Eddie took in a deep breath, as if trying to consume all the oxygen in the room. Before he even had the chance to scream, his instincts and overwhelming fear drove him to run in the opposite direction.
There were two doors to the ward; the giant spider emerged from the front door, leaving Eddie to run towards the back door. He dashed into the corridor, only to find two zombies at the end of the hallway and corners of the staircase.
Knowing that he couldn't use the stairs, Eddie dashed into the room across the hallway - shutting and locking the door behind him. Without turning around, a large cabinet against the wall came into view.
Eddie used all his strength to drag the cabinet against the door. The spider creature wasn't ready to back off and started tapping on the door with its two obviously mutated front legs.
Eddie was not afraid that it could break down the door; spiders were not known for such tasks due to their body structures. Despite its size, the spider wasn't huge enough to be terrifying, and it shouldn't be a problem for a heavy metal cabinet to hold it off for a while.
Yet, what worried Eddie most was that the creature's noise could draw the zombies from the end of the corridor or perhaps the entire floor.
The hospital was located in the suburbs of New York. Eddie had never been there, but it was evidently an old one based on the basic facilities, so the ward wasn't large. If it kept tapping, the zombies would surely break in.
Eddie looked around the room, realizing that it must be the doctor's office, around a third the size of the ward. A large cabinet and a big office desk occupied most of the room.
The office curtains were half-closed. Eddie quickly went over to open them fully and was pleasantly surprised to find a tree outside the window. Beneath the tree, nothing obstructed his path. If he could jump onto the tree from the window, he could escape this damned hospital.
Eddie glanced back at the door, the sounds of the zombie's footsteps were getting closer. Even though he would never get used to jumping out of windows, his survival instincts had clearly overtaken his fear, and he pushed the window open forcefully.
However, as he opened the curtain, the bright moonlight streamed in, allowing Eddie to spot a newspaper on the office desk before turning his head.
Out of journalistic habit, Eddie's gaze lingered on it for a few seconds, and he was drawn to the image accompanying the headline—a large purple mist in the sky from which something was falling.
There was no time to leisurely read the newspaper in such a critical situation, so Eddie ran over, stuffed the newspaper into his pocket, took a deep breath, and jumped out of the window.
Eddie may have been no tree climber, but in his panic, he managed to grab onto anything he could reach. He succeeded in hanging onto one of the tree branches, then mustered all his strength to reach for a lower one with his foot.
He slowly made his way down; once his feet touched the ground, tears welled up in his eyes.
This was an incredibly daring adventure for someone with acrophobia, he had actually managed to escape from eight floors high?!
However, he had no time to celebrate. Being unable to survey the zombies from a vantage point meant that every enemy here posed an unseen threat, making it nearly impossible to avoid them in advance.
The zombies in this cosmos were like omnipotent athletes—fast, strong, hard to kill, and not as foolish as depicted in zombie movies—sometimes they even cooperated with each other.
He couldn't outrun them, nor could he fight them—Eddie finally understood why zombies were everywhere he looked. Perhaps the human resistance didn't last long, and it was debatable whether any survivors were left. Eddie had a pessimistic view of this.
But besides 'how to escape', 'where to go' was another big problem. Normally, he should look for a safe base first, but it seems improbable to find a completely safe place under these circumstances. He could only play it by ear.
Just then, Eddie remembered the newspaper he had taken from the duty room. He pulled out the slightly crumpled newspaper from his pocket and saw the headline clearly. "Unidentified Flying Object Landed in Central New York, Alien Visit or Military Secret Experiment?"
Eddie knitted his brows as he skimmed the entire article at top speed, but like every issue of Global Times, the interesting content was all in the title while the main body of the text offered little worth noting.
At least the reporter had provided the time and place of the UFO's fall. According to the newspaper's date, the object had fallen approximately twenty days ago in Central Park, New York.
Being a naturally curious person, Eddie was interested in knowing whether the zombie outbreak had any connection with the fall of this UFO. He also believed that if Shiller had arrived at this cosmos, he definitely would have followed this news to Central Park, New York, where Eddie could then ask Shiller what on earth was going on.
At this very moment, Shiller was crouching inside a ventilation duct.
The ventilation ducts of Stark Building were rather advanced and spacious. There was also a quite a large space above the vents, allowing an adult male to crouch there.
Shiller held a round-bottomed flask in his hand. He opened the vent cover and threw the flask down.
With a crash, the flask shattered completely. The witch, who had been kneeling on the floor crying, suddenly rose and charged towards the noise like a madwoman.
This location was at the far end of the power distribution room. For the witch to reach him, she would need to cross the entire room. Just as she was furiously waving her claws and screaming while charging forward, a figure silently slipped into the power distribution room.
