The Zombie I Flirted With After Losing My Memory, Who Was Pretending to be an Alpha, Is Actually My Ex - Chapter 20

Chapter 20: The Monitoring Room

The unbearable swelling and pain at the nape of her neck made Xie Jinbing quite uncomfortable. She tilted her body slightly, leaning her back against the wall, and adjusted the glasses on the bridge of her nose to ease her own awkwardness.

They waited for an unknown amount of time until the zombies outside finally settled from their frenzy into a state of mechanical wandering.

Xie Jinbing moved her body, which had grown stiff from standing. She wanted to push Teng Xi—who was pressed tightly against her—away a little, but gave up due to the cramped space. Finally, she pulled out her phone, holding it with one hand as she tapped away in the memo app.

“Go to the monitoring room. Stay close to me.”

Teng Xi read the text on the screen and tapped her arm with an index finger to indicate she understood.

A few zombies were still wandering outside. Teng Xi found the right moment, charging out first with her Miaodao, efficiently dispatching the few in her immediate path with swift strikes.

Xie Jinbing darted out from the space behind her, leading Teng Xi toward the monitoring room.

The monitoring room was located in the furthest corner of the first floor; normally, no one went there except for security guards. The two finally managed to carve a path through the zombie clusters to reach it.

Xie Jinbing swiped her card to open the door, only to be met by several zombies who turned at the sound.

The room had been ransacked and was in total chaos. Tables and chairs were overturned, and blackened blood had long since dried, coating everything. Aside from seven security guards in uniform, a human corpse lay on the floor with its stomach ripped open and its face contorted in agony.

It seemed that not everyone who was bitten turned into a zombie; Xie Jinbing silently noted this fact.

Squeezing through the door gap only as wide as a head, Teng Xi slammed the hilt of her blade against the close button. The door, which hadn’t even fully opened, slid shut slowly behind them, blocking out the zombies chasing them.

The zombies in front of them, seeing fresh food, let out beastly roars and lunged with sharp claws.

Having already experienced being swarmed by zombies, the two quickly cleared the threat in the room. After dragging the corpses into a pile, Teng Xi pressed the button on her walkie-talkie.

“Yao Zhi?”

The walkie-talkie crackled with static. Teng Xi asked a few more times before a voice finally came through.

“Xiao Xi, are you out of danger? Where are you? Is it safe? You didn’t get separated from Dr. Xie, did you? Did you find the back door exit?” Yao Zhi asked incessantly. She tried her best to remain calm, but the tremor in her voice betrayed her nervousness.

“Mama Yao, don’t start the funeral service just yet. Little Bingbing and I are perfectly safe~” Teng Xi used the same words Si Qinghan once used. Her lighthearted tone broke the tension, but earned her a sharp thwack on the head from Xie Jinbing, making her let out a cry of pain.

A soft chuckle came from the other end of the radio as Si Qinghan spoke with schadenfreude: “Getting hit by Dr. Xie? You deserve it.”

Then Si Qinghan herself yelped, shouting “Feng Sisi!” Teng Xi could only hear snippets like “Don’t talk about my Master” and “Master-protecting demon” before the volume faded. Yao Zhi moved to a quiet area, away from the two bickering girls.

“What is your current location?” It was a voice Teng Xi wasn’t very familiar with, likely Cheng Shi.

“We’re in the first-floor monitoring room.”

“You made it in? I sent people to the monitoring room before, but gave up after losing two men.”

It was indeed Cheng Shi. Teng Xi continued: “We’re in. The monitoring equipment is still functional. But is everyone this hardworking? Even the library in a mental hospital is so crowded.”

The two stood in the center of the monitoring room. Before them was a wall of screens divided into twenty or thirty small squares. The surveillance covered all seven floors of the library, the underground garage, and the library’s perimeter.

Cheng Shi explained: “The outbreak happened during an activity day. Besides, not everyone in this hospital is a ‘patient’ in the sense of being unaware; many patients need books for spiritual strength.”

Teng Xi nodded, watching Xie Jinbing sit at the master control screen. The doctor’s beautiful, broken brows knit tighter and tighter as she operated the console.

