novelsite Chapter 14 Trapped Beast on a High Platform
Chapter 14 Trapped Beast on a High Platform
The tires rolled over a crack in the national highway, causing the vehicle to lurch. Zhang Xun's knuckles turned white, and his stomach sank. Three hundred meters away, an abandoned truck lay across the road like a beast. In the rearview mirror, more than ten swaying figures converged from the direction of the gas station, their gait stiff, driven only by instinct towards the sound.
"It's completely blocked."
Zhang Xun turned off the engine, and the hum of the motor came to an abrupt halt. Silence filled the carriage; his heart pounded in his ears, and the soft rustling of shoes against the pavement outside the window felt like sandpaper grinding against his nerves.
Bai Mo propped himself up from the back seat, blood seeping from the bandage on his left foot: "How much?"
"Twenty is the starting price. And we're still going." Qin Wei pressed her forehead against the glass, her voice tense. "To the left is farmland, open ground, too big to run. To the right is a wall, two meters high, smooth, no foothold."
The infected swarmed around. The first one pounced on the passenger window, its ashen face slapping against the glass, leaving a sticky residue. Then came the second, the third. The car shook, the metal shell groaning as it was squeezed.
"Skylight." Zhang Xun grabbed his backpack, pushed open the overhead partition with one hand, his palms sweating profusely. "Go."
Qin Wei climbed first. She stepped onto the center armrest, braced her knees against the seat back, and with a thrust of her waist, her upper body emerged from the roof. A gust of wind blew in, carrying a putrid stench. She steadied herself, and as she turned and reached out, her fingers trembled: "Bai Mo!"
Bai Mo pushed off the ground with one foot and grabbed Qin Wei's wrist. Her left foot had just left the ground when she accidentally hit the seat; the sharp pain made her vision go black, and she almost slipped off. Zhang Xun supported her waist and hips from below and pushed her away. Bai Mo groaned as she was pulled onto the roof of the car, her bandages instantly soaked with blood. Zhang Xun followed, and the three of them squatted on the roof. The car shook violently below, and the infected's fingers scratched at the metal, producing a piercing, tooth-grinding sound that sent chills down your spine with every screech.
"Let's go." Zhang Xun pointed to a lamppost two meters away, his Adam's apple bobbing. "There, then to the second-floor platform."
The lamppost was an old concrete pillar with a ladder welded to it. There was a two-meter gap between it and the car. Qin Wei took a deep breath, took a half-step back, ran, and jumped. She landed halfway up the ladder, her arms tightly wrapped around the iron pole, her knuckles scraping against the rust, drawing a bloody line. She climbed two more steps, and as she turned around, her voice changed: "Throw and catch!"
Zhang Xun crouched, his hands clasped together in a cradling motion. Bai Mo stepped onto it with one foot, and Zhang Xun, using his waist and abdomen strength, lifted her up, propelling her forward. Qin Wei intercepted her mid-air, and the two crashed into a lamppost, causing it to sway violently, with years of rust falling down. Zhang Xun jumped last. Just as he left the roof, a powerful infected pounced on the spot where he had been crouching, denting the metal roof with a loud bang. Zhang Xun landed at the bottom of the ladder, the momentum causing him to slide half a meter, his knee hitting a crossbar, the bone cracking. He gritted his teeth and climbed back up, his fingers gripping the cracks in the concrete, blood seeping from under his fingernails.
The infected began to pile up on top of each other. The average-sized ones weren't intelligent enough to climb the pole, but a few of the more explosive ones took a few steps back, bent their knees, pushed off the ground, and leaped up. Their claws grazed Zhang Xun's heels, tearing off a piece of his trouser leg.
"Jump!" Qin Wei shouted from the edge of the second-floor platform, her fingers turning white from the force.
The platform, a meter wide, was above the abandoned shop's "GG" sign, its cast-iron railing rusted through. Bai Mo, already pulled up by Qin Wei, was lying on the ground, reaching out. Zhang Xun leaped from the top of the lamppost, losing his balance in mid-air. In that instant, he saw dozens of ashen faces looking up below, like a field of rotting sunflowers. He stretched out his hands, his fingers hooking onto the concrete edge of the platform. His body slammed heavily against the wall, the air in his lungs expelled, and stars exploded before his eyes.
Qin Wei grabbed his wrist, and Bai Mo held his arm; together, they dragged him onto the platform. The three rolled into a corner, listening to the roars of the horde of corpses below, finally passing the first hurdle. Zhang Xun rolled over, his chest heaving violently, looking at the hazy sky, his hands still trembling uncontrollably—not from exhaustion, but from the lingering effects of adrenaline.
