Transmigrating into a Wasteland Cannon Fodder Slag A [GL Yuri] - Chapter 4

Sure enough, siding with Gu Xia had been the right move.Yan An glanced at the burly man groaning awake on the floor, grabbed one of his legs, and dragged him to the single bed. She flipped the bed over and tied him firmly underneath.

“Give me a hand.”

Gu Xia stared at the man trussed up layer upon layer and the now-unusable bed. Her expression said it all.

Of all the places in the room to tie him, why the bed? Where was she supposed to sleep now?

Yan An flashed her a smile. “We’ve still got to meet Chen Hao tonight.”

“?” 

Gu Xia froze. Wait—hadn’t she just stopped Yan An from exposing herself, and now she was selling her out?

Catching the suspicion in her eyes, Yan An smoothly knocked the man unconscious again and pressed the bed down harder. It pinned him just right, his stomach pressed flat against the floor, unable to move.

She looked around, as if searching for something to weigh the bed down further, but decided that would be too obvious and she just abandoned the idea.

Rapping her knuckles against the frame, she murmured half to herself and half to the man beneath—

“Better in here than out there.”

Throwing him outside was certain death. Keeping him here, he might, just might have a one-in-ten-thousand chance if the zombies broke in.

After all, this was her first day here. Driving a blade into a living man’s throat wasn’t something she could just do without time to adjust.

Gu Xia gave her a long look, not understanding why she said that.

But the pressing question remained: “You’re sending me to see Chen Hao?”

“Don’t get the wrong idea.” Yan An read her thoughts at once. “All you need to do is stall him. Leave the rest to me.”

“You? You think you can kill Chen Hao?” Gu Xia was skeptical. The first time she had seen an awakened ability-user’s strength, she had realized it took either guns or total surprise to stand a chance.

“You’re not planning to have me catch him off guard for you, are you?”

The disbelief was plain in her tone. Ever since Yan An had stabbed her in the back a few times—figuratively speaking—their relationship had been strained.

At first, Yan An had pretended otherwise, but after the second, third betrayal, they both dropped the act. On the surface, they were cordial; underneath, all caution and calculation.

Gu Xia on the other hand never had much goodwill toward her anyway, but Yan An’s recent change unsettled her. Still, right now they were grasshoppers tied to the same rope.

So, her suspicion wasn’t unfounded.

Yan An rifled through a cabinet, pulling out two loaves of bread and a bottle of water that had been stashed away for days.

She tossed one loaf to Gu Xia, poured half the water into a clean cup, and pushed it across.

“Eat. Your last supper.”

Her mechanical wristwatch read five in the afternoon—perfect dinner time.

Without knowing Yan An’s plan, Gu Xia found it hard to eat. Still, after a moment’s thought, she opened the bread.

She hadn’t eaten in over twenty-four hours; the smell alone was tempting enough and with the water, at least she wouldn’t choke.

Otherwise, why else would she still be holding onto that bag of biscuits?

Yan An wolfed down her portion in a few bites, drained the water, and set the empty bottle on the table.

“I’m going to take a look around. You eat slowly.” She pressed a hand against her jeans. It was tight denim— very uncomfortable.

In an environment like this, a set of tactical gear would’ve been far more practical than the predecessor’s shirt and jeans.

As Gu Xia watched her leave, she dug into the filing cabinet, pushing past folders until she uncovered the missing power drill and a small electric saw.

So this was where the confiscated tools had gone.

But they were too large, too conspicuous to hide.

Her gaze drifted to the spot where Yan An had hidden the fruit knife. If only she still had that…

Wait! Her eyes widened. There it was, tucked inside the water bottle.

When had Yan An slipped it in there?

No, the real question was, she’d actually left her only weapon behind for Gu Xia?

Of course not her only weapon. Out in the corridor, Yan An was twirling a dagger in her hand.

The burly man had been carrying it. If he’d drawn it at the start, she never would have gone head-to-head with him.

Leaving the fruit knife wasn’t generosity; she simply had something better now. She wasn’t anyone’s saint.

Hopefully, Gu Xia wouldn’t decide to plunge that knife into her heart.

Finding a quiet corner, Yan An began testing the abilities she had awakened.

Spatial powers were easy to verify. She just focused, and she could sense the pocket space’s presence.

An F-rank space, one cubic meter, bound to her person. She stored everything useful inside.

Even after repeated use, her mind felt no strain. That had to be the healing ability working.

C-rank healing…enough to counter the strain from using her F-rank spatial ability.

And it wasn’t just healing herself. The note had said: heal everything.

Wait, so she wasn’t just a healer, she was practically a supply depot, carrying resources for the team?

Tch. If Gu Xia awakened her powers, the two of them together might actually carve out a way to survive this apocalypse.

Once she had gotten the gist of her abilities, Yan An headed for another room.

