Apocalyptic Island - Chapter 45

Chapter 45

The sounds outside continued for an unknown duration, but the squirrels never managed to bite through the small wooden house.

Wen Yishu went from being on edge at the beginning to becoming somewhat numb later on. She lay on the bed, trying to listen for any movement from the banyan tree. Aside from the scratching of claws, its voice never sounded again. The String of Pearls in her pocket remained in a deep slumber as well; no matter how much she shook it, there was no sign of it waking up. Trapped in the darkness, Wen Yishu felt time slipping away exceptionally slowly.

Out of sheer boredom, she began to explore the functions of her optical computer.

Smart communicators were highly advanced, but the banyan’s interference persisted. This device could currently only open the electronic display and allow her to swipe left and right. The dim light of the screen flickered in the dark as Wen Yishu found a compass icon. It was a basic tool equipped on all devices, but in an era of such advanced technology, no one ever used it. Words like East, West, South, and North were rarely mentioned in daily life; map navigation had become the most-used application.

But now, it seemed this tool would be extremely helpful for teams venturing out. Wen Yishu’s finger lingered on the compass before she tapped it. A giant compass rose appeared. The light screen instantly shifted orientation to align with the horizon, and the needle and rose became 3D models, making them much clearer to read. Wen Yishu stood up and spun around a few times; the needle consistently pointed in one direction. She wasn’t sure if this was a good or bad sign.

In this type of program, a fixed anchor point was embedded in the underlying code so that experimental data could be steadily output even under interference. However, humans hadn’t accounted for the layer of plant mutation, and there likely hadn’t been time to test it. Wen Yishu decided not to take the risk yet. She would take it one step at a time, waiting for the banyan to wake up or the squirrels to leave. Without seeing the sun, she didn’t know how accurate it was.

The news on social feeds and text messages remained frozen at the moment before she fell. Red notification dots sat on her messages—a rare sight for her. She felt like a primitive human.

As afternoon arrived, she ate some tasteless food and drank the water she had collected. She could clearly feel the temperature inside the room rising; it was getting hot outside. She took off her outer coat, placed the optical computer on the table, and stretched her limbs, performing a few sets of exercises built into the device.

Her short blade lacked sufficient lethality against agile mutated animals like the squirrels. Scanning the room’s furnishings, her gaze finally landed on her cradle bed. Only this was made of separate pieces of wood—uniform in length and thickness, with no burrs.

Wen Yishu pressed her hands together, whispered an apology, and then slowly used the short blade to saw off a wooden slat. The sound of sawing filled the wooden house. Wen Yishu caught the falling sawdust steadily in her hand, resisting the urge to blow it away. Finally, having finished sawing both ends, she searched the database downloaded on her device for knot-tying methods. She took the rope from her backpack and lashed the handle of the short blade to the wood, creating an extension.

Her attack range had lengthened, but her striking power remained undiminished. Compared to the previous close-quarters combat, Wen Yishu now had more reaction time. She swung it a few times to get used to the feel and slowly approached the window.

The squirrels were still scratching outside, but the sound was much quieter and less frequent than before. Many squirrels, seeing Wen Yishu play the “shrinking turtle,” had given up. They returned to the tree to conserve energy, leaving only a dozen or so persistent ones trying to use noise to force her out. These squirrels possessed a natural awe of the powerful banyan; if they destroyed such a large part of it and the tree no longer provided protection, they would likely die a miserable death if they encountered other mutated animals outside.

Thus, all the squirrels were afraid to act rashly. However, they were born with a craving for flesh. Facing an existence like Wen Yishu—fragrant, like a little cupcake—they simply couldn’t resist. The scent of potent flesh drifted out through the cracks in thin strands. Their rodent nature pushed them forward, yearning for the incomparable delicacy inside.

But the little wooden house was like an iron wall, making these leaderless squirrels afraid to advance even half a step. Even though the colossus had fallen into a deep sleep, they were forced by its pressure to refrain from gnawing on anything related to it.

However, that heart-gnawing sensation ended abruptly when the window was opened.

The first squirrel to notice the window opening pounced almost instantly. At this moment, it relied purely on animal instinct; it didn’t hesitate for a second in the face of sweet flesh. The mouth-watering scent gushed out in large volumes from the window. It leaped, flying through the air like a tiny paraglider.

In the next second, it was impaled through the throat by the short blade thrusting out from the window, hanging limp on the tip of the blade. Wen Yishu thrust the blade forward and shook it, and the squirrel’s corpse plummeted down. One after another, squirrels were attracted by this fatal lure, flying forward in succession. Wen Yishu took them out one by one, or sometimes two at a time, as if popping balloons.

Puff, puff, puff, puff. Squirrel corpses soon piled up on the tree trunk like a mound of brown straw. The remaining squirrels who hadn’t moved finally realized the danger. They clung tightly to the trunk, not a single one moving forward anymore. The scent had faded significantly; no matter how important food was, it wasn’t as important as one’s life. They all stared fixedly at the half-opened window.

Wen Yishu smelled the long-awaited fresh air. The fragrance of the trees outside, mixed with a faint scent of blood, entered her nose. She popped her head out slightly to glance out the window and used the tip of her blade to nudge the pile of squirrel corpses. This scene sent a shiver through the remaining squirrels; the delicacy in their eyes had become a slaughtering machine, massacring their kind. These less-than-intelligent creatures should have realized from the start that the “food” that killed the Squirrel King was bound to be extremely dangerous.

