Pleasing Start Over

End of the World: The Doctor 7.2

Qiao Chen drove by two supermarkets. Unfortunately there were a lot of zombies in them. This was year two of the apocalypse. There’d be nothing left in there even if there weren’t any zombies.

Qiao Chen used the system to pull up a map of the immediate area. He examined it carefully, but didn’t find anywhere he wanted to go. Then Qiao Chen pulled up maps of the surrounding areas and checked them. He found a large nut orchard in an area that was relatively nearby.

Nearly everything mutated when the apocalypse began. Plants and even animals had mutated to some degree. Mutated flora and fauna were poisonous and couldn’t be consumed. Vegetables and fruits were the ones that mutated the most, so they were no longer edible. Fortunately, like humans, there were a small variety of plants that didn’t negatively mutate into a poisonous version. These positively mutated plants would be able to provide calories and nutrients dozens of times better than their non mutated counterparts. Nuts were one of these few plants that mutated in this way.

People thought of nuts with their pre-apocalypse perceptions: Easy to carry and convenient to eat. However, it wasn’t very filling and wasn’t high in nutrients. This meant that there weren’t many people who actively searched for nuts. Qiao Chen knew that even if people knew that nuts weren’t negatively affected by the mutations, there should be enough for him to forage for to sustain himself off of for a while.

It took Qiao Chen about four or five hours to drive to the nut orchard. He looked that the fuel gage and figured that there shouldn’t be any problems if he needed to escape. All he needed to do was find a way to avoid the high level zombies on the road and he’d be fine. Qiao Chen looked up at the sky. He also had the day and the big bright sun on his side for now. Therefore, Qiao Chen was positive he would be able to escape any low or intermediate leveled zombies if he encountered them.

Qiao Chen could only go one step at a time for now. If he couldn’t find a way to survive out here, then he’d have no choice but to seek refuge at a base. Then he’d have to slowly find his lover’s whereabouts from there. Qiao Chen wasn’t worried about this either. His healing ability had been activated now. No base in their right mind would even think about turning him away.

As Qiao Chen traversed the route towards the nut orchard, he encountered several high leveled zombies. Qiao Chen was able to maneuver his way to safety and successfully avoided them. These high level zombies not only had extremely powerful attacks, but they had also gained some sort of sentience. This meant that they were far more harmful than the low level zombies that only relied on instinct. In fact, if he were to face a high level zombie at this moment, he was sure that he’d have no chances of beating it.

Fortunately for Qiao Chen, he had a system that helped showed him the way. His system was even like a navigator. It automatically rerouted him onto the safest possible path, so he didn’t burn too much daylight while on the road. His journey to the orchard was relatively smooth if he ignored the few times he was nearly overturned by some high leveled zombies.

Qiao Chen finally reached area where the nut orchard was located. However, the closer he got to the orchard, the stranger he felt. There was this indescribable feeling that grew stronger and stronger the closer he got to the nut orchard.

Qiao Chen scanned the horizons. There hadn’t been a single zombie for the past half hour now. This was very abnormal. Qiao Chen silently wondered, ‘Could there be a high concentration of zombies in the orchard?’

Qiao Chen rolled to a stop. He was hesitating on whether or not he should continue to the orchard, but he had already burned so much daylight just to get here. It’d be a huge waste if he just left now empty handed… but his intuition was warning him. Qiao Chen’s intuition was telling him that he had already entered into some very dangerous territory. If he continued forward, then the dangers would only increase.