Global Evolution

by Steffen Schmidt

  “Go somewhere else, it’s too dangerous here,” Chang kindly suggested again.

  “The medications are all gone. Starting from this morning, many groups were all scrambling for medication. We didn’t even get one pill.”

  “Scrambling?”

  “Yeah, humans are extremely vulnerable now, and even small scratches from grass are fatal. Many people got infected and needed medications, so all the pharmacies on the street were basically robbed. The hospital would’ve been in the same situation had someone come out of it.”

  “Really?” Chang didn’t expect this. That monster tree somehow did him a great favor. Without its obstruction, he could’ve been torn apart by these desperate groups, not to mention he managed to bring out a considerable amount of medication.

  “…..”

  “Never mind, I have some antibiotics here. Go ahead and help your father take these pills. I don’t know whether they’re going to be effective though.” The father reminded Chang of Tao, so he sighed inaudibly and took out a pack of antibiotics and handed it to the boy.

  He then left the family without looking back.

  He didn’t need appreciation, nor was he pretending to be a hero. The value that he always believed taught him to help others in such a scenario. Even so, he wasn’t pleased, as he knew that he was reducing his own chance of survival when he shared his medication with others.

  In fact, Chang was consuming his own life for integrity – which was apparently meaningless in the apocalypse.

  Chapter 14: To Kill

  Chang sighed as he walked through the crowd. He repressed his feelings and tried to stay detached from his surroundings, trying to avoid looking at people who were about to die and hearing the cries from their families.

  However, the more he tried to avoid looking around, the more he could perceive everything around him.

  The anguished faces entered his eyes and into his mind; Chang felt like he couldn’t breathe as he walked through the crowd.

  He continued forward and gradually drifted away from the crowd. He felt like a lonely soul.

  “Sweet heart, you can have the lollipop if you go inside the hospital and tell us what happened.” When Chang moved along the street with glazed eyes, he heard a voice that made him uncomfortable.

  “No, I don’t want to go.” Then came a cry from a little girl.

  “Are you going or not?” The voice suddenly became stern.

  The strange conversation attracted Chang’s attention; he could no longer remain uninvolved. He walked toward the voice and saw three men with flat-top hair styles.

  Among the three, one had a scar on his face, one was stout and one had a hooked nose.

  They all had the same kind of standard prisoner haircut. Their coarse hair was closely cut to their scalps.

  This kind of hairstyle was rare on the street; the chance of running into men with this haircut was less than one in a hundred. Now that there were 3 men with the same haircut gathered together, their identities were obvious – prisoners.

  Both their appearance and behaviour resembled that of criminals, and although they weren’t in uniforms, Chang was almost completely certain that they were.

  The three also had injuries on their bodies and faces, probably caused by fighting with others. If Chang was correct, they must’ve been prisoners who escaped from jail after the growth of the red fog, their injuries were all infected.

  In front of them was a six-year-old girl. Obviously, they didn’t know each other, but there weren’t any parents watching over the girl.

  “I don’t want to go into the hospital, it’s dangerous in there.” The little girl shrank her neck after she heard what the people in front of her wanted her to do.

  “Bullsh*t, we’re just asking you to walk into the hospital. There’s nothing dangerous there.” The hook-nosed man said with a grimace.

  “…It, it’s dangerous…” The little girl repeated as she started sobbing.

  Seeing this, Chang felt even more uncomfortable than when he witnessed death. The struggle between having integrity and surviving made it difficult for him to breath, but he didn’t want to be kind again – in the chaos, things like this happened all the time. It was none of his business, and he didn’t want to risk himself for that meaningless morality.

  Chang turned away to the opposite direction. He decided to ignore the cry.

  He heard a resounding smack on a face as he took the first step.

  “Fu*k! You’ll do what I say, no more bullsh*t!” It was a husky and thick voice.

  Then, the girl started to cry louder. Chang gritted his teeth, but didn’t stop.

  But then, an outrageous sound stopped him – a flick of a switchblade as well as the sound of skin being cut by the blade. What came after was a heart-wrenching cry.

  “F*ck!” He furiously spat and turned around. The first thing he noticed was a long trail of blood which had already coated half of her delicate face. She cried desperately but failed to attract even the slightest sympathy from the thug trio.

  In the thick fog, the visibility of ordinary humans was three meters. To visualize the distance, three meters was similar to an adult leaping or running two steps; it was a very short distance.

  Hence, when Chang sank the scalpel into the hook-nosed man’s neck, the man didn’t even have time to see Chang’s face.

  The tip of the scalpel poked through the right carotid artery, then Chang pulled the scalpel downward, cutting the veins too. He jumped off of the thug’s body and blood gushed from the thug’s neck immediately. The hook-nosed man covered his neck and scowled, but that expression didn’t last for more than a few seconds. His body collapsed soon after he shortly moaned.

  However, no one cared about the hook-nosed man; to be exact, no one looked at him. The remaining two were terrified by the young man who came out from the fog. They were all drawn towards his bloody hand and the scalpel.

