Caught a Cowardly Little Zombie - Chapter 4

In the dim light of the shop, Ling Mo could only make out a vague smudge of green. She recalled the figure wrapped in green cloth she’d spotted earlier that day, and a sliver of suspicion took root in her mind.

Though the shadows obscured the details, the person sitting on the floor seemed physically intact. More importantly, they hadn’t lunged at her with the mindless aggression of a zombie. It’s probably a living person, Ling Mo mused. The green-clad zombie from earlier must have been someone else.

What Ling Mo couldn’t see, however, was the frantic internal struggle of the girl before her. Chu Xiaoran’s pale face was twisted in a knot of conflict; she was desperately swallowing the saliva that flooded her mouth, her jaw clenched tight. She gripped her surgical drape so hard her blackened fingernails poked rows of tiny holes through the fabric.

“Who are you?” Ling Mo demanded, her voice sharp.

She intended to spend the night here, and she had no intention of closing her eyes next to a total stranger. In this world, zombies were predictable—monsters without brains that attacked on sight. Humans, however, were far more dangerous. They could smile to your face while hiding a blade, waiting for the perfect moment to slip it between your ribs.

The “brainless” Chu Xiaoran continued her agonizing struggle to swallow. Her eyes were fixed squarely on the tantalizing “food” in front of her, her nose twitching. She felt as though if she just breathed in enough of that sweet, intoxicating scent, it might actually fill her hollow stomach.

“Are you mute?” Ling Mo asked, tilting her head when Xiaoran failed to answer. She idly toyed with her dagger. Even in the gloom, the blade caught the crimson light of the moon, flickering with a lethal glint.

To Xiaoran, that glint was a death warrant. Remembering the gruesome end of the zombie from earlier, she shrunk back, her neck disappearing into her shoulders. She shook her head frantically and managed to force out a few thick-tongued words. “N-no… I-m n-not.”

“So you can talk. Then explain yourself. Who are you?” Ling Mo’s tone remained icy. She looked at the shivering heap on the floor with a touch of disdain; in a world like this, cowards didn’t tend to last long.

“J-just… r-resting… h-here…” Xiaoran stammered. Using her bottom and her clumsy legs, she hitched herself backward, inching away until she was pressed firmly against the back wall, trying to shrink into the smallest “green ball” possible.

Watching the green bundle quiver and scuttle backward, Ling Mo felt a sudden, inexplicable urge to laugh. She was also a bit curious—how had such a spineless creature managed to survive this long?

She won’t last much longer, Ling Mo thought indifferently. She stopped worrying about the “green egg” in the corner. If it was just a regular person hiding out, fine. If they had ulterior motives, she’d just have to stay alert during the night. She found a relatively clean spot to sit, wiped her dagger clean with a scrap of cloth, and closed her eyes to rest.

Seeing the “Goddess of Death” go still, Xiaoran blinked her clouded eyes. A zombie’s vision was notably better at night than during the day, so she could clearly see that Ling Mo had closed her eyes.

If I creep over there right now… while she’s not looking… and take one little bite… would I finally get to taste her? The thought sent a fresh wave of drool down Xiaoran’s chin. Realizing how unappealing she looked, she clamped her lips shut and swallowed hard.

The audible gulp-gulp of her swallowing immediately drew Ling Mo’s attention. She snapped her eyes open, her piercing gaze landing on the suspicious green lump. Xiaoran jolted so hard her swallow went sideways, resulting in a loud, sudden hiccup.

Ling Mo: “…”

Okay, she’s definitely just a normal person hiding here. She must be starving if she’s looking at me like that. Ling Mo felt a brief pang of helplessness. She had left in such a hurry that she hadn’t brought any food for herself, either. She closed her eyes again to conserve her energy.

Terrified by Ling Mo’s glare, Xiaoran didn’t dare entertain any more “snacks.” She remained huddled in her corner, a pathetic, shivering ball of green.

******

As the sky turned a pale, sickly white, a new day began. It brought no hope, only a fresh layer of despair.

Ling Mo opened her eyes and padded silently to the door. The street outside was deathly still. Moving with practiced stealth, she unlatched the door and began to lift the metal shutter.

The desolate street was a graveyard of trash and severed limbs; the blood had turned black, and flies buzzed in thick, lazy clouds. Seeing no immediate threat, Ling Mo stepped out. She spared a thought for the “green bundle” inside and, thinking she was doing the girl a favor by keeping her safe from the monsters, she pulled the heavy metal shutter back down and locked it.

