Chapter 16
Chapter 16
An Xiaolin gripped the steering wheel as the tires rolled over severed limbs scattered across the ground. She sped toward the lunatics holding their bloody revel beneath the Bell Tower.
“Closer!” Chen Yuhui’s face was pale, but her eyes were fierce. She rolled down the rear window on her side, and the night wind rushed in, carrying a thick stench of blood.
The SUV shot past several lunatics with barely an inch to spare. Chen Yuhui leaned halfway out of the window and roared furiously at the crimson figures laughing up at the sky.
“Over here, you brainless sacks of rotten meat! Is howling like animals all you can do?”
“Come on! Come chase your ancestor! Or are you idiots too slow?”
“Useless trash! You bastards can’t even catch a car!”
The reveling lunatics seemed stunned by the sudden provocation.
They cocked their heads, their eyes brimming with depraved desire.
“You insulted me… Why did you insult me…?” One lunatic licked his lips as he muttered haltingly. Halfway through, his body suddenly convulsed and his features twisted. “You make it sound so beautiful! Hahahahaha!”
“Her voice… so beautiful… It’ll sound even better… when we tear open her throat… hehehe.”
The atmosphere ignited something in An Xiaolin as well. All the fear she had suppressed throughout the night transformed into a destructive impulse.
She rolled down her window and joined in at the top of her lungs.
“What are you staring at, you pack of bastards?”
“Come ram the car if you’ve got the guts! Let’s see you tear one of us apart! Worthless trash!”
A brief, deathly silence followed.
To lunatics who had long since abandoned all reason, their insults did not inspire anger. Instead, they brought a novel kind of pleasure.
“Hahaha… That’s good… Keep insulting me… Louder! Louder!!” One lunatic excitedly pounded his chest, producing dull thuds.
“Heehee… Keep insulting me… It sounds so nice…”
“Rip out their tongues… Let me hear… how they make such beautiful sounds…”
The lunatics’ attention was now completely fixed on them. They crowded around the SUV, hammering wildly against its body with deafening bangs.
One grotesquely twisted face after another pressed against the windows.
“Now!” An Xiaolin saw her chance. The instant the lunatics began moving toward the vehicle, she slammed it into reverse and floored the accelerator.
The SUV’s tires shrieked against the ground as it sped backward.
“After them! Don’t let them get away!”
“Heeheehee! Mine! It’s my toy!”
The lunatics surged after the retreating SUV.
They ran with strange, unnaturally swift strides, every face wearing the same bloodcurdling smile.
An Xiaolin watched the crimson tide flooding after them through the rearview mirror. Her heart hammered wildly, yet her hands remained astonishingly steady on the wheel. She carefully controlled the SUV’s speed, keeping the lunatics from catching up too quickly without letting them lose interest.
She had to lure these demons away from the Administrative Building and create an opening for Qingshui and the others.
Lying at the edge of the platform, her figure nearly indistinguishable from the darkness, Qingshui heard those familiar voices.
The faintest smile touched her lips.
It had worked.
They had done it.
Without a moment’s hesitation, she swiftly made her way back to the storage room on the second floor.
…………
Inside the storage room, Li Wei’an and Lin Hao remained pressed against the wall beside the window. Their hearts pounded as they listened to the howls outside gradually recede, drawn away by the vehicle.
“It’s them… They did it!” Li Wei’an’s voice choked with joy, the glow of her phone illuminating her tearful eyes.
Lin Hao also let out a long breath. The nerves that had been stretched almost to the breaking point finally eased a little. “Thank goodness… Thank goodness…”
Just then, a faint sound came from the window.
Both of them spun around in alarm, instinctively raising the knife and club they were holding.
An agile figure had already vaulted through the window and landed steadily inside. It was Qingshui. Dust and dark spatters stained her face, but her gaze remained clear and composed as it swept over them.
“Get ready,” she said tersely. “As soon as the SUV comes back, we’re heading down.”
