There’s still the matter of the tier-2 to deal with. And the way we deal with it is…

“Run!”

The search team is running along the road, waiting for the car to catch up. The distraction team is already inside. They’d had to take off to lead the zombie crowd away from us earlier and do some off-roading to circle back around to us.

Well, Snowflake and Ms Lu are running. I’m being carried over Snowflake’s shoulder. His shoulders are surprisingly broad under those loose robes, but I’m also not the smallest person so his shoulder digs into my abdomen. I am immensely grateful for his graceful glide-run saving me from the further discomfort of being winded every time he takes a step. Though I have no idea how he isn’t tripping over the hems of his robes while also slashing at any zombies that get too close.

It's somewhat demeaning to be carried like this, but I don't tell him to put me down. ‘Life over pride,’ I chant silently, ‘Life over pride, life over pride.’

The car draws up alongside us. Xiuying-jie throws open the door. Ms Lu grasps her outstretched hand and is safely pulled inside.

Snowflake doesn’t wait for Xiuying-jie to stick her arm out again. He grabs my waist-

“Wait-” I shriek, voice cracking at the end of the word-

-and hurls me into the car like a sack of potatoes. I land on top of the two women with a pained grunt. My head knocks into Ms Lu’s. I flop down onto the ground and sigh. This is just my life now, I guess.

Snowflake tosses my knife into the car before poofing back to wherever he came from. Xiuying-jie yanks the door shut. Liu Guanjun wastes no time in stepping on the gas, and with a lurch, we are speeding away from the zombie horde.

The whole car sighs in relief.

We drive in silence for a minute. Kui Renshu, never one to stay silent for long, speaks first.

“So, you didn’t find Granny Yang?”

The high of relief is abruptly dampened by his question. I draw my knees up and bury my face in them. Ms Lu rests a hand on my back and recounts the events.

When we turn the radio back on, Lu Yang is ready with a thorough tongue-lashing. The moment he takes a breath though, Kui Renshu cuts in with an uncharacteristically curt “She turned into a zombie.”

He probably shouldn’t have put it so bluntly. After a moment of shocked silence, Yaoyao starts crying. Lu Yang clicks his tongue and ends the transmission with “We’ll talk about this later,” which is fine by everyone.

I look out the window. We drive by the occasional zombie. Every time we do, it tries to follow but is quickly left behind. The biggest group I see only contains five tier-1 zombies.

Somehow, out of all these zombie groups on the road, we managed to run into the only big group with a tier-2. Are all the other survivors having as horrible luck as we are?

Speaking of survivors, we haven’t run across any at all. I’d think we were the only humans left on earth if not for the constant chatter coming from the car’s radio, which is repeating the location of the military camp and occasionally giving updates on the situation. I don’t get all of it but I do get that teams of soldiers have gone into the city to look for survivors. Man, the military works fast. It’s what, day 3 of the apocalypse? Feels a lot longer.

I do wonder about how they have that many soldiers though. A third of the people in the shopping centre turned into zombies and killed a good many more, which I now know would’ve turned into more zombies, which would kill more people, which would make more zombies, and so on and so forth. Judging from that, you’d expect about half the military to be gone and the chain of command destroyed, making a response as fast as this impossible. So either there was something in the shopping centre that caused more zombification than other areas, or the military somehow had forewarning and a method to stop the random zombification. Perhaps there’s another factor which I don’t know about, but with the information I have, those two theories are the most likely.

I huff a sigh. Getting more information is going to be even harder for me with my shaky grasp on Mandarin. And anyway, those problems are far removed from what I really need to worry about. Big issues like that should be left to the big fish; small fry like me just need to focus on preserving our small existences.

A few hours later, we stop for lunch. Jin Hailin volunteers to be lookout.

Kui Renshu is checking on Liu Guanjun, whose condition has worsened after her stint as a driver. He fixes up her bandages and tries to smile, but who does he think he’s fooling? Even Yaoyao, were he not conked out from crying over Granny Yang, would understand the severity of her injuries. He gives her two muesli bars and some painkillers.

He grabs Lu Yang and draws him into a hushed discussion. They grow agitated at some parts, but their volume never rises to the point where I can understand their words. Not like I need to though. Everyone knows what they’re whispering about.

Once they seem to have reached a conclusion, Lu Yang waves me and Ms Lu over. I brace myself, but Ms Lu kindly recounts the events by herself again. I feel bad that I’m not of any help, but not bad enough to want to relive the discovery of Granny Yang’s corpse. For once, Mandarin being my worse language helps.

When told about the dead becoming zombies, Lu Yang doesn’t look too surprised. He does look concerned about the intelligent zombie though. He dissolves into muttering with terms I am unfamiliar with and waves us away. Kui Renshu stays and the two use each other as sounding boards for their theories. Ms Lu puts a hand on my arm and I take that as our cue to leave.

We sit on the ground.

“How are you doing?” she asks gently.

“…Not good,” I admit. “Right now, I am very not good. But. Give me time, and I will be okay.”

“Alright.”

We chew on our meagre fare in silence after that. In an effort to distract myself from reality, I think about the intelligent zombie. Not that far from reality, I know, but thinking about the theory of a thing makes the thing itself easier to face for me.

So, what do we know so far?

Normal tier-1 zombies have poor motor functions, are sensitive to noise, and are driven entirely by hunger. They are more like puppets with a singular purpose than beasts.

Tier-2s are an evolved form of the tier-1. Evolution is achieved through absorption of other zombies. It is unknown whether the matter or the core is what contributes to the evolution, or perhaps both. Tier-2s gain basic sentience and the two encountered so far have shown they are capable of anger. Tier-2s appear to be capable of attracting and ordering a small number of zombies around. Their main moves consist of charging, grabbing and swiping.

The deviant encountered earlier displayed caution when faced with unknowns. It demonstrated its motor functions were advanced enough to carve an organ out of a body for consumption. Its speed and strength resembled a tier-1 zombie. It was only its intelligence and improved motor functions that set it apart.

I really wish I could Mandarin. As it is, I don’t even know the word for ‘evolution’. I look over to where Kui Renshu and Lu Yang are in a heated discussion. Are they talking about the deviant zombie? I have theories too, but no one to discuss them with.

Goddamn language barrier.