A large amount of people gathered here, but since vision was restricted, none of them could estimate the size of crowd. But judging from the smell in the air, there were at least 50,000 people – about one-tenth of the population of Kaifeng.
“Attention please! May I have your attention.” While Chang was pondering what to do next as they stood in the crowd, he saw a man standing in a Jeep shouting through a megaphone.
“All of the residents who managed to come here are welcomed, but please listen to the instructions and don’t push against each other to avoid injuries.” The chassis of the military Jeep was far from the ground and the vehicle top was convertible, hence the driver could slowly drive forward with this man standing in the vehicle.
When the Jeep passed by Chang and his company, they quietly listened to what this man was going to say.
“Silence, silence!” the man yelled through the megaphone, intending to make more people hear his voice. “As you’ve seen what’s been going on in this world, you might have a basic understanding of the situation. Therefore, don’t push around as you wish; you know the consequence of getting injured. I don’t want to talk nonsense either, so there are two things I need to tell you.”
“First, you can choose to either stay here or leave Kaifeng.” The soldier who was talking through the megaphone seemed skillful and experienced. He was obviously a carefully chosen spokesman of the military. Also, the crowd didn’t want to miss any useful information either, so when he spoke, everyone stopped discussing and complaining.
“Our plan consists of two parts; first, half of our soldiers will remain stationed here to construct temporary fortifications. We’ll do as much as we can to create a relatively safe living environment.”
“Second, the rest of our soldiers will leave for Zhengzhou, the capital of the Province. They will be meeting another regiment there. Furthermore, they might move to Beijing to seek help from the central military. Hence, you have two options; for those of you who want to stay, please go south to enter our base, and for those of you who want to leave with our soldiers, stay where you are as we are leaving soon.”
The spokesman took a breath after making the long announcement, “The second problem we are facing is food shortages. We all know that the food supplies are insufficient. The same applies to the military, so we hope you have prepared your own supplies, as our food distribution is very limited!”
As he finished the sentence, the quite crowd suddenly became lively, and even became enraged.
“Why don’t you give us food?! I heard that the grain reserve in our country is sufficient to last for three years even if the farmers stop farming,” a person in the crowd shout loudly.
“We grew the crops, so why are you in charge of our property? Plus, we paid taxes to support the military too; you should be the last person to have food!”
“Why don’t you give us food; you are crueler than those man-eating monsters out there!”
……
The crowd clamored vigorously, but no one had the guts to climb on the Jeep – The army was still a deterrent for civilians. They didn’t dare fight, so they kept talking to express the unfairness.
The man on the Jeep patiently waited until the heated shouting calmed down, then said, “Listen to me, please.”
He repeated the sentence twice, but the crowd had barely calmed down; he quickly announced when he caught a gap between their venting, “With regards to food supplies, I would like to explain why. The crops in our warehouse are no longer edible. If any of you still are suspicious about this, you are welcome to visit the depot. The rice and wheat are infested and moldy, and the place is too stinky to even walk into; those crops are poisonous.”
His words were quite convincing, and sure enough, most people in the crowd had calmed down.
“Therefore, the military suffered from the food shortage too. We really don’t have many supplies left except for some crackers and instant noodles. We do hope that you can find and bring your own food.”
The spokesman left as he made sure the crowd understood what he had said. He patted the driver on the shoulder, and then they drove to the other side to make the same announcement.
Chang and his company started to consider their own future.
“Are you going to Zhengzhou or staying in Kaifeng?” Qing Shui whispered to the group when the crowd became quiet.
“I don’t want to go anywhere else.” Chang said, “Other places must be pretty much the same, so there’s no point in fleeing to another city. I know this city better and I want to go home to see whether my mom is still alive or not sometime in the future. What about you; are you staying or leaving?”
“I’d like to follow the army and go to Beijing; I feel like they must have known something was going to happen, but I’m not confident that I’ll be able to survive all the way to Beijing, so I’m staying,” a wry, self-mocking smile appeared on Qing Shui’s face as he spoke.
“I’m staying too; I don’t have confidence in staying alive once I walk out of here.” Pang Zi was the person who bragged about how he would run out from school safely even if all his classmates turned into zombies suddenly, but looking at the fog and the vigorous grass, his eyes expressed a clear look of fear. “To be honest, if I wasn’t following you guys, I wouldn’t even have had the courage to come here from the city center; I would’ve died at the beginning. Therefore, I choose to stay here.”
“I’m staying too,” Lin also whispered. She had been following them silently all the way here.
“What about you?” Chang hunkered down to the little girl.
“I’m following you.” Jing smiled, and the cut on her face slightly opened as she smiled.
“Good. Since we all chose to stay, we need to discuss our plans for the future.”
“Our mission is to survive as long as possible.” Qing Shui gave a small smile, “but the difficulties are the food shortages and finding a safe shelter to live in.”
“As for a shelter, the spokesman said that they would open up a place.” Chang added, “Though the military in Kaifeng isn’t equipped with heavy firearms, living here temporarily wouldn’t be dangerous.”
