It was just past nine in the evening, and the sky over Jiangcheng had turned pitch black. One by one, the windows of the old residential buildings lit up with warm yellow lights.
The roar of range hoods carried the aroma of dinners from various households into the rooms. Lying in bed, Liu Mei rolled over.
The living room lights were off. “Wang Dazhi” stood by the coffee table with his back to her. Light from outside filtered through the window, casting a diagonal sliver of illumination onto the floor.
It was eating.
“I must have owed your Wang family in my past life. I work like a dog every single day. The old one is a pervert, and the young one is never home. If I don't cook, none of you would even think of eating...”
Liu Mei threw her phone down in irritation, turned, and headed into the kitchen, shouting toward the living room:
“Did you not throw out the trash like I told you to? Just playing dumb, are we? There's a smell of dead rats in the house and you can't even bother to clean it up. You didn't even feed the dog either—Wang Dazhi, Wang Dazhi! I'm calling you! Are your ears stuffed with cotton?”
There was no response.
Only a strange, muffled chewing sound drifted out from the shadows.
It wasn't the sound of a video playing on a phone, nor was it the crunchy snap of a dog eating kibble.
It was a rhythmic, slow, and dull gnawing of hard bone, a sound that made one's teeth ache just listening to it:
“Crunch... crunch... snap...”
Bite by bite, it made the hairs on the back of Liu Mei's neck stand on end, her heart pounding in fear. She felt a chill creeping up her spine, genuinely worried that her husband's brain had really gone soft.
“What... what are you eating? Where did you get broad beans from? Stop eating. If things are really that bad, I'll take you to the hospital to get checked out first...”
In the next second, her slipper stepped into a warm, sticky puddle. A heavy, sickly sweet, metallic scent of iron violently invaded her nostrils as she shone her phone's light.
The moment she looked down, Liu Mei saw it clearly.
Half of a bloody, mangled dog head lay on the floor, its jagged white bone exposed at the severed edge. The other half was held in “Wang Dazhi's” hands as he greedily sucked and gnawed at it.
Under extreme terror, a person is utterly incapable of making a sound.
Her phone clattered to the floor. Liu Mei's mouth hung wide open, stretching and closing several times. Accompanied by the continuous chewing sounds, she looked exactly like a character in a grotesque black-comedy silent film.
As if sensing her emotions, the figure turned around mechanically.
By the dim light, she saw everything clearly: that was no longer Wang Dazhi.
The thing was still chewing, making wet crunching sounds, its sinister gaze locked straight onto Liu Mei.
The ultimate terror finally pierced her mind. She only managed to let out a short, choked gasp before her vision went black, and she fell face-first into the pool of blood, fainting dead away.
“Crunch... crunch...”
The zombified Wang Dazhi finally stopped chewing. He took a slow, stiff step, moving like a marionette with its strings cut.
Strangely, he didn't attack. Instead, he took one step, then another, like a wild beast stalking its prey, and began to walk in mechanical circles around the face-down Liu Mei.
One circle, then another.
Tireless and without purpose, only the heavy sound of footsteps echoed in the pitch-black living room.
Outside the window, neighbors were still chatting and laughing. The music from the residential square drifted over, mingled with the shrill laughter of children.
The smell of blood and an indescribable, bizarre stench mingled in the air.
No one knew that in this building, otherwise so full of the warmth of daily life, a reanimated corpse was pacing restlessly.
...
Wang Hao played games until past one in the morning before heading home. To his immense frustration, he hadn't won a single match all night.
Nursing a belly full of rage, he cursed under his breath as he shoved his key into the lock, kicking the neighbor's doormat out of the way for good measure:
“...Stupid lock. It jams every single day. Should've replaced it ages ago. Bah, what garbage luck.”
The door swung open, and an overwhelmingly rancid, suffocating stench rushed out. Wang Hao nearly stumbled, gagging instantly:
“Mom, what the hell are you doing at home? It stinks! Did the meat in the fridge go bad? Gag—”
He flipped on the living room light, but before his eyes could adjust, a dark shadow lunged at him with astonishing speed, bringing with it a bone-chilling cold and dread.
The sticky, foul odor spread from Wang Hao's face to his limbs, and he felt the warmth of his body being rapidly drained away!
He tried to struggle, but his arms were pinned by a grip as hard as iron. He could only watch in horror as a face covered in black fur pressed close to his—
In a mere instant, Wang Hao's face turned a deathly gray at a visible rate. His lips turned bruised and blue, the luster in his eyes faded away, and his skin rapidly lost its elasticity, becoming shriveled and wrinkled. His cheeks collapsed inward like a deflated ball.