  Chang stood still and clenched the handle of the scalpel after taking the thug’s life, then he stared at the remaining thugs.

  “Who are you?” The scar faced man broke the silence after he gazed at Chang for a few seconds.

  “A passerby,” Liu Chang answered honestly. The feeling of killing someone for the first time wasn’t wonderful, but it gave him a sense of relief. The pressure of having integrity was released as he brandished the scalpel; his heart surprisingly felt lighter.

  Contrary to his feelings, Chang’s body was extremely excited. Excess epinephrine was secreted from killing the thugs, causing his body to tremble uncontrollably.

  “A passerby?” The scar faced man saw Chang’s tremble and quickly learned that he was merely an amateur. Thus, he revealed a look of contempt, “Kiddo, you must have watched too many Marvel shows and wanted to be a hero. What a pity; today’s the day you’ll learn your lesson to not be a hero.”

  While the scar-faced man was talking, he flicked the switchblade from his hand. There was blood on the blade – it was this guy who lacerated the little girl.

  Seeing here, Chang slightly squinted his eyes and stepped back without speaking.

  “Well well well, now you know what fear tastes like.” Seeing Chang stepped back into the fog, Scarface grinned loudly, “Little bastard, don’t try to be a hero when you aren’t! You were daring to kill a person, but facing me, you’re just scared silly!”

  Chang calmly stood in the fog which was beyond the scar faced man’s vision. He took a few deep breaths and stabilized his own body. He indifferently looked at the man who was still clamoring.

  Then, he moved slowly and walked around Scarface until he was four or five meters behind him – at this distance, Chang could see every movement the man made without revealing himself.

  Afterwards, things became very simple. He took two big steps and thrust the scalpel into the man’s spine in his lower back. Chang twisted the scalpel, then withdrew the scalpel at the same moment the man uttered a piercing scream. His body was convulsing.

  “No…
no…”

  The unbearable pain from his spine caused the scar faced man to convulse, and his upper and lower body contractions were already disjointed.

  The scream finally sparked fear in the last thug; the two killings were too eerie to him. The stout man made a decision that was both right and wrong under panic.

  He grabbed the little girl tightly.

  Chapter 15: Danger Index

  “Young man.” The stout man held his dagger against the girl’s neck, then impatiently yelled, “We have no animosity against you; there’s no reason to get in a fight like this.”

  “If you want to save this girl, reveal yourself, and then we can make a deal.”

  The stout man yelled into the fog, but he didn’t know where Chang was hiding. He couldn’t see anything but the fog. He wasn’t even able to hear Chang’s footsteps, which made him feel powerless.

  “Say something!” There was only a muffled echo from the fog, so the stout man shouted, “I said, say something!”

  The stout man nervously looked around, and sweat soaked his shirt.

  However, not even a ripple appeared in the fog, nor did a response. All he could hear was the moaning from his accomplice.

  This oppressive silence made his stout figure tremble from fear and anxiety.

  “Son of a bitch! You think I’m afraid of you, huh? I’ll count to three; if you still decide to hide, then this little girl…” The stout man cried while pressing the dagger tighter to the girl’s neck.

  A gunshot from in front of him ended everything; the bullet went through his plump lips as he was thinking about what to say. It entered his head, and his stout body collapsed with just a deep groan.

  Four meters away, Chang put down his pistol – although he was an amateur with guns, shooting someone in the head just four meters away wasn’t a big challenge for him.

  Chang came in front of the little girl from the fog. Blood from the long scar on her face had congealed from the end of her eyebrows to the corner of her lips.

  Surprisingly, the little girl stopped crying when she saw Chang approach. In the pool of blood, a pair of shining eyes fixed onto this man that was half a meter taller than her.

  “Close your eyes and give me a minute, okay?” As if her shining eyes had stung him, Chang turned his head and walked to the man who was still jerking on the ground.

  The scar faced man was still scrawling, but due to his spine being broken, the movement of his upper and lower body was extremely disjointed, as if a maggot was wriggling around.

  “You know what? You’re more disgusting than a maggot.” Chang lowered his body and sat on the scar-faced man’s chest. He looked into his eyes and said so indifferently.

  Then, as if the world had lost all sound, Chang slowly inserted his scalpel into the man’s chest.

  Whiff…

  The blade pierced through his lungs, and it sounded like a slight gust of air from poking through a ball. Chang patiently waited until the man’s chest completely collapsed before he took a deep breath. The smell of death gushed out from the cut.

  Chang stayed in a daze for a while, then pulled out the scalpel and wiped off the dripping blood onto the scar-faced man’s shirt. He then returned to the little girl.

  “Take these antibiotics; I'll help sanitize the cut on your face.” Chang gave her some pills from his backpack, then carefully cleaned the cut with rubbing alcohol.

  After he finished that, however, Chang was confused.

  Should he take the girl with him? It was a great concern in his mind.

  At this moment, he could only take care of himself. Within a day, he had been teetering on the brink of life and death several times, and that was without anyone else dragging him behind.

  Bringing her along meant that the situation would only become worse.

