48 Hours a Day

In the corridor outside the room, Fabericotte was experiencing the most bizarre and terrifying thing in his life, while Zhang Heng, on the other side, remained undisturbed.

The footsteps outside the room became louder, accompanied by a conversation. Zhang Heng had mastered many foreign languages, but he still could not understand what they were talking about. He realized that their language was made up of only a few syllables, and they repeated those syllables constantly.

After a while, more and more movement could be heard outside his door. It seemed like they were hitting the door with a heavy object. And some of them wanted to surround Fabericotte from the side door. Zhang Heng could only imagine the fear he experienced at that moment.

This was especially the case when he heard the door to his room getting hit by a heavy object. When he wanted to leave from the side door, he heard someone trying to insert their keys into the keyhole. It was then that he knew his enemies had surrounded him.

Soon, he fell into despair, but the sheer will to survive had coerced him to tackle one of the side doors. Fortunately, this one was unlocked, and he managed to open it without much effort, right before the enemy opened the front door with the key.

Seconds later, Fabericotte heard someone barging into the room. If he were still there, there was an 80% chance that he would have been captured. Even so, he didn’t have much time to linger around. As he poked his head out of the window, he saw the roof ridge under the moonlight. The slope, however, seemed a bit steep.

Fabericotte knew he had no other choice but to jump out.

He mustered enough courage and prepared himself for the dangerous feat. When he was halfway out, however, he saw something that sent a chill down his spine.

Black shadows had suddenly appeared from the abandoned masonry buildings below. Fabericotte finally knew why there were so few people in town.

If the two people he saw in the restaurant were hideous, then the creatures below him could be classified as monsters. They had gray-green skin and white bellies. There was not a single strand of hair on their skin. Fish-like scales had replaced these. And the thing that terrified him the most was their heads. They possessed massive, never-closing eyes, protruding eye sockets, and both sides of the neck bulged with gills.

They flopped and jumped around under the moonlight, waving their web-covered hands and feet as though dancing to an absurd tune.

Farbericotte almost fell out of the window after witnessing the horrifying scene in front of him. Fortunately, someone caught him from behind before he let go, and he was dragged back into the room.

Not only was Fabericotte unhappy, but the level of fear in his heart had also risen to the top.

He turned his head and saw that the person that dragged him back into the room was the hostel’s male staff. He stared at the escapee with cold, ruthless eyes.

But at the next moment, Fabericotte heard the sound of the door opening in the distance.

The familiar boom of a Winchester rifle somewhat neutralized the horrifying atmosphere for Fabericotte. Screams could be heard outside the room when the rifle was fired, but the commotion soon died down.

Fabericotte’s heart sank. Just when he thought that the guy at the door must be under the townsfolk’s control, the door opened.

Zhang Heng hit the head of the staff, charging at him with the butt of the rifle, managing to silence the latter completely. After that, he walked toward Fabericotte.

When he saw Zhang Heng approaching, Fabericotte subconsciously backed off until his back came against the wall.

“We are greatly outnumbered. Even if I stay here, I can’t save you,” Zhang Heng warned.

Fabericotte snapped back to reality, swiftly getting up to his feet. “You…Where did your gun come from?” he asked, pleasantly surprised.

“I borrowed it from the grocery store,” replied Zhang Heng. “Can we leave this place through the window?”

“No, there are monsters outside.” Now, Fabericotte began to regret that he didn’t loot the grocery store with Zhang Heng earlier. “How about the street?” he asked, moving himself a little further from the window.

“What do you think?” Zhang Heng asked rhetorically.

Although the small town’s residents did not knock on his door, Zhang Heng did not continue lying on the bed, allowing them to take Fabericotte away. Other than the fact that the two of them were the only outsiders in this town, Farbericotte was also the only one who could tell him what had really happened here.

And Zhang Heng wasn’t that naive to think that they would never come looking for him. After all, the old man that he met earlier did everything possible to make him stay at the Gilman Hostel. He even paid for Zhang Heng’s accommodation fees. There was no way that they would allow him to be the bystander here.

“What should we do, then?” Farbericotte was lost.

For starters, they could no longer stay here. Although Zhang Heng had a rifle in his hand, they were only a two-man team. A two-man team that was about to go against an entire town. Other than the deformed residents, the monsters that usually stayed hidden in their houses during the day were also out roaming the streets now.

“Go south,” Zhang Heng said. Before they walked out of the hostel, they quickly checked the street. There were not many people, and the building nearby could help them cover their tracks.

While talking, Zhang Heng had already returned to the corridor, followed closely by Fabericotte. The two walked all the way to the end of the corridor. At the same time, they heard footsteps coming up the stairs again. It meant that another group was coming up to deal with them.

Zhang Heng handed the jerry-rigged wall-climbing hook to Farbericotte, “Do you know how to use this?”

“I think so,” said the latter nervously as he took the grappler.

“Go to the roof of the opposite building. I will meet you there later.” Zhang Heng raised his rifle and aimed at the stairs. The moment the first person appeared, he decisively pulled the trigger. The bullet accurately hit the target’s head.

With a sickening crack, blood splattered all over the wall.

Zhang Heng masterfully reloaded his rifle, swiftly hitting the second person in the chest. Instead of backing up, he kept walking and shooting until he was only three steps away from the stairs. He looked down and found out that the barrage of gunshots and the mounting corpses could not stop them from charging at him. More dark shadows were rushing upstairs. The rickety stairs could only fit so many people, so some of them jumped up on the handrail and climbed toward the top floor.

A half-fish half-frog creature jumped over the corpse and rushed towards Zhang Heng. Despite frayed nerves, he remained calm, not giving in to fear and panic. Right before the monster pounced at him, Zhang Heng lit a Molotov cocktail and tossed it at the monster.