Global Evolution

by Steffen Schmidt

  Chang kindly asked Jing and Zhizhi to stay still, and then he went up to the soldiers at a quick pace. Although he was still a pursued target of the military, his current face wasn’t known to any military personnel except for Zhizhi. Even if his parents met him now, he doubted they would recognize him with all the bandages.

  He walked up to the soldiers openly, inquiring, “Excuse me, what are you doing..?”

  Chang wasn’t given a chance to finish his question when the soldiers got frightened by his bandage-wrapped face. “Stay where you are! Are you infected or something with your head wrapped like that?”

  “We aren’t discriminating against you but you know everything is dangerous nowadays. We don’t want to get infected by chance. So just stay where you are and ask your question from over there.”

  “Sure.” Chang stopped, nodding.

  He had been treated like this for a few days already and learned not to care about what other people thought. Chang stood two meters away from the soldiers. “What are you spraying? Defoliant?”

  “Yes, it was an order. We’re spraying this in the city so that they won’t grow back again for a hundred years.”

  “A hundred years?” Chang was greatly astonished.

  “According to Chief Zhao’s instructions, he said that he urgently needed to transform Zhengzhou. Chief Zhao also said that the new defoliant we are using is harmful to the plants but will only minimally affect humans. The field that we spray the solution on today will be barren for a hundred years. Except for the fields that are cultivated for the Crystal Pea, they all need to be sprayed so that the apocalyptic city will be transformed soon. Didn’t you hear about it before?”

  “Not at all, I didn’t go out in the last two days so I had no idea of what was going on.”

  “Alright, now that you know it, go away. We don’t have time to talk to you, we’re still working.”

  “Thank you for letting me know, good day.” Chang bowed and left.

  When he returned to Jing and Zhizhi with a smile, he relayed the information that he’d heard from the soldiers. He sighed. “Barren for a hundred years, what a tough and vicious guy he is!”

  “Only the fittest will survive the natural selection, he really thinks of himself as the creator.”

  “Nevermind… We are too powerless to change anything, they can do whatever they want because at the end of the day we’ll all die.” Zhizhi heaved a sigh, walked by herself to the front. “We don’t have time thinking about their evil plans for now. Our mission today is to retrieve the worm box from that teenage girl.”

  Chang’s mind was brought back by her words, and he held Jing’s hand while following Zhizhi.

  Their destination was a kindergarten. Its first character was purple, and the rest were concealed by lush vines. However, knowing the name wouldn’t help them in this mission, thus, they took no notice of the doorplate and jumped over the closed gate.

  “Our target is here...” Zhizhi said after taking a deep breath in the middle of the courtyard. “There are sixteen more people in here besides the girl that we’re looking for. Twelve teens and four adults.”

  “You can even smell how old they are?” Chang stared at Zhizhi in stunned disbelief.

  “People of different ages smell differently, so do men and women. The adults are all male,” Zhizhi calmly explained.

  “What a nose!” Chang gave her a thumbs up and prowled to the front of a classroom.

  The classroom was modified into a residence. Five beds were horizontally aligned at the center of the room. The student desks and chairs were jumbled against the wall, while beds were pushed side by side in a long row. On this long bed, thirteen teen girls were lying either in black pantyhoses or naked. One man was snuggled up with one of them, snoring, while the other three were humping with their own partners, enjoying the last bit of ecstasy in the apocalypse.

  Chang kicked open the door with great force, crashing into this smutty yet sensual scene.

  “You’ve really found a way to enjoy your lives.” Chang squinted with his only eye. From his place at the door, he shouted back at his companion, “Jing! Don’t come in here!”

  “Who are you?” Those men let go of their girls when they saw Chang break in. They were vigilant, standing up nude to face him.

  As they stood up, Chang realized something unusual. One of them seemed exceptionally strong and tal. He was so muscular that he looked like a mutated vigorous hound, while his height reached almost two meters.