The sunlight hit the window at an angle. Looking at the shadow of the squirrel corpses, Wen Yishu determined that the house was likely north-facing and south-facing—which fit the house-building habits of Federation citizens. Seeing no more squirrels approaching, she closed the window, much to her regret.

The hunter temporarily put away her slaughtering knife. The squirrels still clinging to the trunk, afraid to move, scattered in a mutual understanding the moment Wen Yishu closed the window. They were terrified that if they ran too slowly, they would be the next to die. They no longer wanted to eat that poisonous cupcake; they only wanted to stay far away from such “food.”

Meanwhile, in the long-silent residential areas, many people, having learned the news online, plucked up the courage to step outside. Once they confirmed the streets were safe, everyone collectively rushed to supermarkets and began a frantic looting spree.

The previous stay-at-home order became a thing of the past. Everyone had been anxious over the last week, and their mental stability had reached a breaking point. Everyone’s taut nerves could only be relieved through frenzied shopping. Every supermarket was overcrowded; the streets were packed with people hoarding goods and fleeing, mixed with countless protesters.

The Federation could not control the collective rioting; only in sparsely populated areas was the situation barely under control. Protesters shouted slogans of freedom, only to be punched down into the crowd by a thug: “Damn it, I can’t even afford to eat, and you’re yelling about your daddy’s freedom! If it weren’t for the taxpayers’ money feeding a hybrid like you, making you so full you have the energy to scream, you wouldn’t be here. Hand over all your damn money!”

Passing residents added a few kicks before moving on. In the chaos, no one knew how many times they had been hit; shoes had to be practically welded to their feet to keep from being lost. Safety officers couldn’t maintain such a chaotic scene. However, everyone’s goals were very clear.

With specific targets in mind, every place was packed. Flying cars collided in the air; with no regulation, accidents were frequent, and falling fire burned large clearings into the crowds. These were quickly extinguished by the trampling of the masses. The emergency “Orderly Travel” policy issued by the Federation became a joke.

Safety officers were knocked over by the shoving crowds; the chaos only stabilized after they removed their silencers and fired their guns. Trampling accidents were frequent across all regions, with casualties even higher than during the stabilized days. In the chaos, some even murdered for wealth or robbed and smashed stores.

This situation only stopped when rats were seen crawling out of the sewers. No matter where you are, there is one creature that will never go extinct: the city rat. They always find a way to survive. Of course, if insects also mutated, the situation would be entirely different.

Rats in the South are larger than common imagination. They frequent landfills and scurry through old residential areas year-round. They roam the streets and alleys, scavenging for food from house to house. Pushing open sewer lids, infiltrating warehouses, and haunting night market stalls, they are city pests that make everyone pale at the mention of them.

A rat darted out from the crowded street, flipping a heavy stone sewer lid. A woman walking in a hurry didn’t care if her shoes got dirty in the mud; she stayed at the very edge, walking quickly, but accidentally stepped into the void. She let out a cry of surprise, and the items she was carrying scattered across the ground.

The people around her gave her a few strange looks, but no one stepped forward to help. Everyone stared greedily at the scattered food, swallowing their saliva. No one knows who was the first to give in, but someone crouched down and made off with a pack of biscuits. Soon, more people followed, picking up the packages of food from the ground.

The woman, stuck in the gap of the sewer, couldn’t get up for a moment. Watching her food being divided, she shouted in anger: “Are you crazy? These are my things! Give them all back!”

No one listened to her. The food scattered further away was quickly snatched up by passersby. In the time it took to say one sentence, those people had vanished into the rolling crowd. No one came to help; worse, some set their sights on the food still near her.

The woman had to try to save herself. She braced against the wall, trying to pull herself up in one go. Her other leg was almost flat on the ground; the leg that had fallen was swallowed by the sewer up to the thigh. An icy, piercing sensation came from her foot; her calf was submerged in the sewage. Without external help, it was hard for her to find leverage to get out. She had to adjust her position, trying to pull her leg out.

Suddenly, she felt a chill on her thigh—which hadn’t been that cold before. An agonizing pain made her scream out loud. The people around looked on in surprise. The woman’s hands clawed desperately at the ground, her index fingers bleeding from the friction, as she screamed: “HELP!!!”

Finally, a few people who couldn’t bear it placed their belongings together and grabbed the woman’s frantically waving hands, working together to pull her out. One of them, after seeing her leg clearly, suddenly let go.

Her once-intact leg was now hollow, leaving only a bloody white bone. Blood gushed continuously from the joint, quickly pooling beneath her and forming a thin layer of ice on the hard, cold pavement. The skin at the break was a mangled mess of flesh, looking as if something had gnawed on it, and several things soaked in blood were still hanging on, continuing to eat.

They had long, disgusting fleshy tails and gray fur wet with warm blood. The woman had already fainted from the pain, lying motionless on the ground as if dead.

A massive scream erupted from the crowd: “It’s rats! These are rats!”

The crowded onlookers immediately scattered to one side. A dense swarm of rats surged out of the sewer like a rolling black tide, frantically sweeping toward the crowd.

Support Apocalyptic Island