Volume 11: The Days of Traveling on a Train
Head
The Third Night
From the looks of it, Shen Maomao figured there was an 80% chance the corpses had gotten up and crawled away on their own. It sounded a bit hair-raising, but it also meant they didn’t have to share a car with the bodies, nor did they have to worry about sudden corpse reanimation1.
The bloodstains on the floor were scattered. While they covered a large area, the actual amount of blood wasn’t much, so the metallic smell in the car wasn’t overpowering. It was still within a tolerable range.
A few people took one look at the scene and ran off in fright. In the end, fewer than twenty chose to stay.
The curtains on the windows were sealed tight. Everyone still remembered the horrifying sight from that morning, so they all stayed as far away from the corridor as possible to avoid both physical and psychological discomfort.
The train car, which could normally hold over sixty people, now had plenty of empty space. Everyone huddled in their compartments, loudly discussing who could have taken the bodies. The twenty people made enough noise for forty, making the car feel almost lively for a moment.
Shen Maomao was more worried about the bunk swap she’d made with Zhan Zhi and decided to go find him to discuss the situation.
When Zhan Zhi saw her, he wore an extremely awkward expression and said uncomfortably, “Ah, can I help you with something?”
His discomfort made Shen Maomao feel very comfortable; it meant the Ailanhua Juice’s2 magic had been completely dispelled. She took out her Sleeper Car Card3 and got straight to the point. “We switched beds. Do we need to switch back now?”
Zhan Zhi remembered this as well. “She… the person on the broadcast said someone would come to check tickets—who do you think that will be? Why don’t we try to talk it over with them when they get here? If that doesn’t work, we can switch back.”
“Alright, thanks for the trouble,” Shen Maomao said.
Zhan Zhi smiled. “Is there anything else?”
“Nope,” she replied. “You can get back to what you were doing.”
Yep, that’s how a normal person is supposed to react.
She had been observing carefully along the way. Several people had looked at others with a particularly feverish gaze, like they were staring at the person they loved most in the world.
I just don’t know what will happen if the effects of this Ailanhua Juice never wear off.
…
The group waited for the ticket inspector’s arrival. Before long, Shen Maomao heard a door slide open. She quickly poked her head out and saw a man in a train attendant’s uniform appear at the rear of the car.
The man wore a hat, his head hung so low she couldn’t see his face.
His clothes didn’t seem to fit right. The oversized cuffs and pant legs were bunched up loosely at his wrists, but he paid them no mind, walking straight toward the last compartment.
There was no one inside, but he still stayed in there for six seconds before coming out and moving to the next one.
Shen Maomao was in the adjacent compartment. She couldn’t see what was happening, but she heard the man inside exclaim, “Holy shit!”
Another six seconds passed. The strange attendant arrived at the compartment where Shen Maomao and Auntie Ning were and held out a hand in a white glove.
Shen Maomao had both of their tickets. She handed the cards over and said, “Excuse me, Comrade4, I was originally in berth six middle, but I switched with the person here. I wanted to be with my mother to take care of her.”
Auntie Ning coughed twice at the perfect moment, pretending to be extremely weak.
The attendant never looked up. He just swapped their cards for a new one and walked silently to the next compartment.
The man next door poked his head out, his small eyes behind round-framed glasses blinking frantically.
Shen Maomao looked at him, confused.
The man started gesturing wildly. First, he pointed at the attendant, then stuck his tongue out to turn himself into a capital ‘Q’, and finally slid his hand back and forth across his neck.
Shen Maomao thought she understood. She quickly pulled out her phone and typed: 【You mean he’s one of the dead people?】
The man nodded furiously.
Shen Maomao’s eyes widened. She put on a frightened expression and kept glancing back at the attendant, perfectly playing the part of someone both terrified and curious.
The man grabbed her arm and made a “shhh” gesture.
She nodded repeatedly to show she understood.
Three minutes later, the attendant left the car.
The second he was gone, the broadcast speaker crackled, zila zila5, twice. But what followed wasn’t the familiar female voice, but that of a strange man.
The man on the broadcast said, “Lights will be out in five minutes. All passengers, please close your doors and windows. After the lights are out, don’t wander around, so as not to increase the workload for the train staff. We wish you all a pleasant evening.”
The man with the small eyes shouted, “Didn’t you guys see that? That guy was one of the three men who died!”
Another person’s voice trembled. “I pretended to drop something to get a look… It’s true.”
Those three men were clearly dead. How did they become train attendants?
