The Apocalypse Solution Provider

Chapter 48: Longxing Pharmacy

“Mom!” Ding Jia threw herself beside her mother, scrambling to check her vitals. She looked up with desperate urgency. “My mom has a severe heart condition, she needs her blood pressure medication. Supervisor Tan, do we have anything like that here?”

Tan Hui let out a helpless sigh. “This is a restaurant, we don’t stock pharmaceuticals. If you need anything else, I’ll do my best to pull it from the pantry.”

Ding Jia clutched her mother, frantically checking her pulse. An icy chill seized her body.

“Medicine… she has to have her medicine…” Muttering under her breath, Ding Jia turned her pleading eyes toward Tattooed Arm. “Big brother, please, can I beg you for a favor? Longxing Pharmacy is right across the street, they definitely have medicine in there. If you can help me get it, I… I’ll do anything.”

Tattooed Arm scoffed, turning his head away. He swatted her arm aside and silently moved to sit at a table further away.

“Will someone please help me?! I’m begging you!”

Ding Jia collapsed to her knees, weeping. Across the lobby, the other survivors kept their heads firmly down, terrified to meet her gaze.

A few minutes later, Ding Jia staggered to her feet. Sobbing and wiping her face, she walked stiffly toward the metal rolling shutter door.

The crowd raised their heads, their cowardly eyes tracking her every move.

Just as she reached the door and bent down with trembling hands, a heavy grip clamped onto her arm and yanked her backward.

She spun around, coming face-to-face with Yue Hao.

“I’ll go. You’re too slow.”

“Tha… thank you.” Overwhelmed, Ding Jia’s knees buckled as she tried to kneel in gratitude.

But Yue Hao immediately caught her, hauling her back to her feet.

Yue Hao swept his gaze across the room. “I don’t know how many more days we have to rot in here, but the government has already abandoned us. We have to save ourselves. We’ll have to leave eventually, and we’re going to need medical supplies when we do.”

“I’m going to grab as much as I can carry. More hands mean better odds. Who’s coming with me?”

One by one, the group ducked their heads back down in cowardly silence. Only Tan Hui stepped forward.

“I’ll go with you.”

“Good.” Yue Hao gave a curt nod. He strode to the window, peeling back a sliver of the curtain to scan the street. “It doesn’t look too hot out there. It’s just a quick dash across the road. Grab some kitchen knives and find a couple of long poles to keep them at a distance. In and out, quick and clean.”

“Alright, give me a second.”

“Thank you… thank you so much…” Ding Jia babbled, bowing repeatedly between the two men, terrified of offending them.

“Go look after your mother. Write down the exact prescription she needs, and list anything else we might use,” Tan Hui said, patting Yue Hao’s shoulder before heading toward the kitchen.

Just as Tan Hui reached the bend in the corridor, a raspy voice called out. “Tan Hui!”

Tan Hui stopped and glanced back.

“It ain’t my place,” Tattooed Arm grunted, “but you saved my life, so I’ll give you a piece of advice: don’t wade into this shitshow. That old bag is a dead weight, today or tomorrow. If she croaks now, it might be doing her a favor. And that bitch is a certified psycho. You really gonna risk your neck over a crazy person’s babbling?”

Tattooed Arm locked eyes with Tan Hui. “Stop playing the saint. In this new world, bleeding hearts bleed out first. You’re courting death.”

Tan Hui was quiet for a moment, then offered a hollow, morbid smile. “The world’s only going straight to hell anyway. If I die out there, it’s a mercy. At least I’ll die acting like a human being… Thanks for the tip, though.”

“I warned you. It’s your own funeral.” Tattooed Arm spat out the words, then fell completely silent.

A few minutes later, the two men were armed and ready.

Undoing the floor latch of the rolling shutter, Tan Hui yanked the padlock free and tossed the key over his shoulder into the room.

Yue Hao reached out to stop him, but he was a second too late. One of the survivors had already snatched the key off the floor.

Clenching his fists in fury, Yue Hao roared, “Listen to me! If we come back and this door doesn’t open, I swear to God I will drag every single Zombie out there straight to this storefront! See how you like those odds!”

He turned his back on them and marched over to Ding Jia, lowering his voice to a harsh whisper. “The shutter makes too much noise. Go to the kitchen, grab five metal prep bowls, and head up to the third floor. Chuck them toward the back alley, one every second. The second we hear the clatter, we move. When we get back, do the exact same thing to cover our entry. You get it?”

“Got it.” Ding Jia gave a frantic, jerky nod.

Yue Hao forced a bitter, cynical smile.

In this absolute clusterfuck, his most reliable backup was a clinically insane woman. The rest were completely useless.

Stepping back to Tan Hui’s side, Yue Hao muttered, “I’ve mapped out the street. It’s not a complete death trap yet. Stick right on my ass, and we sprint it in one breath.”