“Then, there’s only one problem.”
“Obtaining food!” They responded at the same time.
Chapter 20: Confrontation
“In fact, the growth rate of both animals and plants is fast. There should be an abundant food source,” Qing Shui said as he looking at the city. “Without preservatives or other forms of storage like vacuum sealing and fridges, most foods will perish extremely quickly. Therefore, we need to go out every day to look for food.”
“That’s too dangerous!” Chang shook his head, “Even if Jing is helping, it’s still not guaranteed that we’ll be able to avoid danger.”
“But there’s no other way around it… Perhaps vacuum sealing could make food last a little longer, but it wouldn’t stop the growth of mold and bacteria. Speaking of which, we don’t even have the necessary equipment to vacuum seal food,” Qing Shui rubbed his temple.
“Wasn’t there a chemical that stops bacterial growth?” Lin hadn’t spoke at all the entire time, but what she suggested had shocked everyone in the group. “Formalin… the chemical used to preserve corpses. Doesn’t it prevent the growth of microbes? Wouldn’t that solve the issue of spoiling and rotting food?”
“Formaldehyde?” Pang Zi exclaimed, “Are you crazy? We’ll get poisoned!”
“It won’t be that bad as long as we dilute it to certain extent,” Qing Shui surprisingly made no objections after he heard what Lin said. “Although it’s bad for your health, we can still try it. At least it’s a good preservative that can help us store food for a few days without rotting.”
“We’ll talk about it later.” Chang added, “It’s a bit too early to think of a way to preserve food without even having any food in hand. We’ll see how the military arranges us first.”
The group sunk into a brief silence as Chang spoke, and then t
hey looked at each other and waited quietly where they stood.
After about three hours, the military finally informed all the residents in front of the base – it required great effort just to make a single announcement to more than 50,000 people in a world without radio transmissions and electricity.
The crowd was separated into two huge groups based on those who had chosen to stay and those who had chosen to go to Zhengzhou. Those who wished to stay were slowly brought into the base.
The base was huge and there were two or three empty hangars. Even though there were a large number of civilians staying here, there was still enough space for all of them to live there. Everyone walked orderly as if they were afraid of being left behind.
Soldiers on both sides of the thick line were fully armed. In the military, there were no signs of mutated animals of any kind, likely because they had already been eliminated immediately; the base looked safe.
After the long wait until sunset, all the civilians were placed into different zones.
For those who were staying in the hangars, some moved to tents, some received clothes and some obtained blankets. Chang and his company were arranged in the soldier’s barracks in a small room with 4 bunk beds. The layout of the room looked like the student dormitory, but it was cleaner and simpler.
The arrangement wasn’t gender specific; people were placed in the base in families and parties like Chang’s. Therefore, the five of them stayed together. After all, in this environment no one wanted to be separated from loved ones and friends. In survival situations like this, gender became a negligible issue.
This room could normally fit 8 people, but there were currently 12 people in this room – except for Chang’s party, there were a family of three and a family of four.
The family of three seemed exceptionally vulnerable considering the state of the world. They consisted of a young woman and her parents that were nearly seventy years old.
However, the family of four seemed much more assertive; there were two brothers in their twenties who looked fierce, and their parents were about 50 years old, but looked energetic. This appearance of all four were unfriendly; the two brothers were wearing vests without shirts, showing off their heavily-built figure.
They occupied the best four beds in the room and were being completely unreasonable which irritated Chang a lot.
“Yo, buddy! We have 12 people in total and there are only 8 beds. It should be two beds for three people; you’ve already taken advantage of us by taking 3 beds. There’s no room for negotiation, you have to at least give up one bed.” Chang stepped forward as he said, “there are only 8 beds, no one is taking advantage of another!”
“Look at this angry little man!” The two brothers turned around from making their bed.
Qing Shui and Pang Zi also stood up as they saw the conflict.
The three young men on Chang’s side confronted the three other men from the other side. Both side were aggressive. Chang became less sympathetic as he had previously killed three men. Pang Zi was the most thug-like person in the school dorm already, in addition to the fact that his mother was torn apart by a mysterious monster; he wouldn’t be afraid of any of the three men he faced.
As for Qing Shui, though he was usually modest and humble, he wasn’t afraid of anyone right now.
Hence, both sides seemed evenly matched, and it seemed impossible to resolve the issue without a fight – both of them were simply acting in their own interests. More importantly, no one wanted to be injured in the battle.
After a few minutes, the mother of the brothers came over with fake smile on her face, trying to mediate the conflict.
“Well, everyone came for sheltering; it was fated for us to be assigned to the same room. It’s not beneficial for either of us if we fight. How about this...” the woman glanced at the other family as she talked, “We’ll give out a bed, you guys can have four since there are five of you. They can have one for their family. I think it’s fair this way.”
She smiled at the family and asked, “Am I right?”
The family of three didn’t say anything.
“See? They agreed. Let’s just forget about.” As she spoke, she pulled her husband and sons back.