“!” Xiaoran bolted upright at the sound. She had no idea how to operate that metal shutter. The Goddess of Death had locked her in! How was she supposed to get out? She had only just escaped one small room, and now she was trapped in another. “W-wait!” she wailed, but by the time she found her voice, Ling Mo was already long gone.

“Waaaah~” That woman is pure evil! Xiaoran squatted in the corner and began drawing circles in the dust, cursing Ling Mo with every fiber of her being.

*****

Ling Mo sprinted back to her truck. To her relief, the vehicle was untouched. She hopped in, started the engine, and sped away.

As she drove, memories of her childhood resurfaced. Being “adopted” by that middle-aged man had been the beginning of a different kind of nightmare.

The man became her adoptive father, and the young woman with him that day was his biological daughter. Back then, Ling Mo had a different name—one she had long since forgotten. Her “father” had given her the name Ling Mo. Mo meant ink—the black pigment that stains a pure white page until it is consumed. It was a name that signified something tainted.

From the day she was adopted, she was thrown into a brutal training regimen: combat techniques, martial arts, and survival skills. She was also given a proper education. For a while, despite the exhaustion, she had felt grateful to the man. That gratitude died on her fifteenth birthday.

Her father had led her into a dark, stench-filled basement. The air was thick with the smell of iron and decay. Rats scurried in the shadows, their squeaks drowned out by a low, agonizing moan. She had stared in horror at a man tied to a chair, covered in blood. Then, a cold, heavy object was pressed into her hand.

“This man betrayed me,” her father’s low, silky voice whispered in her ear. It was a gentle tone, yet it carried the weight of a mountain, crushing the air from her lungs. She knew instinctively that if she refused, she would be the one dying. “He tried to destroy me, Mo Mo. Don’t you think he deserves to die?”

“Yes…” she had whispered, her voice trembling.

“Good girl.” He patted her head affectionately and raised her shaking hand, aligning the barrel of the gun with the bloody man’s chest. The man collapsed into a mess of tears and snot, begging for mercy.

Sensing her hesitation, her father tightened his grip over her hand and signaled for her to pull the trigger.

That was the first time Ling Mo killed. It was also the first night she didn’t sleep a wink. The nightmares haunted her for days, but as her father forced her to “resolve” more targets, the horror slowly faded into a dull, hollow numbness.

******

In this new world, the power grid had failed almost everywhere, and cell signals were a thing of the past. Ling Mo drove toward the western edge of the city. She hadn’t heard from her father in a week. On the first day of the outbreak, while the phones still worked, he had given her a final instruction: if they lost contact, she was to head to a specific house in the western slums in one week to receive her next mission.

The house was tucked deep within a narrow alley. When she arrived, the usual bustle of the slums had been replaced by a silence so profound you could hear a pin drop. Danger lurked behind every uneven wall and boarded-up window.

Ling Mo’s eyes darkened. She knew what this meant. Her father always placed his “missions” in the most perilous locations. If she survived, she was still useful. If she died, she was expendable.

Despite knowing she was being tested, she prepared to enter. A dagger wasn’t enough for this place. She reached under the seat and pulled out a heavy machete, testing its weight. She hid the truck in a secluded spot, making sure to shove all her food and water deep under the seats so nothing was visible from the windows.

Clouds drifted over the sun, plunging the alley into shadow. A few steps in, she encountered a heavily decomposed corpse, its face a writhing mass of maggots. Dark, dried blood stained the ground, and the body was covered in jagged, crater-like bite marks. These weren’t just zombie bites; it looked as if the person had been eaten alive by something else.

There are other things here besides zombies.

The realization weighed heavy on her. She tightened her grip on the machete.

Two steps further, a sudden chill raced down her spine. Her hair stood on end, and a silent alarm blared in her mind. For a heartbeat, time seemed to freeze. Then, a dark blur lunged from the shadows. Ling Mo dived to the side, rolling across the pavement and springing back to her feet in one fluid motion.

Standing where she had been just seconds ago was a massive black dog.

The creature was a nightmare. Its skin was mottled with rot, and a large chunk of flesh had sloughed off its belly, leaving its intestines to trail on the ground. Its fur was matted into greasy clumps by what could only be dried blood. The beast bared its teeth, foul-smelling saliva dripping onto the asphalt as its clouded eyes locked onto her. It wasn’t looking at a threat; it was looking at a prime cut of meat.

Ling Mo’s gaze turned cold as stone. She clenched her jaw, her muscles coiling like springs as she leveled her machete. In the suffocating silence of the alley, there was only the low, guttural snarl of the zombie dog and the heavy, rhythmic sound of Ling Mo’s breath.

The standoff was about to break.

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