Surviving the apocalypse with a wife and a system! [GL]

Chapter 228: Fell down.

On the balcony opposite, Fang Xiaofei was still frozen in place.

Her mind had not fully caught up. She had seen Hu Xuecheng lose balance, seen him scream, seen him fall, but the truth still felt too insane to settle properly in her head. She stood there gripping the balcony railing, staring downward, her face white. The wind brushed against her skin and made her shiver. Somewhere in the distance, somebody downstairs screamed in alarm after seeing the blood, but that sound was already too far away to matter. All she could think about was the ugly, final sound of Hu Xuecheng hitting the ground.

He was really dead.

At least, he had to be.

Nobody could survive that kind of fall. Not from that height. Not with that kind of impact.

Her mouth opened slightly, but no words came out.

What was she supposed to say? That he deserved it? That she had no idea what had happened? That she had seen him acting crazy and then suddenly he just fell? Nothing she said would make sense. So she stood still, her hands trembling a little now that the immediate danger had passed and her body had started catching up to the shock.

Down below, a few residents had already started peeking through windows again. Some were too scared to get close, but curiosity was stronger than fear for a lot of people. They leaned out carefully, trying to understand whether the fall was real, whether somebody was hurt, whether zombies had been attracted by the noise, whether Bai Li had been involved, whether they should call for help or just stay quiet and pretend they had seen nothing. Nobody had any proper answers. All they had were guesses, and guesses were cheap in a world that was getting more dangerous by the minute.

The first person to speak out loud about the whole thing was not in the group chat at all. It was a woman on one of the lower floors who had seen the balcony and the gun more clearly than most.

She leaned out just enough to look down, then immediately pulled back and said to her family, "Something bad happened upstairs. I saw a man with a gun. He fired. Then he fell."

Her husband stared at her. "Fell?"

"Yes, fell. Or got thrown. I don’t know."

"Thrown by who?"

She shook her head. "I don’t know. I really don’t know."

That answer was repeating everywhere now.

I don’t know.

Nobody knew.

Another person in a different apartment spoke quietly after seeing the blood below. "If he really shot at someone and then got thrown off the balcony, then the person he targeted must be terrifying."

That sentence spread in smaller versions through the building within minutes. Not in the chat exactly, but through whispered conversations at doors, through cracks in hallways, through half closed windows. People began to connect the clues they had. Bai Li had been below. Hu Xuecheng had fired from above. Hu Xuecheng had then fallen. Bai Li was still moving around the courtyard. Somehow that combination made Bai Li look even more dangerous in their minds, even though most of them still did not know exactly what had happened. Fear has a way of filling in the blanks with imagination. And once people fear something, they tend to make it larger than the truth.

A few residents started to get more direct.

Wang Zhichao 203: I’m telling you, Bai Li is not normal.

Ma Shuai 801: You say that like it’s news.

Wang Hao 302: Do not say too much. If she hears you, that’s it.

Zhang Ming 2001: Why are you all scared of Bai Li now? I thought Hu Xuecheng had the gun.

Another resident: That’s exactly why I’m scared.

The tone of the chat shifted from confusion to realization very quickly after that. Not total realization. Not the full truth. Just the sense that something far more dangerous had happened than a simple accident. A gun had been pointed downward. A shot had been fired. The shooter had fallen. No one could explain the middle part, but the ending was enough to make the rest of the building nervous.

Then came fear.

Real fear.

Not the everyday kind people had been feeling since the apocalypse started, but the kind that made the skin feel too tight and the throat feel dry. It was one thing to live in a world full of zombies. It was another thing entirely to realize a person in your own building had tried to shoot someone and then died in a way nobody could explain. That meant anything could happen. It meant no one was fully safe. It meant the thin layer of social order people had been clinging to was maybe weaker than they had thought.

Several residents started asking whether they should report the gunfire. Others quickly said no, because report it to who? Who was even still around to answer? The water had already cut off. The utilities were failing. Communication was patchy. The city was half locked down by fear and half abandoned to its own collapse. At a time like this, the idea of calling some authority and getting a response felt almost funny.

Someone in the group chat finally wrote: We should all stay inside and not cause trouble.

Another resident replied: Like we can even cause trouble now.

That got a few bitter reactions, because it was true.

No one knew whether Hu Xuecheng had died from the fall immediately or whether he had survived long enough to crawl and scream. Nobody knew whether his gun had gone off by accident or on purpose. Nobody knew if Bai Li had been attacked directly or if she had somehow provoked it. Nobody knew whether the strange force that seemed to have pushed him had been human or not. They only knew a man had fallen from the twentieth floor, and the sound of that fall had been ugly enough to make their stomachs twist.

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TO BE CONTINUED.