Apocalypse: I Can See Health Bars
Chapter 15: The Radio

Chapter 15: Chapter 15: The Radio

The hinges of 601’s metal gate had just been sawn through.

Lin Fan grabbed the iron bar gate with both hands, gave it a hard twist, and tore it down as well.

He then carefully knocked on the wooden door and called softly inside, "Anyone home? I’m the veterinarian from downstairs..."

There was still no response from inside.

’Looks like no one’s home.’

He had the Mutated Zombie from 402 downstairs to thank for this paranoia. It knew how to hide, how to ambush, and didn’t respond to knocking. It had gotten to the point where Lin Fan actually felt safer hearing a zombie inside a room.

The complete silence from this apartment was making him even more uneasy.

But he had already decided to clear out the threats in the building first. Besides, the apartments downstairs all had modern security doors that would be difficult to open with just an angle grinder. He had to start from the upper floors.

Lin Fan calmed his racing thoughts, raised his spear, and kicked with all his might!

He kicked the wooden door of 601 wide open, then immediately darted to the side of the frame, peeking inside.

’PHEW... Just a false alarm.’

The thick curtains in the living room were drawn, making it dim and dark despite being morning.

A few take-out containers and cigarette butts were scattered messily on the coffee table. The floor was somewhat grimy, marked with a few shoe prints.

But the cabinet by the door was empty. There were no keys, no electric scooter helmet, no work uniform—none of the things one would normally leave by the entrance.

’Looks like it’s really empty...’

So, Lin Fan advanced with his spear, checking every room, every closet, and under every bed.

Only after confirming there was no danger did he lower his guard.

"Sister Su—!"

Back in the hallway, Lin Fan leaned over the stairwell railing and shouted downstairs.

His shout stirred up the zombies on the fifth floor again. Amid the noise, Su Qing poked her head out of 402 and peered up the stairs.

"Wh-what is it? ...Do you need me to do something?"

Seeing Lin Fan call for her, Su Qing’s heart pounded and her legs felt weak from the clamor of zombies banging on doors and roaring upstairs. But since Lin Fan had called her, it had to be for a reason, so she asked, confused.

"It’s fine—I’ve cleared both apartments on the sixth floor! You can get back to moving things—"

Lin Fan’s voice came from the top floor. ’He seems to be shouting on purpose,’ she thought. ’Didn’t we agree not to yell and attract the zombies?’

But since Lin Fan said it was fine, Su Qing naturally went back to work—moving useful items from 402 back to 301.

It was just that every time she returned to the hallway and heard the zombies upstairs slamming against doors, clawing at walls, and letting out hoarse, grating roars, she couldn’t help but jump in fright. She had no choice but to jog up and down the stairs, trying to spend as little time in the hallway as possible.

...

Lin Fan was doing it on purpose.

He had deliberately shouted to agitate the zombies in the building.

This was also part of his plan for conditioning Su Qing.

Zombie desensitization training, to be exact.

The zombies in the apartments couldn’t possibly break through the security doors anyway. Letting them make some noise to scare Su Qing once in a while would actually help her become braver.

Watching Su Qing’s cautious movements, Lin Fan almost burst out laughing on the sixth floor.

’This is good,’ he thought. ’Let her desensitize slowly, so she won’t be so jumpy if a real problem arises.’

Seeing that Su Qing was back to work, Lin Fan returned to 601 to check for any useful supplies.

The layouts in this building were all the same, with the apartments on either side being mirror images of each other.

It was a basic layout: a two-bedroom, one-living-room unit of just over eighty square meters. You entered into the living room, with one bedroom straight ahead, one to the side, and the bathroom and kitchen off to the edge.

There weren’t many supplies: a few packs of dried noodles, a case of instant ramen, and a case of beer.

Inside the refrigerator’s crisper were only a dozen eggs and a few cans of cold Yanjing beer. Other than that, there was nothing.

Not even any rice.

’Sigh, this delivery guy really lived a slapdash life.’

On the nightstand in the bedroom sat a framed family portrait of three. The frame looked very clean, as if it were wiped often.

Lin Fan picked it up for a look. The tall, middle-aged man was the delivery guy he often saw coming home at night. The woman and child must have been his wife and kid...

’Sigh...’

The guy must have been out making deliveries on the first day. Delivery workers frequent high-traffic areas, so his chances of survival were probably slim.

Lin Fan carefully placed the frame back where he found it, as a small memorial.

What he found strange was that only the secondary bedroom showed signs of being lived in. The master bedroom didn’t even have a bed; it was just filled with a pile of large boxes.

The room looked like it hadn’t been touched in a long time. A thick layer of dust covered the boxes.

Lin Fan grabbed a small knife from the kitchen and opened the boxes one by one. Inside were all sorts of old items from over a decade ago.

A treadle sewing machine, a radio, various old books, an old-fashioned thermos, old binoculars, candles, and all kinds of tin boxes filled with small odds and ends like nail clippers.

Looking at these items, then back at the family portrait on the nightstand, it was clear this stuff didn’t belong to the delivery guy.

These things were at least a decade old. It seemed the original homeowner had stored them here.

Now, it was all Lin Fan’s gain.

Especially the radio!

Lin Fan pulled the radio out from a pile of junk. To his surprise, there was a crank on the back—it was dual-powered, running on both dry-cell batteries and a hand crank!

’This is a real treasure...’

Since it had been kept in a box, it hadn’t collected much dust.

Lin Fan immediately took it and returned to his apartment.

As soon as he walked in, he saw that many items from 402 were already piled up in his living room—the fruits of Su Qing’s labor.

Lin Fan stepped over the items, stood by the windowsill, and started cranking.

The radio was at least ten years old, but you could tell it was a high-quality model. Even the crank was metal.

Lin Fan just hoped the internal rechargeable battery wasn’t dead, otherwise it might not work no matter how much he cranked it.

His efforts paid off. After cranking for a while, perhaps once it had enough charge to power on, the radio’s indicator light suddenly lit up.

"CRACKLE... CRACKLE..."

But to Lin Fan’s disappointment, even after switching through several channels, all he got was crackling static. It wasn’t picking up any signal at all.

"What is that?"

A clear female voice came from behind him. Su Qing was back.

Lin Fan turned around and saw her carrying a large cloth bag filled with spices and fresh vegetables she had just brought down from upstairs.

Since she didn’t have to fight, she had changed out of her previous long pants and into a loose slip dress that barely covered her shorts.

The clear weather was making the temperature climb higher and higher. With the door constantly open, the air conditioning in the room wasn’t very effective.

After hauling things up and down the stairs all morning, Su Qing was inevitably soaked in sweat.

Stray strands of hair stuck messily to her ears and the side of her neck. Rivulets of sweat trickled down, disappearing into the deep valley of her cleavage.

Even the loose dress couldn’t hide her figure, which was curvy in all the right places. Especially her beautiful, snow-white legs beneath the hem of her dress—long, firm, full, and rounded. The tracks left by trickling beads of sweat and the faint blue of her veins visible under her skin in the sunlight made it hard for Lin Fan to look away for a moment.