Chapter 270: Then I Will Thin It Faster
The zombie’s head jerked back, smoke spilling from its mouth, nose, and ears before its body collapsed against the gate. The fire didn’t spread out. It didn’t touch the shelves, climb the walls, or lick across the door.
Instead, it consumed everything inside the zombie, then naturally extinguished itself the moment the body slid down the gate and crumbled to ash on the floor.
Obedient little flame.
Qin Fen made a sharp sound from the back of the truck. "That did not hit the electrical section."
Lingyun’s smile returned a little. "I am learning too."
Another zombie slammed into the gap left by the first.
Lingyun shot it.
Then the next.
And the next.
Each point of fire entered through a skull, an eye socket, a throat, wherever the angle gave him access. The dead at the front began to fall, not in a glorious wave of flame, but in ugly jerks and collapsing bodies that piled against the inside of the gate. The smell leaked out through the cracks, sour and burnt and rotten enough to make several people gag.
And still, Lingyun didn’t stop.
The zombies deeper inside reacted harder now. They surged toward the front, climbing over fallen bodies, throwing themselves against the gate with the mindless violence of things that had smelled food after months of starving. One slammed its face against the bars hard enough to split its cheek open. Another forced its arm between the gaps and clawed at empty air.
Lingyun shot through its open mouth and almost immediately, its body dropped.
"Enough," Chenghai said.
"No."
"Lingyun."
"No." This time, he turned his head just enough to look at him. "You want to find somewhere else? Go. You want to wait until morning? Wait. I am clearing the door."
Zhenlan’s expression hardened. "This isn’t only about you."
That was the wrong thing to say.
Heat crawled up Lingyun’s arm, but he kept the fire tight at his fingertip because the store was useful and Rouxi would be furious if he ruined it.
"No," he said, his voice going hard for a second before he forced himself to control his emotions. "It is about Rouxi. It is about the house that is still broken. It is about the people we dragged out of that base. It is about not spending the night outside because the two of you want to stand here making careful plans until the world decides for us."
Chenghai couldn’t say anything and Zhenlan’s jaw just tightened.
Good.
It always helped when reality bitch slapped someone across the face.
With a satisfied grunt, Lingyun turned back toward the store and fired again.
The front entrance was still packed, but now the pile of half burned bodies inside had become something of a barrier. The living dead behind it had to climb, shove, and tear through one another to reach the glass. That slowed them down just enough to become targets themselves.
He could do this.
He would do this.
Come hell, high water, or every dead customer in the store, he was not spending another moment away from Rouxi that he didn’t have to be.
The next shot burned through a zombie’s eye, destroyed half of its face, before dropping it on top of the others.
Lingyun smiled without looking back. "Let’s start making a path," he said. "We are shopping tonight."
For a moment, no one moved.
Then Zhenlan cursed under his breath and looked toward Chenghai. "Move the SUV. Angle the headlights toward the front doors. If he is going to be stupid, we are not letting him be stupid in the dark."
Lingyun’s smile widened. Hell, coming from Zhenlan, that was almost approval.
Chenghai did not waste time arguing. He turned back toward the SUV, his face hard enough to make it clear that this was not agreement. It was damage control, and that was fine. Lingyun did not need him to agree. He needed him to get out of the way or become useful.
A few seconds later, the SUV rolled forward, its headlights cutting across the parking lot and flooding the front of the store in harsh white light. The zombies behind the glass reacted immediately. The ones still standing threw themselves toward the brightness, jaws snapping, hands striking the gate with enough force to shake the frame.
"Everyone stays in the truck," Zhenlan called over his shoulder. "No one comes down unless I call you."
Old Chen’s pipe struck the floor of the covered rear. "You heard him. Anyone tries to be brave, I’ll break your leg before the dead get a chance."
No one argued which went a long way to proving that they were smart people.
Lingyun fired again and another point of white heat slipped through the bars and buried itself in a zombie’s skull. The body collapsed, adding to the growing heap against the inside of the entrance.
Zhenlan saw just what Lingyun was aiming for, and Lingyun knew he did because the other man’s expression changed from anger into calculation.
"Keep dropping the front row," Zhenlan said.
Lingyun snorted. "No shit Sherlock. I was already doing that."
"Then keep doing it on purpose."
Fine.
But he wasn’t doing it because it was an order from Zhenlan. It had always been part of his plan.
Maybe.
Probably.
If he had a plan, it would have been.
He shot three more in quick succession, each burst smaller and tighter than the last. The trick scraped at his focus, burning clean lines through his nerves, but he held it.
Wide fire was easy... all it wanted to do was eat. This was different. This was control, narrow and vicious, and he could almost hear Yuche’s annoying voice in the back of his head telling him that power was only useful if it went where he told it to go.
Terrible man.
But a useful lesson.
The dead behind the bodies began climbing. They crawled over one another with broken fingers and split mouths, driven by hunger that had spent months with nothing to feed. One wedged itself between the bars and tore half the skin from its arm trying to reach him. Lingyun shot it through the wrist first, then through the eye when it kept moving.
Qin Fen gagged somewhere behind him. "That smell is going to follow me forever."
"Better than being eaten," Gao Shun muttered.
"True."
Luo Qing leaned out from the back of the truck, studying the gate instead of the bodies. "If he keeps stacking them there, we can open one side without the whole crowd pouring out."
Fang Lihua nodded sharply. "Use the dead as a plug."
Lingyun glanced back. "See? They understand."
"They understand that you have created a disgusting barricade," Zhenlan said.
"But it is a barricade."
Chenghai came back from the SUV with a crowbar in one hand and no patience left on his face. "When the front thins, I open the outer door. No one steps past me until I say."
Lingyun looked at the locked store, the dying light, and the dead still throwing themselves forward from the aisles.
For the first time since they had left the base, the path home felt closer.
He lifted his hand again.
"Then I will thin it faster."
