System, are you messing with me? - Chapter 39: Chapter 39

Shu Ning: "ALPHA. What the heck ist this?"
System: "W-What do you mean?"
Shu Ning: "You can't be serious. I just left a world full of danger and death and now I actually entered the bloody appocalypse?"
System: "In my defense, I had no control over this whatsoever. I wouldn't have chosen this. I swear."
Shu Ning sighed as the fight suddenly left him and he tiredly stared up at the ceiling. It had been a long day already and all he wished to do right now was to sleep for a week or so. But that, of corse, would have to wait because he was caught in the FUCKING APPOCALYPSE. And if that was not already a damper to his mood, the fact that the body he was currently occupying was the protagonists 'older brother' Shi Wei surely was.
Shu Ning: "Nothing could ever be easy could it? I'm caught in a mental health instutude surrounded by zombies, my so-called brother wants to see me dead and this body is too weak to even survive a few minutes in this hell. No wonder the plot never mentioned him again after the end of the world startet."
System: "It may look bad now, but look on the bright side of things."
Shu Ning: "And that would be?"
System: "Obviously that is.... Well.... The good thing about this is..... you can.... you are....."
Luckily (or not), the System was saved from having to finish the sentence as a loud roar sounded from the otherside of the door, that was soon followed by another one and another. Untill the whole hospital shook with the force of it. The walls vibratet, the ceiling lamp swung back and forth and the glass tubes on the tables bumped against eachother. It was terribly loud.
In no time, Shu Ning swung himself onto his shaking legs and varily looked at the closed door. The sharp knife from the system store was still tightly grasped in his hand and was now raised defensively in front of him. For a while only the howling of the zombies, the steady dripping of the blood still on the blade and his own ratteling breathing could be heard.
Then, when the dispense almost grew unbearable, the heavy iron door broke underneath the weight of a horde of zombies thowing themselves against it. As if in slow motion the door ripped itself from it's hinges and slowly tipped onto the floor, where it landed with a resonating bang.
Shu Ning cursed when he finally got a good look at the amount of enemies sprawled on the threshold. He carefully lifted the knife higher as one of the zombie threw themself at him and hoped that his weak limbs would obey him one last time.
The first non-human was dodged easily and with a flick of his wrist, Shu Ning slashed the knife right across his opponents stomach and side. The other staggered shortly before righting himself again, but Shu Ning had no time to care about that too much when he had to block a pair of sharp claws from piercing his shoulder. Right on time, as the tip of the nails were only a hairbreadth away from his skin.
Shu Ning pushed the zombie's appentage away from him and used the opening it created to ram his weapon into the others neck. It gave a sickening crunching noise as it sunk deep into the skin and with one last kick into the stomach, the zombie collapsed into a heap.
The glee of a beaten enemy was short lived though as immediately two more creatures rushed at Shu Ning. It was after those two were taken care off, that he noticed his strength speedily declining. Even just holding on to the knife got more difficult by the munute and the next zombie swinging at him even almost grazed his face. It was more of a battle in stamina at this point and it would only be a matter of time untill his body completely disobeyed his orders.
Shu Ning: "We need to leave. NOW!"
Shu Ning felt his lungs burn in strain already and every breath he took, felt like a needle piercing his chest. His arms felt like lead and liffting them to block the sharp claws of a zombie was quickly becoming too hard. So with a heavy pounding heart, he pushed away the undead behind him and dived headfirst through the closed window.
With a crash, the glass broke and gave way for Shu Ning's body to pass. A few sharp edges of the glass cut shallowly into his flesh as he broke through. Then there was only air around him and he had to shut his eyes tightly as he plummet five floors down.
Shu Ning: "Fuck. Alpha. Wind talisman. Medium. NOW."
System: "Y-Yes. Deducing 5000 Points. Thanks for your patronage."
Just when the hard ground was only about five metres away, a piece of pale yellow paper slipped in between the floor and Shu Ning's body and produced a strong air current. It came right out of the piece of paper and hurriedly surrounded his flailing body, suspending it in mid air.
Shu Ning: "God was that close. I almost ended up as a pancake. Let's never ever do that again."
System: "Agreed. Host almost gave me a heart attack. I thought host was choosing suicide over being eaten by ugly zombies. Don't ever scare me like that again. ●﹏●"
Shu Ning invardly scoffed at the System's words but outwardly showed an appologetic smile to appease it. Then he grabbed the floating talisman from underneath him and slowly allowed the wind to lower his body onto the ground. Luckily, there didn't seem to be any more zombies close by at the moment and so he didn't need to hurry away just yet. It would give him the time to take a quick break and get the body into working order again.
