June 26, 2027.
The sky dawned like a stale, unleavened pancake—grayish-white, stiff, and tinged with a sour stench.
Six-thirty.
Yu Molan cinched the last yellow plastic cord into the mouth of the woven bag. The cord was thin and bit deep, squeezing the flesh of the web of his thumb into two halves. It was a raw pain. He didn't slacken his grip. Pinning the belly of the bag with his foot, he yanked the ends of the cord with both hands until his fingers turned a bloodless blue, then tied a dead knot.
The bag contained their life. A few pounds of leftover rice, a bundle of dried noodles, a few cans of luncheon meat, half a bottle of rubbing alcohol, two blister packs of amoxicillin, a raincoat, a Swiss Army knife, a hand-crank flashlight, a roll of nylon rope, and a household axe he’d bought on sale at a hardware store. The hard block at the very bottom was the family photo album Lin Zhixi had stuffed inside, along with two picture books that had long been read to tatters.
It was dead weight. But he didn't take it out.
His gaze swept over the entryway cabinet and stopped on a black leather wallet. It was the one he used daily, stuffed with a few pink bills and some loose change.
Yu Molan picked up the wallet and squeezed it. It still felt thick. He pulled out the cash. Over three thousand yuan, crisp and new, without a single crease. He looked up at Lin Zhixi, his fingers flicking the stack of paper, making a faint, crisp sound.
"Should we take it?" he asked.
Lin Zhixi was adjusting Xiaoyu’s collar. Her movements paused. She turned her head, her eyes glancing over the stack of red paper.
"Take it," she said. "There's no power, no internet. We can't use the money in our cards. Once we get to the countryside, if someone still recognizes it..."
He knew, in his heart, that this wad of cash probably couldn't even buy a bag of rice anymore. But this red paper had ruled his life for so many years that throwing it away now felt like stripping naked and running down the street—it left him feeling panicked and unmoored.
A few seconds later, she came out, clutching a red velvet pouch. It was from a jewelry purchase back when they got married, still as new as the day they got it.
She turned the pouch upside down over her palm. A few crisp clinks rang out—a small sound, yet jarring.
A heavy gold necklace, an old Lao Jixiang design; two gold earrings; a large, hollow gold bracelet he’d bought her when they were dating; and the longevity lock they’d bought for Xiaoyu. The last thing to roll out was a simple diamond ring—her wedding ring.
Lin Zhixi didn't stare at these items, nor did her face have the glow women get when looking at jewelry. She just weighed the metal in her hand like a scrap collector.
"This will probably be more useful," she said in a low voice. She slipped the diamond ring back onto her left ring finger. Her finger had grown thinner; the ring hung loosely at the base, wobbling. She moved the ring to her index finger, then stuffed the rest of the gold and silver back into the velvet pouch, her movements as rough as if she were cramming in a wad of wastepaper.
"Put it in the innermost compartment of my bag," she said, handing the pouch to Yu Molan as she turned to pick up the heavy hiking backpack. "Tuck it in with the sanitary pads. No one will look there."
Yu Molan hesitated for a second, then stuffed the pouch and some documents into his pocket. The lump dug into him uncomfortably.
"Just the weight of a few pieces of paper," he muttered, as if to himself.
He clipped the folding knife to the right side of his belt. The hilt pressed against his hip bone, its coldness biting into his flesh. He took a couple of steps. The waistband of his pants sagged, and he had to keep hitching them up.
Lin Zhixi shouldered the purple hiking backpack. It was stuffed with changes of clothes and sanitary pads, bulging like a tumor on her back.
Yu Xiaoyu wore her pink schoolbag. It was stretched taut and round, filled with a compressed down jacket, two bags of salt, a 1.5-liter bottle of mineral water, some chocolate, and a few crayons. For a ten-year-old, the weight pulled her shoulders back slightly, the straps digging into the flesh beneath her short-sleeved shirt. She didn't make a sound, just quietly fastened the chest strap. *Click*.
She didn't complain about the weight, only looked up and asked, "Dad, where are we going?"
Yu Molan crouched down to his daughter's eye level. Xiaoyu's cheeks had thinned, her chin so sharp it was alarming. He reached out and hitched her backpack straps up a little higher.
"To the countryside," he said. "To find Grandma."
He said it so naturally.
He didn't mention that Grandma was in another province, hundreds of kilometers away, across countless broken lines of communication and with innumerable chances of not making it. For now, a direction was enough.
The city had gone sour. Food was running out, water was even scarcer, the air had turned foul. Black smoke rose every day, only to be quickly flattened by the clouds. People were leaving or dying. As for those who remained, he didn't want to know what they would become. But he had to give them a hope to cling to. Without hope, a person's legs wouldn't move.
The three of them stood in the entryway.
The floorboards were peeling, damp and cold. The shelves inside the refrigerator were bare, its door left open—at first to air out the smell, and later because they just stopped caring. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Lin Zhixi took one last look at the home they had lived in for seven years. Her gaze lingered for two seconds on the sunken cushion of the sofa, the spot where Yu Molan used to lie and watch soccer.
She turned and gently pulled the security door shut, habitually tucking the key into her pocket.
*Click.* The sound of the deadbolt sliding into place was exceptionally crisp in the stairwell.
The stairwell was as dark as a deep well. The voice-activated lights had long gone blind, and only a few murky rays of light filtered through the windows. The air was stagnant, thick with a choking smell of dust.
The floor was covered in trash. Tea with milk cups, delivery boxes, a half-rotted slipper—they crunched underfoot. Yu Molan led the way, kicking aside debris with the tip of his shoe before taking each step down.
The glass doors of the ground-floor lobby were completely shattered, shards littering the floor. Wind poured through the opening, carrying the stench of fish left to rot on the shore for three days.