The largest one in the compound was strategically placed, good for defending against intruders, and even slowing down zombies if they broke in.

This was where Chen Hao lived, where he kept all the supplies.

He was a cautious, paranoid man. Weapons and food, he only trusted in his own hands.

Each morning, when the scavenging teams went out, he would dole out arms.

At five-thirty, the scavenger squad returned. By six, the factory gates were locked tight. However many came back, the doors closed regardless.

When the compound first formed, there had been over a hundred people. With Omegas and female Betas exempt, every ten formed a squad to scavenge in turns.

At the start, rotations lasted a week. Now, it was down to three days and most teams couldn’t even muster ten members anymore.

Chen Hao was planning to reorganize the scavenger teams to include female Betas. Otherwise he would be short of manpower.

As the compound’s population dwindled, the number of zombies outside naturally swelled.

There were almost no survivors left in the surrounding area, and all the living people concentrated in the factory naturally drew the wandering undead.

The tide of corpses was due to hit and break through sometime between eight and nine in the evening.

********

The original plan in the predecessor’s memory had pinned the meeting with Chen Hao at eight o’clock, shortly before the wave would crash in. That timing was what allowed Gu Xia to survive long enough to awaken.

Counting from now, less than three hours remained until the attack. Yan An didn’t have much time.

In the apocalypse, supplies and weapons mattered most. She had to find a way into Chen Hao’s room and take what she could. Otherwise, based on the predecessor’s memories, there was nothing out there. The nearby stores had already been stripped clean.

Before the collapse, when they were still in school, things you couldn’t buy from the campus shop either came from online orders or a bus ride into town. The school and the industrial park were similar in that respect.

Yan An hadn’t decided where she’d head once they escaped the compound. For now, the immediate priority was dealing with Chen Hao and surviving the coming horde.

She timed it, left without making a fuss, and returned to the room.

As soon as she stepped in, Gu Xia pulled her to the window. “Have you noticed how many more zombies there are outside?”

At first there was only a scattering. Now dozens roamed, constantly circling the factory rather than wandering off elsewhere. The scavenger squad still hadn’t come back, so getting out by then would be difficult.

“Don’t you think they’re congregating intentionally? Maybe there aren’t many survivors left out there, and because there are so many people in the compound, the zombies are gravitating toward it.”

“It could also be that a leader emerged like a wolf pack, following a dominant one,” Gu Xia offered.

From Yan An’s many hours watching zombie movies, she’d picked up one lesson: zombies could evolve.

This outbreak had only been a month old. Yan An didn’t know whether they had truly evolved, but the explanation boiled down to those two possibilities.

“So you’re saying there’s a good chance they’ll attack the factory?” Gu Xia asked.

“Yes.” Yan An didn’t want to frighten her with certainty, so instead she guided Gu Xia toward the conclusion.

Gu Xia sat thinking for a moment, then rifled through the pillow on the bed and spread out a paper she’d been hiding. It was a map of the compound. A big “C” marked their position: the quality inspection building.

The park was huge. It is an automobile industrial zone. They had run for a long time before finally reaching this place when they first fled in. On the run, the predecessor had been too panicked to notice that Gu Xia was mapping the paths.

No wonder that an excellent architecture student’s brain at work: a rough plan of the compound and a detailed layout of the factory.

If she’d known about this, she wouldn’t have gone wandering outside earlier.

“The circuit breaker for the inspection building is controlled from the monitoring room. But the monitors get power from the compound’s main distribution room,” Gu Xia said. Her point was clear: with the cameras controlled, they couldn’t slip past Chen Hao’s watch.

“Can we just take out the monitoring room guys and leave?” Yan An asked. If they escaped surveillance, they wouldn’t have to confront Chen Hao.

“No,” Gu Xia said. “There are three people in the monitoring room. Unless you can take out all three at once, they’ll hit the alarm. Chen Hao’s room has an alarm linked to it.”

If the alarm sounded, they still couldn’t get away.

Gu Xia ran through a hundred plans in her head. Without absolute strength, any scheme ended at death.

“If the alarm goes off, will Chen Hao leave his room?” Yan An committed the layout to memory. Memory Storage was proving useful. If she’d had it in her previous life, late-night study sessions might’ve been much easier.

“He will,” Gu Xia answered.

Yan An paused, placing a hand on the map over Chen Hao’s room. She was about to speak when she remembered the man pinned under the bed. She crawled forward, peered under the frame, saw the burly man still groggy, and drew the dagger from the corridor.

Without hesitation she jabbed it into his arm.

A muffled groan escaped him as his eyes snapped open, twisted in pain.

Yan An looked satisfied. “Knew you’d wake up. You little bastard—planning to run and squeal, huh?”

Gu Xia stared. “Is it possible you woke him with that stab?”

“His breathing’s different now,” Yan An replied. She was pragmatic. Survival training had taught her plenty about preserving life before courting danger.