Chapter 19: Ankang Pharmacy
Gunfire traveled along the street all the way to Ankang Pharmacy, eight hundred meters away.
Ankang Pharmacy sat in the row of storefronts west of the hospital. It had two floors: the first floor was the sales area, and the second floor was the storeroom.
Inside the tempered-glass door, three rows of shelves were wedged against it, packed full of cases of medical alcohol and saline solution. Only a palm-wide observation slit remained in the upper-left corner.
The rolling shutter door was half-lowered. Its bottom was braced tightly by two steel pipes, forming a makeshift defensive line.
There were six people in the shop.
Zhou Cun'an, forty-six years old, a former infantryman, had been running this pharmacy for almost ten years. When the virus broke out, he was taking inventory. Relying on his reflexes, he locked the door the first moment he could.
Also inside were two other couples: Lin Yu and Su Xiao—Su Xiao was three months pregnant—and Zhang Cuihua and Old Chen, who had broken his left leg on a construction site. Plus a high school sophomore named Li Mengmeng. The six of them had been crammed into the pharmacy for a day now.
All phones were dead. There was no radio in the shop either. Zhou Cun'an had searched the entire storeroom and found only one device that needed to be plugged in—but when he did, there wasn’t even a static crackle.
They were completely cut off from the outside.
Was the government doing anything? Were the military fighting? No one knew.
All that remained were the howls outside the door—and the dwindling biscuits inside.
Lin Yu had two packs of soda crackers in his bag. Zhou Cun'an had three cases of bottled water in the storeroom. Zhang Cuihua had two cold steamed buns in her cloth sack. Li Mengmeng had half a box of chocolate in her schoolbag.
If they stretched it out, they could last three days. If they ate freely, they wouldn’t make it through one.
Medicine was plentiful—three shelves stacked with antipyretics, antibiotics, and iodophor.
But Old Chen’s leg injury was too severe. Oral antibiotics alone couldn’t suppress the infection. He was already running a fever and, at times, mumbling deliriously.
Zhou Cun'an leaned against the checkout counter, a clenched in his hand.
Every ten minutes, he went to the observation slit and checked outside.
There weren’t many zombies on the street—maybe a dozen, aimlessly wandering. As long as the door held, they were safe for now.
Safe—but only for now.
Food would last only a few days. Old Chen’s injury wouldn’t hold either. The zombies were gathering, and sooner or later, the door would be broken open.
Zhang Cuihua sat beside her husband, using a wet towel to wipe his forehead. She cried as she did.
Old Chen’s breathing was heavy, his cheeks flushed with fever. Blood seeped through his pant leg, turning blackish-red and giving off a faint, putrid smell.
“Brother Zhou,” Zhang Cuihua suddenly said, looking up, “if he keeps burning like this, it’s not good… Could he turn into one of those things?”
Zhou Cun'an walked over, crouched down, and lifted Old Chen’s pant leg to inspect the wound.
The skin around it was red, swollen, and hot—showing signs of ulceration—but it wasn’t the greenish-gray look of a viral infection. It was just ordinary inflammation.
He set the pant leg back down. “It’s not a viral infection. It’s just inflamed. Change the dressing again and increase the antibiotic dose. He can hold on.”
Lin Yu helped his wife sit in a chair near the back.
Su Xiao looked awful. Morning sickness mixed with fear had left her very weak.
“Brother Zhou,” Lin Yu frowned, “we can’t just hide here forever, can we? Isn’t there any noise outside? The government or the military has to send rescue, right?”
“Hard to say. All electronic devices are wrecked, and communications are down. Even if the military wants to rescue people, they have to do it step by step. Our safest bet right now is to stay put here, conserve our strength, and wait for order to be restored outside. Then someone will naturally come.”
“But my wife is pregnant. She needs nutrition, clean food, and water. And there are bound to be survivors at the hospital. The military will definitely rescue the hospital first. We’re so close to the hospital—maybe we’ll benefit from that.”
Lin Yu’s words had barely faded when Li Mengmeng suddenly flinched and pointed at the door: