The last sentence clearly made the girl named Emma Harris visibly moved. She bit her lip tightly, looking fearfully at the expressionless Henry Sutton. Perhaps feeling that she simply couldn’t find any sense of security from this stranger, she turned her head and focused her gaze on the boy standing beside her. With the unique arrogance and superiority of a beautiful woman of this era, yet with fear and anticipation showing on her face because of her terror, her expression was complicated. Reluctantly, she whispered, “Brian Cooper... um... will you protect me?”

The boy named Brian Cooper was very fat, and the solid muscles of his face were also trembling with fear. He was probably a suitor of Emma Harris; the words spoken by the girl gave him a stimulus stronger than any language could describe. He gripped the mop he had been holding even tighter, nervous, but nodded very firmly.

Henry Sutton calmly watched this scene without making any comment. He picked up the last remaining dagger from the box and handed it to the girl closest to him, Grace Sutton.

From beginning to end, he never asked the middle-aged man’s opinion.

He instinctively disliked this person.

However, he did know the man’s name ———— the middle-aged man had a name tag pinned to the chest of his shirt, clearly engraved with “Deputy Manager of the Project Department David Thompson”.

……

The lighting in the parking lot was still dim, and the ramp leading to the ground was covered in blood. If not for the pungent smell of blood in the air, it would have been easy to mistake it for spilled red paint.

Henry Sutton stood behind a thick pillar, silently watching the zombies gathered near the Mercedes in the distance. They were still gnawing on the remains of the two men and women. The flesh and organs had basically been devoured, leaving only bloodstained, broken skeletons.

There were a total of four exits in the underground parking lot. He had checked each one; three of them were stairways connected to the ground-level mall, where hundreds of massive zombie hordes wandered. Any carelessness would immediately lead to being surrounded and torn apart by the swarming zombies.

The only exit left was the way they had come.

On the ramp leading to the second floor of the parking lot, there were several triangular cones with fluorescent markings. Next to them was a sign reading “Pipeline Construction, No Entry.” Their presence meant that all vehicles could only stay on the first floor and could not be parked underground.

Smash the car window, pull out the ignition wire to hotwire it, start the engine, and speed out... This method was safe and reliable. However, it required time, and the moment the car window was struck, the electronic alarm would be triggered, giving the zombies searching for food the exact location of these living people.

“One, two, three, four...”

Henry Sutton silently counted the zombies gnawing on human flesh dozens of meters away—there were thirty-seven of them.

Behind him, the chubby boy Brian Cooper was staring blankly, muttering to himself, “I always thought that ‘Resident Evil’ starring Milla Jovovich was just a game. I never expected these terrifying monsters to actually exist.”

Emma Harris’s face was as white as paper. She kept asking in a low voice, as if talking to herself, “Are you sure this isn’t a movie? Are you sure all of this is real? Then... then what should we do? And my dad, my mom...”

The middle-aged man David Thompson’s face was ashen, and his legs were involuntarily twitching.

Grace Sutton’s face was also pale, but she said nothing, just stared at the sunlight streaming down from the top of the ramp. After nearly half a minute of silence, she leaned close to Henry Sutton’s ear and asked in a very soft but clear voice, “What should we do now?”

Henry Sutton drew his pistol, checked the loaded cylinder again, and said calmly, “Wait.”

Grace Sutton frowned, not understanding what he meant.

“Wait for them to finish eating.”

Henry Sutton patiently explained, “They’re biological creatures. When they’re hungry, they’re more aggressive and dangerous. Once their stomachs are full, they’ll become sluggish and clumsy. At that point, whether we deal with them or just run away, it’ll be much easier.”

The middle-aged man David Thompson interjected, “If... I mean, if those two corpses aren’t enough for them, what then?”

“Some of them with better teeth will get full and leave, and the rest will gradually disperse. Of course, there will always be some hungry ones who want to keep waiting for prey. In that case, the only thing you can rely on is the weapon in your hand.”

Henry Sutton’s tone grew colder as he turned to stare into David Thompson’s eyes. “Remember! Their weakness is the head.”

David Thompson forced a smile, his gaze shifting to the gun in Henry Sutton’s hand, his expression a bit stiff. “I’ve had military training. I know how to use this thing.”

Henry Sutton was about to retort when he heard Brian Cooper beside him exclaim in a low voice, “Look... look, they—they’re coming this way.”

Henry Sutton’s expression changed slightly as he quickly turned around. He saw that two zombies lying outside the Mercedes had already stood up and were looking in the direction of the pillar where they were hiding. They seemed to have noticed something, raising their heads, nostrils twitching, their ferocious, half-rotten faces showing excitement and agitation as they slowly shambled toward the group’s hiding place.

The smell... it was the smell ————