The darkness of the tunnel was illuminated by Bao's faint silver glow as the two of them hurried forward, moving as quickly and as quietly as they could. The deeper they went, however, the clearer the distant sounds became. Zixin could finally make out what Bao had been hearing from so far away.
It was a crashed train.
Several of its compartments had derailed and rolled onto their sides, blocking much of the tunnel. Thin trails of smoke still drifted from the wreckage, mixing with the stale air underground. Somewhere in the middle of the overturned train, Zixin could hear people crying out for help.
So there really were survivors.
Zixin carefully climbed over one of the overturned compartments and peered inside. The last compartment was relatively empty, but a few people were lying scattered across the floor. Some had clearly already passed away. Perhaps they had died from their injuries, or perhaps there was some other reason he couldn't immediately determine. Either way, they were far too gone for him to do anything.
Zixin didn't linger.
He jumped across to the next compartment, where he immediately spotted around twenty passengers huddled together. They were pressed closely against one another, their faces pale with fear. One man appeared to be bleeding profusely, while several others desperately tried to stop the bleeding with whatever they could find.
"Oh my God! Someone is here!" A woman noticed Zixin first, her face immediately lighting up with relief. "Help! Get us out of here!"
Before Zixin could even respond, the heavyset middle-aged woman sitting beside her glared at him.
"First responders take this long? Do you even know how long we've been stuck in here?" she demanded angrily. "You take our taxpayers' money, yet you refuse to work! I'm raising a complaint!"
Her incessant shouting echoed through the tunnel.
Zixin's expression darkened.
With a mouth that loud, she might as well have been ringing a dinner bell for every zombie in the area.
"I'm not a first responder," Zixin said coldly. "And I'm not here to help."
He turned, already preparing to leave.
"W-Wait! Wait, sir, please!" another man hurriedly called out. He looked far more panicked than angry as he peered up at Zixin. "We... we've been stuck here for a day. Just please, help us out."
"You guys can climb out," Zixin replied matter-of-factly.
Even though the train had flipped over, there were still emergency windows on the other side of the compartment. They could have used those to climb out and escape the wreckage.
Yet none of them had.
They had simply stayed inside like sitting ducks, waiting for someone else to come and rescue them.
Then again, perhaps that wasn't entirely a bad thing.
They had somehow managed to survive the first day of the apocalypse.
"We tried," the man hurriedly explained. "But the emergency breaking tool is missing, and... the windows are harder to break than you think."
He gestured toward one of the windows.
Zixin stepped closer and examined the glass. A huge crack had spread across it like a spiderweb, but despite the damage, the window remained firmly intact.
He gently touched the surface.
These laminated safety glasses had been designed to provide extra protection in an emergency. The problem was that the same technology had now trapped these people inside the train.
Although, Zixin supposed, they had technically served their purpose.
If those people had managed to escape on their own, they might have already become zombie food.
He pulled his hand away and looked at them. "What do you want me to do?"
He asked the question almost casually. If the glass was really that strong, there was a good chance he wouldn't be able to break it with ordinary strength.
Then he paused.
Actually...
He probably could.
With his powers and mana, breaking the glass wouldn't be particularly difficult. The problem was that revealing his abilities wasn't exactly a wise move. He didn't know these people, and there was no reason to show strangers what he could do.
So instead, Zixin reached into his bag and pulled out his trusty baby-killer broomstick.
The sight of it made a few of the survivors stare at him strangely.
"Keep away from the windows," Zixin ordered.
He swung the broomstick.
Crash!
The weapon sliced cleanly through the glass, shattering it. Most of the broken pieces remained stuck to the frame rather than falling away completely, so Zixin simply used the heel of his shoe to smash the remaining fragments aside until the opening was large enough to climb through.
"There. Escape route." He pointed toward the broken window. "You guys climb out silently. Don't make a noise. There are deadly things out here."
The man who had been speaking to him didn't seem too bad, so Zixin at least gave him the warning.
As for the others?
He honestly couldn't care less.
"What do you mean by that?" the man asked as he climbed over one of the seats and began helping the women toward the opening first.
Zixin reached through the broken window and pulled them up one by one, helping them safely down onto the tunnel floor.
"There are zombies here," he said curtly.
Bao, who had been waiting beside him, suddenly poked his head through the opening as well. His silver glow illuminated the frightened faces of the survivors.
"Yeah," Bao added with a serious nod. "Very dangerous zombies. So keep quiet." He paused, looking around at the group. "You guys are very noisy."