Free Web NovelChapter 3: The Eerie Observer
The mahogany door of the study slid shut behind Lin Qing with a faint, muted click.
Stepping back into the sprawling master bedroom, the atmosphere felt entirely different from when she had first woken up.
The initial panic of the world ending had settled into a heavy, suffocating dread. The room was cast in deep shadows, the elegant furniture looking like crouching monsters in the dim light. Outside, the distant, chaotic soundtrack of the apocalypse continued—screams, car alarms, and those rhythmic, wet thuds from the lower levels.
Lin Qing didn’t lower her weapon. Her fingers wrapped firmly around the grip of the pistol, her thumb resting just above the safety.
First things first. She scanned the massive bedroom, her eyes clearing the blind spots behind the heavy velvet curtains and under the bed. Satisfied that the immediate area was clear, she slipped into the attached master bathroom.
It was less of a bathroom and more of a porcelain palace, complete with marble countertops, a freestanding soaking tub, and a massive walk-in closet lined with tinted glass doors. The original owner’s luxury lifestyle was evident in every golden fixture. Lin Qing let out a long, ragged breath, and finally took care of her basic human needs.
The relief was instant, but her mind didn’t let her relax. Even while washing her hands in the cold water, her eyes were locked on the mirror, watching the reflection of the door behind her.
Scratch. Scratch.
Lin Qing froze. The water from the faucet ran over her hands, but her ears were tuned into a sound coming from the far end of the bathroom—specifically, from behind one of the tinted glass doors of the walk-in closet.
It was a slow, rhythmic dragging sound, accompanied by the unmistakable friction of fingernails scraping against glass.
Lin Qing slowly turned off the faucet. The silence returned, save for the muffled scratching. She drew the pistol, raising it to eye level, her breathing slowing to a steady, rhythmic pattern. Her mind instantly went into clinical triage mode. ’One target. Confined space. Unknown state of mutation.’
She approached the tinted glass door. Through the dark material, she could make out a distorted, shifting silhouette. It was human-shaped, but its movements were jerky, erratic, and lacked any semblance of coordination.
Lin Qing reached out, her left hand gripping the handle of the closet door, her right hand holding the gun steady, aimed directly at where a human chest or head would be. freёwebnovel.com
With a swift, powerful jerk, she pulled the door open.
A woman tumbled out. It was one of the mansion’s housekeepers, wearing a pristine linen uniform that was now heavily drenched in dark blood. Her skin was a ghastly, mottled gray, her eyes milky white and completely devoid of pupillary reflex. The moment the door opened, the creature snapped its jaws together, emitting a wet, rattling hiss, and lunged forward with claws extended.
Lin Qing didn’t scream. She didn’t even flinch.
Her new body lacked the raw muscle mass of her previous self, but her muscle memory was flawless. Instead of wasting a bullet and making noise that could attract more monsters, Lin Qing pivoted sharply to the left. The zombie’s momentum carried it past her, its outstretched hands catching nothing but empty air.
As the creature stumbled forward, Lin Qing drove the heavy, steel butt of the pistol directly into the back of the zombie’s skull with a sickening ’crack’.
The force of the blow sent the housekeeper crashing face-first into the marble floor. Before the creature could scramble back up, Lin Qing stepped forward, pinning the zombie’s shoulder down. She reversed her grip on the pistol, aiming the barrel directly at the base of the skull, and pulled the trigger.
Pfft.
The sound of the gunshot echoed inside the enclosed marble space, the bullet tearing through the brain stem and instantly ending the creature’s motor functions. The zombie went entirely limp.
Lin Qing stood over the body for a moment, her chest rising and falling in steady rhythms. She knelt down to check if the housekeeper was truly ’dead’. The flesh was already turning cold.
"Biological termination confirmed," she murmured out of sheer habit, wiping a stray drop of dark fluid from her cheek with the back of her hand.
Satisfied, she stood up and turned toward the bathroom exit.
As she opened the door and stepped back into the dimly lit master bedroom, she suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. Her hand instinctively raised the pistol, aiming it toward the shadow near the adjoining study door.
