This is apocalyptic

Chapter 62: Thorns

The howling cold wind outside made the fireplace in the house seem a little warmer.

The chestnuts and dried meat that were roasting by the stove were slowly eaten up, leaving only the flickering flames.

Bai Xiao looked at the map and became distracted. He even wondered if there was an Umbrella Corporation across the sea on another distant continent.

"Have you ever seen an animal with a head split into eight pieces and teeth inside?" he asked Lin Duoduo.

Lin Duoduo shook her head: "No."

Bai Xiao shrugged. Actually, there is a difference. The zombies in Resident Evil are alive and kicking and have not decayed after many years.

Lin Duoduo brought a stool over, took off her shoes and put her feet on it. Even though there was a fire in the house, her feet were still cold.

"It stinks." said Bai Xiao.

"How is that possible?" Lin Duoduo bent her toes and sniffed, "No smell."

She looked up and stared at Bai Xiao, but Bai Xiao continued to roast by the fire without changing his expression.

Lin Duoduo continued to stare at him, especially his throat.

"I won't laugh at you even if you swallow your saliva. You don't have to hold it in. After all, you are a zombie." Lin Duoduo stared at him for a while and then looked away.

Bai Xiao took the opportunity to swallow, "How is that possible!"

But the swallowing sound was a bit loud. Lin Duoduo was roasting by the fire while Bai Xiao remained silent, feeling a bit awkward for a moment.

"Don't drool at other people when you go out. It's easy to be found out." Lin Duoduo said.

"If the eyes are not exposed, others will not associate it with zombies." Bai Xiao said.

Lin Duoduo thought for a while, rolled up her sleeves to reveal an old scar on her forearm, and said, "It's a pity you didn't come earlier. I accidentally got hurt before, and a big scar got rubbed off here. I can give it to you to try."

Bai Xiao was deeply moved. Lin Duoduo really treated him as her own corpse.

Lin Duoduo pulled back her sleeves and smoothed them out, "You should warm your feet up too. It's very uncomfortable to have cold feet in winter."

"I don't get cold that easily."

"is it?"

Lin Duoduo didn’t know if it was because zombies wouldn’t have cold feet, but she felt cold very easily, and had been like this since she was a child. When she was a child, her feet were cold, and her mother would fill a bag with hot water and place it at the head of the bed at night. Then her feet would be warm through the quilt and she would sleep comfortably.

She poured two cups of hot water, held them in her hands and looked out the window. It was still snowing outside.

"Is it cold when you sleep there at night? If the window is leaking, cover it with something."

As she spoke, she sat back down and continued to warm herself by the fire.

Bai Xiao said: "Fortunately, I found a piece of wood to block it."

Lin Duoduo was wearing a dark green coat. She curled up in a chair, exposing her feet and warming them by the fire.

It's easy to get lazy in front of the fire. Lin Duoduo wrapped herself in her coat and felt a little sleepy, but she forced herself to stay awake.

"If you're sleepy, take a rest. I'll go for a walk." Bai Xiao stood up and said.

"It's so windy outside and snowing. Where are you going in this cold winter?"

Lin Duoduo straightened her spirits, but soon realized that the zombies saw that she was sleepy. Although they were not very vigilant now, in such an unguarded environment...

"It's easy to wake up at night when you sleep now, listening to the whistling sound of the wind late at night, you should know that." Lin Duoduo no longer curled up in the chair, sat up straight, warmed herself by the fire, and picked up a book from the side.

Bai Xiao lowered his head to see what the novel was, and found that it was a Bible.

He paused for a few seconds before asking strangely, "Do you still believe in religion?" Lin Duoduo was puzzled: "What religion?"

Bai Xiao said: "This book..."

Lin Duoduo flipped her hand, revealing the cover, and said, "I found this when I was scavenging. The packaging is pretty nice."

Bai Xiao nodded. Indeed, the cover of this book was much more refined than the novel and very beautiful.

"In pain you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will bring forth thorns and thistles for you. You will eat the herbs of the field, and by the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread until you return to the ground, for from it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust you will return." Lin Duoduo read a passage, "This person did something wrong and was cursed, that's what happened to him."

She paused for a moment and said:

“Did we do anything wrong too?”

Bai Xiao warmed his hands and said nothing. Someone did something wrong, which led to this disaster.

Lin Duoduo is just a victim.

Most people after the disaster are innocent. They are just ordinary people who should have an ordinary life instead of living in a world full of zombies and infections.

A thin layer of snow covered the ground. Uncle Cai and Friday, who were wandering in the village, were also covered in white. They dragged their withered bodies and tirelessly knocked on the empty doors, attracted by the sound of the wind blowing the dilapidated windows.

In the afternoon, Lin Duoduo put down the Bible in her hand and went to find a torn quilt. She used the quilt to cover her own windows and doors to block the air leaking through the door, making the room much warmer.

She used needle and thread to modify the remaining piece and gave it to Bai Xiao. She knew that Bai Xiao slept in a small room, so she just needed to block the windows.

"If it snows again, I'll be twenty-one years old." Lin Duoduo sewed the window curtains and looked at the snowflakes outside being blown all over the place by the wind.

"Next time?" Bai Xiao didn't know how she calculated it.

"The second time it snows every year is during the Chinese New Year." Lin Duoduo said, "Do you know what Chinese New Year is? In the past, people would kill pigs and eat meat during the Chinese New Year..."

"I know." Bai Xiao didn't expect that this human would teach him what Chinese New Year means.

"Why is it snowing the second time?" he asked.

"I don't know. Aunt Qian lived this way, and so did my parents."

"What if there's no snow in the winter?"

"Then I missed it." Lin Duoduo said, "Anyway, now I just want to know that another year has passed and I have grown another year older."

She had heard about the Chinese New Year from the older generation, so she didn't have any special feelings about it. She heard that it used to be a very important festival. On the day of the Chinese New Year, people would be happy, wear new clothes, and walk around the streets like zombies.

She had the impression that when she was a child, when she heard the older generation mention this word, they always felt a little nostalgic, as if it was an important and happy moment before the disaster, but she couldn't imagine how happy it was.

"Actually, the birthday is more accurate when you're one year older, but I just don't know the exact time." Bai Xiao said.

"It was also the second snow." Lin Duoduo said.

No one knows when the second snow will come. It is random and fixed.

She poured two more cups of hot water, shook the kettle, filled it up, and put it on the stove.

At night, the fire went out and Bai Xiao went back to sleep.

The hut was not big and not that spacious, so the heat dissipated more slowly. He lay on the bed, listening to the biting wind outside.

After becoming a zombie, he had his first dream. He dreamed that Lin Duoduo graduated from university and became a doctor with her hands in her white coat. Aunt Qian held her grandson and strolled in the park in a stroller.

The scene changed, and I dreamed that God was high above and announced, "You will work hard all your life to eat from the ground..."

When I woke up, the cold wind was still howling outside the window, and there was only cold darkness before my eyes.

(End of this chapter)