Chapter 21, life hangs by a thread
Ding Xiu only took Chen Jianing as a polite remark and didn't take it to heart.
The two walked forward, and suddenly Ding Xiu stopped, and Chen Jianing hit him on the back carelessly.
"What's wrong?"
"Shh Ding Xiu motioned for her to keep quiet.
The light swept around, and a small dark shadow crawled across the ground.
It was a small lizard common in the desert, a shade-loving creature that often hid in cool or dark places.
Ding Xiu didn't let his guard down because it was just a small lizard, because the movement he had just heard didn't come from this little guy.
The little lizard was only the size of a palm, and although it had poisonous barbs on its tail, it was normally no threat to Ding Xiu, as Ding Xiu only needed to lift his feet to kill it.
The lizard crawled towards Ding Xiu, who kicked it away.
The little thing rolled on the ground a few times and hit the wall with a "poof".
It had just rolled over and was about to crawl away, when suddenly a shriveled hand came out of a hole in the wall.
The hand grabbed the lizard at the entrance of the hole, letting the barbs on its tail stumble into its skin.
Ding Xiu and Chen Jianing were both taken aback, and when the light shone over, a hideous figure came out of the hole.
"Zombies!" Ding Xiu recognized the monster.
The hideous figure made a "rattling" sound in its mouth, and the lizard in its hand was only half of its body.
"Ahh Chen Jianing couldn't help but scream, she quickly covered her mouth and hid behind Ding Xiu.
There is more than one hole in the wall, and these holes are pipes that connect to other places. In addition to the hole where the zombie had just been drilled, there were sounds in two other places next to it.
"Let's go!" Seeing zombies crawling out of several holes one after another, Ding Xiu didn't even think about it, and ran wildly with Chen Jianing.
The lights in the passage were shining, and suddenly there was a bright light ahead.
The two of them ran towards the light, and the exit was soon close at hand.
Ding Xiu stopped the moment he rushed out, his reaction was fast, and his eyes were more adaptable to the environment from darkness to light than Chen Jianing.
He stopped Chen Jianing, and the gravel brought up by the two of them tumbled and fell into the abyss in front of him.
No one expected that there was a cliff outside the exit, and a huge crack appeared in front of them in this city made of steel and concrete.
The ruins are tens of meters deep from top to bottom, and the bottom of the pit is full of cracked sand and masonry. A nearby tall building is tilted at a 60-degree angle, and the top of the building is raised to another building on the opposite side of the crack.
Ding Xiu finally knew where he had been.
When he woke up this morning, he saw this half-collapsed building in the mezzanine on the broken bridge.
"It turned out that I had run so far!"
The footsteps behind him chased out, and Ding Xiu no longer sighed.
"Let's go this way." He shouted at Chen Jianing.
On the left side is blocked by a high wall, and on the right is the sloping building. The way out was in the building, Ding Xiu pushed Chen Jianing up to the big stone in the ruins at the bottom of the building, and climbed up himself.
The zombies chased out of the hole, and the first few were knocked out by their companions who rushed out behind them before they had time to brake. They fell to the bottom of a cliff dozens of meters deep, and some of them were able to get up again.
Large chunks of cement and sand built a slope at the bottom of the building, and Ding Xiu and Chen Jianing climbed through the rubble and steel bars, and the zombies behind them chased after them.
Chen Jianing climbed into the sloping building, she turned her head and saw the nearest zombie rushing towards Ding Xiu, and the distance between the two was within easy reach.
"Be careful!" She felt the urge to cover her eyes for fear of seeing what she didn't want to see.
Ding Xiu's reaction was very fast, his body suddenly changed direction, and he jumped forward with the help of a raised stone beside him, which was within the range of the zombies that could escape behind him.
The zombie threw itself into the air and fell to the ground with its body forward, and when it fluttered and got up again, not only did it delay the speed of its companions behind it, but the target's figure also disappeared to the bottom of the building.
Drilling through a gap at the bottom of the building, Ding Xiu found that the situation inside was not much better than outside. The building was in shambles, with some damage to the walls and frames of the houses, and was surrounded by debris.
Because of the sloping of the building, the gravel and steel beams are stacked on top of each other, forming an irregular staircase.
The slope of the steps is very steep, but fortunately there are many places suitable for grippers and pedaling. Ding Xiu escorted Chen Jianing to climb up, and gravel slipped from time to time at his feet.
"Come on!" Ding Xiu saw that Chen Jianing's movements had slowed down, and knew that her physical strength was already a little exhausted, because the girl had barely eaten a grain of rice since last night.
"Hmm!" Chen Jianing gritted her teeth and insisted, Ding Xiu was behind her, she knew that once she slowed down, she would drag Ding Xiu down.
There was a large hole open at the top of the slope in front of them, which used to be the ceiling in the building, and because of the collapse, it was now the entrance to the middle of the floor.
Climbing up is not the way out, but the building straddles above the crack because of its tilt, which becomes a bridge between Ding Xiu and Chen Jianing across the crack.
