absolutely hot

The group drove all the way north, and after a two-day journey, they arrived in Zion City, south of the new city.In the evening, they settled down in an abandoned youth hostel. Ah Xue stood on the balcony and looked at the city with rich cultural atmosphere in the past. The youth hostel they lived in was near the University City. The Archeology Department of Zion University had always been his ambition, but Unexpectedly, now I came to this dream school as a survivor of the last days.The buildings around the University City are quite old. The afterglow of the setting sun shines on the old brick walls and creepers all over the walls. There is no sound of people, no traffic, only the crazy growth of shrubs, the canopy of trees that block the sky, and the deep darkness under the sun. The long and slanted shadows seemed to be a relic of an ancient civilization buried in the flood of time, and they were here for archaeology.

The black-framed boy closed his eyes and immersed himself in the fragments of his dreams. The lively scene in "The School of Athens" popped up exaggeratedly in his mind, but the voices of Lei Zhe and Tu Nansha happened to be heard behind him:

"Hey slow down, the T-shirt is stuck on my chin!"

"Pull it hard—won't it—come out?!"

"You're too violent!" Tunan's buzzing voice finally became clear angrily.

"Your head is too big!"

"Char helps me undress and never gets stuck!"

"That doesn't mean you have a small head!"

Ah Xue sighed with a headache, and Erin came over at this moment, looked back at the noisy Lei Zhe and Tu Nan, smiled and handed half a piece of bread to the black-framed mirror boy.

The bread was still the food that Lan Aowen prepared for them before leaving. It was very unpalatable. Ah Xue took a bite and frowned: "The people of Stalingrad must have eaten this kind of wartime reserve food back then."

The girl was lying on the balcony, looking at a Byzantine dome in the distance: "You told me that your wish is to be admitted to the University of Zion."

"Well," Ah Xue nodded, "The Department of Archeology at Zion University is very good."

"The Department of Biology is also very good. My father is a professor at the Institute of Biology."

"Really?" The black-frame mirror boy's eyes sparkled immediately.

"Well, my father took me to play in the research institute when I was a child," Eileen said, holding her chin. "Later, he immigrated to the United States after my mother divorced. Before the virus broke out, he even sent me a letter." , that letter was inexplicably written, saying that he would come back to China to see me soon, and told my mother and I not to go abroad during that time.” She paused at this point, with a confused expression on her face, she turned her head and looked to her side Ah Xue, "I always feel that my father seems to have foreseen the global outbreak of the Obispo virus."

Ah Xue adjusted his glasses: "Maybe it's the intuition of a researcher."

Irene frowned and shook her head: "My father is not such a nagging person, he doesn't say that kind of thing with intuition. Actually, I have always wanted to visit Zion City after the outbreak of the virus. I always felt that he Come back early..."

"What are you talking about?" Lei Zhe's voice suddenly broke in. He walked to the balcony and looked at the two of them warily. "We are leaving tomorrow morning. Don't make any trouble at this time."

Irene laughed haha: "No, I also want to go to the new city soon."

Ah Xue looked at the girl's smiling face. It has been five years. Even if Erin's father is still alive, he will definitely not stay in the research institute. What's more, he is probably no longer alive, but they are not far away from the university city now. At a distance of one kilometer, Irene wanted to take a look. He thought he could understand this feeling.

.

After nightfall, Lei Zhe went downstairs with a flashlight. This youth hostel only had three floors. When they came in, they checked the hotel up and down. Except for a wandering zombie brother wandering in the kitchen, this place is safe.

After Lei Zhe went downstairs, he checked the door and windows, and after confirming that they were all locked, he went upstairs again. Instead of going back to the bedroom on the second floor, he went directly to the top floor.

The roof is an old-fashioned sloping roof, and as expected from the window, I saw a sniper in black sitting on the roof alone holding a gun, and the big round moon set off the back, cold and cool, no wonder even Tunan loves men God man shouted godly.Lei Zhe imagined how uncomfortable Su Ze would feel if he didn't find a commanding height when he settled down anywhere. When he saw a roof, he couldn't help climbing up, and then sat down obediently. The more he thought about it, the more he couldn't help but laugh.

He raised his hand to knock on the window, but suddenly his hand stopped. The city was extremely quiet under the night, and it seemed to be one with the lonely back of the sniper. Because it was too quiet, he suddenly heard an ethereal singing from downstairs.

