The first snowfall of winter came like a ghost in the night—silent, uninvited, and cold enough to numb what little feeling was left in Li Wei's bones.
He sat in the remnants of what used to be a teahouse on the outskirts of Yanshou Street, the kind with red lanterns and carved lattice windows now broken and dangling like snapped ribs. Most of the tables had been looted, burnt, or flipped over in panic. The wooden floor beneath him was warped with old water damage and fresh blood. The body that had leaked it lay a few feet away, twisted under a collapsed ceiling beam. Male, maybe forty. Eyes long gone. Face frozen in terror.
Li Wei didn't flinch.
He stirred the thin rice porridge warming on his portable gas burner. The pot, dented and scorched, had been found in an abandoned school kitchen the week before. The rice was stolen—from a rooftop camp that had forced a teenage girl to trade her body for food.
He slit their throats in the dark, one by one.
No words. No mercy.
That was the way of the world now.
And it suited him.
Li Wei hadn't spoken in eleven days.
Not since he left the city center and began moving north toward the mountains. He had no destination, only motion. Staying still was death. He'd seen what happened to those who lingered—hope festering in their eyes until the rot claimed them from the inside. Clinging to old lives, old rules, old delusions.
They were the first to die.
His boots were torn at the heels. One toe had gone black two nights ago, and he didn't have the tools or medicine to stop the rot. It would have to be cut off soon.
He would do it himself.
He took a spoonful of the porridge, let the bland warmth touch his tongue. No salt. No meat. Still, it was more than most had. A dull hunger stirred in his belly—more from habit than need.
Across the street, a wind chime danced. It had been clinking for hours, caught in a frozen breeze, each note like a whisper from the dead.
Then it stopped.
Li Wei froze mid-bite.
Silence was a signal.
He rose slowly, sliding the machete—Silence—into his right hand. His fingers curled around the hilt like it was a part of him, which, in many ways, it now was. The dull edge had split skulls, snapped joints, and once carved an arrow of blood across the throat of a soldier who tried to drag a woman into a van.
Li Wei moved toward the window, careful not to step on any loose debris. He peeked through the jagged glass.
Footprints.
Fresh.
Three sets. Moving fast. From the north road. Deep imprints, meaning weight—adults. Not infected. The infected didn't walk in coordinated patterns. They scattered like animals, like insects drawn to movement, heat, blood.
These were people.
And that made them more dangerous.
He had learned that the hard way.
He crouched beside the window and waited.
Minutes passed. Then—
A voice. Male. Raspy. "He must've come through here. Look at the prints."
Another voice. Younger. Nervous. "You sure it's him?"
Third voice. Cold. Female. "Matches the pattern. Wide stride. Deep heel. And look—drag mark on the left. The toe."
Li Wei narrowed his eyes.
They were tracking him.
How?
He hadn't left a trail. Not one that obvious.
Unless someone had seen him.
Unless he had underestimated someone.
He rose, stepped back, and slipped through the rear hallway of the teahouse. The wooden boards groaned, and he paused. A few rooms down, a paper door slid open slightly with a low creak. He froze, blade poised, heart steady.
No movement.
Then a whisper, like a thread of breath on glass.
"Please… help…"
A child?
No.
Too convenient.
Too well-timed.
He moved forward anyway, slow and silent, and nudged the door open with the tip of his blade.
Inside was a girl. Maybe fifteen. Face pale, cheeks hollow. Wrapped in a dirty blue school uniform. Her left ankle was twisted grotesquely beneath her. Her right arm was swollen, punctured with bite marks.
Fresh.
Not infected… yet.
She looked up. Her eyes, dull with shock, met his.
"I—I'm not one of them," she whispered. "Not yet. Please. They left me here. They said I was slowing them down."
Li Wei said nothing.
She blinked. "Aren't… aren't you going to kill me?"
He stepped inside and closed the door softly behind him. His eyes swept the room—bags, wrappers, blood-stained cloths. No weapons. No gear. Just rot and silence.
"I don't want to die," she said, tears now forming in the corners of her eyes. "I just… I don't want to turn alone."
Still, he said nothing.
She looked down. "My name's Lian."
He turned to leave.
Wait," she called. "Why… why do you even bother saving food? Or walking? We're all going to die anyway."
He paused at the threshold.
Then, finally, he spoke.
"We don't walk to survive," he said quietly. "We walk to remember who burned."
She didn't understand.
She wasn't meant to.
He walked out into the snow.
Outside, the air was sharper now. The cold dug into his coat like a dozen knives. He adjusted the machete on his back, slung the rice pot over his shoulder, and moved northward into the trees beyond the last buildings of the village.
Behind him, the girl never called again.
An hour later, he heard gunfire.
Not far.
Short bursts. Disciplined.
They had found the teahouse.
He didn't stop.
Let them.
Let the world bleed itself dry.
He owed it no kindness.
The mountains beyond Yanshou were jagged teeth in the sky. Once they had been tourist spots—quiet temples nestled into the cliffside, old monks offering incense and wisdom for coins. Now they were graveyards. Or worse.
