The darkness of the tunnel was not helping at all. With only a few weak emergency lights flickering along the walls, Zixin could barely see more than a few feet ahead of them, and every time one of the lights blinked out, the darkness seemed to swallow everything around them. He and Bao stumbled along the tracks as they ran, their footsteps echoing loudly through the empty tunnel while the sounds of their own hurried breathing mixed with the distant noises of the zombies behind them.
Zixin didn't dare turn around to see how close they were.
He simply kept running, dragging Bao along with him as they pushed deeper into the tunnel, hoping that whatever lay ahead would be better than what they had left behind.
Unfortunately, their luck seemed to have run out.
They suddenly came across a fork in the tunnel.
Zixin came to an abrupt stop, nearly stumbling over the tracks as he stared at the two paths stretching into the darkness before them. His hand, which was still tightly wrapped around Bao's wrist, instinctively tightened as he looked from one tunnel to the other, his mind desperately trying to figure out which direction they were supposed to take.
"Which way?" Bao asked, looking at him curiously.
"I... I don't know."
Zixin's answer came out with a helplessness that he didn't even bother hiding.
He did take the metro to work every day. In fact, he had taken it so many times that he barely even thought about the route anymore. He knew which station to get on at, which line to take, and where to get off, but he had never once bothered to remember exactly which tunnels the train traveled through beneath the city. Why would he? He had always been safely sitting inside a train, staring at his phone or half-asleep on his way to work.
Now that he was standing in the actual tunnels, however, that ignorance was proving to be a serious problem.
There were no road signs down here to tell them which direction they needed to go, and obviously, the metro tunnels didn't come with convenient maps showing exactly where every path led.
"Damn it..."
Zixin stared into the two dark tunnels, his mind becoming increasingly frantic. They couldn't simply pick one at random. If they chose the wrong path, they could end up going in circles, wasting precious time while the zombies continued to follow them. Worse, they could stumble into another station without realizing it and find themselves trapped in another crowd of those things.
Then, suddenly, an idea struck him.
"Maps!"
Zixin's eyes widened as he smacked his forehead lightly. How could he have forgotten about that?
He immediately pulled out his phone and brought up Google Maps. The screen was badly cracked from everything that had happened, with spiderweb-like fractures spreading across the glass and making the already dim display difficult to read. He tilted it toward the nearest flickering light and squinted at the screen, desperately trying to make out the map.
Even if they were underground, the map should still be able to give them a general idea of where they were.
That was all he needed. He didn't need to know the exact tunnel. He only needed to know which general direction would take them toward the other side of the city.
But, of course, the moment he needed the internet most, it decided to betray him.
Zixin stared at the screen.
Nothing happened.
He refreshed it once again. The little loading symbol appeared again, spinning uselessly before disappearing.
Being underground obviously wasn't helping their situation. There was barely any signal down here, and whatever connection his phone managed to pick up was far too weak to load the map properly.
"What are you doing?" Bao asked, leaning slightly closer to see the phone.
"Checking Google Maps," Zixin mumbled, his eyes fixed stubbornly on the screen.
He refreshed the page again.
"Come on," he muttered under his breath, tapping the screen impatiently. "Just work for once."
Another distant sound echoed through the tunnel.
Zixin's fingers stopped. He slowly lifted his head.
Somewhere behind them came the unmistakable sound of something dragging itself across the tracks.
His heart sank. They didn't have much time.
"work darn it!"
He quickly looked back at the phone and refreshed the page one more time, almost ready to give up when, by some stroke of luck, the screen suddenly cleared.
The map finally appeared.
Zixin nearly sighed in relief.
His eyes quickly scanned the screen, trying to make sense of their location through the cracked display. According to the map, they were somewhere underneath the city center. He traced the surrounding roads and metro routes with his finger, comparing them with the direction they had been traveling.
They didn't need to go much farther before they could connect to another route.
And the direction they needed was... Right.
Zixin's expression brightened slightly.
"Take the right path."
He quickly stuffed the phone back into his back pocket before turning toward the tunnel on the right. Without wasting another second, he grabbed Bao's wrist and rushed forward, pulling him along.
The dragging sound behind them grew louder.
At first, it had been nothing more than a faint scrape echoing through the tunnel, easy enough to mistake for the sound of something being dragged along the tracks. But now it was getting closer, much faster than before, the heavy metallic scraping becoming increasingly clear with every passing second.
It sounded almost as if whatever was following them wasn't simply walking anymore. It was running.
Zixin's heart immediately began pounding harder. Taking a deep breath, he finally forced himself to look back.
The flickering emergency lights gave him only brief glimpses of the tunnel behind them, but those few seconds of visibility were more than enough.
A figure was coming toward them.
It was a male zombie dressed in a maintenance uniform, the once-neat clothing now stained and torn, with dark patches of blood covering the front. Its movements were nothing like the sluggish zombies they had encountered earlier. It was moving unnaturally fast, charging down the tracks with frightening speed.
And in one hand, it was dragging a huge wrench behind it.
The heavy metal tool repeatedly struck the tracks as the zombie ran, producing that awful scraping sound that had been getting closer and closer.
Clang! Scrape! Clang! Scrape!
Zixin's face went pale. Unlike the other zombies, this one was fast. Far too fast.
Bao finally looked back as well, and the moment he saw the creature, his expression changed completely.
"That's a Level 3 zombie..." he shouted, panic flooding his voice. "Ahhh, Zixin!"
Zixin didn't need to be told twice. He turned around and ran harder.