Su Ze on the roof seemed to have heard it too, and looked back at him. He also looked back downstairs wonderingly, pricked up his ears and listened. The singing sounded with an accompaniment, which seemed to be French, quiet and pleasant. It was only when it sounded with limited clarity and occasional noises that he remembered:

"It's a radio. Ah Xue found it at the front desk." He was a little confused as he said that, which radio station still insists on broadcasting in the last days, and is still interested in playing music, which is too conscientious in the industry.

The two seemed to have a good understanding, and neither of them spoke until the end of the song.The female singer's chanting was so lingering that it made people feel a little reluctant to listen. Lei Zhe thought endlessly, in this chaotic last days, they were like listening to Lily Marlene's soldiers in the trenches. In hopeless days, I fantasize about the tenderness that has passed away and will never come again.

It's a really good song, one that makes one dwell on the past without adding to the sadness.After the singing subsided, he heard Su Ze ask, "Is there anything you can do for me?"

Lei Zhe came back to his senses, turned the flashlight in his hand, and said with a smile, "You were on duty for the past two days. I'll be on guard tonight. Go and sleep."

Staying up late for two consecutive days and not having a good rest during the day, Su Ze was indeed a little sleepy. He nodded and slipped in through the window, and went downstairs. On the radio, Tunan was lying next to him, and the two of them seemed to have tuned several channels one after another, but they didn't hear any sound. Tunan asked in a low voice, "Try AM?"

The young man in black didn't disturb them, and quietly entered the room to rest, when the music started again, it was still the same song, he stopped at the door in a daze and turned his head.

Only then did Ah Xue notice Su Ze, and hurriedly turned down the volume: "Did it disturb you?"

Su Ze was stunned for a while, shook his head, walked into the room and closed the door gently, and sat by the bed alone.As soon as the whole person calmed down, the singing became more provocative, as if aware that he had let go of his guard, the low-pitched singing quietly slipped in from behind the door, like strands of curly hair falling when someone lowered his head and kissed him .

Behind the door came Tunan's doubtful voice:

"Who made the radio station, why did this song play over and over again..."

Su Ze lay on the bed, looking up at the ceiling, and finally fell into a deep sleep when the song was played for the third time.

.

Lei Zhe was sitting alone on the steps by the window, Yue Shan Zhenli's inscription knife was lying quietly beside him, he had a fear of heights, it was impossible for him to sit on the roof as coolly and domineeringly as Su Ze.The singing downstairs was still going on, playing the same song tirelessly over and over again. He thought that maybe the person who runs the private radio station had belched when he was suddenly attacked by zombies while playing the song, otherwise he wouldn't have been alone from the beginning to the end. There is no sound, and it is impossible to just play this song over and over again, unless he likes this song like hell, he smiled, what a nasty paranoid that must be.

Amidst the repeated singing, he took out the wallet on his chest, opened it, held it up towards the moonlight, and said to the handsome and gloomy black-haired youth in the photo:

"We're going to a new town, do you have any advice for me?"

"I heard that Lou Zhan is not there, and Lan Aowen also looks down on that place, so it should be quite safe."

"After I take them there, I will go to Lou Zhan to settle the score. I have single-handedly killed many of his subordinates this year."

"You will definitely not allow me to go to Lou Zhan, but there is no way, I have to go, as long as I think of breathing the air under the same sky with him, I will feel so uncomfortable that I will almost suffocate." He held up the photo like this to Lying back on the stairs, his gaze fell for a long time, then he laughed again, shaking his wallet, "Come out and bite me~"

The black-haired young man on the Humvee stared at him as if through time and space.

At that time, if I hadn't pulled you into the gang...

Lei Zhe reached out to touch the samurai sword beside him, and he seemed to be able to feel the cold breath of the blade through the scabbard, just like the man who was always unsmiling and walked alone with a cold aura.

It's all Yueshan Zhenli's fault, otherwise you will not be shaken...

.

At midnight, Eileen came out of the room lightly. Everyone else went to bed early. She quickly found a gun and packed some ammunition into her backpack. She was still a little nervous when she turned out of the aisle, but when she looked up, Lei Zhe, who volunteered to keep watch at night, was lying on the stairs, his face covered with a wallet, and he had already fallen asleep.

She went downstairs without any hindrance, but she was shocked as soon as she reached the door——

Ah Xue stood by the door with a serious face, obviously waiting for her.

The girl paused, tongue-tied.

The black-framed mirror boy lifted the backpack at his feet and pushed open the door: "Let's go, I'll go with you."

