Chapter 38 Discovering the Enemy's Trail
The journey back to the fortress from the industrial park was even more silent than the way there, yet strangely more peaceful. The monotonous growl of the engine, the rumble of the wheels over the broken pavement, and the uniform, dilapidated scenery rushing past the window all became background noise.
Inside the carriage, the stench of blood and gunpowder had been purified by the high-efficiency filtration system, replaced by a silent, tacit understanding between the two, born from the brink of death, and a deeper, unspoken intimacy.
Su Ran leaned back in the passenger seat, unconsciously stroking the pistol that had just been fired, which Wen Yu had now wiped clean and put back in its holster on his leg.
The cool metallic touch on his fingertips reminded him of the terrifying few seconds that had just passed. But strangely, the initial shock and nausea had mostly faded, leaving behind a peculiar calm, and a hint of... a hidden sense of growth that even he himself didn't fully understand.
He fired, in a life-or-death moment, to protect Brother Yu, and to protect himself. He did it.
He quietly turned his head to look at Wen Yu, who was focused on driving. In the dim light flowing from the window, the man's profile was clearly defined, with a taut jawline, a high nose bridge, and his goggles pushed up to his forehead, revealing a pair of deep, calm eyes that were now staring unblinkingly at the "road" ahead.
His lips seemed more tightly pursed than usual, but his overall demeanor exuded a calm and composed air, as if everything had settled down.
Su Ran noticed that Wen Yu had a fresh, small abrasion on the back of his left hand, which was gripping the steering wheel. It was probably left when he rolled around in the ruins to avoid danger.
"Brother Yu," Su Ran said softly, breaking the silence, "you injured the back of your hand."
Wen Yu seemed to only then notice, glancing at it casually: "It's just a minor scratch, nothing serious."
"I'll disinfect and bandage it for you when we get back," Su Ran said casually, then paused, her voice softening, "Will there be more and more... zombies in the future?"
"Highly likely." Wen Yu didn't shy away from the question, his voice steady. "The signs of the virus spreading are quite obvious. The one we encountered today was still relatively 'primary,' moving slowly, and its senses probably relied mainly on hearing and some kind of instinctive tendency towards living things. But if the mutation intensifies..." He didn't finish his sentence, but his meaning was clear.
Su Ran paused for a moment, then asked, "Can our fortress defenses hold them off? I mean, if there are a lot of them."
"Conventional walls and traps are effective against slow-moving individuals. But we need to be wary of them potentially piling up or being guided by more advanced variants. Air filtration and sealing systems are key to prevent airborne or contact transmission." Wen Yu analyzed as he skillfully turned the steering wheel, avoiding a fallen tree in the middle of the road. "Back at the gate, we need to strengthen the airtightness checks at the entrance and add more trigger alarms and barriers around the perimeter of the walls. In addition, our standards for going out must be raised; we must be equipped with full protective gear, and there must be a strict disinfection procedure upon our return."
His thinking was clear, and his plans were meticulous, as if the battle he had just experienced was merely a data update that needed to be considered. This absolute calmness and sense of control strangely soothed the lingering anxiety Su Ran had about the unknown virus. With Brother Yu around, they could always find a way.
"Okay, I'll do whatever you say." Su Ran nodded, relaxed, and turned her gaze back to the window.
The setting sun painted the sky a dark red, leaving only black silhouettes of distant mountains. The scenery was desolate, but because of the person beside me, this perilous journey home didn't seem so unbearable.
To avoid other threats that might be drawn to the fighting, Wen Yu chose a more circuitous but also relatively concealed evacuation route. This route would bypass a sparsely populated area on the outskirts of the city before the apocalypse, where there were once some small factories and scattered villages.
Just as they passed a half-collapsed gas station and were about to turn onto a barely discernible old county road, Wen Yu's gaze inadvertently swept over a low-lying, fire-damaged building ruin to his right. There seemed to be faint flames flickering there, and figures huddled among the rubble.
He instinctively slowed down, silently gliding the vehicle into a thicket of wild bushes before turning off the engine. Then, he took out his high-powered monoculars, adjusted the focus, and aimed them at the disturbing ruins.
Su Ran immediately became alert and lowered her voice: "Are there any survivors?"
"Hmm. A small outpost, about a dozen people." Wen Yu's voice was calm as he observed through binoculars. "They're in very poor condition. They're sharing something, it looks like they're cooking a pot of unidentifiable paste."
His camera moved slowly, panning across faces numb, dirty, and emaciated in the firelight. Suddenly, he stopped. The camera focused on two figures huddled together in a corner, fighting over the last scraps in a broken bowl.
Even through the filth and sickly emaciation, even with their faces distorted by hunger and suffering, Wen Yu recognized them in an instant.