This confrontation ended just like that – both sides flaunted their power to get what they wanted in this negotiation. It wasn’t a conflict or battle, so there was no winner. To be more accurate, both parties were winners, and the weak third party was sacrificed.
The law of jungle applied everywhere, especially in the current situation.
Chapter 21: Water Bottles
Seeing that the two brothers were pulled aside by their mother, Chang and Qing Shui returned to their own place, leaving the family of three standing there feebly. They never even had a chance to say anything.
Chang returned to his own bed and organized his sheets, then sat on the lower bunk bed and said, “We weren’t nice doing that…” Chang glanced at the family of three and whispered, “The old couple seems weak; they’ll get sick easily if they sleep on the floor without blankets.”
“We didn’t decide that, and it wasn’t a matter of being fair anyways.” Pang Zi sat beside him and said, “We got less beds than we should have. Now isn’t the time to be thinking about others. We should decide who’s going to sleep on which bed.”
“Jing and Lin should have their own beds and us three will take turns to sleep on beds. Is that fine?” Qing Shui looked at Pang Zi and Chang following his suggestion.
“It’s fair,” Chang nodded. “Each of us can take turns sleeping on the floor. That person should try to pay attention to the surroundings so that we can watch out for these strangers.”
“I agree,” Pang Zi nodded.
Lin agreed silently, but Jing surprisingly opposed the idea.
“We can share the same bed… I’m scared of sleeping by myself.” Jing quickly glanced Chang’s face and asked gingerly, “If you don’t mind?”
“Okay.” Chang nodded. Then, we have enough beds for everyone, but we should still take turns staying up even if we don’t need to sleep on floor.”
“Since everything’s settled, let’s have dinner. We’ve been tossing around the whole day and it’s getting dark out there.” As Qing Shui spoke, he took out some vacuum sealed bread from his backpack and ripped open the plastic package.
A musty smell wafted from the opening after Qing Shui opened the pack.
“Sh*t, the bread is full of mold too!” Pang Zi looked at the bread and complained. “The packaging was such bad quality… If it was sealed better, the bread should’ve been able to last for two or three days in this environment.”
“We’re lucky that it’s still edible.” Chang took the bread and peeled off the top layer of green and hairy mold from the crust. He took a big bite and then frowned. “It really doesn’t taste nice at all though!”
The moldy bread left a strong stale taste in their mouths as if they were eating blankets that had been left in the closet for years without cleaning. The bread had a waxy texture.
“Eat more.” Qing Shui took out all the bread he had from his backpack. “We might not even have moldy bread to eat tomorrow judging by how fast it’s rotting.”
“Yeah.” Chang took another bite; his voice was slightly slurred, “If we try to save the bread for tomorrow, I am afraid we’ll only have green hairy mold and no bread.”
Pang Zi sighed heavily, then opened a package and removed the green mold like how Chang did. He smiled wryly and said, “To be honest, despite how bad the bread tastes right now, it might taste delicious in 15 days, if we can even survive that long.”
“Really?” Chang suddenly laughed as he heard Pang Zi’s comment. He was surprised as he chewed the bread more carefully, “I think you’re right; it tastes a little like grass!”
Chang torn open another package as he finished speaking and handed the bread to Jing and grinned. “Try it yourself!”
Jing nodded heavily and imitated what Chang did to
his bread. She took big bites from it as if it was hot and fresh.
Their dinner ended with a weird atmosphere; it seemed like everyone understood the importance of staying optimistic and imagining a better situation, even it was woven with lies.
“It seems like listening to the censored news wasn’t as useless as we thought,” Chang and the other four teased each other for a while, then laid down on their own beds.
“At least I can get an understanding of the current situation by listening to the news, even if it might not be the truth.”
Since Chang was sharing a bed with Jing, he chose the lower bunk bed so that it would be more convenient for them.
Lying on the bed, Chang and Jing faced each other. Even though his eyes were closed, he still knew Jing that was trembling as the bed was slightly shaking. He knew exactly what this meant.
“Are you afraid?” Chang looked at the long and deep scar on her face. At this moment, he finally realized how strong she was – she had been suppressing her fear of this terrible world. She was alone and had no relatives or friends. Not only did she face mutated animals, but she was also assaulted by other humans; she was cut on the face, leaving a long and bloody scar.
Chang recalled how the journey had been since she followed along. She didn’t cry in pain or fear, nor did she weight down the team. Her trembling made him aware of how scared she was and how much she carried in her heart.
She was such a brave girl!
“Are you okay?” He patted her on the shoulder.
“It’s okay, I’m better now.” As she spoke, she slowly stopped shaking and closed her eyes.
Seeing this, Chang loosened his guard and was soon overwhelmed by fatigue. Tonight was Pang Zi’s turn on guard duty, so Chang slept soundly.
…
As the sun first rose into the sky and shined through the red fog the next morning, Chang sat up. Though his movements were swift and quiet, everyone in the room opened their eyes almost at the same time. This proved how wary and alert everyone was. It was as if they were soldiers who were on alert even while resting.
Global Evolution Page 9