Yu Molan pulled open the car door.
The chemical smell of volatilized leather hit him. The car hadn't moved from the underground garage since the day he came back from the office.
He got in and pressed the ignition button.
*Zzz—*
The starter gave a dry whine, like an old duck being strangled, followed by a heart-stopping silence.
No roar of the engine, no light from the dashboard. Even the faint hum of electricity was swallowed by the darkness.
Yu Molan's hand froze on the key, not letting go. He held his breath, able to hear the dull, frantic thud of his own heart against his ribs.
He pressed it again.
This time, there wasn't even a whine, only the soft *click* of the relay.
The battery was dead. The little bit of gas in the tank might have been enough to get them out of the city, but now he couldn't even start the engine.
Sweat instantly erupted from his pores, trickling down his temples and into his collar, sticky. He stared intently at the layer of dust on the dashboard, his mind buzzing.
He used to think having a car meant he could go anywhere. Now it just sat here, a useless metal turtle.
Lin Zhixi stood outside the open passenger door; she hadn't gotten in. She looked at Yu Molan's hand, where the veins were popping out and it was trembling slightly.
"Molan," she called out. Her voice wasn't loud, nor was it emotional, just like when she would call him for dinner. "Forget it."
Yu Molan released his grip, got out, and slammed the door shut behind him. *Thump*.
"We walk," Yu Molan said, not daring to meet his wife's eyes. He pulled their bags from the trunk again and adjusted the straps. "First, we get out of the city. Head west, take the ring road expressway. As long as we still have our legs, we can walk."
He spoke through gritted teeth, as if in a defiant rage against someone.
Lin Zhixi said nothing, just quietly took Xiaoyu's hand. Xiaoyu's palm was hot and sweaty.
They slipped out of the residential community's side gate and onto the street.
The cracks in the road were filled with black grime and debris. Plastic bags, caught by the wind, scraped across the ground with a rustling sound. The greenbelts along the road were withered, yellow and dim.
After twenty minutes of walking, they reached a main road.
It was a dead river. Thousands of cars were jammed together, bumper to bumper, some even piled on top of others. Bumpers were twisted, windshields shattered into spiderwebs. Some car doors were open, the interiors empty. Others were closed, their windows covered with dark film, obscuring what was inside.
After walking for a while, a thick stench assaulted their nostrils. It was a mix of rotting flesh, excrement, and burnt rubber—a smell so viscous it seemed to cling to the back of the throat.
Yu Molan pulled a mask from his pocket, put it on Xiaoyu, and pinched the nose clip tight.
They walked along the roadside barrier, their feet treading on shattered glass, bricks, and all sorts of garbage.
Yu Molan, however, felt a strange sense of relief. On a road like this, even a working car couldn't get through.
As they passed a white SUV, Yu Molan's steps faltered.
The driver's side window was shattered, and half a body was leaning out. It was a person, or what was once a person. The pallid flesh was somewhat bloated, the eye sockets empty, staring at the living who passed by. The suit it wore was still mostly intact, the tie askew, covered in reddish-black splotches.
Startled, a few green-headed flies buzzed up in a cloud.
Lin Zhixi’s hand tightened abruptly. She pressed Xiaoyu's head against her hip, using her own body to block the view.
"Don't look," she whispered.
Xiaoyu didn't struggle, obediently burying her face in her mother's clothes.
Further on, the roadside shops looked as if they'd been gnawed by wild beasts. The roll-up security doors were pried open like curled lips, shelves inside were overturned, and the floors were covered in trampled packaging. In front of one shop lay a single, lonely child's shoe. It was red, no bigger than a palm, its lace soaking in a puddle of iridescent oil by the roadside.
Yu Molan didn't dare to stop. He couldn't stop now. The moment they did, the fear that crept up from the soles of their feet would swallow them whole.
An hour later, the buildings grew shorter, and the entrance to the expressway appeared ahead.
The toll plaza was empty, the barrier arm broken into several pieces, the ETC lane wide open. A sign read—
"GXX Expressway - Northwest"
Beneath the roadside guardrail, a few scattered groups of people were sitting. Beside them were pried-loose bicycles and filthy suitcases.
Yu Molan stopped, leaning against the guardrail to catch his breath. He took a water bottle from his bag, and the three of them took turns sipping from it. The water was rainwater they had boiled the night before. It had a strange taste and was so cold it made their teeth ache.
"Let's rest a bit," he said.
The strap of the woven bag was too thin and had dug in cruelly; the skin was probably broken. He shrugged the bag off, set it on a relatively clean concrete block by the road, and they sat down on a relatively clean patch of curb. Lin Zhixi wiped Xiaoyu's face. The girl leaned against her, her eyes gazing forward.
The emergency lane was covered in trash: abandoned suitcases, scattered clothes, and rotting food wrappers. When the wind blew, the plastic bags littering the ground rose like ghosts.
There were people on the expressway too, not many, just small clusters, all dragging suitcases and carrying bags, all heading in the same direction—away. No one greeted each other. No one looked back.
Yu Molan watched for a moment, then looked down at his family. He fumbled in his pocket for half a pack of cigarettes. The box was flattened, a few bent cigarettes still inside. He pulled one out and stuck it between his lips. The lighter was almost out of fluid.
"Can Xiaoyu keep walking?" he asked.
Lin Zhixi's hair was a mess and her face was smudged with grime, but she seemed calm. Xiaoyu's straps had chafed a red mark onto her skin, but she hadn't made a sound.
He suddenly felt that, on this journey, they were tougher than he was.
"Let's go," he said, getting up and readjusting his bag. "We go as far as we can before dark."
Lin Zhixi took Xiaoyu's hand, and Xiaoyu, in turn, took his.
No one looked back.