Chapter 1796: Journey of a Madman (Part 9)

Eddie took a deep breath, as if trying to suck the room dry of air. Before he could even manage a scream, immense terror and the instinct for survival drove him to run in the opposite direction.

The ward had two doors. The giant spider had burst in through the front, so Eddie could still run for the back. He bolted out, charged into the corridor, and then discovered two zombies at the far end and at the corner of the stairwell.

Knowing there was no chance of heading down the stairs, Eddie simply charged into the room opposite, closed the door, locked it, and turned his head to see a large cabinet standing against the wall.

Eddie used all his strength to drag the cabinet over and wedge it against the door. The spider monster, predictably, refused to give up, continuously pounding on the door with its two clearly mutated front legs.

Eddie wasn't afraid of it smashing through the door; from a structural standpoint, spiders weren't built for such things. While this spider was large, it wasn't exaggeratedly so, and the heavy iron cabinet would hold it off for a while.

But what worried Eddie most was that the sound of its pounding would draw the zombies from the end of the corridor, or even attract every zombie on the entire floor.

This hospital was located in the suburbs of New York. Eddie had never been here before, but from the basic facilities, he could tell it was quite an old hospital, so the inpatient department wasn't large. If he let it keep pounding like this, the zombies would definitely break in.

Eddie stood in the room and scanned his surroundings. He realized this must be the duty doctor's office. The room was only about a third the size of a ward, with a large cabinet and a large desk occupying most of the space.

The office curtains were half-drawn. Eddie walked over quickly and pulled them open. To his pleasant surprise, there was a tree right outside the window, and there happened to be nothing under it. As long as he jumped from the window to the tree, he could escape this godforsaken hospital.

Eddie glanced back at the door; he could clearly hear the zombies' footsteps getting closer. Although he would never be able to get used to jumping out of windows, in this life-or-death moment, his desire to survive clearly overcame his fear. He pushed the window open with force.

However, after the curtains were pulled back, bright moonlight shone in, allowing Eddie to see a newspaper lying on the desk before he turned his head back.

Out of professional habit as a reporter, Eddie's gaze lingered on it for two or three seconds, and then he was drawn to the picture in the front-page headline: a massive purple cloud in the sky, and something falling from it.

Time was tight; Eddie couldn't sit there reading the paper leisurely. So, he lunged forward, stuffed the newspaper into his shirt, took a deep breath, and jumped out the window.

Although Eddie didn't know how to climb trees, it wasn't hard to grab onto anything he could in his panic. He successfully hung himself on a branch of the large tree, then used all his strength to stretch his foot toward another, lower branch.

Moving himself down bit by bit like this, once his feet touched the ground again, Eddie felt tears welling up in his eyes.

For someone with a fear of heights, this was simply a bizarre grand adventure. He had actually managed to escape from eight stories up using this method?!

But he had no time to be happy. Not being able to stand at a high vantage point to overlook the zombies' movements meant that every enemy here was a hidden landmine for him, very difficult to avoid in advance.

Moreover, the zombies in this universe were practically decathletes: fast, strong, hard to kill, and not as stupid as those portrayed in various zombie movies; they even occasionally cooperated.

He couldn't run, and he couldn't fight. Eddie now understood why zombies were everywhere he looked. It was likely that human resistance had lasted a very short time, and whether there were any survivors left was questionable. Eddie held a pessimistic view on this.

But compared to "how to go," "where to go" was also a big problem. Normally, one should first find a safe stronghold, but in this situation, it was unlikely any place was completely safe. He could only take it one step at a time.

At this moment, Eddie remembered the newspaper he had gotten from the duty room. He took the somewhat crumpled paper out from his shirt and finally saw the content written on it. The front-page headline read in large letters: "Unidentified Flying Object Lands in Central New York: Alien Visit or Secret Military Experiment?"

Eddie frowned and read the entire report as fast as he could, but just like every issue of the Global Times, all the exciting content was in the headline; the body text had no nutritional value at all.

Fortunately, the reporter at least stated the time and place the UFO fell. Eddie calculated based on the date on the newspaper: the UFO had fallen about twenty-some days ago, and the landing site was right in New York's Central Park.

Eddie himself had quite a strong curiosity. He really wanted to know if the zombie outbreak was related to the fall of this UFO. Moreover, he believed that if Schiller had also arrived in this universe, he would definitely follow this news to Central Park, and then he could ask Schiller what on earth was going on.

Schiller was currently squatting in the ventilation duct.

The Stark Tower's ventilation ducts were quite advanced, and the space was large. Furthermore, there was significant space above the vent, enough even for an adult male to squat there.

Schiller held a round-bottom flask in his hand. He opened the vent cover and threw the flask down.

With a "clatter," the flask shattered completely. The witch, who had been kneeling on the ground crying, suddenly stood up as if she had gone mad and charged toward the sound.

This was the other end of the power distribution room. The witch would have to cross almost the entire room to get here. And just as she was frantically waving her claws, roaring while charging toward this side, a figure quietly slipped into the power distribution room.

