The Humvee was packed with supplies taken from the truck, and both Porsches sat with their trunks wide open, already filled with dozens of stacks of canned food and several rge bags of dog food.

  Danny and Ethan guarded the entrance, each holding a gun, standing stiffly beside the vehicles with cold, intimidating expressions.

  No one with any sense would dare eye their cars or supplies.

  Just as Calista and the others finished dumping everything out of their backpacks, Turner came over carrying several cases of water, sweat running down his face.

  “Damn it, the food section’s packed. People are grabbing instant noodles like they’re free. Took a bit of time dealing with some small trouble.” Turner set down the water and went back to move more compressed biscuits and instant noodles.

  “Where’s Leah?”

  “Over there watching the crackers!”

  Catching sight of the fresh bloodstain on his sleeve, Calista immediately understood what he meant by “dealing with some trouble.”

  After several more rounds of gathering supplies, Calista finally couldn’t hold it any longer. She pointed toward the restroom.

  “You guys go ahead. I need to clean up.”

  Unlike the mercenaries, she didn’t have their experience. She’d drunk a lot of water at breakfast and lunch and was now desperate.

  On top of that, she had only managed to change clothes earlier at the mansion. The zombie brain matter on her colrbone had already dried into a purplish-bck crust, giving off a nauseating smell.

  Mike gnced toward the retively quiet northwest passage.

  “Five minutes. Carver and I will move the st few bags first.”

  Calista slipped into the second-floor restroom. Aside from faint sobbing coming from the adjacent nursing room, the pce looked safe—no bloodstains and no foul smell.

  She calmly finished in the stall, then stepped out. Her right hand held the knife in a reverse grip, while her left suddenly twisted open the door to the nursing room, startling the people inside.

  Three women were huddled behind a diaper-changing table, staring at her in fear. Among them, a brown-haired Bck woman wearing yoga pants had a Lululemon headband wrapped around her right leg, already soaked with blood.

  When they saw that the intruder was only a girl in sportswear—even though she still held a knife—the three of them visibly rexed.

  “Hey, what’s it like outside?” the brown-haired woman asked first.

  “Pretty chaotic. Everyone’s grabbing supplies.” Calista slid the knife back into her belt, her gaze pausing briefly on the wound on the woman’s leg.

  Two Asian women with bck hair and dark eyes both had clear tear tracks on their faces. One held a baby and kept soothing it, while the other trembled as she tried to dial her phone.

  “All the hospital numbers won’t connect. The only one that answered said they’re already full. Today it’s all bite victims…”

  They were clearly friends, probably just out shopping or looking for supplies.

  But bringing a baby along was obviously not a wise choice.

  With the danger gone, Calista turned to leave. Before stepping out, she gnced once more at the darkening bite mark on the brown-haired Bck woman’s calf and said seriously,

  “Bites can transmit the virus. If it just happened, you need immediate amputation.”

  The Asian woman making the call clearly wasn’t listening. The one holding the baby, however, quietly shifted a little farther away.

  Calista shrugged. She had offered a warning out of goodwill. Whether they listened or not was out of her hands.

  “You crazy bitch! Get out!” The Bck woman’s eyes turned red. Hearing that, she suddenly broke down, pulling a box cutter from her pocket and pointing it at Calista.

  “My husband is a surgeon! He said this is just a normal infection! As long as I get a rabies shot at the hospital, I’ll be fine!”

  Calista raised both hands and stepped back out of the nursing room, leaving the woman’s furious shouting behind her.

  “Okay, okay, I’m leaving. Don’t get worked up.”

  It didn’t look like she’d mutate anytime soon.

  The sink was in the hallway outside the women’s restroom, right next to the men’s.

  The smooth mirror reflected her miserable appearance: pale golden hair stuck to her face with sweat and blood, dark red scabs and suspicious white residue crusted along her colrbone.

  Yeah. She did look like a little lunatic.

  Calista pushed her hair behind her ears and scooped water with both hands to wipe her face and neck.

  The cool water washed away the sticky brain matter and sweat, revealing her delicate, striking features again. That felt a little better.

  Just as she finished turning off the faucet, sudden footsteps sounded behind her, followed by a few vulgar whistles. Calista spun around sharply.

  Three Latino men in sagging pants blocked the exit of the passageway. Behind them stood a young white guy.

  The leader grinned, his gold tooth fshing uglily.

  “Hey sweetheart, need help washing up?”

  Calista’s cold gaze moved past them. The corridor was completely blocked, and Mike and Carver hadn’t come back yet.

  Her brows knitted as she said in a low voice,

  “Stay away from me.”