Standing there, completely swallowed by the darkness, was a tiny silhouette.
Han Ye.
The five-year-old was leaning against the doorframe, his backpack still slung over one shoulder. His dark, fathomless eyes were fixed entirely on her. He had sneaked out of the safe room. He had followed her. And based on the chilling, unblinking intensity of his stare, he had witnessed the entire execution in the bathroom.
Lin Qing slowly lowered her gun, her eyebrows knitting together. "I told you to stay in the vault, Han Ye."
The boy didn’t flinch at her sharp tone. He stepped out of the shadows, his small shoes making no sound against the plush carpet. The expression on his face wasn’t one of a terrified child who had just seen a monster get killed. It was an expression of absolute shock.
In his past life, his stepmother had shrieked like a dying animal when the housekeeper broke into the bedroom. She had grabbed him by the arm, panicked, and ran straight into a dead end. But the woman standing before him right now had just cleared a room, executed a target with textbook tactical precision, and checked its demise with the cold detachment of a grim reaper.
’Who is this woman?’ Han Ye’s inner mind screamed. His five-year-old face remained a mask of stone, but internally, his calculations were completely short-circuiting. This wasn’t the weak, useless stepmother from his past life. This was someone entirely different.
"You didn’t shake," Han Ye pointed out, his childish voice small but steady in the quiet room. "When you shot her. Normal people shake."
Lin Qing walked over to the bed, grabbing a clean silk pillowcase and using it to wipe the blood off the butt of her pistol. "Fear is a useless emotion in combat, kid. It slows down your reaction time. If I shook, I would have missed."
She looked back at him, offering a small, challenging smirk. "Besides, didn’t you say it yourself? If I become a liability, we starve. I’m just making sure I’m not a liability."
Han Ye stared at her for a long moment, the tiny gears in his head turning furiously. He realized that his entire strategy for surviving this timeline had to change. He couldn’t just treat her as a temporary shield. She was a weapon.
Before he could respond, a sudden, violent sound cut through the air, shattering the silence of the mansion.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
It wasn’t coming from inside the house. It was coming from the front gates of the estate.
"Help! Please, God, someone open the gates! Let me in!" a frantic, desperate male voice screamed from the outside, his cries amplified by the echo of the concrete courtyard. ’BANG! BANG!’ "They’re right behind me! Open the door!"
Lin Qing’s eyes snapped toward the French doors leading to the balcony.
"Stupid," Han Ye hissed under his breath, his small hands clenching into tight fists. The cold, ruthless aura of a future villain flickered across his tiny face. "He’s going to bring them all here."
Lin Qing rushed to the balcony doors, pressing her back against the wall and peering through the glass down into the front courtyard.
A middle-aged man in a torn business suit was frantically throwing his weight against the massive, locked wrought-iron gates of the Han estate. He was bleeding from a gash on his forehead, his face pale with terror.
But it wasn’t the man that made Lin Qing’s blood run cold. It was what was coming down the street behind him.
Drawn by his frantic screams and the sound of his slamming against the metal gates, a wave of grey-skinned, snarling shadows was spilling out from the neighboring houses. At first, it was three, then ten, then a roaring wave of dozens of infected, their jaws snapping, their eyes fixed entirely on the screaming man.
"Please! Open the gate!" the man shrieked, his voice cracking as the first zombie lunged forward, grabbing his suit jacket through the iron bars of the gate.
"He’s dead," Han Ye said, his voice completely flat as he stood right beside Lin Qing, looking through the glass. He didn’t show a single shred of empathy for the man outside. "And now that the noise brought them here, they’re going to break the perimeter."
As if validating his words, the horde slammed into the wrought-iron gates. The metal groaned under the collective weight of dozens of bodies. Some of the zombies, driven by pure primal hunger, began to awkwardly but rapidly claw their way ’over’ the sharp iron spikes of the fence, their dead eyes locking onto the massive mansion structure.
They were coming right for them. And they had absolutely no way out.