Erin blinked her eyes in astonishment: "Axue..."

Ah Xue pushed the door for the girl, turned back and said, "Just to accompany you to take a look, so that you can give up your mind."

.

Originally, Ah Xue accompanied her to Zion University with the idea of ​​making Erin give up, thinking that seeing corpses and wandering zombies all over the ground would make the girl go astray, but after arriving at the Institute of Biology of Zion University, things turned out to be different. become strange.

Ah Xue adjusted his glasses for the third time, and he was sure that what he saw was indeed a high-voltage power grid, which surrounded the entire research institute.He and Irene looked at each other in blank dismay. Why is the research site of the university so highly guarded?No matter how you look at it, it is extraordinary.

Of course, the high-voltage power grid has long been out of power, and the steel wire mesh has broken and collapsed in many places. He and Irene entered the research institute without any effort.

The further they went into the research institute, the weirder things became. Not only did they find corpses in special police uniforms, discarded firearms, and bullet casings all over the floor, what was even more unbelievable was that there were traces of explosions inside the research institute.

There were scorched black marks left by the shock wave on the walls and ceiling. After so many years, the jet-like dust on the floor also remained the same. They followed these clues to find the past. They didn't meet half of the zombies, but they found that it was falling all over the ground. Ah Xue held up the flashlight and shone along the wreckage of paper on the ground. The white light of the flashlight was suddenly cut off somewhere, as if swallowed by darkness. The two looked at each other and approached carefully.

Crack, the sound of a few pebbles falling was heard in the darkness, the boy in the black-framed mirror and the girl with short hair held their breaths, and the two cautiously poked their heads out at the same time.

Under their feet was a huge pothole with a diameter of not less than ten meters. The floor was blown away by the explosion, exposing the underground space. The flashlight beam swept over, and only saw scattered cabinets and the remains of burned documents. Come on, this seems to be a place to store archival data.

Before entering the research institute, Ah Xue heard from Eileen that the core areas of the research institute are all underground, and the above-ground part has only two floors. Now it seems that the underground of the research institute is not only where the core area is located, I am afraid there are some secrets hidden in it , What kind of secret needs to be kept by special police with live ammunition and a power grid as high as [-] volts, and a mere archive room needs to be blown up?He couldn't figure it out, so he couldn't help hesitating. Seeing Erin's expression, he couldn't wait to go down and find out, but he didn't know if this secret was worth their risk.

But in the end they were defeated by Irene's eager eyes and their eager curiosity. The two went down the safety stairs to the basement floor. In the stairwell of the basement floor was a map of the underground part of the research institute. From the picture, , the entire research institute has seven basement floors, which are much larger than the ground floor. Of course, the further you go down, the higher the authority you need. Now that all the electronic locks have failed, it is estimated that they will not be able to enter these authority areas. I found out, but there is no restriction on the archives room, the door has long since disappeared, and the wall has been blown open with a big hole.

They entered the archive room through the gap, and the explosion made the archive room look like it had suffered a catastrophe, and the place where the flashlight reached was almost completely dark.

There was a dead silence in the archive room, and it didn’t look like there were any zombies. The two of them buried their heads in search of useful clues. Ah Xue searched through the ruins all over the floor with a flashlight, but only found a few fragments of documents. It felt a bit like an archaeological dig, but unfortunately all he found were leftovers, and what was recorded on it was either the management log of the research institute or research reports that people could not understand.

He shook his head and dropped the useless debris and stood up. He was about to greet Irene when he turned around, but he saw the girl squatting in front of a corpse, motionless.

"Irene?" He called out, but there was no response from the other party, so he said in his heart that he couldn't, so he hurried over.

The corpse was dressed in a white coat, a typical researcher's attire, but the corpse had long since lost its human form, leaving only yellow bones.Ah Xue looked at the bones, then at Irene, and when he entered without knowing it, he heard Irene look up and say, "It's father." The girl raised her hand, and there was a simple platinum ring on the palm, "the abbreviation inside It's my parents' names."

Ah Xue was dumbfounded for a while, thinking that Aileen would cry when she found her, but the girl's expression was more sense of loss than sadness.That's right, after all, it's been five years, and there are very few survivors on the mainland, so thank God for finding the bodies of their family members.

Irene put the ring back on the phalanx of the corpse, and stood up: "I think there must be important information in that letter from my father, but I haven't had time to tell it to me." While speaking, her eyes suddenly turned to somewhere, "That's What?"

