When Jing sat up, Chang gently touched her forehead to see if she had a fever – luckily, her body temperature was normal.
Chang stood up and noticed the three people who slept on the floor last night – two of them were the father and daughter from the family of three, and the other one was one of the two brothers.
The father and daughter turned their heads as they saw him got off bed, but the brother stared at Chang’s face for a long time without hiding his displeasure.
However, Chang wasn’t provoked by him. Instead, he gave a friendly smile to the brother, and then put on his shoes and went out of the room.
"Where are you going?" Jing shouted behind him.
“To the bathroom!” Chang waved his hands and then walked out of the room.
The soldiers’ dorms didn’t come with private bathrooms in each room. Chang finally found the bathroom after he passed by three rooms – it was a large shared bathroom for the whole floor.
However, Chang hesitated as he stood in front of the bathroom, and then returned to the room.
“Do we still have the plastic water bottles from yesterday?” Chang pushed open the door and asked Pang Zi loudly.
“Here.” Pang Zi nodded and took out a water bottle that had some water inside and threw it to Chang.
Chang caught the bottle and drank up the water and then walked out of the room again. But this time, someone followed him – it was the brother who had slept on the floor last night.
“Yo bro, why do you need a water bottle when you’re going to the washroom?” The man put his arm around Chang’s neck with great force, and his voice got even louder. “You got a problem or something down there? I bet your piss drips on your feet while you pee.”
Chapter 22: Disturbed
“Yeah, I’m afraid that I’ll pee too far and splash it onto you.” Chang shook off the man’s arm and freed himself from the pressure the man put on him. Chang frowned tightly without saying another word.
The man didn’t continue provoking Chang when he saw that he was able to get rid of him easily. The two walked side by side to the shared bathroom.
Dawn had just arrived and not many people had woken up yet, so the bathroom wasn’t crowded at all. As Chang walked into the bathroom, he stood closely to the entrance and released himself into the bottle.
"Damn! You’re stupid. What are you going to do with it, save water?” The man glanced at Chang and muttered, then walked up to a urinal and loosened his belt.
As he peed into the urinal, he gave a look of relief.
On the other side, Chang finished before the man, so he came up to the closest urinal to empty the bottle – but at that same moment, when he was about to pour the liquid and the man was enjoying his moment, something happened!
A tentacle quickly broke through the cap that covered the bottom of the urinal and attacked the man standing in front of the urinal. Before he was aware of what was happening, the tentacle smashed his genitals violently and pierced his body from his lower abdomen.
Chang was going to empty the water bottle, but jumped far away from the scene as he saw this. He turned away as fast as he could. His footsteps were mixed in with the man’s shrieking.
“AHHHHHHHHH------!”
The loud ear-piercing scream woke the whole floor, but a second before the man screamed, Jing, who was staying in the dorm room, jumped out of the bed and rushed to the door.
“What happened----!” Pang Zi shouted behind her. He knew that his voice might’ve been drowned out by the painful scream, so he shouted exceptionally loud.
“I detected an organism that has danger index of 12 coming from the direction of the bathroom!” Jing explained as she ran. Pang Zi and Qing Shui rushed out with her as they heard her words.
The three ran all the way to the front of the bathroom, and then they sighed heavily as relief. Chang was standing beside the entrance and his body was intact.
“What’s going on?” Pang Zi wanted to peek into the bathroom, but the screaming inside seemed to remind him of some bad memory.
“Don’t.” Chang pulled him back immediately and tried to block his vision. The entrance door was slightly opened. “There’s a monster inside.”
From where Chang pointed with his index finger, they saw the horrifying scene from the slightly opened door panel. Fortunately, they weren’t able to see clearly through the red fog. All they saw was a vague shadow of the monster smashing and dissecting the man, then dragging him down into the sewer.
“F*ck, F*ck this sh*t!” Pang Zi was horrified and his face was distorted with rage.
“Is it the same monster?” Obviously, Chang was referring to what had happened to Pang Zi’s mother.
“No, the other one was darker and its tentacles was less sharp; I don't see the resemblance.” Pang Zi breathed heavily and panicked as he shook his head. “I am glad that you weren’t…”
“I’m alright, I used the water bottle.” He sighed and threw the bottle that he didn’t have time to throw away into the bathroom. “Bang,” the bottle hit the floor and made a sound.
This sound quickly attracted the attention of the tentacle which was still dragging pieces of flesh. In the blink of a moment, the bottle was shattered into small pieces of plastic by the strong tentacle.
“Thank god the tentacle wasn’t long enough the reach here, otherwise we’ll be dead too.” Qing Shui was standing behind Chang and exclaimed with unnoticeable admiration. “This creature has extraordinary reflexes, but its tentacles are still strong and powerful! I really want to know what its body looks like; I bet there are barely any humans on Earth that can react as fast as it.”
“Yeah, the dead man didn’t even know he was attacked until he felt pain.” Chang recalled the situation. “Unfortunately, he was torn to pieces not long after he realized it.”
