Apocalypse Ground Zero: Refusing To Leave Home

Chapter 325: Something They Wouldn’t Eat

The plants started bothering me before breakfast.

At first, it was just one vine tapping against the kitchen window. I ignored it because I had coffee in one hand, toast in the other, and no interest in solving whatever problem it had found before I finished both.

Then a second vine joined it.

A third slapped against the glass hard enough to make Yuche look up from the stove.

"They want you," he pointed out, a slight smile on his face.

"I noticed," I replied, my facial expression completely void of emotions. You wouldn’t believe just how needy plants were when they put their minds to it. For fucks sake, I couldn’t even enjoy coffee and toast because their water level wasn’t right, or they wanted more sun... or wind... or...

The vines hit the window again, completely pulling me out of my thoughts.

Lingyun leaned back in his chair and looked toward them. "Maybe one of the babies found something."

"The babies have teeth," I reminded him. "They can handle it." One vine pressed its head against the glass and stared at me like I could read its mind if it just tried hard enough.

I stared back, not caring at all about what had gotten its roots in a twist.

It slapped the window again and a slight crack appeared.

Apparently, I had just lost the argument.

I set my toast down with a sigh and pushed away from the table. Yuche turned off the stove before following me, while Lingyun grabbed another piece of toast and came along behind us.

"You don’t need that," I told him as he took a bite.

"I might get hungry."

"We’re walking outside."

"Exactly. Exercise."

I didn’t bother answering.

The moment I opened the door, the vines rushed away from the house. They stopped near the end of the driveway, turned to make sure I was following, then hurried toward the road.

Something had upset them.

The closer we got to the edge of the property, the stranger the plants became. None of the flowers leaned toward me or tried to wrap around my arms. The vines stayed low to the ground, pulling back whenever the wind moved through the grass.

That caught my attention.

My plants attacked anything that entered my territory without permission. They didn’t hide from problems.

They ate them.

Zhou Chenghai was already standing near the road when we arrived. Xu Zhenlan stood several feet away from him with one hand resting against the trunk of a tree, his eyes fixed on something beyond the ditch.

Neither man had moved closer.

"What happened?" I asked.

Chenghai pointed toward the broken fence near one of the abandoned houses. "They found a body."

"That usually solves itself."

"This one didn’t," he replied. Yeah, that was cause for worry.

I followed his hand and saw a torn tarp lay beneath the trees, half hidden by what could have been weeds, or just a plant I knew nothing about. One boot stuck out from the bottom, while the rest of the shape beneath the cloth was clearly human.

The body sat just outside the nearest roots.

Not one plant touched it.

The flowers had formed a wide circle around the area, their mouths closed tightly while the vines stayed behind them. Even the grass nearest the tarp had bent away.

That was new.

Lingyun stopped chewing and lowered the toast from his mouth, his attention settling completely on the tarp. Yuche moved closer to me without stepping into the open space, placing himself between me and the body while still leaving enough room to see what was happening.

"Did anyone see who left it?" he asked.

Zhenlan shook his head. "The plants noticed it during the night. Whoever brought him here was already gone by the time Chenghai came to check."

I looked at the tarp again, my brows furrowing in confusion. The body was close enough to the road that someone could have abandoned it there, but the weeds and broken fence made it look like it had been hidden instead of simply dropped.

"Did the plants drag it closer?" I asked.

"No," Chenghai replied, shaking his head. "If anything, they pushed it away."

One of the vines hissed when he pointed toward the body, then curled tighter against the ground as if it didn’t even like being noticed near it.

I glanced down at the smaller vine wrapped around my ankle. "You don’t like him?"

It tightened immediately and tugged me backward hard enough to make my heel scrape against the dirt.

Well, that answered that.

I had seen the plants eat zombies, people, animals, and several things I hadn’t looked at long enough to name. They weren’t picky. If something entered their reach and had enough flesh to bite, they usually treated it like a gift.

They definitely weren’t afraid of dead bodies.

Yet every plant near the tarp had pulled its roots and leaves away from it. The flowers had turned their mouths in the opposite direction, while the vines stayed low and tense instead of creeping closer to investigate.

Even the grass around the body looked flattened away from it, leaving a bare ring of dirt that hadn’t been there before.

Whatever was under the tarp hadn’t simply been rejected as food.

The plants wanted distance from it.

"Move the tarp," I told Yuche.

He lifted one hand, catching the metal rings sewn into the corners. They rose slowly from the dirt, pulling the cloth upward without anyone having to go near it. Zhenlan’s wind caught the loose edge and held it steady while Yuche peeled the tarp back.

The body beneath it rolled slightly before settling on its back.

The man looked dead enough.

He was thin, but not in the usual way. His cheeks had sunk deep into his face, and his clothes hung from his body like they belonged to someone larger. One hand rested against his stomach, the fingers curled inward.

There was no blood around him.

No bite marks.

No gunshot.

Nothing obvious had killed him.

Lingyun tilted his head. "Maybe the plants don’t like skinny food."

A flower snapped at him.

"I was just asking," he complained.

I ignored him and studied the body from where I stood.

"Can you see anything?" I asked Zhenlan.

"Nothing alive," he answered.

"That’s not helpful," I growled. This was not the time for sarcasm. Or maybe it was. Maybe that was what was making this entire morning seem off.

Not enough sarcasm.

"It means he isn’t breathing," interrupted Zhenlan. "But he’s also not a zombie."

"Gee, thanks. I figured that part out myself," I shot back, finally feeling a bit better.

His mouth moved like he wanted to smile, but he wisely kept quiet.

Yuche shifted the metal buckle on the dead man’s belt. The body rolled slightly onto one side, then settled again.

The plants pulled back farther...

That was the part I didn’t like.