Chapter 38: Dust

Chapter 38: Chapter 38: Dust

Xiang Yi had already reached the third floor by the time the squad leader fired that first shot.

From the far side of the third floor, he had a clear line of sight to everything unfolding at the Scavengers’ camp on the second floor below.

Those things — monsters that had once been human — were definitely connected to some kind of Abnormality, or were Abnormalities themselves.

Their raw, terrifying strength made a direct confrontation completely out of the question, even with the Mining Gun.

There were simply too many of them.

The Scavengers couldn’t see it from their angle, but Xiang Yi could see everything clearly.

At least twenty-some Abnormalities with ashen, gray-green skin had poured out of the hospital basement.

And on the other side of the building, another dozen or so had appeared at some point near the stairwell below, completely cutting off every route down from the second floor.

God only knew how a hospital abandoned for years could have this many corpses in it.

There was even one that had been completely hollowed out — every organ gone, like some kind of specimen — and yet it was still moving, still running. The sheer wrongness of the sight was unlike anything Xiang Yi had ever seen.

Worse, the bodies of the people who had just died were still twitching on the floor. In a little while, there would be even more Abnormalities to deal with.

Forty pigs penned up in one place would be hard enough to kill. These things were something else entirely.

They had nightmarish durability, strength that far surpassed any normal person, and their mobility wasn’t much worse than a regular human’s, either.

The only thing off about them was their running gait — something wasn’t quite right about the way they moved, which kept their speed from being truly dangerous.

That one weakness was just barely enough to give someone a chance to run. Fighting back was a different story entirely.

Xiang Yi had been counting on getting some rest in the hospital tonight. Instead, he’d barely finished redressing his wounds — hadn’t even had time to dry his clothes — and now this.

But it had already happened, and there was nothing to be done about it. To avoid running straight into the Scavengers and the Abnormalities chasing them, his only option was to hide.

He tucked himself into a room on the third floor with a door that was still intact.

Maybe this situation wasn’t a complete disaster, though.

It suddenly occurred to him that the tents the Scavengers had abandoned — along with most of their supplies — were still sitting there on the second floor.

The Abnormalities seemed to have no interest in regular food or supplies. It was people they were after.

Which meant that if he could find a way around them, he could get his hands on exactly what he needed right now.

It had been a while since he’d last eaten.

Hunger and cold had been gnawing at him without letting up. He needed those supplies.

Getting into conflicts with people was the last thing Xiang Yi ever wanted to do. Getting into a fight with Abnormalities, though — that felt a lot more manageable.

He just needed to find the right moment.

Ideally, he’d wait for the Scavengers to lure all the Abnormalities up to the higher floors, and then make his move.

He was still working through his options when the sound of rapid footsteps suddenly erupted right outside the door.

The door burst open and three people came charging in.

They spun around instantly, slammed it shut, locked it, and pressed themselves flat against it, listening hard for any sounds from the corridor.

Xiang Yi recognized all three. They were the same ones who had been slacking off during the sweep of the third floor earlier.

Shi Tie whispered, "Is this really a good idea? We’re just going to hide here? The boss told us to head up."

"The boss has obviously dealt with things like this before, and even he couldn’t handle it. Who knows what’ll happen if we stick with him. Better to let the others draw those things away and slip out while we can."

"Shh — keep it down, unless you want them coming back for us."

The three of them had barely caught their breath when they noticed Xiang Yi standing in the room behind them.

All three hearts nearly stopped. They snapped their weapons up immediately.

Only the tall, lanky one had a gun — a pistol. The other two were carrying melee weapons.

Xiang Yi raised the Mining Gun at the same time.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t tried to hide — there just wasn’t anywhere to hide in this room. Not a single corner with any cover.

The tall, lanky guy didn’t dare fire. Instead he dropped his voice to a hard, dangerous edge. "Who the hell are you?"