About ten minutes earlier, Stark explained his plan to Shiller. The plain and simple plan was to have one person make some noise from the ventilation duct within the false ceiling to distract the creature, while the other one would seize the opportunity to grab the battery.
Under normal circumstances, it should be Stark who made the noise while Shiller infiltrated. However, when it came to Shiller approaching the witch, Stark would freak out first.
Another reason Shiller agreed to this arrangement was because nobody knew whether the battery still had power.
Conventionally, the standby batteries in the power distribution room of the Stark Building were always charged, but in the current situation, no one could guarantee that everything was normal. Therefore, in case of a flat battery, only Stark knew where the charging point for the battery in the power distribution room was and what connection it used.
They were extremely lucky; all the batteries were charged, and during the short moment when the sound of the shattered flask attracted the witch, Stark had carried out four batteries.
Stark Industries' batteries were, of course, no ordinary batteries. Although they weren't Ark Reactors, they could be adjusted to various output modes.
Stark simply adjusted the battery, and using some wires found upstairs, crafted a rudimentary cage. He then bravely used himself as bait to lure out the ghost. It didn't take long before he led the hanged ghost into the cage and started the electric current to trap it.
Once the ghost was in the cage and locked up, what remained was a faint phantom that looked somewhat like a mirage. Stark turned to look at Shiller and asked, "How do you plan to eat it?"
Shiller answered him with action. He stood in front of the cage door, reached out to grab the moment the power was cut off, and took a big bite.
A scream that struck one's auditory nerves echoed in Stark's mind. He felt as if he'd been punched in the head.
But Shiller grabbed that blurry phantom and wolfed it down bite after bite. Stark wanted to get close to observe the phantom, but nearly lost a fingertip in the next second.
He quickly withdrew his hand with a "swoosh". Shiller then pulled back his murderous gaze, continuing to obsess over his meal. The shadow wasn't big— it was finished in a few dozen seconds.
Shiller wiped his mouth and looked at Stark, saying, "Still hungry."
Looking at the still strong appetite in Shiller's eyes, Stark couldn't reject him outright. So, he could only say: "Alright, let's catch another one. Let's go for the female ghost."
Less than ten minutes later, the female ghost was also in Shiller's stomach, followed by the clown ghost, old lady ghost, child ghost, headless ghost, drowned ghost...
About half an hour later, Stark pointed a finger at Shiller and said, "The last one, this one must be the last one, Shiller! We have something important to do. We have to go save Spider-Man!"
Shiller stared at him for half a minute, unsatiated. Stark had grown used to this gaze. Just now, Shiller had been using this focused look to break one "last one" promise after another, but this time, he remained resolute.
Half a minute later, Shiller could only reluctantly turn his eyes away, nodded reluctantly, and then swallowed, saying, "That alien..."
Stark sighed helplessly, "We can catch it on the road for you to eat, but you have to promise not to nibble on other things while we're on the move!"
The eyes of Shiller and Stark fell on the tooth marks at the front of the cage.
Shiller once again nodded very reluctantly. It seemed the meal had somewhat restored his sanity, so while Stark was preparing to catch a ghost again, he spoke.
"Do you know where Spider-Man is?"
"Do you?"
Shiller shook his head, saying, "But when I was going through the ventilation ducts, I saw a headline in a newspaper office. It said something had fallen in Central Park, New York."
"Good, then we'll head there next. But our first step is to find a car."
"You're not going to make a battlesuit?"
Stark sighed, "There are only two possibilities now, either Iron Man of this world is dead, or he's been turned into a zombie. I lean more towards the second possibility, so using the Stark Building's system carelessly could alert him."
"Why the second option?"
Stark's hands paused for a moment, then he looked down at what he was tinkering with, saying, "I never told Peter about the courage he truly possesses."
"I never told him that the reason I always charge ahead, determined to face danger before anyone else, is because I know I don't have the courage to be the last one to die."
"I can't bear to watch all my friends die before me," Stark clutched the object in his hand tightly, his teeth gritted, "I don't dare to assume what I'd do then. I'm fully aware that I'm not a purely good person, so I especially fear power."
"Even now, faced with this situation, I might also choose to accept fate, because if I was the last person left conscious, perhaps my thoughts wouldn't be about salvation, but ... complete destruction."
"But Spider-Man wouldn't." Stark looked up, an inexplicable glow in his eyes, he said, "No matter how sad or painful, he will always choose salvation."
Stark looked into Shiller's eyes once more.
"He saves people, I save him, because they've saved me countless times, with their companionship or even just their existence, from choosing destruction in lonely nights. They save this world that is about to be destroyed."
"So even if you're like the ghosts that seem to possess Shiller, as long as there was a moment when you made him give up destruction and choose salvation, you deserve this."
Shiller looked at him in silence. After a while, he finally said, "Then give me the food I deserve."