Seeing that the zombie had caught up with the steps, Ding Xiu pulled a stone from his side and pushed it down. A stone hits a zombie, and the zombie rolls down the slope, bringing up a cloud of dust along the way.
Climb through the large hole in the ceiling, which is already in the middle of the building.
Beneath him was no longer the ruins of bricks and rubble, but the glass windows on the outside of the building. Some of the windows had been broken, and when Chen Jianing looked down, he only felt dizzy in his brain.
"Don't look down." Ding Xiu reminded her. Because in addition to the glass under them, there is a crack at the bottom of the building, and the location where they are at the moment is almost close to a hundred meters from the bottom of the crack.
The wind whistled through the window, and the zombies behind them chased relentlessly, not minding such heights.
In the process of climbing upward, a beam suddenly broke, pressing Ding Xiu to the ground, but fortunately, there were stones next to him, and the beam was not compacted.
Chen Jianing turned around and ran back to pull him up, and asked with concern, "How is it, are you okay?" ”
"It's okay, my life is on the rise." Ding Xiu was covered in dust, and the stone beam that fell just now only crushed him, but did not hurt his muscles and bones.
"Let's take the stairs." His eyes caught a glimpse of the ladder spiraling between the walls, and beckoned to Chen Jianing, "Here, follow me." ”
The iron ladder was mottled with rust, but it was the best preserved thing in the ruins, and it stretched up the walls one by one, so that you didn't have to worry about collapsing under your feet or falling on your head.
It has to be said that it is much faster to walk up the stairs than to climb the ground through the ruins. After Ding Xiu and Chen Jianing stepped on the stairs, the distance between the two and the zombies behind them was slowly widened.
"Watch out for those warped rebars on the stairs."
"I know, you should be careful." After being reminded by Ding Xiu, Chen Jianing cheered up. As soon as she looked down, her face suddenly changed: "They're coming." ”
The zombies did catch up, and when they reached the stairs, they found that the distance had been widened a lot, so they did not take the stairs, but grabbed the handrail on the outside of the stairs and climbed up.
They climbed over the first floor in a few jumps, and their speed up the stairs was much faster than Ding Xiu and Chen Jianing.
Just now, they opened up two or three floors away, and in the blink of an eye, a zombie's hand grabbed the iron bar under their feet.
The zombie climbed the railing and reached out to grab Chen Jianing inside. Chen Jianing dodged backwards, and Ding Xiu kicked the zombie in the chest, kicking it down.
The zombie's body crashed into the guardrails on both sides one after another in the process of falling, and finally fell heavily to the ground, pierced by a raised steel bar.
Its hands and feet kept struggling to get up, but it was fixed there by the steel bars, and its body couldn't move.
The scene just now was quite frightening, and before Chen Jianing could calm down, he heard Ding Xiu's urging behind him.
"Don't stop, run."
There are still pursuers behind them, and those zombies seem to have infinite vitality in their bodies, they are tireless, and they will not die for decades.
Ding Xiu had seen a lot of dangerous creatures, but only the characteristics of this zombie made him unable to understand.
The stairs got steeper and steeper as they went up, and in some places the guardrails had broken, so in order to maintain balance, both of them began to use their hands and feet together.
There was a step in front of him with a large span, Chen Jianing reached out and grabbed a section of the railing above, and just stepped on it with his left foot, the railing suddenly broke.
Ding Xiu was still in the position of turning below, and when Chen Jianing fell behind him, although he reacted, he didn't have time to rescue him.
"Ahh The girl screamed and fell on a door behind her, which was slammed open, and her body slid out along the sloping ground due to the force and inertia.
Ding Xiu rushed to the door and saw Chen Jianing sliding to the window, her body hitting the glass of the window.
This is already the closest point to the outside of the building, and the floor is already heavily tilted at this height. In the room where Chen Jianing slipped in, the door was already on the ceiling, and the floor-to-ceiling glass window that originally served as a wall became the floor.
"Oh my God!" Seeing the crack that suddenly appeared on the glass, Ding Xiu's heart chuckled.
"Jia Ning!" This was the first time he called out Chen Jianing's name, "Are you okay?" ”
Chen Jianing fell a little hard, her head hit the window, and the impact of her body and glass also made her internal organs very uncomfortable.
"I'm fine." The girl moaned and tried to get up, but she was stunned as soon as she turned her head sideways.
Chen Jianing's body was an abyss nearly 100 meters high, and the only thing that stopped her body from falling was a layer of glass.
Cracks have appeared in the glass, and they are gradually spreading in all directions.
"Don't move, I'll find a way to save you."
Ding Xiu slid along the ground that was almost 90 degrees inclined towards the window where Chen Jianing was lying, and when he was about to approach the window, his hands grabbed the raised stone next to him.
Ding Xiu didn't dare to slide directly onto the glass, because it couldn't bear the weight of two people, so he found a support point near the glass window to grip it, and stretched out his other hand towards Chen Jianing with all his might.
Chen Jianing stood up gently, and the glass under her feet "crackled" a few times and there were a few more cracks.
"Hold my hand!" Ding Xiu shouted.
As soon as he finished speaking, a zombie suddenly appeared by the door that had just slipped down.