It was Wen Lei. And his mother, Wang Xiujuan.
It was even more tragic than when he last saw it through the drone. Wen Lei was so thin he was almost unrecognizable, his eyes were deeply sunken, his gaze was cloudy and crazed, and he stared intently at the little food scraps in his hand. He was completely unresponsive to his mother, who was coughing incessantly and on the verge of death beside him. He even roughly shoved her when she trembled from coughing and almost knocked over the bowl.
Wang Xiujuan, like a skeleton draped in rags, curled up on the ground, coughing hysterically. Each breath seemed to drain all her strength, and her sallow face was ashen with the look of impending death. Their clothes were tattered and filthy, and they shivered in the chill of late autumn.
Wen Yu's breath caught in his throat almost imperceptibly for half a second. The knuckles of his fingers, gripping the binoculars, turned slightly white. But that was all.
His face was expressionless, his eyes deep as an ancient well, reflecting the cruel and humble scene of survival seen through the telescope. There was no churning hatred, no sense of vengeance, not even much pity, only a cold, almost indifferent confirmation.
See, this is how it ends.
His blood relatives, before the apocalypse, squeezed every last drop of value out of him; after the apocalypse, they resented each other for a meager meal, struggling in mud and disease, slowly rotting away, heading towards the end he had long foreseen. Just as he had planned.
He had no interest in even checking if Lu Jin was nearby, or if he was already dead in some stinking ditch. Those names, those faces, those betrayals from the past life and the scheming of this life, all became blurred background noise in the telescope's lens, failing to stir the slightest ripple in his heart.
The hatred had long since sunk to the bottom, frozen solid. Their tragic state only proved that his choice was correct, that karma is a cycle—even though he himself had orchestrated it.
He calmly moved the binoculars away, as if he were only seeing two insignificant, soon-to-wither weeds by the roadside.
"What's wrong, Brother Yu?" Su Ran keenly sensed the extremely subtle change in Wen Yu's aura in that instant. Although his back was to Su Ran, Su Ran still felt it.
"It's nothing." Wen Yu put down the binoculars, restarted the car, and said in a calm voice, "I saw a few familiar faces. But they're all gone now."
The vehicle started again, slowly driving out of the shadows of the bushes, leaving the ruins, which flickered with a faint, desperate light, and the struggling figures within them, far behind, disappearing into the deepening twilight.
The latter half of the return journey was unusually quiet in the carriage. Wen Yu focused on driving, but Su Ran could sense that he seemed to be thinking about something, enveloped in an aura of melancholy that was more unapproachable than usual. It wasn't anger or sadness, but rather a kind of... detached, icy coldness reminiscent of memories.
Su Ran obediently didn't disturb him, silently checking his equipment and organizing the records of this trip. Occasionally, he would look out the car window at the seemingly endless darkness rushing past. He had doubts and vague guesses in his heart, but he chose to wait. Waiting for Brother Yu to speak.
When the familiar, sturdy outline of the fortress finally emerged from the shadows of the mountains ahead, and when the hidden tunnel entrance silently slid open after the signal was detected, instantly enveloping them in warm light and clean, cool air, Su Ran finally breathed a sigh of relief. They were home.
Following the pre-arranged procedure, they parked their vehicles in a dedicated disinfection and isolation cabin, thoroughly disinfected themselves and their equipment, changed into clean clothes, and only after confirming that they had not carried any external contaminants did they actually step into the living area inside the fortress.
It was late at night, but neither of them felt sleepy.
Su Ran went to the kitchen to brew a pot of calming chamomile tea and sliced a small plate of fresh, crisp cucumber strips from the sunroom. When he carried the tea tray into the living room, Wen Yu was standing in front of the huge panoramic window that was currently displaying a tranquil starry sky. His back was straight, yet it exuded a rare sense of loneliness.
Su Ran placed the tea tray on the small table, poured two cups of tea, then walked to Wen Yu's side and gently handed him one of the cups.
"Brother Yu," he said softly, without asking "What's wrong?" or mentioning what happened on the way, but simply saying, "Have some hot tea to warm yourself up."
Wen Yu turned around and took the teacup. The warm porcelain cup dispelled the last bit of night chill from his fingertips. He looked down at the clear, golden liquid in the cup, and at Su Ran's clear eyes across from him, eyes filled with pure concern and without any impurities.
These eyes were so different from the murky, numb, greedy, or desperate eyes he had just seen through the telescope.
The cold, hard shell in my heart, which had automatically solidified upon seeing an "old friend," quietly cracked under the soothing gaze and aroma of tea.
