The man's name was Neal Wallace, a cardiologist from the nearby People's Hospital. The woman from before, Violet, was his girlfriend of over half a year and a nurse at the same hospital.
But Neal Wallace never could have imagined that the girlfriend he had been with for so long would abandon him at a moment like that, running off with two of his own buddies.
Neal Wallace had mostly recovered his strength by now. He explained his situation to Flora Bloom, unable to help but sigh at the twists and turns of life.
After all the commotion, the sky was gradually beginning to darken.
Autumn was shifting toward winter, and with the dawn of the apocalypse, the Earth's day-night cycle would slowly change. The nights would grow longer, while the daylight hours remained the same.
Flora Bloom glanced at the sky. After dark, the zombies' activity would increase dramatically. Although the early-stage zombies weren't too formidable, she was pregnant, and her principle was to take no risks and court no danger.
She glanced at Neal Wallace, who was still brooding, and gave him a kick. "Are you really going to act like this over a woman? A big man like you? A woman who'd ditch you when things get dangerous is one who'd stab you in the back later. What's there to be sad about? You should be happy."
Neal Wallace sighed and said no more. He looked at the girl before him. She wore a hat and a mask, but her voice was clear and sounded somewhat young. He watched as she adjusted the backpack on her shoulders. With her slender frame and a fire axe in hand, she looked like she was about to leave, so he quickly called out to her.
"Hey, uh, young lady, I still don't know your name."
Flora Bloom stopped and turned to look at the still-weak Neal Wallace. "My name is Flora Bloom. But I don't like people calling me 'young lady'."
Neal Wallace rubbed his head sheepishly and walked over. "Sorry. Thank you for saving me. I don't know how to thank you. But it doesn't seem safe for you to be alone. How about you let me come with you? I might not be able to protect you, but... the world seems to have changed. We don't know if these monsters will show up in hordes. An extra person is an extra pair of hands, right?"
Flora Bloom considered it but didn't answer. With the sky darkening, it was better to find a safe place to hide first.
"Alright. You can follow me for now. We'll find a safe place to hide for the night. We'll discuss everything else later."
Hearing the mature, almost bossy tone coming from Flora Bloom's youthful voice, Neal Wallace couldn't help but chuckle and nod. He then fell in line behind her, ready to leave.
Just then, the door to the warehouse office suddenly opened. A deep but trembling voice called out to them.
"Uh, little lady... big guy... Could you... could you let me come with you?"
Flora Bloom turned her head and saw it was the portly manager.
Ethan Monroe had been resting peacefully in his office when he was suddenly woken by the loud CLANGING and BANGING from outside. He got up impatiently and looked out the window, just in time to see the girl split a monster's head open with her axe.
The sight made his legs so weak he could barely stand.
But when he looked closer, he saw that the monster the girl had just killed was one of the warehouse administrators he worked with.
'Is this... is this the end of the world? How did a perfectly normal person turn into a monster that leaps around and attacks people?'
Then he heard the door connecting to the supermarket. Something was hammering on it, again and again, and it sounded like it could burst open at any second.
Ethan Monroe was a man who enjoyed the finer things in life and liked to read novels and watch movies. The scenes of zombies biting people immediately came to mind. And so, after watching Flora Bloom kill the zombie and rescue the man from the safety of his office, he couldn't help but call out just as they were about to leave.
Now, as he saw Flora Bloom turn to look at him, the image of this young girl splitting a zombie's skull flashed through his mind, and his words came out haltingly.
"Um, uh... I-I'm an honest guy, I don't eat much... You, you guys, please take me with you."
At that moment, the door connecting the supermarket and the warehouse seemed to give way slightly. It emitted a loud CREAK, as if it were about to fall apart.
"Hey, hey, hey! Miss, please! I don't know what kind of monsters are out there, but you have to take me with you! If there are too many, I've got plenty of meat on my bones. You can push me out there, and the monsters will have something to chew on for a while, right?"
