"I've got to survive! Survive in this cutthroat apocalypse where it's every man for himself!" Zhang Xiaoqiang was sitting on the ground, his stomach growling with hunger as if it were on fire. In fact, he'd been cooped up at home for over a day and a night without having a single bite to eat.

If it weren't for that last shred of sanity he was hanging onto, he'd have long given in to his impulse and charged out recklessly to fight those zombies outside his door to the bitter end.

Half a month ago, he was just an older homebody holed up in Jinyun City all day long. His parents had passed away from cancer one after another, and his only sister had married and moved far away, leaving him all alone in the family.

Fortunately, his late parents had left him a storefront that brought in rent, so he didn't have to worry about food and shelter and could live a simple, peaceful life.

Sadly, just when he was starting to enjoy this laid-back life of just getting by, the zombie virus hit the world. He witnessed with his own eyes how people mutated. Their bodies were still intact, and their faces hadn't changed much, but they'd become mindless zombies, driven only by the urge to keep feeding and feeding.

In just half a month, he watched as the whole city was overrun by countless walking corpses. Laws and order were a thing of the past. The streets were awash with blood, and countless zombies were sprawled on the ground, licking up the bloodstains. Living people were constantly being knocked down by zombies and in the blink of an eye were being torn to shreds and devoured by the horde of zombies that swarmed them.

Screams were echoing from every corner, and scattered fires were burning everywhere, lighting up the night sky in the distance like it was broad daylight.

No one knew what had triggered the zombie crisis. But through careful observation, Zhang Xiaoqiang realized that if he got bitten by a zombie or if the wounds on his body accidentally came into contact with zombie blood, he'd be highly likely to get infected. And those who got infected would die of a raging fever within three days.

By then, he'd lose all rational thought, and his only instinct would be to feast on the bodies of the living, using their flesh and blood to sustain this meaningless existence of his.

To be honest, he had no idea whether he'd already been infected or when he might turn into a zombie himself.

He was terrified of death, of being eaten by those infected who'd turned into zombies. Just the thought of his body being ripped apart and stuffed into the mouths of those zombies, or of himself becoming a zombie and wandering the streets, preying on the flesh and blood of the living, made his blood run cold.

So, the moment the virus broke out, he locked the security door tight and used tape to seal up all the windows and doors. He slapped newspapers on them and drew the curtains, just in case those zombies, who might still have some sense of perception, caught wind of him and came swarming in to devour him.

But even so, he still hadn't escaped the clutches of the zombies.

At this moment, there were a whopping five zombies lurking outside his door. These were all his neighbors from the same unit building in the community. On the day the virus hit, they'd been infected and turned into zombies, blocking the corridor. Since five days ago, they'd been doggedly trying to break down the security door. Their insatiable hunger and greed for flesh and blood made them as persistent as loyal dogs, waiting patiently for him to walk right into their trap.

Peering through the peephole on the security door, he could clearly see their shriveled faces. Some of them were even missing half their heads, looking absolutely horrifying and sending shivers down his spine.

Zhang Xiaoqiang got to his feet and tightened his grip on the kitchen knife in his hand. He could only handle two zombies at a time at most. Any more than that, and he couldn't guarantee that he wouldn't get hurt by the zombies.

If that happened, it'd be as good as dead. After all, he'd just been lucky enough to dodge this wave of the zombie virus. But if the virus got into his bloodstream, not even a miracle could save him.

However, he was now out of food. The only way out for him was to break out of here, find something to eat, and then he'd have a shot at survival.

After a short while of thinking, Zhang Xiaoqiang made up his mind. He wasn't going to sit around and wait for death. He was ready to go out and fight tooth and nail with the zombies outside the door!

His house was part of the allocation during the old street's demolition. He lived on the second floor. There was a platform in front of and behind the unit building. The one outside was a public platform covering nearly 400 square meters. On the platform, there were two buildings connected to it by twenty-five or six steps on each side. Neighbors used to use it as their passageway.

Before the apocalypse, someone on the platform had planted some flowers and plants. Later, his father and a few neighbors had fenced it off to create their own little yards and planted a small vegetable garden.

And Zhang Xiaoqiang's first target was the few remaining vegetables in that vegetable garden.

He made his way to the front hall, pulled back the curtain, and carefully peeled off a small piece of the newspaper that had been stuck on the glass window for half a month. Then he peeked outside. In the middle of the platform's vegetable garden were several rows of bright green Chinese cabbages, looking so juicy that it made his mouth water.