About ten minutes ago, Stark had explained his plan to Schiller. Simply put, one person would crawl into the interlayer ventilation duct from upstairs to make some noise, attracting the monster away, while the other took the opportunity to get the storage batteries.

Under normal circumstances, Stark should have been the one making the noise while Schiller performed the infiltration, but Stark went crazy the moment Schiller mentioned getting close to the witch.

Another reason Schiller agreed to this arrangement was that no one knew if the storage batteries had any power.

Logically, the backup batteries in the Stark Tower's power distribution room should have power, but in the current situation, no one could guarantee everything was normal. So, in case there was no power, only Stark knew where the charging interface for the storage batteries was in the power distribution room, and what kind of interface it used.

They were very lucky; all the storage batteries had power. And during the short moment the sound of the shattering flask attracted the witch, Stark carried out four storage batteries.

Of course, Stark Industries' batteries weren't ordinary batteries. Although they weren't Arc Reactors, they could adjust to various output modes.

Stark simply adjusted the batteries and made a makeshift cage using wires he found upstairs. Immediately after, he used himself as bait to lure the ghost out, and before long, he had lured the hanged ghost into the cage, powered it up, and locked it in.

After the ghost entered the cage and was locked up, only a hazy phantom remained, looking a bit like a mirage. Stark turned his head to look at Schiller and asked, "How do you plan to eat it?"

Schiller answered him with his actions. He stood in front of the cage door, reached out to grab it the moment the power was cut, and opened his mouth to take a bite.

A scream that struck the auditory nerves echoed in Stark's mind. Stark felt as if his head had been punched.

But Schiller grabbed that hazy phantom and devoured it mouthful after mouthful. Stark wanted to get closer to observe that phantom, but the next second, he almost had his fingers bitten off.

He retracted his hand with a "whoosh." Only then did Schiller withdraw his murderous gaze and focus on eating. That shadow wasn't large, and he finished it in a few dozen seconds.

Schiller wiped his mouth, looked at Stark, and said, "Still very hungry."

Looking at the still-vigorous appetite in Schiller's eyes, Stark couldn't say no, so he could only say, "Fine, then let's catch another one. Let's catch that female ghost."

In less than ten minutes, the female ghost also entered Schiller's stomach, followed immediately by the clown ghost, the old lady ghost, the child ghost, the headless ghost, the drowned ghost...

About half an hour later, Stark held up a finger to Schiller and said, "The last one, this one must be the last one! Schiller, we still have serious business to attend to; we have to go save Spider-Man!"

Schiller stared at him with lingering desire for half a minute. Stark was already very used to this gaze; Schiller had just used this focused gaze to break one "last one" promise after another, but this time, he was determined not to waver.

Half a minute later, Schiller could only turn his gaze away with lingering desire, nodded reluctantly, and then swallowed again, saying, "That xenomorph..."

Stark sighed helplessly and said, "We can catch it to eat on the way, but you have to promise not to gnaw on other things while we're moving!"

Schiller and Stark's gazes fell together on the row of tooth marks in front of the cage door.

Schiller nodded very reluctantly again. It seemed this meal had helped him recover a bit of his sanity. So, just as Stark was preparing to catch a ghost again, he spoke.

"Do you know where Spider-Man is?"

"Do you?"

Schiller shook his head and said, "But when I was walking through the ventilation duct just now, I saw the headline of a newspaper in an office. It said something fell into New York's Central Park."

"Great, then we'll set off for there next, but the first step is to find a car."

"Aren't you planning to build a suit?"

Stark sighed and said, "There are only two possibilities now: either the Iron Man of this world is dead, or he has also been turned into a zombie. I'm more inclined to believe the second. If so, if we use the Stark Tower's system at will, we might be discovered by him."

"Why the second one?"

Stark's hand paused for a moment, then he lowered his eyes to look at what he was fiddling with and said, "I never told Peter just how much courage he possesses."

"I never told him that I've always been charging at the front, making sure to be the first to encounter danger, just because I know I don't have the courage to be the last one to die."

"I can't watch all my friends die in front of me." Stark gripped the item in his hand tightly, gritted his teeth, and said, "I don't dare to assume what I would do when that time comes. I know well that I am not a purely good person, which is why I am especially afraid of power."

"Even as I am now, facing this situation, I might choose to accept fate, because if I were the last person awake, what I might think of wouldn't be salvation, but... complete destruction."

"But Spider-Man wouldn't." Stark raised his eyes, a strange light flickering in them, and said, "No matter how much sadness and pain, he will always only choose to save."

Stark raised his eyes again to look at Schiller and said.

"He saves people, I save him, because they don't know how many times they have used their companionship, or even their very existence, to save me in the lonely night when I wanted to choose destruction, to save this world that was about to be destroyed."

"So even if you are like ghosts possessing Schiller, as long as there was even one such moment where you let him give up destruction and choose salvation, all of this is what you deserve."

Schiller looked at him in silence, and only after a long while did he speak: "Then, give me the food I deserve." ===== CHAPTER 1797 =====