Even at this point, some people still refused to believe they were in a supernatural event. The attendant’s appearance gave them a new line of reasoning. One of them said, “I think it’s just a prank show, maybe some high-tech prank—like the train is just shaking in place, and they’re using the moving scenery to give us the illusion of movement. And that ticket inspector? Maybe he was just pretending to be dead to scare us and see us make fools of ourselves!”
Shen Maomao didn’t know which car he was in, but she felt a pang of sympathy for him.
Look how scared the poor kid is. He can’t even believe the truth anymore.
Someone immediately refuted him. “Then how do you explain the one whose head fell off? A prop? A dummy? Did you even get close enough to look at the body?”
The man went silent.
A moment later, Shen Maomao heard Zhan Zhi’s voice. “Everyone… should we use clothes or something to lock the door? Have you guys seen 《Train to Busan》6?”
“But if we lock it, what do we do if something happens inside our car?”
A woman’s voice rang out. “I have a knife. I should be able to cut through the clothes instantly.”
At her words, the entire car went quiet.
The voice came from the middle of the car. They didn’t know each other well, so it was hard to tell who was speaking. No one knew who had managed to bring a knife through security.
The woman spoke again. “Don’t worry about how I got the knife. I’ll only use it for self-defense. I won’t reveal who I am unless absolutely necessary, so you can all think carefully about whether to lock the door.”
This person must be a player.
But they were too far apart; she couldn’t figure out who it was.
Since Zhan Zhi had made the suggestion, he definitely hoped they would lock the door. He tried to persuade them for a little longer, and most people decided to just let him do as he pleased. He immediately pulled out his suitcase, took out a few articles of clothing, and went to tie the door shut.
The man with the small eyes from the second-to-last compartment also came out. “I’ll get this side. We’ll be faster together.”
Shen Maomao yelled, “Hey guys, leave a path to the bathroom!”
Zhan Zhi: “…”
The man: “…”
If Shen Maomao hadn’t said anything, they probably would have completely overlooked that problem.
The two men quickly tied the door shut. Afterward, they gave it a hard tug to test its sturdiness. Once they were sure it was secure, they each returned to their beds.
They had barely been lying down for two seconds when the lights on the ceiling flickered, zila zila, and then instantly went out.
The entire car was plunged into darkness. Not even a single standby light was left on.
Shen Maomao didn’t turn on a flashlight, just brightened her phone screen a little for illumination.
Auntie Ning was usually fast asleep by this time. Today, she had been forcing herself to stay awake for the ticket inspection. Seeing that it was now dark, she started yawning one after another. Finally, Shen Maomao couldn’t take it anymore and told her not to worry about anything during the night and to just get some sleep.
A few seconds later, she felt Auntie Ning’s breathing deepen. She was probably asleep.
The car fell into a state where ten thousand sounds were all silent7; no one was speaking. Shen Maomao turned off her phone screen, remaining on high alert, her ears pricked for any sound in the darkness.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t hear anything besides the noise of the wheels on the tracks.
At night, time seemed to pass exceptionally slowly, becoming exceptionally difficult to endure.
She didn’t know how much time had passed when the sound of the train suddenly grew several times louder. The honglonglong8 rumble meant it had entered another tunnel.
Shen Maomao turned on her phone to check the time. It was eleven o’clock, exactly on the dot.
She hugged her blanket, closed her eyes, and pretended to be fast asleep.
Based on the past two nights, something always happens after we enter a tunnel. I just don’t know if it’ll be our turn tonight, or if it’ll be the others who didn’t follow the broadcast’s instructions.
As she was thinking this, a loud bang echoed from the door not far away.
The sound was so loud it drowned out the train’s noise, making Shen Maomao jump. She thought her own poisonous milk9 had summoned the monster.
But immediately after, she heard crying, shouting, and banging from outside. It sounded like more than one person.
The glass was being struck with loud peng peng10 sounds. Shen Maomao twisted around, shifting to the foot of her bed to look toward the glass door.
But it was too dark to see a thing. She couldn’t tell if there were really people outside or if something was trying to trick them.
I don’t know if the others in the car are awake. Shen Maomao turned her head back around, pretending she hadn’t heard anything.
An unknown amount of time passed. The noise from the tunnel instantly quieted, and the sounds at the door vanished at the same time, as if nothing had happened.
She glanced at her watch. It was already twelve o’clock.
The train had been in the tunnel for a full hour.
I have a feeling this hour isn’t just hunting time for the monsters, but also the time I can use to find an exit—because games love to pull this kind of disgusting crap.
Nothing happened for the rest of the night. The train ran normally, without a single extra sound.
