The Walking Dead : Rules of Survival

The elderly couple finally realized what I was signaling and turned their heads in that direction.

The old woman immediately let out a sharp cry, grabbed the man's clothes beside her, and her body started trembling.

The man instinctively grabbed the kitchen knife that had been placed nearby.

But the next moment, he seemed frightened and dropped the knife back to the ground.

Watching the approaching walkers, I grew more anxious and shouted, "Sir, ma'am, what are you staring at? Run! Run!"

The old woman, who had been cowering behind the man, suddenly turned sharply at my words.

Then, somehow finding strength, she quickly got up from the ground and ran toward the car window.

I had already rolled down the car window to warn them.

When she reached the window, she suddenly reached in, grabbed my arm tightly, and pleaded, "Miss, miss, please save us old couple, we don't want to die, we don't want to die."

The old woman was still sobbing uncontrollably, and without the glass between us, I could feel her panic and desperation even more intensely.

She grabbed my wound tightly.

Judging by her likely years of farming and hard work, she had strong hands, and her grip on my injury caused a dull pain.

I instinctively wanted to pull my arm back with a sharp hiss, but the old woman sensed it—probably thinking we had no intention of saving them—and she tightened her grip even more, even leaning halfway into the car.

"Let go!" Suo Tian, standing beside me, reached over, wrapped his arm around me, and tried to pull the old woman's hand away.

I glanced outside and saw the walkers were getting dangerously close.

Growing anxious, I shouted at Suo Tian, "Hurry, don't worry about me, the walkers are coming!"

Suo Tian glanced back irritably, released his hold, opened the door, and got out of the car.

I was about to warn him not to use the gun since there were too many walkers, but before I could say anything, Suo Tian quickly ran to the front of the car, pulled the standing man behind him, and drew his pistol, firing at the group of walkers just a few meters away.

The old woman, who had been agitated, gradually calmed down after seeing Suo Tian get out of the car.

But the moment Suo Tian took out the gun, I clearly felt her grip on my hand tremble violently.

She probably had never seen a real weapon like this, only on TV.

Taking advantage of her momentary distraction, I pulled my arm back.

When the old woman realized it, she tried to grab me again, but I dodged quickly.

"Ma'am, please don't grab me. Since he got out of the car, he'll definitely protect you. You're gripping my wounded arm pretty hard."

Hearing this, she gave my arm a suspicious glance, her expression flickering.

I guessed she thought I had been bitten, so I quickly explained, "It's just a scratch."

Outside the car, after firing a few shots earlier—and since the pistol didn't have many bullets—Suo Tian shot down several walkers, then tossed the gun aside, drew a dagger, and charged forward.

Actually, there was no need to worry about Suo Tian's skills at all, but I really wasn't used to just sitting there watching him take the risk alone.

After all, the reason he now had to deal with those walkers was because I meddled.

I opened the car door, drew my dagger, and charged at the walkers too.

The usual method worked just as well — I kicked one hard, then quickly stabbed through its head.

Every time I pierced a walker's skull, I felt an indescribable sense of satisfaction.

After taking down the first walker and looking up, I saw Suo Tian had already knocked all the others down.

I turned to look at the couple, intending to signal that they were safe, but found them both staring seriously at Suo Tian.

When they noticed my gaze, the old woman was momentarily stunned, then immediately changed her expression to one full of gratitude and bowed deeply to me.

I glanced at Suo Tian, who was wiping his dagger on a dead walker, then turned and walked over to the couple hiding by the car.

"Uncle, auntie, how come you're here? Do you live here?" I asked, pointing toward the alley entrance.

The old woman sniffled, wiped her face with her sleeve, and said in a hoarse voice, "We used to live here. We've been hiding here for quite a while now — otherwise, how could we have survived until now?"

"Why didn't you just stay safely inside today? What are you doing out here?" I cleaned the dagger on the ground and slipped it back into my bag.

The old man glanced at the woman, then shakily said, "There's no food left. We came out to find some. We can't just starve to death inside while hiding from those people."

"Those people?" I looked at the old man in surprise.

"They're these kinds of people," he said, pointing to the walkers lying on the ground.

Then he sighed deeply and said, "What kind of world is this? What happened? How can people rot like that and still be able to walk and move?"

Glancing back at the walkers' bodies, I realized the old couple had always seen those walkers as 'people.'

No wonder when I warned them about the walkers earlier, they looked so confused — they didn't understand what I was talking about.

I couldn't help but twitch the corner of my mouth in helplessness.