Cheng Shi added: “By the way, you probably can’t see the back door’s camera. A few days ago, a patient playing ball broke the equipment there. The technicians were scheduled to arrive, but the outbreak happened first.”

“Indeed.”

Not all the screens on the wall were intact; four were damaged. Xie Jinbing typed on the computer, and a large black void soon occupied the main screen, with only the words “Back Door” printed in the top-left corner confirming Cheng Shi’s words.

“You’re in the monitoring room? Report the status of each floor.” An unquestionable male voice suddenly rang out from the radio, commanding them without a shred of politeness. Both people in the monitoring room frowned.

“Mr. He, they are not your subordinates.” Yao Zhi looked at He Qi, who had appeared beside her, with annoyance.

Ever since He Qi’s group of Alphas arrived at the safe room, they had not only eaten the most—claiming they needed to “conserve strength for emergencies”—but their gazes toward the other patients were unsettling. Particularly, their gaze toward the women was filled with blatant, undisguised desire.

The food the doctors had scavenged was scarce. The two groups had already clashed over food distribution, and these Alphas kept bringing up the fact that they had contributed food back in Section C, forcing the others to yield their meager rations.

The food Teng Xi’s group brought from the kitchen was all in their hiking packs. To be safe, Si Qinghan had hidden her pack in the office where only the pregnant woman stayed. The Alphas didn’t dare barge into a room where someone might turn at any second, so they hadn’t found the extra food, but Yao Zhi only dared to give food to the patients in secret.

“Oh? Mr. He hasn’t taken his Alphas out to conquer the world yet?” Teng Xi spoke with dripping sarcasm.

When she left this morning, He Qi had been discussing with his men about finding their own way out, unwilling to stay with the “old, weak, and sick.” Now, it seemed they had been scared back by the commotion on the second floor.

He Qi snorted coldly but didn’t speak. Teng Xi then reported the internal state of the library: “Currently, Dr. Xie and I have cleared the zombies on the third floor; the stairwell barricade is safe for now. There aren’t many on the fourth floor, maybe a dozen. The fifth and sixth floors have more, about forty or fifty per floor. The seventh floor looks safe, but we can’t rule out blind spots. Most zombies on the second floor were lured to the main gate by the noise earlier, leaving about twenty or thirty. The first floor has the most. The main gate is completely blocked, and the elevators are full of zombies.”

Teng Xi was incredibly glad they hadn’t blindly used the elevator.

“It looks like we can turn the library into a fortress. The first floor is just a bit troublesome,” He Qi interjected again.

“No!” “No!”

Voices rang out simultaneously from both ends of the radio—it was Teng Xi, Yao Zhi, and Cheng Shi.

He Qi, accustomed to a high position, saw his proposal rejected by everyone. His “gentle-gentleman” facade finally cracked. He gripped his hands, breathing heavily, and finally couldn’t help but swear: “Fuck! You bitches, if you want to die, don’t drag us down. The food here will be gone soon. Staying cooped up here is a dead end!”

Cheng Shi lowered her head, unusually stung. It was true; if they stayed, they would starve, but her group of survivors had no combat capability.

She looked up, tucking a few stray white hairs behind her ear, and spoke kindly: “Mr. He, you see our situation. Including your men and Dr. Xie’s pair, we only have 23 people capable of fighting, plus 29 patients. If anything goes wrong, the consequences would be unthinkable. For now, the safe room won’t be breached. We just need to wait out this peak period and then find people to go out for supplies. We will survive until someone comes to save us.”

“Save us? No one knows the situation outside. You’re still counting on someone to save us?” He Qi laughed mockingly and then ignored her with a cold snort.

Teng Xi and Yao Zhi frowned. Their perspective was completely different from the conservative Yao Zhi’s. They actually agreed with He Qi’s view that holding a corner forever wasn’t an option, but rushing out blindly was even more dangerous. Moreover, Teng Xi was never someone to place her hope for survival on a rescue that might never come.

Yao Zhi spoke: “Mr. He, Xiao Xi just said that there are risks in blind spots. We can cooperate on this and make thorough preparations.”