  “Calista Norton?”

  After seeing her face clearly, the white guy showed a fsh of excitement and hesitantly called out her name.

  The others’ eyes immediately lit up. Their gazes turned openly lewd as they stared at her. The leader even tugged at his belt.

  Calista’s face turned instantly cold, her hand quietly reaching toward her lower back.

  “Whoa, Billy, you know this chick?” the thug on the left asked with a grin.

  “She’s the school beauty at our school,” Billy replied.

  Only then did Calista look directly at him.

  The white guy named Billy did seem a little familiar. Wasn’t he the school bully back in their high school?

  She hadn’t expected him to end up hanging around with street thugs.

  “Since you know her?” The leader looked at Billy, sounding as if he might let her go.

  Calista stayed alert. Her right hand had already slipped onto the pistol, but her body trembled slightly. Her left hand gripped her backpack strap so tightly her knuckles turned white. Biting her lip, she looked at Billy with pleading eyes.

  “Billy…”

  Billy looked conflicted.

  “How about… letting her go?”

  The thugs hesitated. Under her pitiful gaze, they shifted slightly aside, as if making room for her to pass.

  Just as Calista thought she might actually get through, Billy’s expression twisted. He suddenly broke into a dark grin and spped the leader on the shoulder.

  “Hahaha! This is hirious. She actually believed it!”

  The group looked at each other and burst out ughing.

  Calista’s heart slowly sank.

  “Wow. The high-and-mighty school beauty, living in some fancy neighborhood, never even gave me a gnce before. And now she’s giving me that sweet look?” Billy narrowed his eyes, openly sizing up her face and figure.

  Realizing they had just been pying with her, Calista’s muscles tightened. The weak expression vanished instantly, repced by a cold, sharp gaze as she swept her eyes across the four of them.

  “I’m waiting for my friends. They’ve got very bad tempers. I suggest you don’t mess with me.”

  “Wow, that’s a quick mood change.”

  “Come on, sweetheart. With things this chaotic outside, that trick won’t work anymore.”

  The thugs had lost their patience. They could hardly wait to press the delicate blonde beauty beneath them.

  The leader’s rge hand reached straight for her waist, his breath thick with tobacco and marijuana blowing right into Calista’s face.

  One of his companions watched excitedly, tapping a baseball bat against the wall, his face flushed.

  “This girl’s hotter than a Victoria’s Secret model! After you’re done, we want a turn too!”

  The moment his hand touched her, Calista smmed her left elbow hard into the gold-toothed man’s nose.

  Blinded by lust, he hadn’t expected such fierce resistance from her.

  “Ahhh! Damn blonde bitch!”

  The gold-toothed man cried out in pain, clutching his face as he stumbled backward. Blood instantly sprayed through his fingers.

  Did it work?

  Her heart pounded wildly. Seizing that split-second opening, she drew the pistol with her right hand. Her thumb instinctively moved to release the safety, her finger hooking around the trigger guard as she tried to raise the muzzle toward them—

  Too slow.

  Or rather, to a thug with real experience in close-quarters fighting, the fws in her desperate sequence of movements were ughably obvious.

  The instant the muzzle began to rise, another thug beside her struck the inside of her gun-holding wrist.

  “Fuck!”

  A sharp numb pain shot through her entire forearm. Her fingers lost their strength, and the pistol flew from her hand, cttering and sliding into the corner of the corridor.

  Despair had barely surfaced before a stronger instinct for survival crushed it down.

  The gun was gone, but she still had the knife.

  In the next instant, Calista’s left hand reached for the dagger sheath.

  With a soft metallic whisper, she pulled it free. Without thinking about any technique, she drove the dagger straight toward the waist and abdomen of the thug who had knocked away her gun.

  The attack was completely unrefined—pure desperation.

  A fsh of surprise crossed the thug’s eyes. He clearly hadn’t expected this seemingly delicate woman to fight so fiercely.

  But his reaction was fast. His arm dropped down and blocked her forearm. The collision of unequal strength numbed her wrist, throwing off the direction of the stab. The bde only sliced a bloody cut across his arm.

  At the same time, another rge hand suddenly cmped tightly around the wrist holding her dagger.

  It was the gold-toothed man who had just recovered. His face was covered in blood, his eyes vicious enough to swallow her whole.

  “Ah—!”

  He smmed Calista’s hand hard against the sink. The pain in her wrist felt as if it had snapped.

  She could no longer hold the dagger.

  With a cng, it followed the pistol’s fate and dropped to the floor.

  In a real fight for life and death, all the techniques she had just begun learning proved useless.

  She was finished.