He reached for his waistband to check the walkie-talkie, but his fingertips touched something hard deep in his pocket—a pink, plastic rabbit keychain. He gripped it tightly, his fingertips rubbing the smooth surface, feeling a lingering warmth that wasn't his own.
At the same moment, five kilometers away.
Lin Xiaotang sat on the floor, a rabbit doll lying on her lap. The pink fur was dusted with flour dust and looked old in the candlelight. She stared at the crooked stitches on the rabbit's ears—stitches made by Zhang Xun many years ago, the stitches crooked but never broken. She threaded her fingers through the doll's ears and gently clenched them, her knuckles turning white from the force.
Su Nian sat opposite her, her left leg outstretched, the bandage on her knee glowing yellow in the candlelight. In front of her was a cement floor, covered with a thin layer of gray, a grayish-white tinged with the brownish-red of brick powder.
Several buildings were arranged on the gray soil with small black pebbles: shops, an intersection, a government building, and a warehouse in the western suburbs. Su Nian held a burnt matchstick in her hand, the charred end drawing thin lines on the gray soil to represent streets.
"Here," her voice was hoarse, a matchstick lit beside a pebble representing the western suburbs, "they should have picked up the person by now. If all goes well, they'll be back on the national highway in three hours."
The carbon core was moved to the line representing the national highway, stopped, and left a black mark.
Lin Xiaotang, holding a rabbit plush toy, squatted to her right. She wasn't looking at the map, but at Su Nian's knee. A faint red ooze was seeping from the edge of the bandage, from capillary bleeding caused by the previous activity.
"Your knee is burning up," Lin Xiaotang said. She held up her finger an inch above the bandage and could feel the abnormal temperature. "Sister Qin Wei said that if it gets worse, we'll have to cut it open and drain it."
"I know." Su Nian didn't look up, tapping the matchstick on the ash, raising a fine dust. She tried to bend her right leg to change position, her knee making a slight click. Her brow furrowed, and sweat immediately beaded on her forehead, but her voice remained steady: "Get me some mung beans."
Lin Xiaotang took out a small cloth bag from her pocket, which contained about twenty mung beans left over from cooking porridge yesterday. Su Nian took it, picked up a bean with her thumb and forefinger, and placed it next to the stone representing the shop.
"We're here." She picked up another one and placed it in the western suburbs. "They're here."
The mung beans sank slightly into the grayish-white dust.
"In the middle," the matchstick traced an arc in the dust, avoiding the main road, "if the highway is blocked, they'll take this route. They'll go through the farmers' market, through the abandoned gas station, and circle back through the back alleys."
"But the farmers' market has a lot of..." Lin Xiaotang paused for a moment, "those things."
"Just like when you're baking bread," Su Nian tapped the matchstick in the ash, raising a small cloud of ash, "you make a cut on the dough, and the heat goes into the cut, so it won't crack."
Lin Xiaotang paused for a moment, then nodded: "A diversionary tactic."
"Yes." Su Nian's lips twitched slightly, not in a smile, but out of habitual muscle tension. "The words you taught me."
She ran her fingers through the dust, making a quick line, but her fingertips trembled. It wasn't fear; the pain in her knee traveled through her nerves to her fingertips. She stopped, grabbed her left knee with her right hand, and pressed down hard, her knuckles turning white. Dust clung to her knee, leaving a layer of grayish-white frost.
"I can't go," she suddenly said, her voice low, as if to herself. "I can only sit here and draw maps."
Lin Xiaotang looked at her. Su Nian's profile looked like a stone sculpture in the candlelight, but her jawline was trembling slightly, as if she was clenching her teeth too tightly.
"The map you drew," Lin Xiaotang said softly, "will save their lives."
Su Nian didn't speak. She grabbed a handful of dust and slowly sprinkled it on the ground. The grayish-white powder fell in a flurry, covering the lines she had just drawn, like a miniature gray snowfall, obscuring the black traces.
"Let's try again," she said, "the possibility of going around South Street."
---
6 hours of being trapped.
They were trapped on a platform about 5 meters above the ground, in an area of less than four square meters. Below them was a side road of the national highway, and the horde of corpses showed no signs of dispersing.
The platform's inner side is flush with the building's exterior wall, where the peeling gray-green plaster reveals the red brick. To the left is an aluminum sliding window, its frame warped and jammed, with cast iron security bars welded to the inside. The vertical bars are less than fifteen centimeters apart, and rust extends from the weld points to both ends. To the right is a wooden door, its frame piled high with cement bags and construction debris, sealing it from the inside. No light shines through the cracks, only solidified darkness.
Zhang Xun leaned close to the window and gently tapped the glass with his baseball bat.
