Zombie Siege: The Road to Survival Begins at School - Chapter 1
“You little punk! That’s crap, you hear me? If the protection fee’s late again next time, this is what you can expect!”
“Ugh… gag…”
In a stall inside the boys’ restroom—
A boy was being shoved face-down against the toilet pit by another boy, his face just half a foot from the yellow-and-white sludge festering inside.
Outside the stall, a few others were standing watch.
It was an old-fashioned dry toilet, the kind with a massive open cesspit underneath. You could even see countless white maggots squirming below.
A sharp, nauseating stench filled the air.
The bullied boy was on the verge of passing out, bile rising in his throat.
“Ugh… The protection money… It’s in my pocket… this month’s… in my pants pocket…”
The taller boy yanked him up and, looking disgusted, fished out a wallet.
He licked his finger and began counting the hundred-yuan bills.
His lackeys looked on, faces full of admiration and shock.
“Zhang Wei, at least you know your place.” The guy spat out a half-chewed piece of gum and stuck it onto Zhang Wei’s hair, then swaggered off.
Zhang Wei clenched his fists so tightly they almost bled.
Just then, the school bell rang. He quickly splashed water on his face to wash off the filth and sprinted toward the classroom.
But as he turned the corner out of the restroom, he collided head-on with a middle-aged man wearing gold-rimmed glasses.
“Director Wang Jing!”
It was the discipline officer, Wang Jing!
A strange fear welled up inside him. Zhang Wei instinctively stepped back—only to feel the world spin around him.
“No, don’t pass out in the restroom—!”
“Sh1t!”
“Wait… why are they all here? And what am I even doing? Sleeping?”
“So, it was a nightmare!”
Zhang Wei looked around and realized he was in a classroom.
The bell had just rung.
Someone nearby whispered, “The exam’s starting.”
He looked around and saw students up front passing down test papers.
He casually wiped a small puddle of drool off his desk and scribbled something on the scratch paper with his pen, pretending everything was normal.
Surrounding him were classmates he knew well.
“It’s the English exam!”
Some students frowned, some scratched their heads, some looked blank, and others appeared calm and composed.
At the front and back of the classroom, two stern-looking teachers stood guard.
“But… weren’t they all dead? They died right at the beginning! How can they all still be alive?!”
Zhang Wei felt like reality had become utterly surreal.
“No… it’s not that they’re alive again—it’s that I’ve come back to life.”
“This is… right when that English exam started. And after the exam… something terrible happened…”
“It felt like a nightmare. Did I get reborn? Even in dreams, I’m still getting bullied by Xu Long and his gang?”
“Maybe this really is rebirth,” Zhang Wei muttered.
“It’s like time turned back, but without any of those novel-like perks. No infinite inventory, no stockpile of billions in supplies, no superhuman evolution.”
He instinctively patted his pocket. It was bulging.
If he remembered correctly, there was over 800 yuan in cash.
“Good, the protection money’s still there.”
“I have to turn in my paper early!”
He rushed through the multiple-choice questions on the answer sheet in five minutes, filling them in almost at random.
As the classroom speakers began playing the English listening section, he sat still, going over what he remembered from the dream—planning his next steps carefully.
Based on fragments of memory, the zombie outbreak would start right after the English exam.
From his seat, he saw two invigilators: one looked normal, the other—a female teacher—had her left leg wrapped in a bandage and was limping slightly.
She was clearly in pain but was trying to hold out until the test ended before dealing with her injury.
She was a responsible teacher. She didn’t ask for leave, probably afraid it would disrupt the students.
But Zhang Wei knew he couldn’t help her.
According to his memory, she had already been bitten by a zombie.
Being bitten meant infection. And infection meant death.
There was only one way to save her: cut off her leg immediately after the bite.
He knew this with certainty because two years after the outbreak, someone in a motorcycle helmet had chopped off his arm the moment he was bitten—and saved his life.
That person had stopped him from turning into a zombie.
Zhang Wei pinched his thigh hard.
“This is real. Everything I dreamed—every death—was real. Just like Final Destination.”
He had escaped the school and survived by lying low in the city, only to be betrayed and die three years later in another zombie siege.
Right at the moment of death, he was jolted awake—back to this day, just before the outbreak began.
“I’ve returned… to the moment right before the zombie apocalypse began three years ago.”
“Is there anyone else like me? Someone else reborn with memories of the future?”
“This… might be the final two-hour countdown before the zombie crisis starts.”
“Two hours isn’t nearly enough. I won’t have time to get out of the city.”
He remembered clearly: in those first days, almost everyone at school—students and teachers—turned into zombies. Hardly anyone survived.
The true survivors could be counted on one hand.
“From what I remember, only the family of the dorm guard at the girls’ dorm somehow made it through…”
He glanced left at the seat of his roommate, Xu Long—who happened to look back at him at that moment.
That guy had bullied him constantly and extorted protection money from him.
What started as 100 yuan a month eventually ballooned to 800.
Zhang Wei survived on steamed buns and off-campus part-time jobs just to scrape that money together.
That’s why he had over 800 yuan in his wallet—it was meant for this month’s “protection fee.”
It was the price of avoiding humiliation in the dorms or the boys’ bathroom.
“Fvck your mother,” Zhang Wei mouthed silently toward Xu Long.
He didn’t say it out loud—but Xu Long recognized it anyway. It was one of his favorite insults.
Xu Long’s face twisted with rage.
He lowered his head and let out a cold chuckle.
He was already planning how to make Zhang Wei pay after the exam.
Zhang Wei looked toward the front of the room.
There she was—the so-called class beauty, Zhang Ya. He recognized her back from memory.
The English listening portion was playing now, and she was completely focused on the test.
In the right front corner, the injured female teacher was limping slowly up and down the aisle.
Zhang Wei couldn’t recall her full name, only that her surname was Luo. Most students just called her Teacher Luo.
He watched her leg tremble with each step, the bl00d on the bandage spreading slowly.
Zhang Wei knew—it was coming.
In less than two hours, at the exact moment the exam ended, she would begin convulsing… and then, she’d turn.
Zhang Ya, seated nearest the front, would be the first to die.
Several students would rush up to stop the teacher, but no one would think to flee immediately.
Chaos would erupt. The zombie outbreak would begin.
“I need to figure out a way to get out of this exam room—now.”