Chapter 341: Completely, Utterly Done
By the time we returned to the infected house, I was done.
Done with strangers bringing problems into my territory. Done with people insisting they felt fine while parasites crawled through their blood. Done with sacrificing plants because someone wanted more time to pretend the ending might change. Done with putting me and mine at risk because some asshole couldn’t drop a dead body in someone else’s backyard.
But most of all, I was done watching the things I cared about tear themselves apart to protect people I didn’t.
The five adults were still inside the house. Four had gathered near the living-room window, while the man Yuche had dragged back onto the porch stood just inside the doorway with dried blood beneath his nose.
They all knew they were infected, there were people around them that weren’t, and yet, not one of them had followed Zhenlan’s order to stay apart.
Of course they hadn’t.
Apparently, infection improved neither intelligence nor listening skills.
Old Chen stepped toward us as soon as we approached, his face tightening when he saw the soot and dirt covering the five of us. "Did you stop whatever was near the mansion?"
"Before or after it destroyed my living plant wall keeping zombies out?" I snarled, no longer checking my words before I said them.
I guess somewhere in the past few months I had become domesticated... maybe it was around the same time that Yuche fucked me within an inch of my life... I don’t know. But I was done being domesticated, and I was going to go back to being a feral bitch that bit the hand that came near me.
Old Chen’s eyes moved past me toward the bare road. From where we stood, it was impossible to miss the empty strip leading toward the mansion or the smoke rising from the plants we had been forced to burn.
The workers who had stayed with him noticed it too but neither man asked what had happened.
Pretty smart of them if you ask me.
I stopped outside the yard and looked at the house. The plants still refused to touch the property. Not one vine had returned to the fence, and the grass around the walls remained flattened toward the neighboring yards.
That was enough of a sign for me.
"Yuche, seal the house," I ordered, my voice and face completely devoid of emotions. "Windows, doors, vents—anything large enough for those things to crawl through needs to be sealed shut behind ten inches of metal."
Thick sheets of metal started surrounding the property before I finished speaking.
I had no idea where it came from, but at this point, I didn’t care.
Old Chen turned sharply toward me like he had any right to give me that look on his face. "What are you doing?" he demanded, his voice coming out sharp.
He might have begun to think that he was in charge of this place because everyone deferred to him, but that wasn’t the case at all.
Ignoring him, I turned to look at Zhenlan. "Pay attention to the air inside. Nothing leaves the house in any way, shape, or form once the fire starts."
His body stiffened and his eyes widened as he looked back at me. It might have been a small enough gesture that no one else would have noticed, but I did.
For half a second, I waited for him to tell me that I was making a mistake.... to tell me that the people inside were still alive. I could see the thoughts crossing through his mind... that we should give them more time, that killing them before they collapsed was different from defending ourselves after they became dangerous.
But I was done.
These people didn’t mean anything to me, and playing on heartstrings that I was determined to cut was not the way to go right now.
Zhenlan looked toward the house. His gaze moved over the five adults clustered behind the windows, then shifted toward the burned road leading back to the mansion.
When he looked at me again, he had never once opened his mouth to argue.
Instead, he only nodded his agreement.
"I’ll hold it," he replied, already raising one hand.
The tightness in my chest loosened slightly.
Lingyun came to stand on my other side, fire spreading over his fingers as he followed my attention toward the house. I didn’t even have to say his name or tell him what I wanted him to do. I didn’t ask him if he was even willing to kill five people who he had probably been laughing or joking with a few days ago.
On the flip side, he didn’t ask me to spell out what needed to happen, he didn’t need to ask whether I was sure or not. He didn’t look at the people inside and decide that keeping them alive was more important than the plant that would have to die as a result.
All he did was wait for a nod from me.
Old Chen stepped directly into my line of sight like blocking me would also block what came next. "Miss Shen, you can’t burn them alive."
"Sure, I can," I replied, not looking at him.
"They’re still people," hissed one of the workers who were standing on this side of the invisible line. He wasn’t infected, but he was still looking at me like he finally discovered just how big of a monster I was.
"They’re hosts," I countered. "Would you hesitate to kill them if they were zombies? Because they aren’t that far off."
"We don’t know whether there’s a cure or not," insisted Old Chen. "It’s always better to preserve a life when you can, especially in the current world where there are so few humans left."
I stared at him long enough that he shifted his weight, but he didn’t move aside.
"We watched Tang Mei die," I reminded him. "We watched Pei Shuo collapse because there was almost nothing left inside him. One drop of that man’s blood made the ground move, and the water they shared has already infected five people."
"They’ve only had it for a few hours," Old Chen argued, his voice dropping as though calm words could make the situation less stupid. "Maybe there’s still time to help them."
"And how do you suggest we do that?"