Mutation

Chapter 6: A Fractured World Begins

About an hour later, my phone rang loudly, flashing with the contact's name “Scumbag.” I sighed and picked up, and immediately, Liang Zhiyong’s angry roar blasted through the receiver.

“Zhu Ting, have you completely lost it? You used my information to take out online loans? Where do you get the nerve?”

I replied calmly, “The nerve? Naturally, from you.”

“You get back here right now!” he barked.

I chuckled, “Sorry, you’re not going to see me again.”

His voice shot up a few notches. “You think you can divorce me? As long as I refuse to sign the papers, you’ll get nothing, Zhu Ting. Nothing.”

“Divorce or not doesn’t matter much. I’ll be a widow soon enough.”

He growled, “Zhu Ting!”

I lowered my voice, almost in a whisper, “Oh, but you should probably start worrying about that loan payment—two million, due tomorrow. You might want to make preparations.”

His threats devolved into a string of furious curses, which I promptly tuned out, moving the phone away from my ear until the call ended on its own. Setting my phone to silent, I ignored the constant calls that followed.

I wasn’t done with him yet, but my focus was no longer on petty revenge. I glanced at the clock on the wall—it was almost 10 p.m., the time I knew everything was about to change.

Moving to the balcony, I scanned the quiet streets below, eerie in their calmness. It was like the final silence before a storm. Suddenly, a scream echoed from a distant street, and the uneasy peace broke apart. A woman covered in blood staggered onto the road, her body barely holding itself upright. She stumbled in front of a delivery truck, which swerved but couldn’t avoid her, sending her crashing back a dozen meters onto the pavement.

Other cars screeched to a halt, drivers shouting in confusion. And then, somehow, that woman began to twitch, her movements unnatural. She dragged herself to her feet, swaying, and with jerky, mechanical steps, approached a nearby man. Before anyone could react, she lunged, sinking her teeth into his shoulder with horrifying force.

He screamed in agony as she tore away a piece of his flesh, and crumpled to the ground, convulsing. People nearby tried to pull her off, but in moments, they too were bitten, the infection spreading as quickly as panic. Each new victim twitched violently, then staggered back to life, rabid and hungry, lurching toward the next closest person.

Within minutes, the intersection was a grotesque scene of c*****e, blood pooling and limbs scattered across the road. I lowered my binoculars with a hollow feeling, and my mother, standing next to me, spoke in a trembling voice. “Tingting… it’s really happening. They’re real. Aren’t there people who’ll come to help?”

I answered softly, “Mom, the zombies spread so quickly… The last time, they tried to lock down the city, even deployed the military. But it didn’t work. The infection moves faster than anyone can stop.”

Through her own binoculars, she observed the chaos below, sighing, “Look at all those people… Some are running to the grocery stores, and there are so many tripping and falling.”

“They’re about to panic, and when they do, the shelves will be empty. The pharmacies will be looted. Fear spreads faster than the infection itself.”

I thought back to the last time, the insane rush to stock up on supplies, elbowing my way through the aisles with a cart, grabbing whatever I could, stumbling several times in the process. At checkout, the cashier snapped, abandoning her register mid-scan. “Forget this! I’m out—my family has nothing!” she yelled, running into the crowd to grab supplies for herself. For a moment, everyone was stunned, but then they all started grabbing what they could.

As I staggered out with my supplies, loading them frantically into the car, I encountered waves of zombies, their relentless eyes empty of all humanity. I fought through them, pushing myself until I finally made it home, battered and weary.

When I got back, though, all I received was scorn. My mother-in-law glared at me with disapproval. “Is that all you bought? This isn’t even enough for a week.”

She showed not a hint of concern over my disheveled, blood-smeared appearance. Liang Zhiyong looked at my scraped knees with open suspicion and took a step back. “What’s that?”

The memory dissolved into the present, and I turned to my mom. She was still watching the scene below, her face pale with dread.

“People are getting hurt everywhere, and no one’s helping them,” she whispered, horrified.

I put my hand on her shoulder. “The stores and pharmacies will be empty soon. The infection spreads too fast. Those who aren’t prepared have no choice but to go out and scavenge whatever’s left.”

Suddenly, my mom looked at me with quiet resolve, taking on a steely determination. “What about our trash, Tingting? All this, it’ll pile up fast in here. It’s going to smell if we don’t find a solution.”

I hadn’t thought about it, but she was right. Within days, waste would accumulate, creating a breeding ground for disease.

Thanks to her suggestion, I called the contractors back to install a heavy-duty waste disposal system, complete with a direct drainage pipe to carry waste far from our apartment. We added a top-tier trash compactor, which ground down everything to tiny particles before flushing it away. We wouldn’t be living on top of our garbage.

Then she tackled food sustainability. “We can’t rely on just the stores. Vegetables and meat spoil quickly; we need plants we can grow ourselves.”

We picked up seeds for fast-growing vegetables, and she arranged an entire hydroponic setup on our enclosed balcony. The balcony already had protective grates and secure solar panels to provide both power and sunlight, ensuring our plants could thrive even when the rest of the world went dark.

But she didn’t stop there. She ordered a dozen chicks, raising them in a corner of the balcony where they would be safe. They would lay eggs, enough to keep us going for the long haul. And the chicken manure could fertilize our plants, completing the cycle.

In those days before the outbreak, my mom prepared everything I hadn’t thought of, going so far as to bring a batch of Sichuan pickled vegetables, declaring, “No matter what, we’re not living without a taste of home.”

As Wednesday dawned, the clock ticking down, I felt as prepared as I could be. We had supplies, and thanks to my mom, I felt we’d last. She sat beside me, holding my hand, her voice soft yet unwavering. “As long as you’re safe, Tingting, nothing else matters to me.”

I swallowed hard, her strength keeping me from breaking down.

It was Wednesday. The zombies would arrive any minute now.