Chapter 6: At Home

The medical alcohol bottle shattered near Unit 3. At the sound, the gatekeeper’s attention snapped toward the area, and he rushed over. Reaching the broken glass, he began circling around, not daring to approach Unit 6. Instead, his heavy breathing could be heard as he sniffed the air, searching for clues. After a few minutes, Li Fengyi quietly closed the unit door behind him.

In the dim corridor, sacks of rice and flour were piled up—left there by Sun Xiaoshan and the others who hadn’t managed to bring them inside. From behind the thick, fully sealed security doors of each home, muffled sounds drifted through.

This old apartment building had no elevator. With a heavy heart, Li Fengyi trudged up the stairs to the sixth floor, where Wang Shujuan was already peeking out from a crack in the security door, half her face visible as she watched for him.

Inside, the restless shuffling of the girl next door could be heard—she was trying to get out. That door, too, opened inward; though wooden, it was made of solid timber, sturdier than the gatekeeper’s plywood door, and lacked any glass window for observation.

No. 5 Jia Courtyard belonged to the Beijing Writers’ Association, built in the late 1970s or early 1980s, before the concept of shoddy construction existed. When Li Fengyi had the air conditioner installed, the technician drilling into the wall discovered that the concrete beam was reinforced with cobblestones—solid and reliable.

Later, the apartments were privatized, each unit divided among employees—a total of eight units. Unit 6 had seven households per floor. 601 and 607 were two-bedroom apartments; 602, 603, and 605 were writers’ studios, each with only a bathroom, a drying balcony, and a bedroom, meant for writers who needed to shut themselves away to work.

604 was a one-bedroom with a rear balcony, a dining room, a kitchen, and a bedroom.

The owner of 607 was from Shanghai, a veteran art editor. One two-bedroom wasn’t enough for him, so he was also allocated 605 as compensation.

He renovated the place, knocking two units together to share the kitchen, rear balcony, and bathroom. Later, the landlord bought a villa and moved out, renting the place to Li Fengyi—not for the rent, but because he didn’t want the apartment to sit empty and wanted someone to keep an eye on it. For this reason, even as housing prices soared, the rent on this place never increased, and so Li Fengyi never moved.

When Li Fengyi first came to Beijing, his career was just starting, and he hadn’t bought a place yet. To save money, he shared the apartment with another tenant.

The girl and her boyfriend lived in 605, partitioned off, fairly private, with only the rear balcony connecting 605 and 607.

Hearing the girl’s agitation and seeing the chaos outside—people turning on each other—those inside knew Li Fengyi had a key and didn’t bother watching from the rear balcony anymore.

Now, everyone was gathered in 607’s section—the living room, kitchen, and rear balcony scattered with nine sacks of rice and flour, mineral water, and other supplies. The girl was still banging on the door, growing more frantic, and everyone was tense, uncertain what to do.

When Li Fengyi returned, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. He listened to the girl’s commotion, his heart pounding in his throat. Not only had he seen cannibalism, but he had witnessed it up close—he knew that if the girl got out, none of them would be safe. But for now, there was nothing they could do.

In this information age, gathering news was critical. Li Fengyi began issuing orders in a low voice, “Wang Shujuan, turn on the computer. Sun Xiaoshan, check online for updates. See if the water’s still running—if it is, everyone find whatever you can to store water!”

He had never forgotten the hunger he endured when he first arrived in Beijing, surviving on a handful of cornmeal.

He organized everyone to stack the sacks of rice and flour in front of the girl’s door. Hearing the noise, she grew even more agitated, slamming against the door. As a final measure, Li Fengyi poured a bottle of medical alcohol through the crack under the door, then waved everyone off, “Everyone, into the east room.”

After a while, the girl’s room fell silent.

The computer was in the east bedroom, furthest from the girl’s room. When Sun Xiaoshan saw Li Fengyi enter, he whispered, “Things don’t look good, Brother Li.”

In private, Sun Xiaoshan always called him Brother Li.

Li Fengyi browsed through dozens of pages Sun Xiaoshan had opened. The latest updates were around 5 p.m.—most posts reported cannibalism breaking out everywhere. After that, there were no new posts; presumably, by then, people were either attacking or hiding, and order had collapsed.

Servers were still running automatically, and the power plants wouldn’t shut down right away, so information was still accessible for now.

Searching further, Li Fengyi found some sites still updating—likely from people hiding out: “Zombies appear!” “Dawn of the Living Dead!” Most of the posts were along these lines.

Some posts had begun heatedly discussing how to kill these creatures—mainly that the head was the weak spot, wounds elsewhere did nothing; others speculated on how to take advantage of the apocalypse to seize power. Some ideas were practical: collecting information, stockpiling resources.

Li Fengyi noticed it was all conjecture—no one had actually reported killing a zombie yet. Most crucially, nobody knew if it was right to kill these infected.

Stories of excessive self-defense leading to convictions were all too common. Ordinary people in China had been stripped of their right to defend themselves. If, back in that year, someone had killed a feverish person on sight, they’d probably have been executed.

Li Fengyi still worried whether taking all those tools, food, and bottled water would get him in trouble—whether it counted as causing panic buying.

But he reasoned that he’d brought back colleagues and clients, too—it was all for rescue, so perhaps he’d be less to blame.

His immediate stockpiling of food and water sprang mainly from his mother’s constant stories of past hardships—how they’d had nothing clean to drink, forced to lap muddy water off the ground.

Li Fengyi himself had been through tough times: when he first arrived in Beijing, he’d once had nothing but a handful of cornmeal left. It became instinct to prepare food at the first sign of risk. There were five in his family, all but himself women, children, and the elderly.

He considered the situation: only one computer at home. He instructed Sun Xiaoshan to keep monitoring the news, assigned Tian Ming and Sun Feigang to watch the street park behind, Huang Shunyi and Sun Feigang to guard the west balcony, and told his mother, Wang Shujuan, and Chu Zhen to focus on caring for the children.

Everyone stared blankly out the windows, listening to the cries and screams echoing from all around. What had these people, so recently human, now become?