Chapter 269: Come Hell Or High Water
"The customers never left."
Lingyun liked the line. It was very tongue in cheek if he did say so himself.
In fact, he liked it enough that, under different circumstances, he might have enjoyed the way Qin Fen swore from the back of the truck, or the way Gao Shun muttered something about cursed luck, or the way Old Chen went quiet in a way that he hadn’t been before since he started threatening them all with a metal pipe.
But unfortunately for everyone, Lingyun was not in the mood to enjoy anything right this minute.
He stared through the windshield at the construction supply store and the shadows moving behind the glass. Dozens of them pressed against the locked doors, their dead hands dragging dark lines over the surface. More shifted deeper inside the aisles, slow at first, then faster as the scent and sound of the living reached them through the sealed entrance.
The store was full with zombies that apparently had been locked inside for a very long time.
Good.
That meant the shelves were probably full too.
Zhenlan looked at the dying light overhead, then toward Chenghai’s SUV. Chenghai had already stepped out and was staring at the store with that hard, practical expression Lingyun had grown tired of seeing over the past few hours.
"We cannot clear that before dark," Chenghai announced like he was stating a hard fact. Some of the survivors nodded their heads in agreement, but Zhenlan did not answer immediately.
That was the problem.
He was thinking.
Again.
Lingyun’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel until heat pressed against his palms. They had spent too long at the base. Too long talking. Too long listening to hungry people list skills and relatives and reasons. Too long letting Commander Li handle soldiers who should have already been on their knees thanking Rouxi for being alive. Now they were outside with a truck full of workers, a store full of supplies, and a sky turning darker by the second.
And they were still fucking talking.
"We need somewhere defensible for the night," Chenghai said. "Somewhere with fewer entrances."
"There should be a place nearby," Zhenlan agreed, already nodding his head like this was the best idea he could ever come up with. "We come back at first light."
First light.
Lingyun almost laughed.
First light was hours away. First light meant a night spent somewhere else with strangers breathing too loudly and zombies moving outside. First light meant another stretch of time where Rouxi was back at the mansion without him. He had not been away from her this long since the beginning of the apocalypse, and every extra minute scraped against something under his skin until he was starting to feel like he was going to explode.
Zhenlan could stand there calculating because Zhenlan always calculated.
Chenghai could talk about defensible positions because Chenghai was all about security and defensible positions.
But neither of them seemed to understand that going back to Rouxi mattered more than anything else.
Rouxi hated waiting. Rouxi hated uncertainty. Rouxi hated people making decisions around her while pretending those decisions were for her own good. She would not thank them for returning tomorrow with excuses, tired workers, and no supplies because they had spent the night being reasonable.
And Lingyun was more than done being reasonable.
Without a word, he opened the truck door and got out. Zhenlan turned toward him and narrowed his eyes. "Lingyun." Just his name. But it was more than just his name. It was a warning.
’Don’t do something stupid.’
’Think before you act.’
’You aren’t thinking straight.’
’You need to follow orders.’
There were countless lines that were probably going through Zhenlan’s head at the moment, and not a single one of them mattered.
Lingyun simply waved in their direction and shut the cab door behind him. "You two can keep talking if you want."
Chenghai’s eyes narrowed. "Do not."
Lingyun smiled at him, but there was nothing cheerful in it. "Do not what?"
"Do not make this worse."
That almost did make him laugh.
Worse.
The world had ended. Rouxi had nearly died more times than Lingyun cared to count. They had stolen workers from a military base, stolen a truck from Commander Li, and driven straight to a store packed full of dead people because it had the things they needed to keep Rouxi’s house standing.
But sure.
Lingyun was the thing making it worse.
Zhenlan stepped toward him. "We are not opening that store in the dark."
"I’m not asking you to."
"You aren’t going in alone."
"Funny, I don’t remember asking for permission." His tone was one that Yuche, if the bastard was here, would have warned them about. But that was fine. Let them learn the hard way.
The air went still as Lingyun lifted his hand and held it in front of him.
His index finger extended, the rest curling loosely toward his palm. A thin line of fire gathered at the tip of his ’gun’. It was a play on how Yuche first learned to control his powers, but in this case, Lingyun wanted to make damn sure that the only thing burning was what he needed dead.
He didn’t need to burn down an entire store and then be forced to go somewhere else. That would take even more time.
So, instead of a flame thrower, he would have a flame gun. Just as effective, if not more so. He narrowed his fire until it became nothing more than a single white light... almost like a laser at the tip of his finger.
Zhenlan’s gaze sharpened. "When did you learn that?"
Lingyun did not look away from the doors. "While everyone else was talking."
He flicked his thumb down with a twisted smile on his face.
The fire shot forward in a thin streak, passed through the small gap between the metal bars behind the glass, and punched into the forehead of the zombie pressed closest to the entrance.
For half a second, nothing happened.
Then light burst behind its eyes like it was burning from the inside out.