The two sides stalemated for a few minutes. He Qi eventually said nothing more, snorting coldly as he turned and left. Everyone watched him calm down, but an ominous feeling lingered in their hearts.

Through the monitor, Teng Xi watched He Qi walk back to his bodyguards. They sat in a circle, whispering. He Qi’s eyes occasionally flicked toward the camera in the room—that gaze reminded Teng Xi of a venomous snake lurking in a forest.

“He Qi won’t let this go. Keep a constant watch on them,” Teng Xi warned.

Cheng Shi rubbed her temples with a headache.

“What do you two plan to do now?” Yao Zhi asked.

Teng Xi looked up at the clock on the wall. She hadn’t realized it was already past 3:00 PM; it had taken them so long to travel just three floors.

“We’ll rest in the monitoring room for the night. We made such a big noise today that the zombies outside are restless. There are still zombies gathered outside the monitoring room door. It looks like today’s work ends early. Being here makes it easier to keep an eye on things outside,” Teng Xi said, hopping up to sit on the edge of the desk. She held the Miaodao hilt in front of her with both hands, the walkie-talkie in one, and her eyes scanning the wall of monitors.

The others agreed it was the only way. He Qi was in a fit of rage; trying to cooperate with him now would lead nowhere.

“Is there food?” Yao Zhi asked. They hadn’t brought food when they left, thinking it was a simple scouting mission.

Xie Jinbing rummaged around and successfully found a stash of food.

“These security guards hoarded a lot of stuff. Don’t worry, Mama Yao,” Teng Xi said. She finally understood why Si Qinghan and Feng Sisi called her ‘Mama Yao.’ She really was like an old mother to them, constantly worried about her “children” being hungry or cold.

Next, they briefly discussed their plans. With the advantage of the monitoring room, they decided to talk to He Qi again tomorrow to recruit his men and see if they could secure the library, or at least scavenge its supplies.

Night fell quickly. As the clock struck twelve, Teng Xi yawned. She took a blanket from a cabinet and draped it over Xie Jinbing, who was asleep in a chair.

Xie Jinbing wasn’t sleeping well. Even in her dreams, her brows were tightly knit. Her head was tilted against the edge of the chair, lacking support.

The lights in the monitoring room were off; only the screens cast a faint, shimmering glow. Teng Xi stood before her, tracing her features with her eyes. She paused at the scar on the broken eyebrow and instinctively reached out. By the time she realized it, her fingertip had already touched the uneven skin.

As if to cover her impulsiveness, she gently picked Xie Jinbing up in a horizontal carry and moved toward the sofa.

Xie Jinbing, held in her arms, suddenly jolted awake from an apparent nightmare. She reached out and clung to the other’s neck, her body trembling uncontrollably.

She wasn’t wearing her glasses. Her startled eyes crashed into Teng Xi’s. The red corners of her eyes were filled with a sense of vulnerability, lacking even a hint of the “alpha” energy she showed during the day.

“Hiss…”

Xie Jinbing instinctively opened her mouth to speak, but the “Xi Xi” she intended came out as a blurred, muffled short note.

Teng Xi laid her gently on the sofa and knelt on one knee beside her. “Did you have a nightmare, Sister Xie?”

Xie Jinbing looked at her, her lashes trembling, making no move.

“Get some good sleep. I’m right here,” Teng Xi said with a soft laugh. She sensed that even if the doctor’s voice was fine, she wouldn’t want to talk right now. Teng Xi tucked the blanket around her and turned to sit in the chair, her eyes fixed on the monitors.

Xie Jinbing watched Teng Xi leave and bit her lip. In the past, Teng Xi would have absolutely held her in her arms and whispered comforts; she would never have just walked away like that. Her hand under the blanket trembled; if Teng Xi had stayed one second longer, she wouldn’t have been able to stop herself from throwing herself into her arms.

But the woman’s departure made her feel incredibly slighted. The corners of her eyes, already red from the nightmare, grew redder. Xie Jinbing rolled over to face the back of the sofa, curling herself into a ball. She pulled the blanket over her head, her eyes grew wet, and finally, she couldn’t stop the tears from falling.