Tonight, Shen Maomao wasn’t the least bit sleepy, probably because she hadn’t eaten the boxed meal. She lay with her eyes open until the sky began to lighten. As soon as she could make out her surroundings, the first thing she did was check the door.
The once clean and tidy door was now covered in a dense patch of bloody handprints. At the very bottom, outside the door, she could vaguely see two bodies lying overlapped.
The worst has happened. I don’t know how many of the people who didn’t come back last night are still left…
She had no intention of waking anyone else. She just sat in her seat and contemplated life.
They had searched every place they could on the train, but aside from that meaningless pansy11 pattern, they had found nothing.
As everyone knows, daytime and nighttime in a horror game are two different worlds. Something that seems useless during the day might become clear at night. I don’t even need to think too hard about it.
But at night, there are unknown monsters on the train, and there’s also that Scavenger whose identity can’t be confirmed…
At first, I suspected the Scavenger was the female tour guide, because I saw her talking to the person who died on the second night. And what she said last night, telling people not to believe the broadcast, was also very suspicious.
If the female tour guide survived today, the probability of her being the Scavenger will go from 30% to 50%. If the other male tour guide is dead, it’ll be 80%. I want to save the remaining 20% for Zhan Zhi.
An hour later, she didn’t get to see anyone else wake up. Instead, she was hit by a surging urge to pee.
Looks like I can’t count on anyone else.
Shen Maomao first shook Auntie Ning awake to prevent her from getting a scare when she started her performance.
Once Auntie Ning was a little more lucid, she ran to the door, stood there, and began to sink qi to her dantian12 before letting out a scream. “Ahhh—!!!”
Everyone in the car was jolted awake by her shriek. They scrambled about in a panic, thinking something had happened to her.
Shen Maomao screamed, “So many people are dead… It’s so scary!”
Several men slipped on their shoes and ran toward the door, immediately seeing the tragic scene.
Shen Maomao really had to pee. After playing the part of a delicate young girl, she pretended to gag and rushed into the bathroom.
A little while later, she came out and saw Zhan Zhi and a few others taking down the clothes from the door.
“What are you guys doing?” she asked.
“Going out to see if there are any survivors,” Zhan Zhi said. “We’ll save who we can.”
As he spoke, the door was opened. A thick, metallic stench hit them, and the two bodies at the door lost their support and tumbled crookedly inside.
Shen Maomao nearly flew into the air, leaping to the side and yelling, “Holy shit! Holy shit!”
The state of these two corpses was exactly the same as the big bro who had stuck his head out the window—their heads were completely gone. There was no way to tell who was who.
The people behind them were in chaos. Auntie Ning came out to see what was going on, but upon seeing such a bloody scene, she merely frowned.
I might need to revise my judgment about the Scavenger, Shen Maomao thought. Take 10% from the female tour guide and add it to Auntie Ning.
Either she’s the Scavenger, or she’s seen blood in real life. Either way, she’s dangerous. But before her identity is exposed, she’s my boss, so I still have to protect her.
“I want to go with them to look for survivors. Do you want to come with me or wait here?”
Auntie Ning said, “My legs aren’t what they used to be… Will I slow you down?”
“It’s fine,” Shen Maomao replied. “We’re just going to check out the situation.”
“Then let’s go together,” Auntie Ning said. “I’m worried about you.”
Hearing this made Shen Maomao feel both amused and touched.
A boss is actually worried about the safety of her substitute player13… Is it because I’m young, so she’s treating me like a junior?
Alright, seeing as she’s worried about me, maybe I can take one of her suspicion points and give it back to the female tour guide.
The search party was formed. Everyone carefully stepped over the bodies and headed toward the dining car.
The situation along the way could only be described with one word: brutal.
There were bloodstains everywhere, bodies everywhere. And without exception, all of these bodies were headless.
The entire car was practically soaked in blood. Every step on the green rubber floor left a footprint, and the paji paji14 sound was enough to make you want to dry heave.
Shen Maomao even counted. So far, they had stepped over eleven bodies—ah, here comes the twelfth.
They finally made it to the dining car, only to find even more bodies inside. A quick glance revealed at least twenty of them. In total, only about forty-odd people had chosen to stay in the dining car; it was almost a complete wipeout.
Zhan Zhi’s eyes swept across the scene, and he suddenly said, “Look! Some of the bodies still have heads!”
It was a corpse that had fallen under a table. The head on its neck was perfectly intact, but its face and body were covered in blood, making it impossible to identify.
The man with the small eyes mustered his courage, grabbed the body by the leg, and dragged it out. He leaned in for a closer look and said, “No… this one seems to be alive!”
