Chapter 1 — Queen of the Apocalypse

That day the apocalypse fell, and my family awakened three S-class people. My father, To Liet, is an S-class fire-type ability user. One punch can pierce the sea of zombies. Everyone in the base calls him "Fire God". My mother, Trieu Han, is an S-class ice power user who can freeze an entire street in the blink of an eye, and the survivors call her "Ice Queen" behind her back. My brother, To Than, who has S-class spatial abilities plus teleportation, is the savior of the entire base. Every day, countless people kneel down and beg him to help transport supplies and save their loved ones. It's just me, To Van, twenty-one years old, a third-year student, without any special abilities. Three months after the apocalypse, I learned how to use the least amount of food to survive a day, how to hold my breath and pretend to be dead among the zombies, and how to bow my head and walk quickly past under the scornful eyes of the supernatural beings. I thought that was my future - as a "normal person", living in the apocalypse, implicating my family, until one day I was bitten to death by a zombie, or abandoned by the base as a sacrifice. But I didn't expect that day to come so quickly. My younger brother, Tieu Vu, had a fever, so feverish that he became unconscious. The health department said the antibiotics were out of stock and had to wait a week. As for the base's laboratory, there was just in time a "volunteer project" - as long as I volunteered to participate, I would get a batch of antibiotics. Mom pulled me into a hidden corner, her voice as gentle as when I was a child to coax me to sleep.

"Van Van, you are a normal person, living is only causing trouble for everyone. Sacrificing yourself alone can save the whole family - isn't this the end of the world?"

I looked into her eyes, looked at the silent father behind me, looked at my brother avoiding my eyes. At that moment, I suddenly felt something in my body break. Three days later, I was taken to the base's laboratory. Lying on the operating table, as the tip of the needle entered my neck, cold liquid was pushed into my blood vessels. Then I heard an earth-shattering roar from outside - the sea of zombies attacked the city earlier, and the base's pseudo-power defense line was torn open. The zombie bit my neck and, after draining my blood, suddenly stopped. Its eyes changed from opaque white gray to transparent yellow. It knelt down. No, “they” knelt down — the zombies that were biting the humans outside the door simultaneously knelt down, facing me. My whole body was covered in blood and I sat up from the operating table. Looking down, the bite wound on his wrist was healing at a speed visible to the naked eye. Outside the door, my parents and brother were surrounded by zombies, and their abilities were about to be exhausted. They turned their heads and saw me sitting in a pool of blood. Fear appeared in my father's eyes for the first time. My mother's lips moved, but no sound came out. My brother trembled all over, muttering: "Van Van... you, what are you?" I stood up, my bare feet stepping across the blood-stained floor.

“Mom,” I said smiling, “didn't you say I'm a normal person?”

Outside the window, the sea of zombies behind me bowed their heads in unison. The apocalypse struck that day, I was in the library working on my thesis. Thinking back, it's funny, I'm writing an essay about "The heteronormativity of humanity in apocalyptic literature." So", looked up more than thirty reference documents, wrote more than five thousand words, planning to submit them to the professor next week. Then the end of the world really came. When the shrill siren sounded in the loudspeaker, my first reaction was that the library's fire prevention system had failed again. Just during a rehearsal last month, that tattered loudspeaker rang for half an hour before someone turned it off. Until someone screamed and ran past outside the window. I raised my head and saw a man in uniform. The security guard rushed through the library door like crazy. Because he was running too fast, even one of his sandals was thrown away. Behind him was another man wearing a security guard's uniform chasing him - no, that's not right, that was no longer a "person".

The other "person" had a neck bent ninety degrees, a limp arm hanging down at his side, and a running gait like a wooden puppet whose strings had been cut off, wobbly but surprisingly fast.

He caught up with the guard ahead. He rushed up. He pressed down on the guard and bit madly. Blood splashed three meters away, splashed onto a white car next to it, then flowed down the car door, gathering on the cement floor to form a small puddle. I pressed close to the third floor window of the library and looked at the scene below, my fingers tightening on the door frame until they turned white. I wanted to scream, but I couldn't scream. I want to run, but my legs don't listen. I just stood there, watching that "person" bite the other "person's" face and nose, until from afar came more screams, police sirens, and the sound of broken glass. The loudspeaker suddenly sounded. It's no longer the library's loudspeaker, but the entire city's air defense siren. A mechanical female voice repeated over and over: "Emergency announcement: the entire city has entered a first-level response state, asking people to immediately return home, lock their windows and doors, and not go out." Again, we ask people to immediately return home, lock their windows and doors, and do not go out." I took out my phone, my fingers were shaking so much that I couldn't press the screen properly. Call dad first. No one answered the phone. Then call mom.