Chang stopped talking abruptly because he saw someone walking towards here – they were people that he was familiar with.
It was the family of the dead brother. They had only moved after Qing Shui. They knew the voice of their beloved son, so they also arrived at the scene very quickly.
Ultimately, they couldn’t perceive danger as well as Jing could do. Moreover, with the red fog lowering their vision, they spent some time figuring out where the scream came from, and hence they were slower than Chang’s group.
Their bodies were seized by sudden shock.
They saw the scene from the door that wasn’t closed tightly. The monster had cut and dragged most of the brother’s flesh away, and all they saw were pieces of clothing soaked in a pool of blood.
However, based on the previous screams and the familiarity of the blood-stained clothes, they could easily connect the pieces together and find out what happened to their son.
As they realized that his brother had died, the other brother stepped forward and grabbed Chang’s collar tightly and threatened, “What did you do to my brother???”
“A monster with tentacles came out from the sewer and killed him.” Chang pushed away the brother as he said so; no one liked to talk being threatened like that.
Chang nudged him, but the brother didn’t let go, which made him very upset. Initially, he didn’t have a good impression of the family, and now the brother was being irritating and unreasonable. Therefore, he pushed harder to try to get the brother away from him.
However, because of how hard he pushed in addition to the brother holding his collar so tightly, Chang’s collar was ripped apart and it revealed his bone necklace.
This made Chang even more angry, so he pointed to the bathroom and yelled, “If you want revenge for your brother, go ahead! It’s still in there and shouldn’t be far away. You are f*cking yelling at the wrong person, you son of a b*tch!”
The man noticed the unusual necklace on Chang’s neck, and then glanced at the bathroom. In the end, he didn’t have the guts to enter.
While Chang and the brother were in a dispute, on the other side, the man’s mother burst into tears.
But Chang looked beside her and was extremely disturbed; although she must have honestly been mourning for her son, she continued crying extremely loudly. There was likely a hidden intention in her actions.
As expected, after less than a minute, her disturbing cries and the previous screams attracted the attention of a lot of people who lived on the same floor. They showed different looks when they saw the woman sitting on the ground and crying desperately.
Some asked what happened, some were sympathetic, some were standing in the distance quietly observing and some noticed the blood in the washroom.
"Let's go." Chang saw the growing crowd of onlookers, and he didn’t feel very good right now. He left from the center of the crowd with Jing and gestured Qing Shui and Pang Zi to leave, too.
Chapter 23: Narrow-minded
When Chang held onto Jing’s hand and was about to leave, someone grabbed his shirt tightly.
“Where are you going?” It was the dead brother’s father who gripped Chang’s clothes and yelled, “How dare you leave without giving us an explanation?”
“I gave a clear explanation already; it was none of my business.” Chang tried to get rid of the hand on his clothes and raised his voice so that the crowd could hear him. “I’ve made everything very clear. We went to the bathroom together and when he was using the urinal, a monster with tentacles attacked him from the sewer. I hope I’ve made my point now, so stop making things difficult for me.”
“Why weren’t you attacked then?” the father questioned.
“I don’t know; why don’t you ask the monster yourself?” Chang was provoked by this question. “I didn’t ask it to attack your son, nor I am its father!”
Chang didn’t emphasize “father” deliberately when he spoke, but the word had obviously caused pain to the man who just witnessed the death of his son.
Without a doubt, the dispute heated up pretty quickly.
The family had just lost their own beloved son, but there was no one they could vent their anger on, so all the dissatisfaction and anger from their hearts was pushed to Chang. Also, because Chang felt that there was no room for compromise between him and the family, he no longer held himself back and started arguing, too. All of a sudden, their dispute had gathered a crowd of spectators; it seemed like everyone was getting involved in meaningless conflict.
There was no sign of stopping until someone from the military showed up.
Two soldiers dismissed the crowd as they received orders from the squad leader to bring Chang and the father to an office.
“Okay, tell me what happened.” A captain-like soldier sat behind the desk, looked at them and knocked on the desk.
“He set my son up! He made my son die!” The father complained to the captain and tried to address the injustice of what happened. His face was distorted with hatred and grief.
However, seeing the father’s face irritated Chang even more. Even before the apocalypse, he had hated these kinds of people who distorted the truth to act in their own interests; they were greedy and had no conscience. These people became even more despicable after the apocalypse; within a day, they had ignited Chang’s anger more than three times.
However, Chang was a relatively reasonable person, and although his was very irritated, he still managed to suppressed his emotions. “Captain, it’s very simple. I went to the bathroom with his son, and he was attacked while I wasn’t. This man didn’t have anyone to blame for his son’s death, so he insisted that I caused his son to die as an excuse to calm himself down.”
