Chapter 129: The Dead and the Doppelgangers |
When Bai Mu awoke, a thin blanket was draped over him.
By midnight, the temperature had dropped to around ten degrees Celsius, bringing a distinct chill to the air.
He lay on the mattress. Since he had dismantled all the chairs and tables, the living room felt exceptionally spacious. The foam and spring double mattress rested directly in front of the television.
Lucy lay beside him, resting on the same mattress.
After getting out of bed, Bai Mu drank a glass of water, used the bathroom, and tore open a small packet of compressed biscuits for breakfast.
Lucy vanished at nine in the morning, leaving Bai Mu completely alone once more.
At ten o'clock, a breaking news bulletin interrupted the regular television broadcast.
"The temperature continues to rise, and the Doppelganger invasion shows no signs of stopping."
"According to expert analysis, we have discovered another major identifying trait of the Doppelgangers."
"If you notice anyone around you with blood-red eyes, please exercise extreme caution. They could be a Doppelganger."
The news anchor had just revealed the second key characteristic of the Doppelgangers, a detail Bai Mu firmly committed to memory.
The daytime was just as eerily quiet as the previous two days. No corpses appeared on the streets today. The residents of this city seemed to have vanished entirely, leaving behind an absolute, dead silence.
It felt akin to being locked in solitary confinement. The continuous, oppressive heat was maddening, and the limited living space combined with repetitive television programs did absolutely nothing to stave off the crushing boredom.
The only constant was a creeping paranoia, a lingering sensation of being constantly watched that refused to fade.
Truthfully, the hidden Doppelgangers exerted an immense psychological pressure on anyone left alive. Even Bai Mu did not feel entirely at ease. He could adapt to this environment, but that certainly did not mean he enjoyed it.
The sheer passivity of the situation was agonizing. Since his knowledge of the Doppelgangers was strictly limited to news reports and a single fleeting encounter on the first night, he simply lacked the information needed to take the initiative.
For now, his only option was to quietly observe and wait.
His current stockpiles were enough to sustain him for quite some time, so there was no need to take unnecessary risks by venturing outside.
The clock struck six in the evening. Having finished his biscuit ration, Bai Mu waited inside the house for the woman to arrive.
However, she never showed up as promised. The temperature at six o'clock was entirely tolerable for outdoor activities. If Bai Mu were in her shoes, he definitely would have sought out his neighbor to trade for food much earlier.
Yet, even as the clock struck eight, the woman remained nowhere to be seen.
This triggered a sense of unease in Bai Mu. He highly suspected that something terrible had happened to her.
Without the woman, he lost his only source of cash.
And without cash, he could not purchase food.
If he could not scrape together some money tonight, he feared he would end up wasting another entire day.
Standing by the window, Bai Mu observed the house with the red roof. A faint yellow light seeped through its windows.
He frowned, debating whether he should head over to check on her. Just then, a knock echoed from outside his front door.
Bai Mu approached the entrance. When he peered through the peephole and saw the person standing outside, his pupils abruptly shrank.
Standing on his porch was none other than the woman who had visited on his very first day.
However, her face was deathly pale, and her eyes were a bloodshot crimson. She stood there as rigid as a stiffened corpse.
A sudden, icy chill ran down Bai Mu's spine the moment he laid eyes on her.
"Neighbor, I am here," the woman said, a stiff smile plastered across her face. "Are you home alone? I brought the cash you asked for to trade for food."
The woman reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of items.
But they were far from banknotes. What she held was clearly a tangled, messy clump of human hair.
"I seem to have made a mistake," the woman murmured. "Oh, Lord, I must be completely exhausted."
"The kids, the house, the bills... I am the only one worrying about all of it. He does not care in the slightest."
"He never used to be like this. I am just so heartbroken. Why did the world have to become like this?"
"I do not want to deal with these frustrating things anymore. Ever since I got married, I feel like I have not lived a single day for myself."
The woman bowed her head and began to sob. Pitiful, mournful wails drifted through the solid metal of the door.
Throughout this entire display, Bai Mu remained completely silent.
He merely observed in silence. After crying for several minutes, the woman abruptly stopped. She raised her head, staring dead ahead at the security door. Despite sobbing for so long, there was not a single tear track on her pale cheeks.
"Oh, I am sorry. I cannot cry anymore; my children are still waiting for me to return," the woman suddenly said. "I remember now. I hid the cash inside my collar pocket yesterday."
She shoved a hand down the front of her shirt. This time, she genuinely pulled out a handful of loose bills and coins.
"I swear, I have not told a single soul about this. Not even my children know."
"Neighbor, just like last time, I am going to leave the money by the door."
"I am so sorry to disturb you, but we really need the food. Even though we stretch the biscuits by soaking them in water, there are still five mouths to feed in our house."
"I know food is precious right now. Just give whatever you see fit. As long as there is something to eat, I will be satisfied."
With those words, the woman squatted down and dumped the money, along with the clump of hair, directly onto Bai Mu's doorstep.
She then took five stiff steps backward, staring at Bai Mu's front door with a hollow, expectant gaze.
Bai Mu found this extremely abnormal. Bizarre, even.
He had seen plenty of corpses in his time, and the vibe this woman gave off was exactly that of a reanimated corpse.
While the Doppelganger he encountered earlier was virtually indistinguishable from a living human, this woman—aside from the fact that she could move and speak—was virtually indistinguishable from a dead one.
Her speech and logic were incredibly disjointed, as if her very consciousness was fractured and foggy.
Bai Mu had no idea what she had been through, but his instincts screamed that the entity standing outside his door could no longer be called "human."
'Are Doppelgangers created from the dead?'
The news reports had stated that the Doppelgangers crawled out from beneath the earth. The detail about mud beneath their fingernails certainly tied neatly into the concept of rising from the grave.
Bai Mu carefully considered his next move. She claimed she came here to fulfill their previous agreement. If it was sheer obsession that brought her to his doorstep, then perhaps fulfilling that lingering obsession would cause her to leave on her own.
Bai Mu glanced down at the scattered money. The denominations were much larger this time, with ten- and twenty-dollar bills. It looked to be around fifty in cash total.
That was actually quite a substantial amount. After all, this Script was set in an earlier era where the purchasing power of even a single dollar was nothing to scoff at.
Voluntarily opening the door meant risking a sudden, violent attack from the woman. However, anyone could see that her current state was deeply bizarre, and she did not look like she would simply walk away unprompted. Ultimately, Bai Mu cracked the door open and tossed fifteen small packets of compressed biscuits as far away from the porch as he could.
He made sure to throw them quite a distance, landing them squarely on the grass near the street.
Simultaneously, the Hand of Walrider swept up the cash and securely tucked it into his pocket.
His right hand tightly gripped his revolver, ready to fire at a moment's notice. But the woman made no aggressive moves. Instead, she eagerly chased after the biscuits, picking them up from the ground one by one.
"Thank you so much, neighbor," the woman said, hastily stuffing the biscuits into her pockets.
She looked absolutely thrilled. Hugging her newfound stash of biscuits, she turned away from Bai Mu's front door and shambled off toward the house with the red roof.
Bai Mu silently watched her depart, choosing not to intervene.
Once the woman vanished into the darkness, she did not reappear for the rest of the night.
However, the following morning, a corpse lay discarded on the ground halfway between Bai Mu's house and the red-roofed house.
It was the corpse of the woman.