Apocalypse Ground Zero: Refusing To Leave Home

Chapter 324: Respect For The Dead

Pei Shuo grabbed Wang Lei’s sleeve before anyone could move him. His fingers were weak, but the fear in his face made Wang Lei stop.

"Water," he whispered.

Wang Lei handed him the nearest bottle.

Pei Shuo drank too quickly. Water spilled down his chin and soaked the front of his shirt, but he kept swallowing until the bottle was empty. When he finished, his stomach cramped hard enough to fold him forward.

Tang Mei caught his shoulder. "Pei Shuo?"

He gasped once, his whole body tightening beneath her hands, then suddenly went still.

For a moment, no one moved.

Wang Lei kept waiting for Pei Shuo to breathe again. He watched the thin chest beneath the wet shirt, expecting it to rise, but nothing happened.

Tang Mei pressed two fingers against the side of Pei Shuo’s neck. Her face slowly changed as she searched for a pulse she couldn’t find.

"He’s gone."

Liu Fang stepped back.

The street around them was quiet. No zombies wandered between the houses, but that didn’t make the moment safer. They had all seen what happened after death. Qingxi Village might be different, but they weren’t in Qingxi Village anymore.

Wang Lei reached for the knife strapped to his belt.

Tang Mei looked up at him. "What are you doing?"

"We have to make sure."

"No." She shifted in front of Pei Shuo’s body before Wang Lei could pull the knife free. "People from Qingxi Village don’t turn."

"We don’t know if that still works out here."

"It isn’t magic tied to the ground."

"You don’t know what it is."

Neither of them did, and that was the problem.

Liu Fang picked up a metal bar from beside the cart and held it ready. "We wait. We be sure. But we don’t destroy a body on a ’what if’."

Wang Lei looked at Pei Shuo’s body, then at the dark windows surrounding them. Waiting beside a corpse in the middle of an open road was a terrible idea, but leaving without knowing what would happen seemed worse.

They dragged Pei Shuo into the yard of the nearest house and laid him beneath a tree. Wang Lei kept the knife in his hand while Liu Fang stood several feet away with the bar raised.

Five minutes passed.

Then ten.

Pei Shuo’s fingers did not twitch. His eyes stayed closed, and no sound came from his throat.

They stood there for a moment, none of them knowing what else to do. Personally, Wang Lei hated waiting beside the dead.

Before he made it back to Qingxi Village from his university campus, he had seen people change almost immediately. One man had opened his eyes before his wife even finished crying over him. Another had stayed still for nearly and hour, only to lunge the moment someone leaned close enough to check his pulse.

There was no reliable amount of time. That was what made it worse.

Tang Mei remained beside Pei Shou with one hand resting near his shoulder, although she was no longer touching him. Liu Fang stood several steps away with the metal bar raised, watching his hands and mouth for the smallest movement.

"We should tie him," Wang Lei muttered under his breath.

Tang Mei looked up sharply. "He isn’t going to turn."

"You don’t know that," replied Wang Lei sharply.

"I know where he came from," shrugged Tang Mei. "And the village would never let something happen to us."

"You don’t know that for sure. After all, we aren’t there anymore."

For a moment, none of them spoke. The belief that had made Qingxi Village feel safe suddenly seemed much harder to trust with Pei Shou lying dead between them.

Liu Fang adjusted her grip on the bar. "If he moves, I’ll handle it."

Tang Mei’s face tightened, but she nodded and slowly moved farther away.

Wang Lei kept his knife ready... but after a half an hour had passed, Tang Mei finally let out the breath she had been holding. "You see?" she murmured. "Qingxi Village looks after its own. Even out here, it kept him safe."

Wang Lei wasn’t sure safe was the right word for a dead man, but he understood what she meant.

Pei Shuo had stayed dead.

Whatever protected the people of Qingxi Village had followed him beyond the valley.

The thought should have made Wang Lei feel better. Instead, he found himself staring at Pei Shuo’s face and wondering why the body looked even thinner than it had an hour earlier.

"We can’t take him back," Liu Fang said quietly.

Tang Mei looked toward the carts. "We can make room."

"We’re two days from home, and he was already slowing us down before this. We still need food and medicine."

No one wanted to say what that meant.

Pei Shuo had been their friend, but he was also dead weight. They also couldn’t afford to put him in his own cart and bring back less supplies because of it.

Wang Lei crouched beside the body and pulled Pei Shuo’s jacket closed. "We’ll put him somewhere safe."

There was a shallow ditch behind the house, hidden from the road by weeds and a broken fence. They carried Pei Shuo there and laid him on his back beneath the trees.

Tang Mei placed his empty water bottle beside him before stepping away. "We should cover him," she announced.

"With what?" Liu Fang asked. "We don’t have a shovel."

Wang Lei pulled a torn tarp from the yard and spread it over Pei Shuo’s body. It wasn’t much, but it kept his face hidden and his dead body respected.

Maybe it was their care for the dead that kept their people from coming back. Anything was possible.

Nodding her head, Liu Fang looked toward the road. "We need to move."

Wang Lei picked up the cart again.

They continued east, following signs of occupied houses and hoping someone nearby had medicine they were willing to trade. None of them noticed how close they had come to the roads surrounding Rouxi’s territory.

They also didn’t notice the tarp sinking around Pei Shuo’s stomach.

The cloth pulled tighter as something moved beneath it, slowly eating through what remained inside.

The body might have stayed dead.

But the thing inside of it?

That was just waking up.