The moment she finished speaking, a frantic horn blared in the distance below. A heartbeat later, the SUV’s dazzling headlights cut through the darkness. It pulled to a steady stop beside the Administrative Building once more, directly beneath the rope they had fashioned from curtains.
Chen Yuhui leaned out of the passenger-side window, waving desperately toward the second floor.
“Move!” Qingshui barked.
“Qingshui, you go first!” Li Wei’an urged.
“Enough. Stick to the order, and hurry!” Qingshui replied coldly. She slid her combat knife back into its sheath at her waist, then checked that the rope was secure. “Wei’an, you first. Yuhui will catch you at the bottom.”
Li Wei’an knew this was no time to argue. Taking a deep breath, she followed the method Qingshui had taught her, quickly looping the rope around her waist and arms to secure herself. Then she climbed out the window and began descending, cautiously but quickly.
Below, Chen Yuhui and Ji Feifan, who had just gotten out of the vehicle, stood with their arms outstretched, ready to catch her.
Lin Hao went next. His large frame made his movements somewhat clumsy, but his desperation to survive gave him strength. He made it down safely and was steadied by Chen Yuhui and Ji Feifan.
Qingshui was last. She barely used the rope to secure herself. Alternating her grip hand over hand, she descended in a few light, fluid movements and landed without a sound.
“Get in! Hurry!” An Xiaolin shouted from the driver’s seat.
No one wasted a second. They yanked open the doors and crammed themselves inside. Qingshui, Li Wei’an, Chen Yuhui, and Lin Hao squeezed into the back seat, while Ji Feifan took the front passenger seat.
The doors had barely slammed shut when the crazed horde, temporarily lured away, began surging back toward them, drawn by the vehicle’s last burst of noise and its scent. Terrifying sounds rose from the darkness.
“Head for the rear gate! There are usually fewer people over there, so there might be fewer obstacles too!” Lin Hao said, pointing ahead.
An Xiaolin glanced in the rearview mirror at the figures converging behind them. Without the slightest hesitation, she sped toward the campus’s rear gate.
Outside the windows, one hellish scene after another flashed past.
Shattered glass. Scattered organs. Twisted corpses sprawled in pools of blood. Crazed figures that lunged excitedly at the sound of the SUV, only to be sent flying by the impact…
The campus that had once overflowed with life had become a carnival of death and madness.
No one spoke. The SUV was thick with the stench of blood and the stunned silence of those who had narrowly escaped death.
Everyone stared out at the familiar yet alien nightmare, faces pale and eyes filled with complicated emotions.
Qingshui silently watched the road ahead. Escaping the school was only the first step.
The world outside had descended into a madness even worse than the zombie apocalypse of her previous life.
How long could they survive?
The thought weighed heavily on every one of them.
Suddenly, An Xiaolin slammed on the brakes.
At the end of the road, the tall rear gate stood firmly shut. Beyond it lay a street swallowed in darkness.
“The gate’s locked,” Chen Yuhui said hoarsely.
Lin Hao spoke without thinking. “D-Do we need to get out and pry it open?”
Ji Feifan frowned as he assessed the situation. “I don’t think we have time. They’re almost here.”
Behind them, the howls of the crazed horde were drawing closer.
“No need,” An Xiaolin replied coldly.
She shifted into reverse, backing the SUV up more than a dozen yards.
Then she changed gears and floored the accelerator.
The engine let out a deafening roar. The SUV shot forward like an arrow loosed from a bow, accelerating straight toward the locked cast-iron gate!
“Hold on!” someone shouted.
BANG!
The thunderous crash was deafening.
The shriek of breaking metal tore through the night as the sturdy iron gate buckled beneath the SUV’s brutal impact and went flying!
They had smashed straight through it.
The SUV plunged headlong into the darkness beyond.
The campus receded behind them, its blood-soaked carnival gradually swallowed by the night.
They all understood that escaping the hell of the campus only meant entering an even greater hell.
Staying alive had become their one and only goal.