“Understood!”

Three minutes later, the sharp, hollow thud of metal hitting pavement echoed from the alley behind the restaurant.

The few Zombies wandering the main street immediately snapped their rotting necks toward the noise, shambling away in unison.

Watching through the slit in the curtains, Yue Hao knew this was their window. He dropped into a crouch, grabbed the bottom of the shutter with Tan Hui, and heaved it open just enough to squeeze through.

They rolled out onto the filthy concrete. The ruined street stretched before them.

At that exact second, panicked screaming erupted from the cowards inside the restaurant.

“Quick, shut the door!”

….

“Director, you mentioned the Disguised Infected are hiding among the general population,” Fu Hu said, his brow furrowed as he stared intensely at the desolate road ahead. “If we’re setting up a Base at the military compound, we’re definitely going to be issuing firearms. What if—and I’m just saying what if—Elder Sun and Elder Wei’s screening method isn’t one hundred percent foolproof? If a Disguised Infected gets their hands on a rifle, they could just shoot us in the back.”

Su Jin stared blankly at the apocalyptic devastation rolling past the window. “Not a major concern. You need to trust the elders’ data. Internal paranoia will bankrupt this team faster than the virus,” Su Jin replied, his tone chillingly pragmatic. “Besides, the Abilities triggered so far are all completely different. Statistically, someone is bound to awaken an Ability that acts as a lie detector for the Disguised Infected. Old Fu, you know better than anyone how unique Qingdai is. I wouldn’t be surprised if she develops exactly that.”

Fu Hu lapsed into a heavy silence. He didn’t want his daughter dragged into this violent, meat-grinder of a lifestyle.

Su Jin caught the hesitation in the man’s eyes and was about to offer some tailored PR comfort when Cheng Du piped up from the backseat.

“Honestly, even if we have a mole, handing out guns isn’t a big deal. I’ve got a strategy to mitigate the risk.”

“Oh?” Su Jin’s eyes glinted with cold amusement. “Let’s hear it.”

“We purposefully zero all the newly issued iron sights to pull heavily to the left. If a traitor tries to cap us in the back of the head, their first shot goes wide, and we get a window to turn around and blow them to pieces.”

“Genius!” Su Jin and Fu Hu said in unison.

…

The SUV continued tearing down the asphalt. The straggling Zombies couldn’t react fast enough to the speeding chunk of metal, effectively neutralizing the threat.

But as they pushed deeper into the urban sprawl, the grimly comedic banter in the cabin evaporated.

Splintered trees and shattered masonry choked the roads. Buildings were gutted husks, garbage littered the gutters, and the infected roamed freely.

It was an unrecognizable hellscape compared to the orderly, bureaucratic society of just a few weeks prior.

Fu Hu and Cheng Du clenched their jaws so hard their teeth ground together. A deep, agonizing grief swam in their eyes.

The psychological wounds were ripped open all over again, raw and bleeding.

The city they had spent half their lives building and defending had been reduced to an abattoir in the blink of an eye.

The nation was gone. Their homes were gone. Their people were gone…

Su Jin merely rested his chin on his knuckles, staring out the window with the detached calculation of an auditor surveying a bankrupt firm.

He had reviewed the after-action reports with Sun Ya and Wei De. The bombardment that leveled the city was only a fraction of the Cold Vault Missile System’s payload.

Yet even that fractional yield had inflicted catastrophic damage. And they weren’t even driving through the core blast radius of the Cold Vault strike.

That night… it truly was the visual and literal manifestation of the apocalypse.

….

A couple hundred yards later, a dazzling, gold-tinted skyscraper pierced the ruined skyline, standing proudly untouched amidst the rubble.

A flicker of interest finally broke through Su Jin’s dead-eyed stare.

It was the Longlin Skyscraper, the absolute pinnacle of Longshan City’s commercial real estate. Even by pre-apocalyptic global standards, the structural engineering was top-tier.

“Damn, Longlin Skyscraper was built like a bunker!” Cheng Du exclaimed in surprise, craning his neck. “At that altitude, you’d expect the shockwave to blow it out, but the glass on the top three floors doesn’t even have a scratch!”

Fu Hu fell back into his military-intel cadence. “It was zoned as a commercial tower, but those top three floors were never listed for lease or sale. Rumor has it they were strictly reserved for V.I.P.s with serious political or financial leverage. No amount of money could buy you a keycard. Did you know about that, Director?”

“Obviously. You can tell just by looking—the architectural specs on that glass are completely different from the lower levels,” Su Jin smirked, his mind already spinning a new logistical web. “Keep your eyes on the road. We’re about half a mile out from Longxing Pharmacy. We secure the medical supplies first.”

….