Flora Bloom was suddenly amused by the big, portly man. But this was no place to linger. With the sky getting darker, it was best to find a safe place to shelter.
"Let's go. We need to find a place to hide first. Night is when these zombies are most active, and you two can't handle them yet."
With that, Flora Bloom headed for the back door first, with Neal Wallace and Ethan Monroe following close behind.
Flora Bloom didn't want to reveal the secret of her dimensional space, so she couldn't just pull out a car.
The narrow alley behind the warehouse opened up to a street. The small street was now cluttered with vehicles parked haphazardly, their hazard lights flashing and alarms blaring.
Ethan Monroe and Neal Wallace peeked out onto the street and saw that everything, from the cars to the road, was stained with blood. The once-quiet street was now filled with a cacophony of screams and terrifying roars.
It seemed some people had realized something was wrong and fled, luring a portion of the zombies away.
"This... this is..."
Neal Wallace couldn't believe his eyes. 'The streets are already like this? Has the apocalypse really come? Are zombies and monsters real?'
"It's over. It's all over. So many monsters... we're doomed."
Ethan Monroe muttered at the corner of the wall, his eyes filled with despair.
"If you're scared, then don't follow."
Flora Bloom spotted the nearest car and dashed toward it with all her speed.
The owner must have been in a hurry to leave, as they had even left the keys in the ignition, which saved Flora Bloom a lot of trouble.
She quickly started the car, slammed on the gas, and sped toward where Neal Wallace and Ethan Monroe were standing, executing a sharp drift to stop right in front of them.
"Get in!"
The commanding tone snapped the two men out of their terrified stupor. Surprisingly, the first to react was Ethan Monroe, the very same man whose legs had been trembling just moments ago. If Flora Bloom hadn't shouted, Neal Wallace would still have been too dazed to keep up.
Ethan Monroe jumped into the passenger seat and buckled his seatbelt. Neal Wallace scrambled into the back, and just as he shut the door, before he could even settle in, Flora Bloom stomped on the accelerator and shot the car forward.
Even so, a few zombies with a keen sense of smell were tailing them, chasing the car frantically. Flora Bloom floored the gas pedal, expertly weaving around several large clusters of zombies, and finally, after making a turn, she arrived back at her own residential complex.
Of course, she had no intention of going to her apartment. She didn't know if Shelton Underwood had turned into a corpse or a zombie, and either way, he'd be an eyesore. She just drove a big loop around the complex, honking the horn a few times, and found a relatively safe house.
It was a small villa within the same complex. A middle-aged couple had originally lived there. But after Flora Bloom honked the horn, that same couple had rushed out of the door with bizarre movements, chasing after the car.
Flora Bloom stopped the car, grabbed her axe, and rushed over to split the female zombie's skull. Seeing the male zombie shriek and lunge at her, she calmly pulled the fire axe from the female zombie's head, dodged his pounce, and began hacking at his face with swift, precise, and ruthless strikes.
She only stopped when the male zombie collapsed to the ground, motionless.
Neal Wallace and Ethan Monroe stared at the two corpses, their hearts still pounding, and couldn't help but swallow hard. If they didn't know these were two man-eating zombies, they would have thought Flora Bloom was a ruthless she-devil who could kill without batting an eye.
Flora Bloom enveloped her hand with water using her superpower and rummaged around in the two zombies' heads for a good while before standing up in disappointment. 'Ah, looks like my luck can't be good all the time,' she thought. 'Neither of these two zombies produced a Crystal Core.'
But Flora Bloom knew that in the early days of the apocalypse, the probability of zombies forming a Crystal Core was low. Once a zombie formed a Crystal Core, it could evolve and advance to a higher tier by continuously strengthening itself.
It was the same for humans.
In the early days of the apocalypse, very few humans would awaken a superpower. But once they did, they could raise their Superpower Level by absorbing Zombie Crystal Cores.
Although the apocalypse had destroyed everything for humanity, it was also, in a way, enforcing nature's rule of survival of the fittest.
Those who used these rules to achieve ultimate victory would be the strongest of all.