Apocalypse Ground Zero: Refusing To Leave Home

Chapter 323: Qingxi Village

There was one well-known fact that only the residents of Qingxi Village knew about.

The dead didn’t rise in Qingxi Village.

No one knew why, and after almost a year, most people had stopped asking.

At first, they thought it was luck. When the first man died, everyone crowded into his bedroom with knives, axes, and one old shotgun that probably hadn’t worked before the apocalypse. They waited for his eyes to open or his fingers to twitch, but nothing happened.

Instead, he surprised everyone by staying dead.

A few weeks later, a woman fell from the roof of one of the farmhouses and broke her neck. Her husband refused to let anyone damage her head, so they locked her inside a shed and waited until morning.

Only... she stayed dead too.

After that, people started whispering about Qingxi Village being different. By the time the tenth body was carried out to the pit, no one bothered whispering anymore.

It wasn’t wishful thinking, something supernatural, or even something magical. It was just the way it was.

The dead stayed dead, the living went on with their lives, and no part of the outside world bothered them.

Sure, they knew about the zombies, the apocalypse, and the mutated plants. But they neve saw it. The valley was safe, and so where they.

Lin Xiaoyu carried one end of a wooden board while her brother carried the other. Old Wu’s body lay between them, wrapped in an old blanket that had once covered the couch in his living room.

He had complained about that blanket too.

Then again, Old Wu had complained about almost everything. The soup was too thin, the chickens were too loud, and the children had no reason to run past his house so many times a day.

He even complained that people used too much water from the spring, like it was going to dry up just to prove him right.

But yesterday, he stopped complaining.

Lin Xiaoyu almost missed it.

"Lift your side higher," her brother grunted as they stepped over a thick root. "His shoulder keeps sliding."

"I am lifting it," she hissed back, her own shoulders burning as she tried to lift her end higher.

"Then lift it more," her brother continued. "It’s not like he weighs that much. I swear he was heavier a month ago. Even you should be able to carry him to the pit."

Lin Xiaoyu glared at her brother, but kept her mouth shut.

Old Wu had never been a big man, but that didn’t mean it was easy for her to carry him.

She looked back at the man who had been apart of her life for as long as she could remember. The blanket had pulled tight across his hips, and the side of his face looked almost hollow.

He had been losing weight for months.

A lot of people had.

No one talked about it because everyone was thinner now. Food was limited, meals were smaller, and there was no point complaining when they had more than most settlements.

"There’s no zombies, or monsters, or mutated plants," Lin Xiaoyu chanted over and over again as her own stomach started to growl again. It almost made it easier for her to go hungry knowing that at least she wasn’t fighting for her life.

Two women followed behind them with shovels resting across their shoulders. They probably wouldn’t need them, but people still brought shovels every time someone died.

It was habit.

People had a lot of habits left over from when the dead refused to stay where they belonged.

The path curved around the hill until the trees opened around a wide patch of dirt. The body pit sat near the far edge, well away from the houses, gardens, and spring.

No one came out here unless they had to.

The strange part was how little it smelled.

Even during the hottest weeks of summer, the pit had never smelled as bad as it should have. There were no clouds of flies buzzing over the bodies, no rats hiding between the trees, and no wild dogs trying to dig their way through the dirt.

People called that another blessing.

Lin Xiaoyu thought it was better not to think about it too much.

She and her brother carried Old Wu to the edge before tipping the board. His body slid over the side and landed among the others with a soft thud.

One of the women crossed herself while the other stayed near the edge of the pit, staring down at Old Wu’s body longer than anyone else.

"Should we wait?" she asked quietly.

Lin Xiaoyu’s brother shifted the shovel against his shoulder and looked over at her. "Wait for what?"

The woman rubbed her hands against the front of her pants before glancing back into the pit. "In case he moves."

"He won’t," Lin Xiaoyu’s brother replied, but the answer came a little too quickly.

The woman looked at him. "You don’t know that."

No one had an answer for her after that.

They all trusted Qingxi Village, but there was always a tiny part of them waiting for the valley to change its mind.

Lin Xiaoyu looked down at Old Wu. The blanket had slipped away from his face, leaving his mouth open and one cheek pressed into the dirt.

He didn’t move.

Of course he didn’t.

Nothing dead moved in Qingxi Village.

"We should cover him," Lin Xiaoyu said.

They pushed loose dirt and dead leaves over the body. No one spent much time making it look nice. The pit had stopped looking like a graveyard months ago, but they still tried to cover the faces.

Once they were done, Lin Xiaoyu wiped her hands against her pants.

Her brother looked toward the path leading home. "Dinner should be ready."

That was enough to get everyone moving.

The people in Qingxi Village understood exactly how lucky they were, which was why no one talked about the valley over the radio.

Travelers were turned away long before they reached the houses. Anyone asking too many questions was told the place had been overrun months ago.

It wasn’t cruel.

There were only so many beds, so many gardens, and so many cans of food left in the storage barn. If people learned there was a place where the dead stayed dead, they would come in hundreds.

Then the food would run out.

The houses would fill.

The fighting would start.

Qingxi Village would stop being peaceful.

Lin Xiaoyu followed the others down the hill without looking back at the pit.

Behind them, Old Wu remained exactly where they had left him.

Dead and buried.