“Help! Help—murder!”
Before losing consciousness, Wang Hao let out a hoarse yet piercing shriek.
After a brief pause of only two or three seconds, the lights on the entire floor began to turn on one after another.
“What's that racket? Screaming in the middle of the night! Are you summoning your father's ghost or sweeping your grandfather's grave?”
“Sounds like it's coming from the second floor. Probably a couple fighting.”
“It sounds like something bad happened. He screamed like a dying pig! Call the police!”
A few busybody neighbors in their pajamas walked out into the hallway and peeked through the wide-open door. But one by one, the moment they saw what was inside, they spun around and fled as if they had seen a ghost:
The living room was in complete disarray. Liu Mei lay face down in a pool of blood, her fate unknown.
Wang Hao slumped against the wall, with a black-furred monster that looked like a giant macaque draped over him.
Some neighbors ran outward while others, driven by curiosity, squeezed inward. A surging stench of decay erupted from the apartment, stinging their eyes worse than an exploded septic tank.
Those wanting to flee couldn't get out, and those wanting to look couldn't squeeze in. The first few people at the front were practically weeping and gagging as they forced their way out:
“It stinks so bad! Gag, cough... Stop pushing in! Someone's dead! Gag...”
“Gag... Dead people! They're dead! A zombie broke into Liu Mei's place! Call the police station to bring guns and shoot it!”
“Run! There's a monster! Gag...”
“Oh my god, it's haunted! It's haunted! Gag, cough...”
Quite a few daredevils still craned their necks to peer inside, their faces a mix of curiosity and dread:
On the monster's chubby, flat face was a layer of fine, grayish-black fuzz, like the mold on fermented tofu, covering nearly its entire face. In its eye sockets, pupilless eyes were exposed, resembling a pair of turbid, deathly gray voids.
Its lips curled back, revealing bizarre, sharp, elongated fangs, with a shred of flesh still hanging from the corner of its mouth.
Its once short and thick fingernails had grown to an astonishing length. Its skin presented a bizarre bluish-gray, stretched tight over the bones without a single trace of a living person's softness.
...
Instead of running away, the crowd grew even more excited. Despite the foul stench, several hands reached forward, thrusting their phones out to record:
“Gag... Oh my god, what is that thing? Is that Wang Dazhi? How did he turn into that? He's covered in hair!”
“Look at Wang Hao! That thing is biting him! Is it rabies? Gag...”
“Definitely! I always said their poodle was trouble. They never leashed it and it bit everyone it saw. See? Now they've got rabies!”
“Hello, police station? Come quick! People are dead at Hongguang Community! Two people have been stunk to death! Someone went rabid, turned into a zombie, and stunk people to death! Bring guns and shoot it!”
Instantly, the hallway descended into chaos. People from upstairs and downstairs who heard the commotion also squeezed in to watch the spectacle, filling the entire stairwell with eager, peering heads.
Inside the apartment, Wang Hao's breathing grew weaker and weaker until he stopped moving entirely.
The zombified Wang Dazhi slowly turned around. Letting out a non-human growl from his throat, he began to move toward the crowd.
The crowd finally scattered in terror, but then they saw the thing halt abruptly just as it reached the living room doorway—
Its joints were completely stiff; its knees couldn't bend, its ankles couldn't move, and it couldn't lift its feet.
A threshold of only ten centimeters had become an impassable chasm.
It could only hop in place inside the living room, baring its fangs and roaring in anger at the crowd outside.
The Chinese people truly have a natural gift for spectating.
Realizing the monster couldn't get out, the shaken crowd gathered once more. Standing three or four meters away, they pinched their noses and peeked in:
“Hey, why isn't it coming out?”
“Look at his legs. They're like a dead man's—they won't bend! He's too stiff to step over! It's definitely a reanimated corpse!”
“Nonsense! How can a dead person move? This is a zombie, probably some kind of virus.”
“Hey, hey, is Wang Hao dead or alive? Someone go in and see if Liu Mei is dead! Save them first!”
“You go! I value my life. Who knows if you'll get poisoned if you get bitten—”
The crowd buzzed with chatter. When the wail of police sirens pierced the night sky from afar, this terrifying, foul-smelling spectacle was instantly pushed to its climax.
Rate on N.U.