Xiang Yi kept his voice equally low. "I was going to ask you the same thing. I was resting here and you just barged in. So who are you?"

Shuffling footsteps drifted in from outside the door.

All four of them froze mid-standoff, not daring to make a single sound.

The tall, lanky guy glanced at the laser Mining Gun in Xiang Yi’s hands, then down at his own little pistol. He was the first to back down — holstering his weapon and pulling his two companions into a crouch in the corner of the room.

Seeing that, Xiang Yi lowered the Mining Gun as well and retreated to the opposite corner, positioning himself by the window.

Both sides took a step back without a word. The bigger threat was still right outside the door.

The footsteps in the corridor were growing clearer. Around seven or eight Abnormalities were moving around on the third floor — whether the Scavengers had led them there or not, he couldn’t say.

Fortunately, none of them came to ram the door. They were just drifting aimlessly through the hallway. Maybe they’d move on in a few minutes.

Xiang Yi used the time to study the three Scavengers.

The big, broad-shouldered one was Shi Tie. The tall, lanky one had the pistol. The third was short and scrawny, easy to overlook entirely.

Nothing obviously remarkable about any of them — but if they were out here operating in the field and dealing with Abnormalities on a regular basis, they each had to have something going for them. He’d need to stay sharp.

While Xiang Yi was sizing up the three Scavengers, they were doing exactly the same to him.

They had no idea who he was. All they could make out was that he was wearing some kind of space-rated protective suit, with a conspicuous crack running across the helmet’s visor — gear that looked like it had been scavenged from somewhere.

Showing up in a place like this in the dead of night, acting all secretive — whoever this was, he was definitely not someone to trust.

Both sides eyed each other with open wariness.

But the things outside kept everyone in check.

The seconds crawled by.

The footsteps outside the door lingered and showed no sign of fading.

In fact, without anyone noticing exactly when it had happened, there seemed to be more Abnormalities out there now. The dense, chaotic shuffle of movement had spread to fill what sounded like the entire third floor.

"How did it come to this?"

Xiang Yi listened carefully to the sounds outside, and suddenly understood.

The area with the heaviest concentration of footsteps seemed to be the surgical outpatient room — the same room where he’d treated his wounds earlier. The blood that had dripped onto the floor must have drawn them in, just like what had happened back at the prison.

Lucky for him, he’d been enduring the discomfort of his soaked clothes this whole time and had kept the protective suit on over everything. If his wounds had seeped even a little more blood, those Abnormalities would have already broken through.

Xiang Yi couldn’t help but frown.

The moment his thoughts turned to his still-soaking wet clothes, the cold became impossible to ignore again.

He’d been moving around before, which had kept it manageable — but now that he was hiding, the chill seeping into his limbs was growing heavier by the minute.

He needed to move. But Abnormalities were everywhere outside.

Xiang Yi’s gaze drifted slowly to the window. Maybe he could climb out that way.

He’d jumped off a ship forty meters in the air. What was a three-story building going to do to him?

The difference, admittedly, was that the ship had dropped him into a lake, and the ground below the third floor was concrete — but he wasn’t planning on dropping all the way to the first floor anyway. Just from the third floor down to the second.

That should be doable.

With that thought, he shifted a couple of steps toward the window and leaned in to take a look outside.

His pupils contracted on instinct.

Because there was nothing to see.

As far as his eyes could reach, everything was swallowed in complete, total darkness. Visibility was under ten meters.

The lights that should have been coming from the city were gone. The wall had vanished entirely into the black.

But it wasn’t a lighting problem. Every surface he could see was smothered in a layer of dark gray, ashen particles.

The torrential rain hadn’t made a dent in them — but the howling wind that came with the storm had carried that gray-black dust and scattered it across the entire hospital.

It was the Abnormalities.

They were continuously shedding this particulate matter from their bodies.

Outside the hospital, inside it — even in the very room he was standing in right now — the dust was everywhere.