Chapter 90: The Small Starship Finally Arrives

When hope fills the heart, time passes with remarkable ease. By the time Du Yun woke again, it was already the next day.

Because they were in an underground shelter, there was no way to tell the hour by the sun. Fortunately, Du Yun had a helper, and when she asked, it was already nine o’clock. Alarmed, she sprang to her feet.

“It’s already nine! The shuttle will be here at eleven. We have to hurry!”

She quickly gathered her hair with her hands, tugged at her clothes, wrinkled from sleeping under the covers, and stuffed the blanket and the rest into the storage compartment. After that, there was little left to do.

There was no running water in the underground shelter, and water was far too precious to waste on washing her face or brushing her teeth. So aside from straightening her clothes and hair, Du Yun truly had nothing else to do.

When she came out after tidying up, people were gradually emerging into the main hall as well. From their sleepy eyes, Du Yun could tell that everyone had slept well the night before.

In less than half an hour, everyone was ready. With the hope of escape right before them, even though there were still nearly two hours to wait, no one could sit still. They all looked toward the leader, their meaning plain enough: they wanted to go aboveground and wait.

“Let’s go. We’ll wait outside,” the leader said after some thought. Rather than sitting here staring at one another in idle anxiety, it would be better to wait outside.

Besides, they had already been outside for several days. Going out was not some dangerous ordeal; as long as they stayed close to the entrance of the underground shelter, they could just rush back inside when the shuttle arrived.

To be able to wait outside— even Du Yun, who prided herself on being steady—could not help giving a little cheer. The thought of seeing with her own eyes the small shuttle that would carry her away from this world of zombies filled her with excitement.

“Let’s go!” Du Yun’s eyes were bright. She took the leader’s hand and went out of the underground shelter in high spirits.

A flicker of surprise crossed the leader’s face. A moment later, delight spread across his brows and at the corners of his eyes. His eyebrows rose slightly as he looked at Du Yun’s lowered face; the slender line of her neck formed a graceful curve, and for some reason it made him think of a swan.

In truth, if she had been herself as usual, Du Yun would never have dared to take the leader’s hand so openly in front of everyone. First, the hope of salvation was right before her, leaving her in an exceptionally relaxed mood. Second, judging from the deputy commander’s attitude toward the leader, that woman might well be a rival in love. Unconsciously, Du Yun had already claimed the leader as her own, and so her manner toward him had become close very quickly.

They were about to be saved, and everyone was so excited that no one paid much attention to Du Yun and the leader’s interaction. Seeing the two of them standing side by side on the ground, gazing up at the sky, everyone else did the same.

“When will the Seawind return?” Looking at the clear blue sky, the same question rose in everyone’s hearts. If only it would come sooner.

Perhaps it had heard their thoughts. Just as Du Yun and the others had been standing on the ground for about twenty minutes, a tiny black dot suddenly appeared in the sky.

“It’s here!” The man in charge of scouting spotted it almost the instant it became visible. He cried out in excitement, a smile blooming on his face at once.

“It’s here! It’s here!” Everyone burst into joy. Those who had been sitting or squatting on the ground all stood up, smiling and jumping with excitement as they watched the black dot slowly grow larger and larger.

“Wonderful, we’re finally saved!” After watching the shuttle grow from a sesame seed to a dinner plate, the stout auntie suddenly began wiping her tears. “If only my old man were here too. That damned fool had to go out drinking for no reason, and once he drank, he never came back. Sob, sob…”

The balding man who had been laughing heartily just a moment ago fell silent after hearing her. After a long while, he said in a low voice, “Yes. My wife and child insisted on going out to play too.”

For a time, the gloom seemed contagious. In this calamity, too many people had become zombies, and many who remained uninfected had become food for them. Among those present, aside from the leader’s group and Du Yun, almost everyone had lost relatives in this disaster, to a greater or lesser extent. The mood naturally sank.

“At least we’re still alive, aren’t we?” Taozi also missed her grandmother very much—the grandmother who had stood desperately in front of her to keep Second Grandmother from eating her. If only she were still alive.

But Taozi quickly gathered herself. The fact that she was still alive was already a gift from heaven; if she became too greedy, she would only invite the heavens’ disdain.

“Yes, we’re alive now. That’s better than anything!” A young man wiped his tears with his sleeve and said in a choked voice. After traveling so far to this air harbor and fighting the zombies with such desperate effort for so long, wasn’t it all for the sake of living? Now that hope lay before them, nothing else mattered.

At that moment, Du Yun also thought of many things. In the days when she had been a web novelist, she had spent her time immersed in the emotional worlds she invented, unable to extricate herself. She had not loved herself, and no one had loved her. Her life had been plain and ordinary to an extreme.

Later, after crossing over to Greenfield Planet, she had gained family and a direction to strive toward. It was as though she had suddenly come alive, yet she still lacked any plan for the future, only pushing forward with her head down. Then, after coming to this world of zombies, she had been driven onward by pursuit and danger, never once looking back to ask herself what she truly wanted.

Only now, watching the small shuttle grow larger and larger in the sky, Du Yun suddenly felt an urge—a longing to do something, to make her life no longer ordinary, to make it brilliant and extraordinary. It was a sensation she had never experienced before.

“Let’s pack up and get ready to head back to the underground shelter,” said the stout man and the thin monkey. Seeing that the shuttle was not far from landing and having also received communication from Deputy Commander Leah, they immediately ordered everyone to prepare to withdraw.

The air currents stirred by the shuttle’s landing were no joke. If one were careless, one might be blown straight into the sea.

Just as the leader took Du Yun’s hand and prepared to turn back, Du Yun suddenly heard a cry of alarm in her mind from her helper.

“My God, what is that?”

Du Yun had never heard such shock, such fear in that voice. She hurriedly turned around. In the blue sky, besides the small shuttle already quite near, there were suddenly countless other black dots, and those dots were hurtling toward the ground at terrifying speed.

“My God, what the hell are those things!” Du Yun cried out, eyes wide, a profoundly ominous feeling surging up in her heart.