Ten minutes later, Shu Ning carefully stretched his stiff limbs and made his way to the parking lot of the hospital. On the way he tried multiple times to get his legs into a light trott but it quickly became apparent that it was a hopeless endeavor. So it took a bit longer than he would have liked to finally sit in the relative safety of a car and speedily drive away from this hellish place.
Shu Ning: "Alpha, is there a way to strengthen this body? I feel exhausted already and the movements of this body are too slugish and slow."
System: "yes, there are some medical pills for.... Host? What's wrong? Host?"
The system anxhiously continued to call out to it's Host, but Shu Ning could barely hear anything beside the loud rushing of blood in his ears that was accompanied by a scorching heat spreading inside his body. Soon even breathing became difficult, as if a heavy stone pushed down onto his lungs and when a sudden stinging feeling attacked his head he couldn't hold back a pained groan even if he tried.
With no one paying attention to the road anymore, the car unceremoniously bumped into other cars blocking the road, sliddered off the street and came to a stopp right when it was about to smash the window of a  clothing store. For a minute, everything stayed quiet as dark smoke oozed out of the front of the car. Then, in a matter of seconds, all of the zombies in close vicinity turned their heads in the direction of the crash and curiously began sniffing the air.
System: "Host. Host. Come on, please. SHU NING!"
Shu Ning: "Yes.... ughh....... I hear you."
System: "You need to go. They will be on us soon. Hurry! (((＞＜)))"
Shu Ning: "Can't move. What is going on? Was the strain too much for the body to handle? No, wait...."
Shu Ning shook his head to get the fuzzy feeling out of his head but instead it only made him feel dizzy and the pain worsen. So he could only grit his teeth and ignore the discomfort as he hurriedly scroled through the plot. He hoped that the guess in his heart was wrong, but at the moment it seemed to be the only plausible explanation.
Shu Ning: "Got it. Shi Wei started feeling weird a bit more than a year ago. The symptoms were memory loss, no apetite, agression, fever and insomnia. A lot of other people seemed to show the same kind of symptoms around that time too. That, coupled with the fact that there was no more relevant news about this after the appocalypse started, I would say, that it is closely related with each other."
System: "You mean...?"
Shu Ning: "hmmm. I have read novels about the apocalypse before and most of them said similar things. When a body get's infected by the virus, the body turns slugish and slow and the brain starts to shut down relevant functions, like memories, knowledge, thoughts, taste, etc. As you can see, it fits quite well to my situation. The only thing really missing would be the sharp claws."
System: "But that would mean, that the original had been infected for a whole year already."
Shu Ning: "Yes, just like a lot of other people. I suppose the virus entered the body either through the skin or through a mucous membrain and then multiplied itself and tried to make it's way into the bloodstream. It would be a lengthy process. Instead, if someone got scratched or bitten by a zombie, the virus could directly travel into the heart of the body and occupy it. That's why it only took a few days for the nurses of the hospital to transform into zombies while the initial carriers of the virus took longer."
System: "But a whole year?"
Shu Ning: "Not everyone needed a whole year to transform into zombies. I also don't believe that the first zombie only appeared today. The news propbably just hid it so that the citisens don't panik, but now there are way too many of them. I think the time the virus takes to transforme someone probably either has something to do with their will, their immunsystem, or the source they gor infected from. Every person is different I suppose."
System: "Alright. Alright. Enough of that. The zombies..."
By now, the zombies have already surrounded the broken car and more and more creatures got attracted by the delicious smell of fresh meat. Soon, there wouldn't be a single gap between them anymore and so escape would be nearly impossible. Even now the numbers of Zombies were already difficult to count as there were just to many of them around.
Shu Ning gritted his teeth as another wave of pain assaulted his head and the heat intensified, but he still deteminedly checked the condition of the car. When nothing too seriously came up, he started the car again and hit the gaspedal so that the vehicle agressively shot forward. The zombies in the path of the car were unceresmonely run over and with sharp turn of the whele, the car tires screetched on the asphalt as the rear end turned a circle around the front. With that manöver a whole lot more zombies got knocked down and a wide gap appeared between them.
With another hit on the gas pedal, the car burst right through the openned space and made it's way in the direction Shu Ning guessed the future B-Base was located. If everything went well on the way he could reach the city by the fifth day. Of course that would meant getting a car that could actually manage the entire distance.
However, not even an hour later the discomfort of Shu Ning's body got too much to handle and he had to park the car in a small wheat field on the side of a dirty road. There he shut off the engine and lowered the back of his seat to get some rest. Sleep would not come eaily that day though as scorching lava passed through the vains in his body and a massive sledgehammer continued to pound onto his sensitive temples. After a few hours of uncomfortable thrashing and painfull whimpering, a deep unconciousness caught hold of him and dragged him right into the merciful dark.