Chapter 5: Back to School

The tarmac had become soft; Chang couldn’t imagine the vitality of the seemingly weak grass for it to be able to penetrate the pavement. However, there wasn’t any room for him to think too much about it. Walking along the eroded sidewalk step by step, Chang hoped that he wouldn’t run into any danger.

He walked for about 10 minutes and noticed that there were less people on the street. He didn’t know where they had hid. As he was thinking about this, a distant noise attracted his attention.

Despite the sound coming from far away, Chang knew that the red fog could greatly reduce noises and sounds. Hence, despite seeming to come from far away, it was probably much closer than he thought.

Chang anxiously looked around but the bloody fog blocked his vision. Within three meters of visibility, his eyes couldn’t really collect much information about the scene. The first did that Chang did as an onlooker of this fight was to determine if they were humans or primates.

However, the second thing that Chang felt was to stay away from the scene. According to societal logic had taught him that being involved in the situation wouldn’t be beneficial at all for him.

Hence, he slowly moved away from the source of the sound. Unfortunately, things almost never happened like one wanted to in this world—the sound of fighting rapidly approached him, and finally, “pong”, a man fell out of the deep fog in front of Chang. It was a policeman who was covered in bruises and severely wounded.

Looking at this man, Chang ducked and carried his crowbar as he moved aside. Thankfully the fog was dense enough, so the policeman’s figure became blurry again despite only being two steps away.

Chang hid himself behind a car that was parked beside the road. He was extremely alert and carefully watched the situation over there. Just as Chang hid himself, on the other side of the fog, three shadows approached—there were three stray dogs. What was even worse was that Chang ran into one of them before when he found the crowbar.

However, looking into its eyes, the dog had already lost its previous fear to humans. Drooling through it teeth, it stared at the crawling policeman with crimson eyes.

The policeman struggled to stand up and carefully pulled out his gun.

The policeman seemed like he was an animal expert; although he was injured, he didn’t panic nor shoot aimlessly to scare off these dogs. Because the policeman knew how to deal with animals, he tried to avoid any intense body movements that could provoke an attack from them.

He kept his eyes on the dogs without any sign of relaxation as his hands slowly moved to his waist, gently opening the holster. With his right hand, he unlocked the safety and raised his arm, then steadily pointed his gun at one of the stray dogs.

The moment the gun was pointed these dogs, their bestial instincts made them realize that the black hole they saw could threaten their lives. They launched a fierce attack without a second thought.

Bang!

Woof Woof!

The gun fired almost at the same time these beasts leaped. Among the three dogs, one got shot but the other two jumped over a distance of two meters and pounced on the policeman.

What followed were sounds of chomping, struggling and “whining.” Chang heard some desperate gunfire.

That wounded dog soon joined the group after the gunfire—the bullet didn’t put it down.

Though it was dim, Chang saw the blood ooze from its neck. Normally if a dog was shot on the neck, it would be considered lethal even if it didn’t hit the head or heart. The stray dog was still able to stand up and tear apart its prey. It was needless to say that the vitality of these stray dogs were no longer on the same level as Chang had known.

Realizing this, Chang stopped himself just as he was about to go and help the policeman—he couldn’t even handle one of these dogs, and there were currently three. The policeman couldn’t save himself even with a gun, so with only a broken knife and a crowbar, Chang was doomed to die if he tried to help.

Hence, for the second time in his life, he saw a living person gnawed by animals—the first time was Saner, the daring student. Under the attack of the three stray dogs, the policeman soon stopped crawling. Then, there was a nauseating sound of flesh being ripped off. It sounded pretty much like when a piece of fabric was being torn, but much worse.

The dogs started chewing on the policeman’s bones. Chang was familiar with that noise as he used to have a pet dog too, but at this moment, he felt sick.

Chang was so afraid that he couldn’t move. Luckily, he knew how sensitive a dog’s ears were, so he suppressed his breathing as much as he could.

However, Chang had still underestimated those dogs’ sensitivity. After they were sated, they immediately turned towards the location Chang was hiding.

It turned out that they discovered Chang’s presence from the very beginning.

Tightly clenching the crowbar, his palm became sweaty from intimidation. Summer was hot already, and at this moment, he was soaked in cold sweat.

He wanted to run as far away as he could, but his sanity told him to stay—whether it was a stray or pet dog, they all had the instinct to chase moving objects.

But most importantly, humans were generally unable to run faster than dogs. Therefore, trying to escape would 100% result in his death. Though confronting them would almost always guarantee his death, Chang still chose to stay there.

The three dogs converged and stopped a meter away from Chang with pairs of scarlet eyes.

Chang stood there as if he was a statue, suppressing himself in order to not reveal any frightened expressions on his face. His heart had never pounded so heavily when he saw blood dripping from their teeth.

Perhaps the stray dogs were full or something, but they appeared less aggressive and stared at Chang feebly. The leader dog sniffed and then sneezed; it was that pungent perfume. The leader immediately lost interest in Chang and left the scene with its tail wagging.

Seeing their leader withdraw, the other two dogs also disappeared into the fog.

“Oh my god…”

Chang heavily breathed as the danger left. He stretched his stiff body, then walked towards the corpse of the policeman.