The Scent in the Air

Lin Qiao walked to a window beside the stairs in the building and looked outside. In the eyes of ordinary humans, there was only darkness outside. The buildings, plants, and all the other things on the ground were just shades and shadows in the dim light.

However, Lin Qiao could see everything clearly. Zombies weren't able to see colors, but Lin Qiao's eyes were slightly different from those of ordinary zombies.

Her eyes were even darker than the shades of night. She opened those eyes wide and swept her gaze across the area which could be seen from the window. However, even after searching for a while, she detected not a single light. She guessed that those people were being careful not to draw attention to themselves.

After observing things for a little longer and still seeing nothing, her eyes sparkled as she changed her way of searching.

She lifted her chin slightly, closed her eyes, and carefully sniffed the air again and again.

She had come to realize that her sense of smell was now even sharper than that of dogs. As she had hoped, after spending a while sniffing the scent in the winds around the tall buildings, she sensed something special.

Among all the scents she detected, the strongest was the rancid stench from zombie bodies. She also detected some strange scents from plantlife and mutated animals, but those were faint, diluted by other scents in the air.

By now, she could tell the smells apart, especially those of living people and zombies. However, she didn't yet know the reach of her sense of smell.

She sniffed for quite a while in this tall building, detecting all kinds of smells but finding none which belonged to living human beings.

She didn't want to give up, so she walked about aimlessly on this floor, then ran in the other direction and found another window. She removed the window pane, then stuck her head out, and sniffed as hard as she could.

But still, she detected no trace of living human beings while standing in this building.

She found this a little perplexing. Wouldn't that man send his people out to look for his daughter? Why couldn't she detect any live human being in this area?

Should she keep the little one if she failed to find her family?

Lin Qiao struggled a little with this thought.

She was a zombie now, and no matter how hungry she felt, she couldn't seem to die. But unlike her, the little one in her space was a living human being, a five-year-old child. A human being needed to eat, especially a child. If she were not careful, the child could get sick, and that would be troublesome.

Thinking of the little one, Lin Qiao suddenly realized that she hadn't been sensing anything from her for some time now, and could no longer hear her cries. What if the child had had an accident? This thought flashed across Lin Qiao's mind, and she hurriedly re-entered her space.

A bright light flashed across her eyes and then she showed up in the space, which was still misty and had no sounds disturbing the silence.

Lin Qiao's eyes swept across the area and found Wu Yueling's tiny body curled up on the ground, wrapped in the small blanket.

Her heart sank as she hurried over. Suppressing her urge to eat the child, she squatted down to observe the color on the girl's face. Her face was very pale, as were her lips, and the rims of her eyes were dark and bluish.

Lin Qiao wanted to reach out and touch the girl's forehead, but the sight of her black and shiny nails made her pause.

Zombies' teeth and nails all carried the zombie virus, and the virus on her dark and sharp nails must be more potent than that of ordinary zombies.

She couldn't directly touch the child's skin with these nails! Therefore, she wondered if she was able to somehow retract her nails.

She looked at her fingernails and thought about retracting them, causing a strange feeling to arise in her finger bones. She then fixed her eyes on her nails and actually saw them slowly turning white and becoming shorter. Next, she watched the sharp nails disappear from her fingers and look like the nails of ordinary humans.

She looked at her fingers with confusion, then raised her other hand. The fingernails on her other hand were still black and sharp.

Could…her fingernails change according to her thoughts?

She thought about this with a degree of uncertainty, then pointed at her unchanged hand, staring at her fingertips as she whispered silently in her heart.

'Turn back! Turn back! Turn back!'

As expected, her other hand slowly started looking like a hand of an ordinary human while her dark fingernails disappeared.

After watching her fingernails change, she remained silent for a while, then tentatively touched the child's forehead with her fingers.

The child's skin was cold, much colder than the normal body temperature of healthy humans.

Lin Qiao frowned slightly and immediately withdrew her hand.

She didn't know if the child had been awakened by the coldness of her fingers, but after she withdrew her hand, the child's eyelids suddenly twitched and then slowly opened.

'This isn't good!'

Lin Qiao's heart skipped a beat. She shouted silently in her head and then hurriedly stood up to step aside, darting five meters away from the child while looking nervously back at her.

That had been a completely instinctive reaction of Lin Qiao because earlier on, the child burst into screams and almost fainted on seeing her. Just now, the girl suddenly opened her eyes once again, and if she saw that Lin Qiao was standing right beside her, she would be scared to death, wouldn't she?

The child turned her head and began to look around blankly. And as Lin Qiao had thought, the girl became fully awake the moment she saw her. Her large, watery, but somehow lusterless eyes were fixed onto Lin Qiao's face and grew even wider with fear.

But this time, she didn't scream, and just bit her lips tightly while staring at Lin Qiao without blinking.

Lin Qiao was standing five meters away as she looked helplessly back at the girl. She had always been hopeless with children. Children at this age were the most ignorant, self-willed, and naughty creatures in the world, the hardest ones to pacify. To make matters worse, their cries were shrill to the point of being deafening!

A wailing child was at the top of the list of the things that she couldn't stand.

'She's here! She's back! She's here to eat me... This zombie is gonna eat me... Wooo... Daddy! Daddy! Where are you? Come and save me! Come and save Ling Ling! Why won't you come to save Ling Ling?'

Just as Lin Qiao was reaching a despairing level of indecision, she suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of fear, desperation, panic, and other negative emotions. At the same time, she was able to read the mind behind it.

These were clearly the child's current feelings.

But soon, these feelings became weaker and weaker.

'I'm gonna die... Daddy... I'm gonna be eaten... Daddy...'

'Daddy... Daddy…'

'Daddy…'

Lin Qiao was startled and dismayed to notice that the light in the child's eyes was dimming.

'What should I do? What should I do?' Lin Qiao was becoming anxious, almost scratching her head in her frustration. She had already felt that the child was losing the desire to survive, truly believing that she would be eaten.

If Lin Qiao left the space now, there was a chance that the child might recover a little. However, that wasn't a permanent solution. The child hadn't eaten for days, which had resulted in her body beginning to fail. Now that she had lost her desire to survive, that would only speed up the failure of her body.