Li Wei climbed without pause, his breath coming in controlled bursts. He'd left the lowlands behind days ago, but the road north had grown thinner, narrower, more treacherous with every hour. Trees leaned over the path like mourners. Ice coated the rocks. Somewhere above, wolves howled—no longer shy, no longer afraid of man.
The old gods had abandoned this place.
Or perhaps they had never lived here to begin with.
Near dusk, he reached a plateau—a flat stretch of abandoned farmland nestled against a half-burnt greenhouse. He saw the remnants of once-thriving tomato plants curled black with frost. A metal sign swung from a bent pole: Guanyin Family Agricultural Cooperative. Its paint was flaking. Its promise was dead.
He knelt and swept his fingers through the dirt.
Still warm.
Recently stirred.
He rose, eyes scanning the treeline. Quiet.
But the quiet meant nothing anymore.
Then a branch snapped behind him.
He spun just as a figure lunged from the greenhouse—a woman in layers of mismatched clothing, long hair matted with ice and blood. She moved like something rabid. In her hand, a blade fashioned from broken steel and wire. Her scream tore through the cold like a blade through silk.
He dodged, barely, the tip of her weapon slicing across his sleeve. He stepped in fast, elbowed her jaw, caught her wrist and twisted—
Snap.
She screamed again, but this time in pain.
The blade dropped. She fell to her knees.
Li Wei raised his machete.
"Wait!" she cried in broken Mandarin. "Please! Not infected! Just hungry!"
He paused.
She was not infected. Her eyes were clear. Her breath came in shudders, not snarls. She held her broken arm close, trying not to look him in the eye.
"Why attack?" he asked quietly.
"Thought you were one of them. The men. The soldiers. They come sometimes. Take things. Women. Everything."
Li Wei glanced around.
"How many?" he asked.
She hesitated.
"Three. Maybe four. One has a rifle. They took my sister last week."
Silence hung heavy.
"Where do they stay?" he asked.
She blinked. "What?"
"Their camp. Where?"
She swallowed. "You're going after them?"
He didn't answer.
She stared, something like fear—or awe—creeping into her voice. "You're not just a scavenger, are you?"
Still no answer.
She pointed with her good hand. "Down the other side of the ridge. There's a sunken village. Wooden gates. Old mining town. They holed up in the courthouse."
He nodded once.
"You'll die," she added, voice trembling. "They're monsters."
He stepped past her.
"I've met worse."
He descended before nightfall, slipping through the trees like a ghost of the old world. His breath fogged the air. Snow whispered underfoot. He moved with purpose, with memory. In another life, he had studied battle strategy under the Tang generals. Read every siege of the Warring States period. He understood how power corrupted. How fear was weaponized. How empires fell not to enemies, but to themselves.
In that way, nothing had changed.
He reached the village gates just after dark.
The wooden planks were reinforced with scrap metal and burnt tires. Barbed wire ran across the top. Two men stood outside with flashlights, wrapped in thick jackets. Their breath curled upward like steam. One had a cigarette. The other had a shotgun.
They joked in low voices. Laughed.
They didn't hear the stone bounce past them.
They barely turned before the second one hit the ground, choking, a knife buried in his throat. The cigarette fell from the first man's lips.
Then Li Wei was there.
One swing.
Silence again.
He dragged the bodies behind the wall, cleaned his blade on a tarp, and slipped into the compound like smoke.
Inside the village, there were five buildings still standing. Two were burned out. One served as a sleeping area—he could see the dim orange glow of fire through the cracks. The courthouse loomed at the center, its windows shattered, doors reinforced with rusted metal. A makeshift watchtower stood above it, manned by a lone guard with binoculars and an old rifle.
Li Wei mapped it all in seconds.
He moved first toward the far building—a storage unit. The door was chained. He picked it slowly, carefully, then slipped inside.
Inside: food. Blankets. A small cage with a girl in it.
His jaw tensed.
She looked up—barely thirteen. Face bruised, mouth gagged.
He broke the cage.
She stared in disbelief.
You'll run west," he whispered. "You see the river, follow it. Don't stop. Don't turn back."
She nodded, eyes wide. He gave her a blanket, a chunk of dried meat, and pointed to the hole he made in the side wall.
Then he turned and left.
No questions.
No names.
Just ghosts moving in the snow.
He returned to the courtyard.
Two more men exited the courthouse, laughing. One wore a military coat. The other had a bottle in his hand. They didn't see him in the dark.
Until the first head fell.
The bottle shattered on the ground.
The second man didn't get to scream.
By the time the guard in the tower noticed, Li Wei was already halfway up the side.
The rifle cracked.
Missed.
The second shot never came.
Blood painted the edge of the lookout.
Below, chaos erupted. Two more men ran from the barracks, shouting. One had a bat, the other an axe. They saw the tower, saw the blood, then turned toward the gate—
A bolt slammed through the first man's chest.
The second turned to run.
Li Wei landed on him from the roof, driving the machete down with both hands.
Then, silence.
Only the snow remained.
Red.
Steaming.
Alive.
He stood in the center of the courtyard, chest rising and falling, breath shallow. The flames from the watchtower flickered above, casting twisted shadows across the wood.
He looked at his hands.
They didn't shake.
They hadn't shaken in years.