Zombie Siege: The Road to Survival Begins at School - Chapter 15

Zhou An just assumed Zhang Wei was joking and didn’t take his words seriously.

After hesitating for a moment, he accepted the betel nut Zhang Wei offered and started chewing. Before long, his face turned red from the heat.

Lu Renjia also hesitated for a while, then finally gathered his courage and reached out to Zhang Wei.

“Take it all. Eat too much of this stuff and you’ll get oral cancer,” Zhang Wei said as he handed Lu Renjia most of the remaining bag of betel nuts.

“You don’t have to be so nervous. I’m a good guy. The only ones I kill are zombies. I won’t lay a hand on ordinary people unless I absolutely have to,” Zhang Wei added.

Still, Lu Renjia only took one piece and placed the rest back on the bed.

With nothing much to do, they took turns keeping watch.

During the day, they quietly lifted the bedsheet covering the balcony glass to peek outside.

At night, they stayed alert for any sounds in the hallway, fearing a sudden zombie attack.

On the fourth day, they were hit with a harsh reality—there was a power outage.

This was the worst news since the water had stopped on the first day.

Although they had never turned on the lights at night for safety reasons, the blackout brought a new wave of despair. It meant that the city’s power system had likely suffered a major breakdown.

And the rescue they had been desperately waiting for might be delayed… or never come at all.

Only Zhang Wei knew the truth—there would never be an official rescue.

At least, not for the next three years after the zombie outbreak.

If the survivors wanted to live, they had to rely on themselves or find strength in numbers.

That’s why Zhang Wei was planning to form a team. One person alone just wasn’t enough.

But his teammates had to be people with strong mental resilience and excellent survival instincts in the apocalypse.

During the day, Zhang Wei showed the others his phone—it was his way of giving them hope.

He deliberately lent his phone to Lu Renjia, who tried to make a call. While there was still a signal, no one was answering.

Even the emergency lines were either busy or unreachable.

“No use trying,” Lu Renjia said, handing the phone back. “I haven’t heard a single ambulance or police siren these past few days—not even a firetruck…”

He wasn’t stupid. He had a rough idea of what had happened to the city.

When night fell, Zhang Wei took a candle from his backpack—finally putting his earlier supply run to good use.

He brought a bucket from the bathroom, lit the candle inside it, and covered it with a sheet of newspaper. The light only illuminated the ceiling, preventing it from spilling outside.

That way, they wouldn’t attract unwanted attention.

In a city where every window had gone dark, a suddenly lit dorm room would stand out like a beacon.

In the apocalypse, you couldn’t trust anyone.

Survival made people lose their humanity.

Zhang Wei blew out the candle. He just wanted to test the brightness.

This was the fourth night since the crisis began.

They still had three more nights to endure under these conditions.

Even though they took turns standing guard, most of them couldn’t sleep.

Li Xiaoqian finally couldn’t resist her curiosity and asked, “Wei-ge, is it true you and Zhang Ya used to date?”

“Don’t call me Wei-ge. Just call me Zhang Wei-ge.”

“Okay.”

“Zhang Ya was just someone from my hometown. There was nothing between us. That’s why I had no hesitation chopping off her head. Even if she hadn’t turned, I still would’ve done it—if you guys hadn’t stopped me that night.”

“We understand. Even if you had something going on, it wouldn’t have mattered. Qin Shaofeng and Zhang Ya were close too, but in the end, everyone just looks out for themselves. Qin Shaofeng didn’t exactly meet a good end either.”

Zhang Wei wanted to tell them that Qin Shaofeng’s end wasn’t even the worst.

He’d merely been bitten and then eaten by zombies.

In his previous life, Zhang Wei had seen people eaten alive by other humans.

But he didn’t want to talk about that. Those memories were things he’d rather leave buried.

Then he turned to Zhou An and Li Xiaoqian. “I’ve been meaning to ask you two something.”

“Go ahead, Zhang Wei-ge.”

“Yeah, boss, ask away!”

“How exactly did Zhang Ya get scratched? I thought during the final moments of the English exam, she wasn’t bitten by that female invigilator with the injured leg who collapsed and bit someone?”

“Oh, Zhang Ya? She got scratched while fighting to climb out the window with the others. It was another invigilator who got her.”

“And the female invigilator with the injured leg?”

Zhang Wei thought for a moment. That didn’t make sense. Zhang Ya sat in the front row—why would a zombie go past others to get to her?

Zhou An continued, “You didn’t see this, but after you ran out, that female invigilator chased you out the door. She came back with an injured leg—bandaged, but the gauze was soaked in bl00d. She was in so much pain she went to the infirmary herself. After that, she disappeared. Didn’t even say a word to the other invigilator.”

“So that’s what happened… the butterfly effect,” Zhang Wei murmured to himself. “That means the invigilator wasn’t the original source of the infection…”

“Of course she wasn’t. Even while we were handing in our papers, some students were already acting strange. We thought they were having seizures or heatstroke. One of the invigilators even tried to call for emergency services…”

“But boss, I didn’t purposely turn in my exam late just to copy you. After you went to the restroom, Xu Long and the others also handed in their papers, and the teacher made an announcement—anyone else who turned in early would get a zero… I wanted to leave with you, but I didn’t want to flunk either.”

“I see.”

“But boss, you must’ve noticed something was wrong, right? That’s why you submitted your paper early.”

Zhang Wei didn’t answer, but his silence was confirmation enough.

So, Zhang Ya had been scratched while trying to escape through the window—by someone who had either already turned or was about to.

Zhang Wei shuddered at the thought.

In his previous life, he’d also escaped by climbing out that same window, running down the hallway, then down the stairs.

He had always thought it was the female invigilator who had started the infection by biting someone.

But then… what about the wound on her leg?

Zhang Wei couldn’t figure it out.

But he was a rational person. If he couldn’t figure something out, he didn’t dwell on it.

Just like in his past life—two years into the apocalypse, during an escape mission, he’d been bitten by a zombie.

At that moment, someone on a motorcycle, wearing a helmet, had decisively chopped off his left arm.

He’d passed out immediately.

When he woke up, he never figured out who had saved him—didn’t even know if it was a man or a woman.

Even after living for another year as a one-armed survivor, Zhang Wei never forgot the person who’d charged into the horde on a motorcycle to save him.

He survived another year like that—one-armed, like a post-apocalyptic Yang Guo.

Until that day came, when tens of thousands of zombies formed a tide and swarmed the city.

Trapped and unable to escape, Zhang Wei chose to end his life—so his teammates wouldn’t risk theirs trying to save him.

He knew he might’ve had a chance to survive that day.

But as a one-armed man, he saw himself as a burden.

Now, Zhang Wei looked down at his fully intact left hand and smiled faintly.

Charge forward.
It’s good to be alive.