In the evening, members similar to neighborhood committee workers went door-to-door delivering some mineral water and bread. When asked when the vaccination could be administered, the response was that it would be soon.
Due to the successive outbreaks of the epidemic in various places, the number of clicks on the online serialized novel plummeted from several hundred to single digits. Even for the latest chapter, the click count remained zero for several hours after it was published. Guo Xiaobei lost interest in updating. After all, during this period, he guessed that no one would urge him to update his novel.
Two more days passed. Accompanied by the increasingly scarce sound of ambulance sirens downstairs and the occasional cries of grief in the stairwell, Guo Xiaobei felt that something was wrong. If the epidemic had been brought under control, the water supply should have been restored. However, in fact, the tap water had been completely cut off not long after he saw the news. Now, only the national TV channel could be watched on TV, which reported on the current situation. The Internet was completely inaccessible. Another day later, even the electricity was gone.
Guo Xiaobei was holed up at home. In the pitch-dark night, he could only see a few flickering candlelights from the opposite building. The candles were delivered together with food and water by people wearing protective suits. However, there were only a few of them. From time to time, ear-piercing howls came from the dilapidated stairwell, like the desperate screams of people before death.
Guo Xiaobei was very scared. He took out a candle and lit it. This was the last one. No one had come to deliver supplies since the day before yesterday. In a state of extreme depression and unease, Guo Xiaobei crawled back to bed powerlessly and continued to study his system. After all, for now, it seemed to be the only thing he could rely on.
The system emitted a faint blue light in the darkness, which looked quite similar to an LCD screen. Guo Xiaobei idly looked at the empty task list and sighed silently at the mall where there were thousands of items but he couldn't afford any of them.
Since the day before yesterday, no one had come to deliver water or bread. The last bottle of water from the system was what Guo Xiaobei was currently drinking. If this continued, with no water and no food, he really didn't know what to do. Moreover, the howls coming from outside made him feel that he couldn't wait any longer. Although he had a security door, no one could predict what would happen next. With no source of information, he had wanted to go out a few days ago but was persuaded back by the staff standing at the entrance of the stairwell. Now that no one had delivered supplies for several days, there probably weren't any guards left. He didn't know how serious the situation outside had become.
Guo Xiaobei summoned the system again, ready to figure out what could be useful. The item bag was empty, and he was holding the last half bottle of water in his hand. All the food at home had been eaten up, and even the bread sent by the system had been consumed completely, leaving no crumbs, the day before. In the equipment slot, it was still the same set of clothes he was wearing. Guo Xiaobei tried on several different outfits, but only the clothes on the three-dimensional avatar changed, while the data remained unchanged, still showing "Upper body defense: 0, Lower body defense: 0." Sure enough, these were all ordinary things.
After closing the equipment slot, Guo Xiaobei entered the skill slot. Except for a bright red "0" at the top, there were rows of iron-gray boxes below, each with a lock symbol in the middle. It seemed that a special method was needed to unlock them. The task and pet slots were also all gray. The only thing visible was the character attribute column, where various attributes remained unchanged. However, he didn't understand what those numbers meant, and without reference data, he didn't know whether they were high or low.
It seemed that for now, only the mall was useful, but the high cost...
Guo Xiaobei sighed and prepared to close the system and pack some things by the last candlelight. He couldn't wait any longer; waiting was tantamount to waiting for death.
Ding. The Zombie System is upgrading.
What? Guo Xiaobei was confused for a moment and followed the rapidly updating progress bar at the bottom.
Next to the faint green progress bar was a line of iron-gray text. If you didn't look carefully, you wouldn't notice that it actually read "Zombie System" in big letters.
The Zombie System... Wasn't it a system for eliminating zombies?
Ding. The system upgrade is complete. The system has added a map. The host zombie can query humans and other zombies within a hundred meters. Aberrants are marked with a red alert, humans with a green alert, and zombies with a blue alert...
Wait... What was a host zombie? Why did not only zombies have alerts, but humans and aberrants also had alerts? Guo Xiaobei trembled as he silently thought about opening the system introduction.
At the bottom, the iron-gray "Zombie System" popped up a prompt box: This system automatically selects a zombie as the host to help the host upgrade... For other functions, please explore on your own, host.
After closing the system introduction, Guo Xiaobei almost fainted. So he was no longer considered a human? He was really a zombie now! Guo Xiaobei let out a howl and rushed into the bathroom. The neighbors in the adjacent households couldn't help but shudder: That terrifying sound came again.
Guo Xiaobei summoned the map system. Since this was the only system that could be kept in view all the time, for safety reasons, he placed the minimized map in the upper left corner. When needed, he just needed to think silently to enlarge it. When not needed, the map was only the size of a palm, and he could clearly see the various colored alert points on it.
Ever since the system was summoned, Guo Xiaobei began to pay attention to the surrounding movements. At this time, he noticed that every time he heard a scream, there was always a group of blue dots surrounding a few green dots. The original green dots on the map were decreasing rapidly, while the relative number of blue dots was slowly increasing.
The green dots represented humans, and the blue dots represented zombies. The fact that the reduced number of humans didn't all turn into zombies made Guo Xiaobei shiver.
There were so many zombies here, but the government didn't send anyone to suppress them. This indicated that the situation in various places had become very serious. This place was no longer significant, or perhaps they simply couldn't take care of it. In short, he couldn't stay here any longer. He had to leave as soon as possible. Otherwise, even if he was a zombie, other zombies might not be able to distinguish him. He didn't want to die; he wanted to live. He had no other choice.
Guo Xiaobei pulled back the curtain and looked outside. Due to the power outage, everything around was pitch-dark. There were not many families like his that still had a lit candle, or rather, there weren't many living people left in this community. From outside the security door came the sound of nails scratching the door. Guo Xiaobei swallowed hard with difficulty and began to pack his things.
There wasn't much he could pack at home. Besides a few sets of clothes he often wore and some miscellaneous small items, he found a box and put all these things into it. He had tried it. If he put things in one by one, the space in the system would be filled up quickly. However, if he put the things into the box first and then put the box into the system package, it was considered as one item. This could be regarded as a system bug.
On the bedside table, there was a photo frame with a family portrait taken ten years ago inside. Guo Xiaobei gently stroked the photo frame. The appearances of his parents in the photo remained unchanged, but they were gone forever. In a way, this was good. In the current world, he didn't know what the outside situation was like, and he himself had become a zombie. He couldn't stay in this once - dear home...
Guo Xiaobei sniffled, suppressed his emotions, and placed the photo frame at the bottom of the box. Then he put the whole box into the system package.