“You can inspect the bathroom yourself if you would like to know the truth. You’ll reach the same conclusion as mine. His son was killed by the monster, and there’s evidence of it from the blood and flesh at the scene. Obviously, I don’t have power to control a monster; I was lucky that I didn’t get attacked because I didn’t go up to the urinal at the same time as his son did. This is exactly what happened, and if I knew that there was a monster waiting, I wouldn't have even dared to go into the bathroom.”
“I agree,” the captain nodded after he heard Chang’s explanation, so his questions were no longer focused on the argument between the two. Instead, he asked questions he was truly concerned about, “The monster was able to attack a human from the sewer?”
“Yes,” Chang nodded.
“Send someone to inform the soldiers in other departments. Tell them how the monster attacks; also, notify the civilians to be more careful.” The captain stood up as he gave the command to his subordinates.
He seemed shrewd and smart, and he knew exactly what to do under the current circumstances.
Therefore, he nodded to Chang and the father when he walked past them. The captain didn’t explain anything, nor did he take notice of the father’s pleading. He left the room without looking back.
“I’m sorry, in this situation and circumstance…” Chang gave a mocking smile to the father after the captain left. There was a hint of irony in his words, “Such trifling matters don’t deserve the captain’s attention.”
Chang turned away without hesitation as he spoke – since he had offended the father, he didn’t mind offending him to the very end.
When Chang returned to his room from the office, Jing and others were waiting for him nervously with worry written all over their faces.
“How did it go?” Qing Shui asked first as soon as he saw Chang. “Did the soldiers do anything to you?”
“No. To be honest, the military is already busy enough trying to solve the problems of food shortages and communication with the central military, so they didn’t care about such a small issue,” Chang shrugged. “Plus, anyone with a discerning eye could easily tell that the death of his son was none of my business.”
“Those bastards!” Pang Zi sat back to his bed after he learned Chang was safe. “His own son was attacked by a monster, but he deliberately accused you of killing his son. I really don’t understand how he can do this.”
“There are many of these type of people. Eventually, everyone will encounter one in their life.” Chang sighed.
“Still, you shouldn’t just continue offending them.” Lin, who didn’t speak for a while, argued softly, “We won’t get much peace as long as we continue to live with them.”
“That’s might not necessarily be the case.” Chang added, “In their little and narrow minds, I’ve already completely offended them the moment their son died. How we treat them afterwards doesn't matter anymore.”
“How do you know?” Lin ignored Chang’s explanation and continued to ask.
“I know these kinds of people all too well.” Qing Shui gave a similar answer, and then brought up another topic. “We should be aware of what they do later, but right now it isn’t a good time to discuss this.”
“Yeah, I thought so,” Qing Shui nodded. “Food; the food problem is the most critical issue at this moment.”
“Has all our food perished?” Chang dismissed all his irritations when he heard the word “food.”
“They aren’t edible anymore.” Jing wiped a barely noticeable tear drop on her face, then took out several bags of food and bread from the backpack.
Chapter 24: Hunting
“That’s gross!” When Chang took the food from Jing, his face crumbled. The bread was squishy and sticky. He frowned, “Is this bread? It’s literally become a ball of yarn.”
“Unfortunately, not a single piece of it is edible.” Pang Zi showed a look of pity when he looked at the bread.
“What can we do now? We haven’t had proper food since two days ago.” The five had been tense and stressed from running back and forth in the military base. This was already very energy consuming, not to mention that they didn’t have any protein the past two days. Their strength was drained.
“The military should be distributing food these days. Although most
of their grain reserve probably perished, they’ll figure out a way to solve the food shortage.” Qing Shui leaned against the wall and said in a faded voice, “Let’s just wait for now.”
“Yeah.” The other four nodded as they stood in silence.
They didn’t wait too long; the family of the dead son came back, followed by some soldiers who were distributing food around.
“Each of you gets half a pack of hardtack or half a can of canned food. You can only choose either one of these, and no one can take more than that.” The soldier didn’t explain much and gave out a portion for everyone in the room, then he continued onto the next room with the cart.
“Hardtack is a kind of cracker that soldiers carry in the war zone as food. Apparently, it can last longer than regular crackers in the supermarket.” Qing Shui took a pack of hardtack and flipped over the package. “The sealing technique they used on the hardtack is so much better than those in the supermarket, and it contains less moisture. There’s no doubt that these can be preserved for a long time.”
“The seal on the canned food is also impressive.” Pang Zi opened a can and sniffed, “Although it smells a bit sour, it’s definitely edible.”
“But we only have half a piece of hardtack or half a can of food for each person. There’s no way it’s enough.” Lin was sitting by the bed as she spoke emotionlessly.
“We’re lucky that we still have these.” Chang took a bite of his cracker and sipped some water, causing the cracker to expand in size.
It took less than a minute to finish the cracker and canned food. The five had been hungry for two days, so they swiftly finished their meal.
Each of them laid on their beds after they ate up their prestigious and only meal of the day.
“I feel even hungrier after eating that cracker; don’t you guys feel that way too?” Pang Zi rubbed his belly as it rumbled deeply.
Global Evolution Page 10