Click.
A soft sound echoed through the empty shop. Immediately, dragging footsteps and the sharp scraping of fingernails against the concrete floor came from the depths of darkness—at least three, trapped inside for days, hungry and agitated, but unable to break through the iron bars. Their faces were pressed against the bars, their grayish-white features fragmented by the mesh, their mouths opening and closing, emitting silent growls.
They can't get out, and they can't get in.
Zhang Xun took half a step back and returned to the edge of the platform.
They attempted a breakout. Zhang Xun used a climbing rope to entangle himself in the metal bracket of the air conditioner unit, hoping to use the swing to leap to the roof of the adjacent building. However, the bracket was corroded, and as soon as he applied force, one of the expansion bolts snapped off, causing the unit to tilt and nearly crash down. He pulled back, looked down at the horde of corpses looking up at him, and gave up. Only then did the pain in his knees become clear, throbbing and aching, as if reminding him of his physical limits.
Next, they tried using the prefabricated panels to climb onto the awning, slid down by grabbing onto the aging electrical wires, tied their backpacks to the straps to hang down onto the rusted water pipes, and crawled on the GG steel beams, but the panels broke, the wires snapped, the water pipes fell off, and the steel beams slipped—either the materials rotted or they attracted hordes of zombies, blocking all avenues of escape.
Night fell, and the temperature plummeted. The three huddled in a corner, Bai Mo in the middle, Zhang Xun and Qin Wei on either side, their body heat passing between them through their clothes. No one spoke; their breaths mingled in the darkness, like some ancient pact.
Zhang Xun touched the walkie-talkie at his waist; the red light flashed rhythmically. He looked at it, his finger hovering over the call button, and finally closed his eyes, making a decision in his heart: wait a little longer, just a little longer.
In the distance came the static of Su Nian's routine call—it was the home channel. His fingers tightened, his muscles tensed like iron, and he almost pressed the call button, but in the end he just rubbed the phone without pressing it.
He looked down at the dark mass of corpses, which resembled a black wheat field, swaying slightly in the wind, waiting to be harvested or to rot.
The feeling of being watched lingered, as if countless eyes were glued to my back, making me restless.
---
17 hours of being trapped.
Zhang Xun leaned against the cold concrete wall, knees bent, baseball bat resting across his legs. The platform was less than four square meters, the cast iron railing at the edge rusted through. Five meters below, the asphalt pavement of the national highway auxiliary road was cracked, weeds pushing out from the cracks, stained blackish-brown by blood.
The horde of corpses did not disperse.
They entered a strange standby state. Without a target, they simply wandered slowly, their gait stiff, heads drooping, arms hanging naturally at their sides, like machines that had been unplugged. Occasionally, two would collide, emitting a low, hoarse growl, then separate and continue drifting aimlessly.
Qin Wei sat to Zhang Xun's left, the hem of her white coat spread out on the cement floor, a first-aid kit resting on her lap. She was re-bandaging Bai Mo's left foot injury—the bandage had long since soaked through, the dried bloodstains hardened into clumps, and each time she peeled it off, it brought a tearing, stinging pain.
Bai Mo leaned against the right corner of the wall, her dark gray trench coat pulled tight, a piece of her silver-rimmed glasses broken and wrapped with tape. Her fingers taped on her knees, three long taps followed by one short one, as if unconsciously keeping track of time.
"The forty-seventh time," Bai Mo suddenly spoke, his voice hoarse as if sandpaper were being rubbed.
"What?" Zhang Xun didn't turn his head, his eyes fixed on the infected person in blue overalls below.
"Count the number of times the horde of zombies appeared," Bai Mo said. "Forty-seven times. That's an average of once every twelve minutes."
Zhang Xun's lips twitched, but he didn't laugh. He was indeed counting. The left leg of the person in the blue work uniform had a problem; each step dragged, leaving dark marks on the ground. Thirty meters away, a female infected person in a red dress walked at an extremely fast pace, twice that of a normal person, but each time she bumped into an abandoned trash can, she would pause for three seconds, like a processor freezing. And the burly man standing next to the white SUV, with broad shoulders and biceps that stretched his T-shirt out of shape, possessed astonishing explosive power when chasing cars, but now he stood beside the car, his shoulders heaving—he was "panting," even though they didn't need to breathe.
"Classification." Zhang Xun took out his notebook and used a charcoal pencil to write down, "Blue work clothes, ordinary type, left leg disability, dragging gait. Red dress, speed type, fast stride frequency, three-second reaction delay. Strong man, strength type, short endurance, needs to recover after thirty seconds of burst."
Qin Wei looked up at him, holding an iodine swab in her hand: "What are you doing?"
