless his face looked, it was clear that he was just as terrified as she was.

Yu Qiu’s every sense was dialed up to eleven. She felt the cold air blasting against every inch of her exposed skin, felt the freeze sink past her clothes and into her bones until every part of her started to shake. She listened as the zombies paced through the cooler, passing the shelf which hid their hiding spot.

How long were they going to be in here? Were the zombies going to find and kill them, or would they freeze to death?

Then, Yu Qiu heard a slight noise—the sound of chattering teeth.

She looked to the side and saw Hong Sheng stuff his mouth with the handle of his backpack to keep himself from making noise. If she, a fire ability user, was freezing, then Hong Sheng was far worse. Only a few minutes had passed yet Hong Sheng’s face was already looking pale, his lips blue. Panicked, Yu Qiu nearly leaped over him to try and share her body warmth, and she stretched out a hand to ignite a fire.

Seeing this, Hong Sheng’s dark eyes widened, and he snapped his hand out to grasp her wrist before she could activate her power.

Hong ge? Yu Qiu mouthed, not daring to even whisper. One of the zombies made an inquisitive noise in the other room and shuffled closer.

His teeth clenched around the fabric, Hong Sheng couldn’t respond. His eyes looked nearly crazed with tension. He grabbed Yu Qiu’s hand and wrote on it with a finger. Cold, he wrote. Can’t sense heat.

It took Yu Qiu a moment to realize what he meant. Then it went off like a lightbulb. The freezing temperatures of the room meant the zombies couldn’t find where they were through their body heat. But if Yu Qiu used her power…

Shivering, Yu Qiu curled up.

So she couldn’t do anything. Neither of them could.

The two of them huddled together, trying their best to conserve body heat.

After all their efforts, they had reached a dead end.

 

 

As the cold dragged their body temperatures down to the point both of them were nearly unconscious, Hong Sheng’s dark and slowly-shutting eyes didn’t lose the faint, nearly invisible trace of fervent belief.

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