  “There is also an EM in the city...” Chang turned his head to face the outside of the classroom and asked, “What’s their index?”

  Chapter 101: Zhizhi He

  “Ten, he is a ten!” Jing reacted instantly.

  “Thanks!” Chang took out a small pistol that he had collected and kept from a dead soldier. He fired twice at the EM with each bullet hitting one of the knees, which resulted in him immediately kneeling on the ground. Chang shouted out, “Stay still and stay silence!”

  Zhizhi happened to see this when she walked in.

  “Good call! Subduing them without force.”

  “I am not fighting against them anyways.” Chang was still holding the pistol, his eyes browsing among the girls to find a face that he was familiar with. He asked her then, “Where is my worm box?”

  “They hid it.” The girl pointed at the muscular EM.

  His hands weren’t shaking at all, and his eyes not blinking. Chang walked up to the hard-bodied man. “Where is my worm box?”

  “What worm box?”

  “Don’t fool with me, the box that contains numerous tiny white worms that are edible.” Chang pressed the muzzle on the EM’s temple. “Don’t play stupid, even though your evolution is far more advanced than others’, you can’t take a shot with the pistol pressed to your head. Your head will explode, and your brain will splash about. But I didn’t come here to fight, I just need my worm box back.”

  The facial expressions of the men changed, and their tight-pressed lips loosened once they heard what Chang came for. One of them even raised his hand, showing that he was willing to bring Chang to the worm box.

  It was rather easy for them to find the worm box as it was only hid in a cabinet that stood against the wall. Chang immediately opened the worm box when he got his hand on it.

  If the base number of the worms was reduced, the production efficiency would be reduced as well. Seeing less than half of the worms slowly wriggling in the box, Chang was greatly upset.

  “You ate quite a lot, didn’t you?” Chang furrowed his brows.

  “I didn’t eat them all, you see, we also have girls living with us. Our lives aren’t as easy as you thought.” The man tried to ingratiate himself with Chang as he saw’s Chang’s disappointment. “We ain’t having it easy, either. We’re just trying to have some fun.”

  “I don’t care what your lives are. I’m just here for my box. Now that I lost more than half of my worms, you need to pay me back for my loss.” Chang smiled, his eyes shone with greed as he urgently wanted some other weapons in exchange for food.

  However, the man misunderstood him.

  “Bro, I see what you mean. Do you like any of our girls? Just take whoever you like. They’re all obedient, I’ve wiped out those naughty ones.”

  “You killed them?” Chang maintained his composure.

  “Of course.” The man raised his brows. “Why feed them if they’re only trying to run away and kill us?” As if promoting his merchandise, the man pointed at each girl], saying. “The girls we kept know their job and are good at it. Hell knows how much time we spent on training them. Some of them are sisters, so as soon as we controlled one of them, the other would become as docile as a puppy…”

  “Sounds fun…” Chang covered his disgust with a smile.

  “It was…” The man didn’t finish his words, his voice choked.

  “Although it sounds fun...” Strangling the man’s neck, Chang’s fingers tightened. The man’s neck bone broke int
o two. “This is challenging my bottom line.”

  The man’s eyes popped out as a result of being choked to death.

  Chang threw away the incapacitated body. He took the worm box from the ground, his hand waved, gesturing for Zhizhi to walk out with him.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Chang killed two men with two headshots. The last bullet hit the EM’s forehead but apparently the power of the gun was too weak – the bullet got stuck at the frontal bone. The EM had evolved not only his muscles, but also the density of his bones. In other words, the degree of bone hardening made his bones firmer than steel.

  Chang’s index finger was ready to pull the trigger again, but Zhizhi stepped up and stopped him.

  “We came here for the worms, why are you killing them? Even though they did something bad, they don’t deserve this, it’s their choice,” Zhizhi almost screamed.

  “It isn’t just something bad. Go ahead and ask the girls.” Chang put away his pistol and stopped talking.

  To confirm his answer, Zhizhi squatted down to ask one of the girls in front of her. Later, what the girl told her, made her expression gloomy.