"Create files." Zhang Xun wrote the fourth line. "They're not the same. Some are fast, some are slow, some are strong, some are weak. Like..." He paused, searching for the right words, "like different people, their souls taken away, leaving only their physical habits."
Bai Mo stopped tapping and turned to look at him: "You're very observant."
"We must be careful." Zhang Xun put away his notebook, his fingers unconsciously stroking the walkie-talkie at his waist. The black plastic casing, the red light flashing regularly, indicated it was fully charged. The channel was set to a private frequency. Just press the call button and say "Trapped, immediate assistance," and a shop five kilometers away would receive the message.
But he didn't press it.
After treating the wound, Qin Wei tied a tight knot in the bandage. She noticed Zhang Xun's movement and reached out to press her hand against the back of his hand. Her fingertips were icy cold and carried the pungent smell of iodine.
"No," she said, her voice low so as not to disturb the shadows below. "Su Nian's knees need compression bracing. A normal person can walk five kilometers in an hour; she can't make it this far."
"Besides," Bai Mo continued, his eyes closed, "there's only Xiao Tang in the shop. If she comes, she'll be sent to her death. The three of us versus the two of them, we can't make ends meet."
Zhang Xun remained silent. He had, of course, considered the consequences. Su Nian's knee injury required rest; forcing herself to trek could lead to permanent damage. Lin Xiaotang lacked combat skills; guarding the shop alone was already her limit. If Su Nian came to her aid injured, the success rate was less than 10%, and the risk of the shop falling was 100%.
He released the walkie-talkie and wiped his fingers on his trouser leg, as if trying to wipe away some kind of temptation.
"Water." Qin Wei took out the half-empty bottle of mineral water from her bag; the bottle was dented. She unscrewed the cap, took a small sip herself, held it in her mouth for a long time before swallowing, and then handed it to Bai Mo.
Bai Mo took the bottle, merely moistened her lips, and handed it back to Zhang Xun. Zhang Xun finished the last bit of his drink, the empty bottle squeaking shrilly in his hand. Below, the three infected simultaneously looked up, their grayish-white pupils fixed on the platform. Zhang Xun froze, his fingers loosening, the empty bottle rolling into the corner, the sound ceasing.
Three seconds later, the infected person lowered their head and continued to wander.
"Sound threshold," Bai Mo said in a breathy voice, "above 50 decibels, mid-frequency. The sound of a plastic bottle being squeezed is just right on the line."
Zhang Xun nodded. He slowly took out his notebook and continued writing: "Sensitive hearing, frequency range 2000-8000Hz. No reaction to sustained low frequencies, alert to sudden mid-frequency spikes."
---
20 hours of being trapped.
Sunlight streamed in from the east side of the platform, causing the temperature to rise rapidly. The concrete walls, which had stored up heat overnight, now released their own. Zhang Xun took off his coat and placed it under his bottom; the back of his shirt was already soaked with sweat.
Zhang Xun stared at the speed-type infected below—the one in the red dress, circling in a closed loop. Its explosive power during last night's car chase had impressed him, but now, without a target, it was just mechanically circling, like a trapped beast on a treadmill.
"Try again," Zhang Xun said, his voice hoarse. "Use your voice."
They tried to use sound to lure the enemy away. Bai Mo set his phone to an alarm, half-wrapped it in his jacket (leaving the speaker hole exposed), set it to ring after thirty seconds, and then threw it onto the roof of an abandoned truck on the lower left side of the platform.
Ring ring— Ring ring—
A sharp ringing sound shattered the silence, like a handful of glass beads scattering on a metal plate. The horde of corpses below instantly stirred; three ordinary-type corpses within five meters abruptly turned and staggered toward the truck. Those further away began to move as well, like iron filings drawn by a magnet, slowly but resolutely converging toward the source of the sound.
effective.
But it only lasted fifteen seconds. The infected that rushed to the truck found no scent of living beings, only a vibrating black mass, and began to spin in place, emitting confused growls. The two below the platform—one speed-type and one strength-type—only glanced up, making low gurgling sounds in their throats, before lowering their heads again to continue guarding the edge of the platform. They were too close to the scent of living beings; it took precedence over the sounds from afar.
Looking at the scene, Zhang Xun wrote in his notebook: "Sound is effective, but its range is limited. The scent of living people at close range (within five meters) has higher priority than distant sound sources. Noise needs to be created at extremely long distances, or scent misdirection needs to be used simultaneously."
He closed his notebook. This meant that unless someone risked jumping twenty meters away to create continuous noise, this method wouldn't break through the encirclement.
failure.
[End of Chapter Fourteen]