5 A Frightening Night

Despite finding himself in the world of Resident Evil, Zhang Heng didn't feel too afraid of anything for the time being. Not only had he not found any zombies so far, but he also hadn't seen a single shredded dead body ever since he arrived in this world. He was somehow able to keep his mind in a rather neutral state, but he had no idea just what the next day would bring.

He wasn't so naïve as to really think that there wasn't a single zombie found in such a huge building. He saw no zombies in the lobby only because they were all drawn outside by the noise out there, but the same couldn't be said for the floors above.

He felt a chill running down his spine when he thought about the myriad dangers he would probably run into the next day. He didn't mind the zombies, as they were simple monsters that could only move a little faster than a regular person's walking speed. Shrugging off the zombies wasn't that difficult. So long as he wasn't caught or bitten, he was confident he could get away.

What truly frightened him was the kind of monster that was able to climb walls, possessed claws powerful enough to tear steel plates apart, and capable of moving like a gust of wind—the lickers. If he were to run into such a monster, he didn't know how he would survive. He would die, alone and forgotten, on a strange word far from home.

With those kinds of cheery thoughts going through his head, Zhang Heng couldn't help but feel restless. He took his pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, sticking one in his mouth. It took him quite a while to fish a lighter out of his pocket to light the cigarette.

Zhang Heng considered himself to be the manly type of guy who could skip meals plenty but not go a day without smoking. It was just like those hardcore gamers who claimed that they could 'do without girlfriends, but never without LOL (Leagues of Legends)'—the typical types who would eventually die alone. Even his so-called 'Genuine Hong Kong ZORRO kerosene lighter' was something he fished out of Taobao for just a little more than 30 yuan. The ice-blue metallic color on the lighter just looked cool to him.

Snap, snap… The metal kerosene lighter snapped several times as Zhang Heng tried to light his cigarette. Normally the sound was so quiet it could barely be heard, but in the echoing silence of the ruined building, it sounded as loud as a gunshot.

He frowned and lit his cigarette as quickly as he could before shutting the lid carefully and taking a deep breath. The stimulating, spicy smoke shot to his lungs and the fatigue in his brain melted away like ice under hot water.

But, as Zhang Heng puffed away in the night to kill time in silence, all of a sudden, he heard slight knocks on the cabinet inside the guard room…

Zhang Heng's heart froze. He turned his head in a jerking motion to look directly at the steel cabinet.

Clang…Clang...

The sound came again.

Sh**, my ears aren't fooling me.

He stood up right away and extended his hand to his hip, slowly drawing out that American military knife-like dagger. The way the blade was advertised made it sound like something surreal, but he knew well what he actually got, as he had bought it online for just a few dozen yen, and a bottle of maintenance oil came with it. Only the seller would know just how well-made such a blade would actually be.

He remained tense, eyes trained on the cabinet, staying perfectly still for quite a while and forgetting all about the cigarette at his mouth, right until it burned all the way to the butt and began to smell burnt. He only opened his mouth slightly to let the cigarette butt drop to the ground.

He was able to confirm from the sound he heard that it was definitely not wild animals like rats in that cabinet, but a zombie in and out. He could tell not only from how the cabinet rattled but also because he heard low-pitched growls coming from inside—the kind of voice that only human vocal chords could produce.

He had no idea who was it who had locked a zombie up in the cabinet when the crisis broke out, and that move had almost gotten him. He was sure that the zombie inside first heard the sound from his lighter, before starting to move in the cabinet. He was thinking at that moment, that if he didn't make another sound, nothing else would happen.

That was what he told himself to calm himself down, yet his heart beat furiously all the same, so much so that the hand holding the dagger had gotten all sweaty.

Time passed and he remained perfectly silent. The movements in the cabinet grew increasingly faint. Just when he thought that he had managed to fool the zombie without problems, he heard a rumbling, far-reaching howl from the inside of the cabinet all of a sudden.

Zhang Heng's face paled.

He could hear the sound of hands banging hard on the door of the cabinet at the same time, like it was some demon that just climbed out of hell, banging on the gates separating the world of the living and the dead, just to make it through the barrier and feast on the other side.

He didn't know how well insulated the security room was in terms of soundproofing. He dared not think what would happen if the soundproofing turned out to be lousy.

"Goddamn it!" His face went pale. He lowered his head instinctively, seeing that still-burning cigarette butt continue to emit that weird, burnt smell. He realized all of the sudden that the zombie inside had definitely determined that someone was outside, because it was able to smell something strange.

Bang, bang, bang!

The hollow reverberations shook the steel cabinet as well as his heart. Every bang caused his chest to jump, making him feel as if that zombie might burst out of the door at any second and charge at him.

I can't just let it keep banging on the cabinet anymore.

That was the only thought in his mind at the moment. He tensed, letting adrenaline rush through his body. He somehow managed to muster the courage to rush to the cabinet and open the door as fast as he was able to.

A rotten face appeared in the open cabinet, like a demon from hell materializing out of nowhere. He felt his mind go blank all of a sudden and stopped thinking. He plunged that pitch-black military knife into the eye socket of the horrendously ugly face in one swift move, before the thing was able to burst outside.

The zombie's low-pitched grumble died suddenly, slumping to the ground, and landing with a stifled thud.

Hufff… huff. Zhang Heng dropped to the ground, feeling every ounce of strength leave him as he panted loudly. While it had actually taken very little strength to do what he did, all that adrenaline rushing through his body compelled him to take deep, measured breaths nonetheless. His heart still pounded against his chest, seemingly about to leap out of his chest at any given second.

That was his first time killing a zombie, and better still, he killed it with one swift and clean stroke.

Groowwlll… A low-pitched rumble was heard outside the room again before he was able to start feeling lucky. Noisy footsteps followed the sound, and all those footsteps stopped right outside the security room.

Zhang Heng stopped panting hard and loud right away. His eyes were thrown wide open as he struggled to keep his bodily reactions in check, as if time had stopped in that moment.

Well, well, the zombies could hear after all. I bet that noise just now traveled far and wide. That's the only way so many of them could show up so quickly. Now, I wonder if those lickers are still hanging around this building, too...

Several minutes passed, dragging like centuries. In those stifling moments, the footsteps outside the door of the room began to sound increasingly packed, before thinning out gradually, and, eventually, they seemed to have disappeared altogether…

Huff… He only let his breath out slowly after confirming that there were no other sounds outside the door. He pulled out the dagger that he had plunged into the zombie's eye socket earlier and moved to the window, flipping down a corner of the shutter a little and peering outside cautiously.

He was able to see, with the aid of the moonlight that passed through a slit about the width of a finger, that there were seven or eight black things shuffling back and forth in the dimmed, darkened lobby, seemingly trying to locate the source of the sound they heard earlier. It was fortunate that zombies had no intellectual capacity to speak of, as they would have been able to see that something was wrong with the security room just from that corner of flipped shutter alone.

He figured that those zombies probably either came from upstairs or from the corridors. They dispersed after being unable to locate the source of that noise they heard earlier.

After almost being discovered by the zombies, he lost all desire to smoke at the moment. He made his way back to the cabinet that had held the zombie before and curled up there. That tight, enclosed space was the only place he could find any semblance of safety.