Zombie Siege: The Road to Survival Begins at School - Chapter 16

On this sleepless night in a building without power, Zhang Wei found himself deep in thought.

Since fate had granted him a second chance at life, he was determined to live it well.

At the very least, this time around, he wasn’t alone like he had been in his past life—some of his classmates had survived too, hadn’t they?

Lying on the bed, Zhang Wei pulled out a photo sealed in plastic and handed it to Zhou An.

“Thanks,” Zhou An said, accepting it gratefully.

The photo of Zhou An with his grandmother stirred memories of Zhang Wei’s own.

He had been an orphan since childhood, raised solely by his grandmother.

Sadly, just when he’d started earning a little money from part-time jobs to help her out, she’d passed away from illness.

“You have to study hard, Wei,” his grandmother had said, gently caressing his face on her deathbed. “It’s the only way to leave Zhangjia Village behind. Otherwise, your days will always be spent with your face to the soil and your back to the sky.”

“But in the apocalypse, schools don’t even exist anymore. How am I supposed to study?”

If he could turn back time, Zhang Wei just wanted to return to the countryside and live those days of backbreaking but peaceful labor with his grandmother.

Instead of worrying about how to survive tomorrow.

The next morning, just as the sky began to lighten, Zhang Wei woke up early.

He did a few push-ups and sit-ups in the dorm room—basic exercises he had learned from a book called Convict Conditioning.

It was a method of building muscle in tight spaces using nothing but your own body and common surroundings.

He still remembered the excitement he felt the first time he discovered that book in the school library.

It wasn’t just a guide to fitness—it was a manual for developing useful, raw strength. Strength to endure, to survive.

The author was an American named Paul Wade, who had spent 19 years in one of the harshest prisons in the U.S., and during that time, he developed this ancient system of physical training.

It was a forgotten philosophy of power, long since buried by commercialized fitness culture. Through this method, the convict became one of the strongest men alive, earning respect and survival in prison.

After his release, he compiled and published the system for the public.

And somehow, the book had ended up in the hands of the weak, scrawny Zhang Wei.

He only trained lightly—for now. His current body just wasn’t ready for anything intense.

Building strength was a gradual process.

He poured a tiny capful of protein powder, mixed it with bottled water, and swallowed it in one gulp.

Lifting the bed sheet that covered the balcony window, Zhang Wei peeked outside.

More and more zombies were showing up. Many had wandered out from the buildings and were now aimlessly roaming the campus in search of food.

Breaking out was only getting harder.

Some of the more agile zombies were now slowing down due to lack of sustenance.

They only moved rapidly when they caught a scent or heard a noise.

But that also meant zombies were starting to cluster, forming groups and moving in packs.

Zhang Wei thought about it—he still needed to scavenge for supplies, at least clear out the nearby dorms.

How much food or water he’d find was up to luck.

He called Zhou An and Lu Renjia, wanting them to start training too.

“Where are we going? Are we trying to break out and call for help?” Zhou An asked excitedly, holding up a back scratcher like it was a broadsword.

“Wherever you say, boss! We’ll follow you,” Lu Renjia said, more practical than the other, holding the mop handle Zhang Wei had once used to barricade the door.

After Zhang Cheng had used it, the stick was carelessly tossed under the bed.

But as a weapon, it was useless. Even if a zombie stood still and let you hit it, you’d be exhausted before it went down.

Zhang Wei took a watermelon knife and sharpened the tip of the stick. “You’ve got to stab it through the head—that’s the only way to kill a zombie. Aim for weak points like the eyes, mouth, or under the jaw.”

“Remember: zombies only die if the brain is destroyed. Hits to other parts of the body won’t work.”

“Yeah, we saw that on TV.”

Zhang Wei looked at Zhou An’s “weapon,” a back scratcher with a tiny wooden mallet on the other end. “Are you planning to give the zombie a massage?”

“Fine, I’ll switch weapons!” Zhou An finally found a grip strength trainer made of solid metal, with a heavy spring in the middle. It weighed around ten kilograms and felt good in his hands.

“Alright, the girls will stay here and watch the dorm. Don’t make any noise, don’t open the door for strangers, and only open it if you hear our knock pattern.” Zhang Wei gave clear instructions to Hu Die and Li Xiaoqian.

These two still weren’t mentally ready for outside threats—bringing them along would only slow the group down.

And someone had to guard the food stash.

Zhang Wei suspected there might be other survivors in the dorm building.

Who knew? Maybe some of them were already watching his group in secret.

“Okay, let’s move out!” Zhou An found a baseball cap and pulled it on.

“We’re heading to the sixth floor first,” Zhang Wei said.

Right now, the sixth floor was likely the safest.

At the start of the outbreak, panicked students would’ve rushed into the lower floors to take shelter. Since the chaos happened during exams, most dorms had been empty.

On their first night, Zhang Wei’s group had heard faint knocking. But by the next day, there were no bloodstains or zombies in the hallway.

That likely meant the knocking came from survivors. Zombies wouldn’t be active late at night like that.

But without the right key, those people wouldn’t have been able to get into the rooms. They also wouldn’t have dared to force the doors open and draw attention.

Zhang Wei figured they must’ve come from floors below. When he went to the third floor dorm manager’s office to grab keys, he’d seen a twitching body on the verge of turning.

Which meant the zombies had at least reached the third floor.

Over the past few days, the group had only heard footsteps and running from below—nothing from above.

That could only mean one thing: the rooftop hadn’t been breached yet. Either it was still secure, or survivors like them were hiding up there.

Zhang Wei decided to start clearing from the sixth floor downward, checking each dorm room one by one.

He wanted to be sure each room was safe.

Even if someone ran inside later using their own key, the risk would be manageable.

What worried him more were the survivors who might’ve already taken shelter in those rooms—and could now be zombies.

At this point, the bigger threat wasn’t just the zombies themselves—it was the unknown in other humans.

People could make noise and attract zombies or even sabotage his group.

Just like how three days ago, he and Zhou An had staged a trap—dragging a “corpse” from the third floor and planting it outside Room 511. They used the chaos of Zhang Ya’s transformation to take out the “fortress” that dorm had become.