Zhan Zhi hurried over, then said with certainty, “It’s Du Pengyu!”
“Huh? You know him?” the small-eyed man asked.
“He’s another one of my colleagues!” Zhan Zhi replied.
The small-eyed man understood. He reached out and patted Du Pengyu’s blood-caked face, shouting, “Du Pengyu?! Du Pengyu! Wake up! What the hell happened here? Why did you all end up like this?!”
Du Pengyu’s eyelashes fluttered. His eyes slowly opened, but he didn’t look at the man. Instead, he stared at a point in the empty air, muttering, “Head… head… head…”
The grown men felt their scalps tingle. Zhan Zhi and the small-eyed man each supported one of his arms and helped him into a seat. They decided to leave him for now and continue searching.
Later, they managed to pull seven or eight people with heads out from the pile of bodies, including the female tour guide whom Shen Maomao suspected the most.
But all of them seemed to have been scared out of their minds. When woken, their eyes were unfocused, and they all mumbled things like “head, head, head,” like some irascible old bro15 who’d been screwed over by his teammates and couldn’t wait to start the next match.
Shen Maomao hovered around the female tour guide for a long time, trying to find any trace of a disguise, but she failed.
What the hell is the point if the female tour guide has gone crazy?
Either she’s faking insanity to clear her name, or my guess was wrong. The probability for Auntie Ning and Zhan Zhi just shot up.
In the end, they did a headcount. Out of forty people, only eight were left. The human faction had suffered heavy losses.
Shen Maomao suggested, “Should we keep moving forward and see what it’s like up ahead?”
A few of them exchanged glances. It seemed like there were no other options, so they did as she said and continued on.
After leaving the dining car, the bloodstains vanished completely. Even the air became exceptionally fresh.
Judging by the direction they fled, something must have come in from the opposite end and started slaughtering the people in the dining car. Those near the rear door all ran in the opposite direction, and the thing instantly chased after them, which is why it missed a few survivors who had fainted from fear?
Shen Maomao walked on as she thought, and then she suddenly heard Zhan Zhi say, “There’s someone inside!”
She looked up and saw they had reached the broadcast room16. Looking through the transparent window, they could see a man in a uniform slumped over inside.
Zhan Zhi knocked on the window. “Hello? Can you wake up?”
The person inside didn’t react at all.
“He’s not another corpse, is he?” Shen Maomao said.
Zhan Zhi’s brow furrowed. He pulled open the door to the broadcast room and gently tapped the person’s shoulder.
The man remained motionless. It had to be a corpse.
Zhan Zhi pulled the man over. When his face was revealed to the group, everyone instinctively took a step back.
The man’s eyes were nearly bulging out of their sockets, and blood was streaming from his eyes, nose, and mouth. But the most horrifying part was the microphone stuck in his throat. When Zhan Zhi moved him, the microphone fell out onto the floor, spattering a few drops of blood and leaving behind a gaping black hole of a wound. If you looked closely, you could almost see the tissue inside.
One look was enough to ruin Shen Maomao’s appetite. The others also turned pale.
One of them said, “Look at him… isn’t he the guy who said he was going to look for the announcer yesterday…”
Hearing this, Shen Maomao looked again, trying to recall the man’s face, but it was no use. There were too many people on the train; she didn’t have much of an impression of him.
“How do you know?” Zhan Zhi asked.
The person replied, “I was in the same compartment as him. We played cards together on the first day.” As he spoke, a clear layer of fear appeared on his face. “I thought the voice sounded familiar during the ticket check. I think… it was his voice.”
Zhan Zhi sighed and comforted him. “Don’t overthink it. The man is gone. Let’s leave him be and keep moving.”
He said to keep moving, but some people were already thinking of turning back.
A girl had started wiping away tears. “Why are we even here? This place is so scary… I want to go home… I miss my doggy…”
Another man said dejectedly, “I feel like I’m not far from going crazy myself… If this keeps up, I think I might just jump off the train… Who can stand this?”
Zhan Zhi quickly tried to encourage everyone. “Don’t lose hope. We have to survive. The train will soon pass over the tracks by Lake Baikal17. Maybe we can jump from the train and escape then.”
His words brought a sliver of hope to the group. They rested for a moment before continuing their search.
Shen Maomao followed at the very back of the group with Auntie Ning, watching the dejected backs of the others. She felt an inexplicable sadness in her heart.
Players can leave through the white light, but how are these NPCs supposed to get off this horror train?
I know they’re NPCs, but they’re so vividly real. They have their own joys and sorrows; they can feel fear, and they can feel despair…
Could I… or rather, am I even worthy of doing something for these people?
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