A Xue followed and looked back, two beams of flashlights converged, illuminating a safe lying on the ground.

The door of the safe was open, and there seemed to be only a few... photographs in the locker?

The two of them were puzzled and were about to step forward to check, when suddenly there was a sound of kicking and tapping above their heads.

Ah Xue's back went numb. The sound was too weird. Although it didn't sound like a zombie, it didn't sound like a small animal like a mouse. It sounded more like some kind of huge but flexible beast.

The voice stopped for a while and then sounded again. The two nervously held up their flashlights to search around. Irene suddenly gasped: "What is that?! Did you see it?!"

A Xue looked in the direction of Irene's eyes, only saw the hole in the ceiling that was pierced by the explosion, and saw nothing, which made people more nervous: "What did you see..."

The girl's voice was so tight that it was almost knotted: "I didn't see it clearly, but I saw a shadow flashing past..."

Ah Xue swallowed his saliva, and the two leaned back to each other, carefully walking around with the flashlight. ...

wrong!The pupils of the black-framed boy suddenly tightened. It wasn't the sound of sweat, but the cold, hollow, viscous ticking sound, which was clearly...

He raised his trembling wrist one by one, and the light beam moved towards the ceiling. The white light definitely saw something, and the thing made a "hiss—" sound like a poisonous snake spit out a letter, and a long tail hung down. Flicking down, what followed in the light was the limbs hanging upside down from the ceiling, as if the skin had been stripped off the whole body, leaving only red and white intertwined muscle fibers, a monster that was neither human nor ghost.

It's just that what dripped down wasn't blood, but sticky saliva when the monster opened its mouth and dropped its wet tongue...

The boy was so frightened that he threw away the flashlight and screamed!

The scream startled the monster, and the thick and long lizard tail rolled suddenly. The monster turned its body upside down and landed in a prostrate posture. Its four feet landed firmly on the ground. On the ground, there was a dull sound.

This scene was so horrifying that neither of them could move in horror. They could only watch the monster open its bloody mouth, and at the same time it stretched out its long scarlet tongue, its body bowed back and its four legs were separated. rushed towards them with a suddenness--

It was too late and then soon, Ah Xue only felt that the wind thrown by the lizard's long tail was thrown on his face, and at this moment he only heard a "bang" gunshot!

The bullet carried a huge kinetic energy and shot the lizard-like monster forward. Ah Xue was very close, and he could see clearly that the bullet did not pass through the monster's body, but shot out from the monster's lower abdomen. A piece of blood and flesh, it seems that a small part of the tissue exploded directly, and the internal injury must have been even worse.

But the monster didn't fall down immediately after being so seriously injured, and still had the strength to move around. Fortunately, another bullet was fired right after it. It sprayed out from the gaping mouth.

The alien let out a hoarse roar, the huge lizard tail waved for the last time, and slapped the ground heavily, and a deep dent was made on the aluminum alloy file rack. After the dust settled, the monster finally stopped moving. Thick and smelly blood poured out from under it in large quantities.

Ah Xue grabbed Irene's hand, still in shock, when he heard a young and frivolous male voice above him saying loudly:

"How about it, I asked you to bring armor-piercing bullets, right? Otherwise, with your marksmanship, you might not be able to hit it with ten bullets!"

"But I can knock you down with one bullet," said another voice.

"OK, OK," the frivolous male voice immediately learned, "You don't need to remind me, I will keep quiet right away!"

Ah Xue looked up in the direction of the sound, squinting his eyes to try his best to distinguish. He and Irene lost (scared) the flashlight when they were attacked by monsters just now. With the weak light, they could barely make out the hole in the ceiling. There are two men standing above, one of them is holding a large sniper in both hands, it looks like an anti-material firearm like Barrett, the size and shape are not ordinary rifles, the other man has no weapon in his hand, But wearing - a pair of handcuffs?

Ah Xue blinked in astonishment, thinking he had misread.

The man in handcuffs was inserting both hands into the clothes of the man with the gun, and kept whispering, "Give me a knife or something... Isn't it ugly that I have two empty hands..."

"Aren't there handcuffs? How do you call it empty?"

"I also think that a handsome man like me can kill zombies better than handcuffs, but the point is that people don't believe it... What's wrong with you giving me a knife? Can I use a knife to confront your Barrett?"

Ah Xue blinked again in astonishment, it turned out that he was not mistaken.