He tore his eyes away from the cabbages and carefully scanned the surroundings. There weren't too many zombies on the platform. The two households opposite his had knocked down the wall facing the platform and built greenhouses, with the doors opening onto the balcony. It was clear that when the doors were open, a few zombies were shuffling in and out of each house, giving off a clear "keep out" vibe.

Zhang Xiaoqiang reckoned that there were six zombies aimlessly wandering around in the vegetable garden on the platform. And right now, there were five more zombies outside his door, lying in wait for him like a pack of wolves. Who knew how many zombies were lurking in the other unit buildings? So, he had to grab those cabbages as quickly as he could.

Otherwise, if he got tied up with these zombies for too long, the nearby zombies would surely hear the ruckus and come running, and then he'd lose his chance of escape.

He also knew that going up against the zombies empty-handed was a surefire way to get himself killed. So, he came up with a battle plan. First, he rummaged through the storage room and found a thin hemp rope. He tied one end to the iron fence on the window and left the other end with about ten centimeters of slack, which he then tied to the door handle. This way, when he opened the door, he wouldn't have to worry about the zombies pushing it wide open. He could just crack it open a bit and take on the zombies outside one by one.

Next, he kept digging around and fished out a triangular file from the toolbox. The file was about a foot long. It had been sitting around for so long that the metal had darkened a bit, but it was still sharp as a tack and solid in quality.

To play it safe, he used a knife to whittle down the wooden handle of the file so that it could fit snugly inside a water pipe. Then he hammered in some iron nails to secure the connection between the pipe and the handle. Now it was a pretty decent weapon for taking on the zombies.

With everything in place, Zhang Xiaoqiang stood behind the door and double-checked his gear. When he walked up to the door, though, he hesitated again. He held the homemade iron spear in his left hand and reached for the doorknob with his right hand several times, his hand hovering in mid-air. Finally, thinking that he had to take a gamble if he wanted to turn things around, he gritted his teeth and slowly opened the door.

"Bang!"

The moment the door opened, a putrid stench of rotting corpses hit him like a ton of bricks. It was so overpowering that Zhang Xiaoqiang slammed the door shut again in a flash. The smell was so bad that his eyes started watering.

Since there were no masks at home, Zhang Xiaoqiang grabbed a woolen scarf and wrapped it around his mouth and nose. He then splashed some cologne on it, and that helped a bit.

He opened the door again, and this time, a black, gnarled claw lunged at his face. The zombie was trying its damnedest to squeeze through the crack in the door.

This time, he was ready and didn't flinch. He took a good look at the creature. The skin on the zombie's hand was shriveled and pulled back, exposing the bones like an eagle's claw stretching out towards him. The sharp, withered nails were retracting and extending menacingly as it tried to shove its head through the door. The flesh on its face looked just as shriveled as its hand, its eye sockets were sunken, and its jutting cheekbones were scraping against the iron door as its teeth gnashed together involuntarily.

Zhang Xiaoqiang gripped the iron spear with both hands and without a moment's hesitation, he thrust the triangular tip of the file right into the zombie's eye!

He held onto the water pipe tightly and pushed with all his might. Since it was his first time using the iron spear, he didn't have a good handle on the strength and just kept shoving it forward. His normally weak body was suddenly filled with a fierce determination at that moment. He felt a rush of adrenaline and thought that these zombies might not be so tough after all and that he could take them all down.

Just then, two more hands shot out from the crack in the door, waving wildly in front of his eyes, which snapped him right back to reality.

In the next moment, he yanked the spearhead back, and the zombie's eye socket was now a gaping black hole. The zombie slowly toppled over, its head facing him, one eye a blank white without a pupil and the other a black void. The stark contrast between the two sent a chill through Zhang Xiaoqiang's heart.

"Four more to go..." he muttered to himself and forced himself not to look at the fallen zombie.

Since he wasn't used to using the long spear and couldn't quite control the strength, he had to rely on his clumsy stabbing technique to wear down and finally finish off the remaining four zombies.

When the last zombie dropped to the ground with a thud, Zhang Xiaoqiang's arms gave out, and the iron spear clattered to the floor.

He slumped onto the ground, gasping for breath. One leg was stretched out in front of him, and the other was bent at the knee. The 1.6-meter-long iron spear was leaning against his foot, its triangular tip pointing towards the security door, smeared with black, stinking blood.

The green security door, still in decent shape, was ajar by about ten centimeters. From where he was sitting on the ground, he could see several corpses lying still outside the door.

They'd been his neighbors just half a month ago, but now they were zombies, and he'd killed them one by one right outside his door.

But Zhang Xiaoqiang didn't feel any fear after taking down the zombies. All he felt was the thrill of victory!