  Not only had the men molested and raped these girls, they had also threatened and forced them to search for food. To ensure the girls would do so, most of their sisters were put under house arrest.

  When they were short on food, they even cannibalized the girls.

  “Bastards!” Upon hearing the girl weep out her grief, Zhizhi turned furious. She then pulled out a dagger from her belt and hunkered down, stabbing the dagger into the dying man’s anus.

  “F*ck you! Son of b*tch!” Zhizhi’s face was contorted. Her anger pushed her action further, she started moving about the blade that was buried in the man. “Does it feel good, huh?”

  “Ah!” the dying man emitted a squeal of pain.

  “Just kill him! What are you doing?” Chang asked, standing behind her.

  “Killing him won’t relieve my fury, I can’t believe cannibalism exists.” As Zhizhi was speaking, she pulled out the dagger and sliced at the man’s ankle and wrist so that his tendons were cut off. She then dragged the man to the door of the classroom by his collar, shouting to the girls, “Someone tell me, where is the closest washroom?”

  “Just turn left in the corridor, you’ll see it...” a girl answered in a shaky voice.

  Zhizhi smirked to show her appreciation, then left to the corridor. Seeing this, Chang went behind her hurriedly.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing that you need to worry about, I’m just having a bad day, and I need to alleviate my frustration.” Zhizhi didn’t slow down but sped up. The man groaned in a deep voice but that didn’t make Zhizhi feel any sympathy toward him.

  Almost all the citizens knew about the tentacle monsters that evolved and lived in the sewage, and thus, no one used flush toilets nowadays. Thousands of attacks had made humans fear the bloodthirsty tentacles under the toilets, so they became the least safe place to go to. Therefore, most of the washrooms were sealed off—the one in this kindergarten was no exception.

  The sealing tape was ripped off in a rough way, and Zhizhi opened the toilet cover, throwing the man onto a seat. She then tied up this EM so that he couldn’t move away, just sit on it.

  “May you die in the greatest fear.” Zhizhi even secured the man by having ropes wrapped around his thighs and the toilet. This way, the EM wouldn’t be able to stand up. She laughed. “I’m sorry for stabbing your anus, but you’re dripping blood into the toilet… Let me guess, how soon they will come to you with this flavorful smell of blood?”

  “Please...” Her words struck fear into the man. The EM hadn’t even displayed dread in front of a pistol, but this time he begged. “Please let me go, please! I can work for you! You see, I’m very strong and that makes me capable of tons of things. If you do me a favor today, I’ll be loyal to you forever, I promise!”

  A series of melodious chuckles came from Zhizhi’s thin lips. She nodded, and her heart was filled with satisfaction. “Sounds pretty nice… but sweetheart, I don’t need anything but for you to go to hell.”

  To stop the man from pleading, Zhizhi grabbed a mop from beside the door and shoved its head into the man’s mouth.

  The washroom was left with the man alone inside; the air was frozen since Zhizhi had walked out the door. The man’s desperation leaked from his wide open eyes, accompanied by blood dripplling down from his anus. The drops were the tick tocks of a timed bomb. Every second passed slowly breaking down his nerve.

  Even though Zhizhi had done something cruel to the EM, her expression wasn’t nervous at all, instead, she kept smiling silently and waved to Chang, who awaited her outside the washroom.

  “Zhizhi, I didn’t know you were so cold-blooded...” Chang, too, turned around, walking away with Zhizhi and leaving the hopeless EM alone in the washroom that was suffused with torments of remorse.

  The duo returned to the classroom, seeing the girls having found their clothing. They sat on the ground with shirts or dresses loosely covering their young bodies. Their eyes were still innocent as those of puppies. Instead of being filled with fear, they gazed at Chang and Zhizhi, who were now in charge of their lives.

  “You can live your own lives now, just go somewhere you want to.” Chang waved his hand. “I know some of the communities are still accepting new members, but I just can’t guarantee your safety there… Your youth is wanted so badly by the gangsters, I can’t say for sure that you won’t be traded again.”

