Perhaps due to the fear in her heart, Lin Qingqing's voice trembled. It took her a long time to utter the address she hadn't called out for years.
"Are you... Xiaoqing?" The hoarse male voice was hesitant.
"Yeah... it's me... I..."
She wanted to say that she was scared and ask her father to come and save her! But in the end, she just opened her mouth, yet couldn't say anything.
"The world has changed. There are man - eating monsters everywhere." The hoarse male voice seemed not to have come to terms with it yet. It took a long time for him to utter such a dry sentence.
"I know... I know..."
Hearing this strange yet familiar voice, Lin Qingqing's eyes suddenly turned red. For some reason, an inexplicable sense of grievance welled up in her heart, and before she knew it, her tears had started to fall in a continuous stream.
"Look, you've been on your own all these years. Since you're still alive, Dad believes you can take care of yourself in the future. I have to take care of your mother, your little sister and brother, so I won't come to find you."
As soon as the hoarse voice finished speaking, the call was hung up directly, not giving her any time to react, as if it was just an ordinary call that was dialed by mistake.
"Hello? Hello! Dad... Dad?"
Listening to the "beep - beep - beep" sound in her ear again, Lin Qingqing's mind went blank.
...
The mother mentioned on the phone was not her biological mother, nor was the younger sister her real sister. But in this terrifying doomsday, her biological father had once again abandoned her for them.
She didn't know what she had vaguely been expecting when she made that call earlier, but at this moment, she suddenly felt that the invisible thread connecting the father - daughter pair had broken.
She had nothing left. She had completely become all alone.She desperately wiped away her tears. "This is for the best, it really is! When one person is full, the whole 'family' is fed. Haven't I been living like this ever since Mom passed away? Lin Qingqing, what are you still expecting from something you've never had?"
"No, I want to live. Not just live, but live well." She dried her tears and secretly swore in her heart.
Closing her eyes, Lin Qingqing forced herself to cast aside those sad emotions. She gritted her teeth and pulled herself together, for she had to plan for her future.
Today was New Year's Day, the first day of the new year. The doomsday had arrived, yet she had survived.
Lin Qingqing wasn't sure if there was any definite connection between the two, but since she could "come back to life", perhaps it meant that her life wasn't meant to end!
"What an exciting New Year this is! Could this be the so - called 'being reborn from the brink of death', 'finding a way out only after being pushed to the edge'?"
She looked back on her short life. Apart from an unhappy childhood at home, she didn't have any regrets.
Although her mother passed away when she had just come of age, later she lived a free - spirited and wonderful life as her mother's last wish. In just over a decade, she had perhaps lived a more exciting life than most people would in a lifetime.
"But now the world is different. Even if I were to die tomorrow, I won't give up!"After thinking all these things, Lin Qingqing gradually managed to struggle out of the previous fear and sadness.She
tried moving her hands and feet and found that her body was no longer stiff, basically returning to its normal flexibility.
Then she slowly got up and subconsciously rummaged through the medicine box, looking for the medicine she usually took.
"Eh? What's going on?"
Lin Qingqing looked at her hand. The skin was fair, delicate, with distinct joints, and blue veins bulging on the back of her hand.
"This is my hand, yet it doesn't seem like the original one!" she murmured, touching the tiger's mouth.
There used to be a burn scar here. She got it when she was a child, being naughty and accidentally knocking over the thermos. It had accompanied her for more than ten years, but now it was gone.
Realizing this, Lin Qingqing, with an incredulous mood, quickly checked all over her body.
"None! Not a single scar! How is this possible!"
The next moment, she got up and rushed to the mirror. Only when she saw the familiar face in the mirror did she secretly heave a sigh of relief.
The person in the mirror had shoulder - length black hair, porcelain - white skin, delicate and curved eyebrows, a straight nose, and soft lip lines. It should have been a charming appearance, but she happened to have a pair of sharp phoenix eyes. The pupils in her eyes were pitch - black and bright, yet her gaze was extremely cold. Those who saw her would be so attracted by her eyes that they would overlook other outstanding features.Thank goodness, she was still herself! She had just managed to survive with great difficulty and didn't want to be reborn in someone else's body.
However, although it was still her own body, at this moment, she looked even thinner and frailer than when she was sick. Although her skin was good, her cheeks were severely sunken.
She found a weighing scale and stood on it. When she saw the glaring number 44 in front of her, she was a bit stunned.
What a joke! As a girl who was 1.75 meters tall, how could she only weigh 88 pounds?
"What on earth did I go through last night?"
Lin Qingqing looked down at herself. This body was almost nothing but skin and bones. She seriously suspected that some goblin had secretly sucked her vital essence last night. With this ghastly appearance, if she just darkened her face a bit more, she might look more like a zombie than the ones downstairs.
"Gurgle ~"
At this moment, her stomach let out a growl. Thinking about this troublesome doomsday, Lin Qingqing took two deep breaths, tried her best to cheer up, and decided to soothe her empty stomach first.
She walked into the kitchen, put a pot on to boil water, and then took out the frozen dumplings she had bought before the doomsday.
"Gurgle ~"
"Gurgle - gurgle ~"
A series of sounds, like a drumbeat, came from her stomach. She was so hungry that she was desperately swallowing her saliva, barely managing to wait until the dumplings were cooked.
One bowl wasn't enough, so she had another.
It wasn't until she had eaten two whole bags of frozen dumplings that the sense of emptiness in her body finally disappeared. She had never been this hungry before, nor had she ever thought that frozen dumplings could be so delicious.
As a single young woman, Lin Qingqing rarely cooked at home, so there wasn't much food stocked up at home. And with this first meal, she had eaten nearly one - third of the stored food. Most of what was left were snacks like chocolate cookies.Looking at the remaining food, she fell silent. Whether she could survive the year no longer seemed important; food shortage had become the top priority.
She didn't know if she would need to eat this much for every meal from now on because of her current state. If she really turned into a glutton, she might as well let herself degenerate into a zombie in advance. At least zombies didn't have to worry about hunger.
Thinking about the uncertain future, the good mood brought by having just a full stomach vanished completely.
Fortunately, she had always been a calm and rational person. After being dispirited for a while, she put aside these silly worries.
Calmly ignoring her seemingly bottomless appetite, Lin Qingqing carefully divided the remaining food into nine portions according to her previous meal size. With three meals a day, it was just enough for three days.
"Hmm, no."
She paused, then set aside one portion from each day's ration. If she just stayed at home and did nothing, two meals a day should be fine.
Although her body seemed to be severely lacking in nutrition, this was a long - term issue, and a couple more meals wouldn't solve anything.
After allocating the food, the next step was to stock up on drinking water. Lin Qingqing didn't know how long the tap water would be available, so she filled all the bottles and jars in the house with clean water, not even leaving out the ice trays in the freezer of the fridge.
After finishing all this, Lin Qingqing felt as if her bones were about to turn soft. She slumped on the sofa and took a long time to recover before starting to think about the issue of zombies."While the internet is still working, let's see what's going on outside."
She turned on her phone, and all the websites and forums, big and small, were filled with topics about zombies. Messages of fear, complaints, and excitement came pouring in.
Skimming over these, Lin Qingqing first opened the official news website of China and found three top - pinned messages there.