This is apocalyptic

Chapter 182 181: Millions

Winter used to be terrible. People in the ruins didn’t like this season very much because it meant food shortage and endless cold. They needed to prepare for winter early, many months in advance.

But things got much better after the Zombie King appeared.

Things didn't get better from the beginning. In the first year, the Zombie King was stupid enough to eat vegetarian food and followed her into the mountains to pick chestnuts, dig wild vegetables and collect firewood. He was very hungry that year, so she could only scatter some millet on the snow when it snowed and catch some sparrows to feed the zombies some meat.

At that time, Lin Duoduo thought that her life would remain unchanged like this, just like everyone else living in the ruins, until the day she died.

But the following spring, the Zombie King left to find a shelter, and when he came back, he started to become different. His experiences along the way were only a few words in the black leather notebook, but the Zombie King had become a powerful hunter since then.

This is just an isolated case. Occasionally, when Lin Duoduo thinks back to the winter before the Zombie King appeared, she still feels palpitations.

After talking to the Zombie King about other scavengers, she glanced in the direction of the community. Those people living in the ruins were still the same as before, fearing winter, cutting back on clothing and dieting, and waiting for the arrival of spring.

Together with the zombies, they picked up some dead bones scattered around the community and gathered them together. Some were from old zombies and some were from animals. When the ground was not so frozen hard, they buried them.

A woman was picking up bones and putting a skull aside, which looked very scary to Bai Xiao.

"Shall we bury them all together?"

"They shouldn't mind." Bai Xiao said, "If no one picks them up, they will slowly turn into bone fragments among the dead grass, rot in the soil, and occasionally be dug out by those monsters and thrown everywhere."

The bones left behind by dead zombies are very brittle, probably because they are old zombies. They decay and age first before turning into dry bones and falling down.

The zombies in this situation have very brittle bones, and it takes them a long time to get up after squatting down.

They collected the dead bones and placed them under the mezzanine of the building where they would not be covered by snow.

There are still some sports equipment left here. Because it is not open-air, it is on the mezzanine floor and is relatively well preserved. There are horizontal bars, parallel bars, leg stretching bars, space walkers, and waist twisters.

Before the disaster, the old men and women in the community would probably gather here to stretch their legs while chatting about family matters and gossiping about other people's private affairs, but now they are covered with a layer of dust and have not been used for a long time.

Bai Xiao wanted to try it, but unfortunately, he had to curl his legs hard to hang himself up.

"It seems that it is not suitable for zombies to play."

He felt a little melancholy as he ran his hand over the old community facilities.

When civilization is lost, we realize what a prosperous and beautiful era we lived in before. But that era can no longer be found, and only these ruins are left.

This is for humans, not zombies.

Lin Duoduo stepped on the treadmill and swung her legs with a creaking sound. Just as she was about to say something, the treadmill suddenly fell down.

Bai Xiao grabbed her and lifted her up. The human was startled, but after she came to her senses, she started laughing while being lifted by the zombie.

"It's really flimsy," she said.

"It's too old. It used to be very useful." Bai Xiao kicked the cracked cement underneath. If someone had been living here all the time, it wouldn't have deteriorated so quickly. But without human activity, vigorous natural growth would destroy everything.

Lin Duoduo picked it up, and Bai Xiao asked, "Where are you going to throw it?"

"Move upstairs and see if it can be fixed." Lin Duoduo said.

"It can't be repaired. This needs to be driven into the concrete floor, and we don't have the tools."

"Oh, so that's how it is." She put it down with regret. This human was like a bandit, trying to move everything before the disaster into his home.

The habit of picking up scraps has continued for so many years, and it may be impossible to change it.

Before, Lin Duoduo had been hiding in the building. After the snow, she confirmed that it was safe on the snow, so she came down and wandered around, walking around with the zombies, picking up bones, or going into the garbage room to take a look.

In the past, people went to the city to scavenge for rubbish, and the feeling of living in the city is different now.

She counted the buildings. A two-bedroom building like this could accommodate about thirty households, which was not a lot.

Some of the houses in the distance have seven or eight households on each floor, and some have more than ten households. The buildings are more than thirty stories high, which means there are two to three hundred households living in one building. If there are two people in each household, that means more than five hundred people. With more than a dozen buildings in a community, there are at least five to six thousand people.

No wonder there are so many zombies.

"There used to be communities with a million people living in them. Are you scared?" said the Zombie King.

Lin Duoduo had no idea about the number of one million and scratched her head, but instinctively felt that it was a little scary.

"What do so many people eat?"

“Eat zombies.”

It is a very difficult task to explain the ecology before the disaster to humans and barbarians, so Bai Xiao just skipped it.

Anyway, Lin Duoduo had never seen it, never squeezed into a bus, and never took the subway, especially the subway during rush hour. She would be scared to death when she saw it.

There were more people in one carriage than she had ever seen in her life.

"They run out from the dark and may die soon. You will need to dig a big hole to bury them." Lin Duoduo pointed to the crowded zombies outside.

Bai Xiao also knew that they had survived until now because they had been hiding in the dark shopping malls and subways without moving. If they had been out in the open air, they would not have survived until this moment. Now that they were outside and covered by heavy snow, they would be wet when the snow melted, and then freeze at night. The already aging zombies might fall down in large numbers.

"take it easy."

He and Lin Duoduo squatted at the foot of the wall, looking at the zombies at the gate of the community. Next to them were the dried bones of zombies who had died in the community.

"They used to be people, walking through the streets of this city going to and from get off work every day," said Bai Xiao.

"Sounds good."

Lin Duoduo imagined groups of people, rather than zombies, wandering the streets, just like in the old photos.

They had never experienced the zombies at their most ferocious, and now they were just ghosts wandering around the city.

They are the last echoes from deep within the city.

After this snow, some zombies have fallen down, and some have been taken away by monsters. The Zombie King cannot protect them and can only bury them.

She went to the building opposite and experienced the satisfaction of scavenging. When she reached the seventh floor, she heard a banging sound from the house. Lin Duoduo thought about it and remembered that it was the neighbor from the building opposite, an old zombie trapped in the house, so she did not disturb it.

She picked up a lot of books from this building. In the past, when she was picking up rubbish on her tricycle, she couldn't put them all down, so she would only pick a few to take with her. Now that she lives opposite, it is much easier for her to move.

(End of this chapter)