Apocalypse Ground Ze Chapter 84: Did You Get Snacks?

Chapter 84: Did You Get Snacks?

The SUV rolled to a stop in front of the house just after noon, three days since they first left the mansion.

Zhou Chenghai cut the engine, but none of them moved right away. They had spent the drive back expecting a fight waiting on the other side of the door and figuring out what they needed to do to make sure things went their way.

The supplies that they had risked everything for were stacked in the back, weapons that they had found on dead bodies were close at hand, and every muscle in their bodies still held the strain of the last three days.

They had gone out to get supplies, not knowing what was in store for them. But now... now they were even more sure that Rouxi had been right from the start.

The world had changed, and now, humans couldn’t be trusted.

Chenghai looked up at the long driveway in front of them. The house looked wrong.

Yuche was the first one to move. He shifted his weight, his hand tightening around a crowbar resting across his lap. Lingyun leaned forward from the back seat, his shoulder braced against the door as his eyes moved from the windows to the roofline and back again.

In contrast to their wariness, Zhenlan had already reached for the handle and was out of the SUV long before Chenghai opened his door and stepped out onto the street.

He stopped on the pavement.

The others followed his line of sight.

Something hung from the porch rafters.

For a moment, the shape didn’t make sense. Then Lingyun stepped out of the SUV, narrowed his eyes, and the details settled into place.

A zombie hung there by its arms, wrists bound overhead with rope looped through the wooden beams. Its head tilted sharply to one side, its chin sagging toward its chest, and its ruined body swaying in the light breeze like some obscene Halloween decoration left out too long after a holiday.

No one spoke.

Yuche got out slowly, his eyes locked on the body. Since it was daylight, the zombie wasn’t moving all that much, just floating in the wind. But its movements didn’t matter. What mattered was that someone had put it there, had tied it up in broad daylight where anyone approaching the house would have to see it.

Chenghai’s hand brushed the grip of the gun tucked at his back, but he didn’t draw it. "Stay sharp," he muttered, his voice low enough that it barely carried. The warning was unnecessary. After the hell that they had just survived, they were already sharp.

They moved toward the porch in a loose formation, Chenghai in front, Lingyun slightly behind him, Yuche carrying the crowbar low at his side, and Zhenlan, with his own crowbar, bringing up the rear.

The steps creaked under their weight, and the zombie above them shifted slightly in the breeze, rope groaning faintly where it rubbed against the beam. Lingyun glanced up once as he passed beneath it, then looked away again with his jaw tightening.

The front door was closed, as expected, and Chenghai reached for the handle and turned it.

Unlocked.

That alone was enough to put them further on edge.

He pushed the door open and stepped inside first. The others followed close behind, ready for shouting, movement, panic, violence—something. Instead, the house greeted them with quiet.

There was no one around.

Then the smell hit them next, or rather the lack of it.

There was no sweat, no stale food, no blood, no rot, no bodies packed too closely together in a house that had stopped being a home. The floors were clean. The surfaces were clear. Even the air felt different, as though the place had been stripped down and put back together while they were gone.

Yuche’s eyes moved over the living room, taking everything in at once. The carpet had been cleaned. The furniture was back in place. There was no sign of the disorder they had left behind, no bottles, no plates, no scattered blankets or half-open bags.

And that was where the survivors were.

Three of them stood near the far wall while two others sat stiffly in chairs by the window. Another hovered near the hallway entrance, half-hidden, as if uncertain whether he wanted to be seen or not.

When the men stepped inside with bags and boxes full of stuff in their arms, no one rushed them.

That was the first thing that truly unsettled Chenghai.

Not one pair of hands reached for the food. Not one person stepped forward to argue over what had been brought back.

Instead, every set of eyes flicked in the same direction.

Toward the couch.

Rouxi sat there with her legs tucked beneath her, her phone in one hand and her attention on the small screen in front of her. The television murmured softly in the background, some bright short drama still playing to itself.

She did not look up when they entered. She did not ask if they had been hurt. She did not ask what had happened outside.

She just kept scrolling.

Yuche watched one of the survivors shift his weight, almost stepping toward the nearest bag of supplies before stopping himself. The movement died halfway through. His eyes cut to Rouxi, then back down to the floor, and he stepped back into place like he had never moved at all.

That was enough to make Yuche’s grip tighten again.

This was not submission born from desire.

This was complete and utter fear.

For Rouxi...

A girl who couldn’t stop snacking or looking up from her phone long enough to see that they had come back home.

Chenghai lowered one of the bags to the floor beside the entryway without taking his eyes off the room. Lingyun set another one down more slowly, his posture still tight, his face unreadable as he tracked the survivors one by one. Zhenlan moved last, placing his load on the floor with controlled care before lifting his head and looking directly at Rouxi.

And still, she had not looked at them.

Zhenlan took a step further into the room and it finally drew her attention.

Rouxi looked up from her phone with the same expression she might have used if he had interrupted her in the kitchen a week ago.

"Did everything go well while we were gone?" he asked the question like everything was normal, like he had just returned from a week long business trip.

Rouxi shrugged lightly against the couch. "Of course," she replied, her tone casual, almost absently. "I got in a few more dramas in while you were gone. I made friends. Pretty normal."

She looked back down at her phone.

No one else moved.

The survivors’ eyes dropped with hers, almost in unison. One of them swallowed. Another shifted his feet and then held perfectly still, as though even that had been too much.

Yuche’s gaze went back to the hanging zombie outside and then returned to the room. He didn’t need anyone to explain the connection. He didn’t know what had happened here while they were gone, but he knew purposeful fear when he saw one.

Someone had installed that fear, and based on the gaze of everyone else, that someone was sitting on the couch watching dramas. Now he just wanted to know how she managed it.

Chenghai straightened slightly. "What happened?" he asked, his tone quieter than it should have been.

Rouxi didn’t answer.

Or maybe she chose not to hear him.

Her thumb moved across the screen, pausing on whatever she was watching and she looked up at them again.

Her eyes moved over the bags.

Then over the boxes.

Then over the men themselves.

The pause stretched just long enough to make the entire room pay attention.

Then she asked, "Did you find any more snacks?"