Doomsday Knocks

"Whoa—!!!" The piercing sound of the city-wide air raid siren ripped apart the midday tranquility without warning. Immediately afterward, screams even more chilling than the siren erupted from the apartment building below. "Help! Madmen! They're all madmen!!" "Don't bite me! Ah—!!" In the split-screen view of the vertical surveillance camera, the once peaceful community garden had instantly transformed into a scene of c*****e. The middle-aged women who usually danced in the square were now frantically devouring their neighbors, blood splattering onto the camera lens like a bursting crimson spider lily. In the distance, several festering sores and graying eyes were running at a twisted yet incredibly fast pace, pouncing on every living person who passed by. A new type of rabies virus had broken out. However, in stark contrast to the hellish screams outside the window, there was a deathly silence inside the first-floor safe house. In the dimly lit room, a young man, his face almost translucent with paleness, sat in a wheelchair, his long, thin fingers flying across the keyboard. "First lock, down." "Second lock, down." "..." "Twelfth lock, down." With his low, hoarse voice, the specially reinforced security door groaned, the twelve latches locking shut, shutting out the outside world. Lin Ye expressionlessly drew the specially made bulletproof blackout curtains, plunging the room into darkness. Only the eerie blue light from a few monitor screens illuminated his unchanging eyes. "Independent power supply system, activate." The deep hum of the generator filled the air—this was the apocalyptic fortress he had painstakingly built over three years. The wheelchair slowly turned, and Lin Ye's gaze swept across the room—a corner piled high with enough compressed biscuits, canned food, and bottled water to feed a hundred people for a year; on the other side were boxes and boxes of medicine—his life-sustaining drugs; and various security devices he had personally modified, a makeshift generator, a signal jammer… This was his world. A world of absolute safety, absolute isolation, and absolute solitude. As a former physics genius from a top-two university, Lin Ye had been confined to a wheelchair for three years due to neuromyelitis optica. In those three years, he had never stepped out of this room except to go to the hospital. Outsiders called him a cripple, a rat hiding in the gutter. Lin Ye's lips twitched into a cold, sarcastic smile. Now, the whole world had become a rat in the gutter, and he had become the sole king. On the surveillance footage, the lights in the hallway flickered. Screams, running sounds, and the pounding of doors rose and fell. "Resident 302 is dead." "Resident 501 is infected." "702..." Lin Ye calmly recorded the list of deaths in the building, as if watching a silent mime. His heartbeat was eerily steady, as if what was happening outside the window wasn't the apocalypse, but a trivial farce. For someone like him who should have died long ago, the apocalypse was just another way of living. Just as he was about to cut off the surveillance signal and continue studying the circuit diagram at hand, the door surveillance camera in the lower right corner of the screen suddenly moved. It was a woman covered in blood. She wore a torn business suit, tightly gripping a broken golf club, her chest heaving violently, her eyes wary and sharp, like a lone wolf on the verge of death, still baring its fangs. Behind her, three zombies were howling and lunging, less than five meters away. Lin Ye's finger hovered over the button to cut off the surveillance, but he hesitated to press it. He looked at the woman. Unlike the others who screamed and collapsed, she calmly observed her surroundings. Finally, her gaze pierced through the peephole, seemingly striking directly into Lin Ye's eyes behind the screen. The next second, the woman rushed to his door. "Knock, knock, knock." The knocking was rapid, yet terrifyingly restrained. A calm yet desperately panicked female voice came from outside the door, penetrating the heavy security door and clearly reaching Lin Ye's ears: "Hello, I'm a resident on the 32nd floor. I'm not infected. Please open the door." Lin Ye's fingers trembled slightly. This was the first time in three years that someone had knocked on this door. And the first time, in this deathly silent room, someone had pleaded with him for help.