  “You don’t want to take me with you, do you?” After she took the pills, she softly asked. Her sensitivity allowed her to understand Chang’s thoughts.

  "I'm afraid that I can’t take care of you.” Chang confessed, "Where are your parents?"

  “I ran out from an orphanage. I don’t have any parents or family.” The corners of her mouth curved into a smile at Chang, but along with the smile, blood oozed from the cut.

  “Take me with you please… I won’t drag you behind! I have a special power.”

  “A special power?” Chang frowned. If a kid told him such a thing yesterday, he would certainly think that the kid was joking, but everything was different today. After he personally experienced the extraordinary feeling from his slight mutation, he wouldn’t belittle anyone who said things of this sort.

  "What kind of special power do you have?" Chang asked.

  “Since yesterday, I could sense all kinds of danger, even if they were far away.” The girl described with her hands, using simple words to explain, “For example, for those three men, their level of danger was about this big…”

  The girl clenched her fist, showing what she envisioned to be “as big as a fist”.

  “As for you, the level of danger you give to me is this big…” The girl drew a circle that was the size of an adult fist.

  “Okay…” Chang looked at the girl; he knew she wasn’t lying. He then asked, “What about in the hospital, did you sense anything?”

  “Yes, it was huge.” She raised her arm as high as she could and drew a giant circle, “It’s even bigger than this.”

  “Okay… come with me then.” Chang decided to bring her along and held her hand.

  Knowing that the girl had danger-sensing capabilities, he no longer held his previous concerns.

  Originally, he wasn’t going to bring her with him. First, he didn’t have the ability to take care of a kid; second, she would definitely weigh him down. He wasn’t a hero or anything. He was simply an ordinary high school student – he even failed the f*cking entrance exam. Looking back, he had saved someone’s life twice. But even a hero wouldn’t get involved in a survivor’s afterlife, not to mention bringing someone with him – unless she had special powers.

  The ability to recognize and visualize danger was an extremely practical ability for survival. The chance of surviving would be significantly improved if he knew whether something was stronger or not, as he could avoid them instead of meeting their attacks.

  “If you can sense danger, why did you get caught by those men?”

  “They were average men; I couldn’t really feel anything from them.” The girl answered.

  "Oh." Chang nodded. He now understood that the danger levels she sensed wasn’t really how dangerous a being was, but rather their vitality. She mistook the pressure from those powerful being as being danger. In other words, she couldn’t sense whether a being intended to harm her.

  “Okay, how about this… from now on, let’s just say that the danger of those thugs was at level 1. If we run into something that is several times stronger, use numbers to help me understand the level of danger you feel from it compared to those thugs. Understood?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay, so what is my danger level?”

  “Somewhere between 2 and 3.” The girl counted with her fingers.

  Chapter 16: Strategy

  “That isn’t too accurate though...” Chang knew that he could fight more than two or three people given the sensitivity and perception of his body he currently had.

  “But that’s exactly how much danger I can sense from you.” The girl carefully calculated again and nodded with determination.

  “Really?” Chang thought again and realized that vitality didn't necessarily represent how good someone or something could fight. It definitely had some impact, but couldn’t fully determine how dangerous one was. For example, his vision and hearing had significantly improved, so his vitality had also increased. However, no one could predict how much these sensory improvements would benefit him in a fight.

  “Tell me, what’s the danger level inside the hospital?”

  “I’d say about 129…oh, no, it�
�s 130 now and it’s still increasing.” The little girl quickly peeked to the direction of the hospital, and her eyes revealed a trace of fear.

  “Oh, that’s certainly a horrifying monster.” Chang nodded calmly and turned away as he said, “Let’s go.”

  The little girl also nodded. Though she didn’t know where Chang was going, she still followed him closely.

  “About how far away can you sense danger?” Chang asked the girl as he was walking.

  “About 100 meters…beyond that, the feeling becomes very blurry.”

  “Is your face is still hurting?”

  “Yes…but I can bear with it.”

  “You’re a brave girl.” Chang kept pulling the grass aside. As long light from the Sun hit the Earth – even just the smallest amount – the plants could manage to thrive in it.

  “How old are you?”

  “12.”

  “You must be kidding me.” Chang looked at the girl in surprise, “You look like you’re 7 or 8! Don’t lie to me!”

  “I’m not lying to you! I’m just short… Although I’m 12, I’m only 4’4’’ tall…But don’t worry, you don’t need to take care of me that much; my physical strength is much better than an average kid. I promise I won’t weigh you down!” She anxiously said.

  “Ah… Don’t worry, just stay with me. I won’t abandon you for any reason.” Chang turned away to avoid her bright eyes, “Let’s go to a convenience store, someone I know is there.”

  The girl didn’t say anything after hearing his promise, and followed Chang even closer.

  They both stopped talking after the short conversation. With help from the girl, they avoided a level 35 organism far away. After walking two blocks, they finally returned to the front of the convenience store.

  Chang knocked the door gently, then someone in the store carefully opened it.

  About half of the people who stayed at the store yesterday had left, but luckily there were still people here that he knew.