  Thinking of their miserable fate, Chang didn’t continue speaking since he knew these teen girls were the most vulnerable in the apocalypse, even if they lived in a relatively safe community. If they were lucky enough, they might became farmers. But most likely, they would be treated as bargaining chips.

  Chang looked up at the ceiling, heaving a long sigh. “Just go.” He waved his hand again.

  As Chang urged them again, the girls reluctantly left the classroom one after another. All except for that one girl who had met Chang before.

  “Can I go with you, please?” she asked.

  “No, you cannot.” Chang shook his head.

  The girl nodded at his answer and didn’t ask again, but neither did she leave.

  “She is smart” Zhizhi commented as a spectator of this conversation. She then threw herself to the bed, falling on her back. “The apocalypse made the bad worse, and the good ones suffer.”

  Zhizhi teased Chang, “Hey, didn’t you think of something else when you saw those naked girls?”

  Chang walked backward and slowly laid himself on the bed as well. “Even if I wanted to, I know the consequences would make me sad...”

  Zhizhi gazed at the ceiling, murmuring. “You are a good guy.”

  Keeping his eyes closed, Chang said, “Why do you say that?”

  “You have a good nature, kind and caring,” Zhizhi spoke softly. “I’m glad that Zhuo’s special force didn’t kill you.”

  “I’m the opposite of good.” Hearing her compliment, Chang wasn’t delighted at all. “I’m just disinclined to take responsibility. I always have the feeling that If I do something good, responsibility comes with it. And I can’t even take care of myself now...”

  “If I ever am capable, I wish I could grant them safety...”

  ...

  Chang and Zhizhi had a long conversation that day. Jing joined later, and they ventured to some strange topics. They left the classroom after two hours. Before they went, they checked-up on the EM that was tied to the toilet—he was dead.

  The tentacle monster hadn’t killed him. He had died of fright.

  The teen girl followed them when they left the kindergarten, but the trio quickened their pace. Soon, she lost sight of them.

  Chapter 102: A Storm is Coming

  For almost a month, Zhizhi, Jing, and Chang spent their days in peace.

  There was a troop of soldiers chasing them, but Chang and Zhizhi were able to backtrack the pursuer
s before they got close. Countless times, the troop hunted for nothing. In the end, they would disappear from Zhizhi’s olfactive perception range, probably just returning to the military as they aborted the impossible mission.

  In the city of Zhengzhou, quite a few explosive news spread.

  The first news was that a month ago, which was five days after Chang retrieved their worm box, The Agent Orange plan was well-implemented and completed in time. Most of the non-cultivation fields were sprayed with the chemical. And as Zhuo had anticipated, these affected areas became barren. The devastated plants lost their color, and their feeble stems lay flat on the ground.

  Once Zhuo’s goal was achieved, the government and the military tasted the sweetness of convenience. They also began clamoring to clear the highways that connected the cities using Agent Orange.

  However, the clamor only lasted for a few days. The decision was stalled for a long time, and in the end, still not made. No one knew whether it was because the regional political struggle made the authorities yearn for more power and hence they didn’t want to connect with the central government that would take away their freedom to do as they wished, or it was because the research institute ran out of Agent Orange, which resulted in the mission having to be aborted since the amount of the chemical was insufficient to implement the plan. Either way, the clamor was settled down.

  Civilization restored itself once the plants, which were shelters for predators, withered. The animals were either killed off by the army or fled to the jungle as Zhuo had expected.

  Once the citizens were granted safety, it meant that the old industrial activities could be resumed, and the people were assigned to different infrastructure projects. Their wages were the seeds of the Crystal Pea—the more they worked, the more they would be awarded; and if they chose not to work, they wouldn’t get any seeds since the distribution stations were going to be cancelled soon. It was a simple solution, and Zhuo’s ruled civilization continued to flourish.