"Uncle, those things aren't people anymore."

"How are they not people? Look at them — aren't those all people?"

"These things are called 'walkers.' They were all dead originally, but now, for some unknown reason, these corpses have all stood up again."

After saying this, I glanced at the couple and noticed a hint of suppressed strangeness flash across their faces.

They seemed a bit confused by what I said, so I tried to explain it more simply and directly: "To put it plainly, they're walking corpses — dead people."

The couple didn't respond.

They exchanged looks with each other, their expressions growing even stranger, as if they were struggling to hold back some emotion.

After a while, the old man forced a smile and asked, "Miss, I don't quite understand what you mean. If these people are really dead, how can they still want to eat? How can they still walk?"

It seemed the old couple probably didn't have a TV at home.

Even if they did, they likely hadn't seen the news for some reason.

I patiently explained again, "Those things are people who have already died. If you still want to call them people, that's fine, but the truth is they're no longer normal. They have no life left; their bodies are constantly rotting. All they know is how to eat flesh — living flesh, biting it right off from the living."

Taking a deep breath, I looked at the couple with curiosity and asked, "Uncle, you said your son and grandson were all bitten to death. How come you didn't know about this?"

The uncle was momentarily stunned, then shook his hand with a somewhat low voice: "How could we not know they eat human flesh? We've seen it with our own eyes many times, but we thought it was some kind of rabies. Who knew it was actually like what you said."

The old woman's eyes were a bit red, and it looked like she was about to cry again.

I quickly comforted her, "Auntie, why are you crying again?"

"Chen Yang, let's go." Suo Tian, who had somehow come to the car door, opened it and urged me.

"Oh, coming." I turned back and replied to him.

Then I turned back to the stunned couple with an apologetic look: "I'm really sorry, uncle and auntie. Although I want to help you, our situation isn't much better than yours. We really are powerless and unable to help."

The couple, who had been dazed, looked at me one after another.

Their eyes flickered in a way I couldn't quite understand, but it was probably just that they hoped I could take them with us.

"Oh, and make sure you never think of those things as people again. Next time you run into them, if you can't escape, just use a knife to smash their heads in—that way, they'll be truly dead," I kindly reminded them.

Before, seeing the kitchen knives in their hands, I thought they knew how to deal with those walkers, but who knew they didn't even know what a walker really was.

Now, I really felt I should be glad for them—they somehow survived without even understanding what's going on.

"Miss, we know you're having a hard time too. We shouldn't have troubled you either. At our age, we've probably lived out our time already. Every extra day we get to see the light is a gift. Just now, we were only causing you trouble," the old woman suddenly said such reasonable words that I was a bit caught off guard.

I smiled at the two of them and didn't say anything further.

Suo Tian inside the car was already honking the horn to urge me.

Glancing at the kitchen knive the uncle was holding, I hesitated for a moment, then took the dagger I had just put away back out of my bag and handed it to the old woman: "Take this—it's better than the kitchen knive."

The old woman stared at me blankly for a moment, then glanced at the old man.

After he nodded at her, she hesitantly reached out and took the dagger into her hand.

I gave the couple a forced smile of farewell, then walked around them toward the car door, feeling a bit heavy-hearted.

People their age should be at home taking care of their grandchildren, enjoying the warmth and happiness brought by their children—family bliss was supposed to be just that simple for them.

But now, in this world, at a time when they have already endured nearly all of life's hardships, they are hit with such a harsh blow.

After struggling and fighting through life's challenges, they are forced to experience those two words separately: how to survive, how to live.

"Chen Yang, watch out!"

Just as I was lowering my head, lost in thought and about to reach the car door, Suo Tian suddenly shouted from inside the car.

I was startled, looked up at him, and before I could ask what I should be careful of, a strong force grabbed my neck from behind.

The pressure on my neck left my mind blank for two seconds—I had no idea what was happening.

Until my thoughts finally came back to my brain, I was still a bit dazed as I heard the heavy breathing of the old woman behind me.

Why was she grabbing my neck from behind with her arm?

Suo Tian, who had been sitting in the passenger seat, quickly opened the car door and rushed out, his face full of anger as he stared at the person behind me.

The old woman's grip was incredibly strong—probably from years of hard farm work—and I could hardly catch my breath, only able to stare blankly at Suo Tian.

"Young man, you better not come any closer," the old man's deep, heavy voice came from behind the old woman, completely different from his earlier trembling state, as if he had become a different person.

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