He walked over to the sofa and sat down. Su Ran obediently sat down next to him, not too close, but at a supportive distance.
Wen Yu silently sipped his tea, the delicate, slightly sweet flavor melting in his mouth. He put down the cup, his gaze unfocused, fixed ahead. After a long while, he slowly spoke, his voice lower than usual, carrying a calmness as if recounting the past:
"What I saw in the ruins today... one of them was my blood brother. The other was the woman who gave birth to me."
Su Ran's hand holding the teacup paused slightly, and he suddenly looked up at Wen Yu. He hadn't expected it to be such an "acquaintance." Brother Yu had almost never mentioned his family.
Wen Yu didn't look at him, and continued speaking in that calm and even tone, as if she were telling someone else's story: "Before the apocalypse, they were my only 'family'. My younger brother was idle, addicted to gambling, and constantly causing trouble, always asking for money. That woman, with filial piety and tears, forced me to fill the bottomless pit with money time and time again. I worked, earned money, and gave most of it to them. I thought it was a responsibility, a blood tie."
He paused, a faint, emotionless smile curving his lips: "Later I realized, no. It was greed, it was exploitation. To them, I was just a convenient ATM. Before the apocalypse, during my most difficult time, all they were thinking about was how to trick me into mortgaging my last house to get money for my brother's extravagant spending."
Su Ran's heart clenched. He couldn't imagine the scene Wen Yu described, but he could sense the hidden chill and... the past hurt beneath that calm tone. He reached out and gently placed his hand on the back of Wen Yu's hand, which rested on his knee. That hand, with its thick calluses, was warm and dry, but now it was slightly stiff.
"So," Wen Yu grasped Su Ran's slightly cool hand, his grip firm, as if drawing on some kind of reality, "before the apocalypse, I made some arrangements. I made them lose their jobs, burden them with huge debts, be abandoned by their families, and suffer social death." He spoke casually, but Su Ran could guess that those "arrangements" were anything but gentle. "I wanted to see just how strong the so-called 'blood ties' truly are in the face of real despair, without me as their 'ATM'."
He raised his eyes and finally looked at Su Ran. In his deep eyes, Su Ran's image was clearly reflected, along with a trace of almost imperceptible weariness, like self-mockery: "You saw it today. Very strong, so strong that for a mouthful of rotten scraps, a son can push away his mother who is coughing up blood."
"Brother Yu…" Su Ran's throat tightened, and he didn't know what to say. Comfort seemed inadequate, and criticizing the mother and son was even more superfluous. He could only hold Wen Yu's hand tighter, using the warmth and strength of his palm to convey silent support and understanding.
"Do you hate them?" Wen Yu suddenly asked, as if asking Su Ran, or perhaps himself. "I used to hate them, hated them to the bone. But now, looking at them like that, I just feel... it's meaningless. I'm too lazy to even feel hatred anymore. To me, they are strangers, like roadside trash, I can't even stand the sight of them."
He reached out and gently wiped away a tear that had unknowingly slipped down Su Ran's cheek with his fingertips, his touch incredibly gentle. "Don't cry. It's not worth it."
"I'm not crying for them." Su Ran shook her head, her voice nasal, but her tears fell even harder. "I'm crying for you. Brother Yu, you must have had a very hard time before."
Wen Yu was stunned. She cried for him? For his... hardship?
The frozen wasteland in his heart seemed to be completely washed away by these scalding tears and straightforward heartache. A string that had been taut and hardened quietly snapped. He reached out and hugged Su Ran tightly, resting his chin on the top of his head, feeling the slight trembling of the body in his arms and the hot wetness.
"It's all in the past." He whispered in Su Ran's ear, his voice gentler than ever before. "After meeting you, all of that is a thing of the past."
Su Ran nodded vigorously in his arms, raised her tear-blurred face, looked at Wen Yu's deep and handsome features so close to hers, and said earnestly, word by word, "Brother Yu, you have me now. From now on, I am your family. We are family."
Wen Yu's heart felt as if it had been struck hard by something both the softest and the most resilient. It ached, burned, yet was filled with an unprecedented sense of fulfillment and peace. He lowered his head, kissed away the tear stains on Su Ran's face, and then deeply kissed those trembling lips that uttered the most beautiful words in the world.
This kiss was devoid of lust, filled only with endless tenderness and gratitude, and a determination to bury the past and move towards the future together with the person in one's arms after everything has settled.
Outside the window, the long night of the apocalypse stretches on. Inside, the lights are warm, the aroma of tea wafts through the air, and the two embrace, having shared their heaviest secrets from the past, find the last vestige of distance between their hearts quietly melting away.
From now on, they will only have each other, this shared home, and a future that may still be difficult, but will no longer be lonely.