July 7th, 2027. 5:30 in the morning.
The twentieth day since the disaster.
When Yu Molan climbed down from the wooden watchtower on the north wall, his right leg was so numb he could barely feel it.
It was as if his blood had been steeped in that cold rain, congealing in his joints. The moment he moved, a sharp, needle-like ache shot up his nerves. He leaned against the damp concrete base of the wall for a while, waiting until the leg could bear his weight before limping toward the shantytown.
He had worked a double shift last night. In the second half of the night, Lao Zhou had let him catch a couple of hours of sleep in a corner of the platform. Though sheltered from the wind, the spot was heavy with moisture, the rotten mud at the base of the wall seeping with water. He had curled up in a ball, wrapped in an old raincoat stripped from a dead body, but his sleep was fitful.
His dreams were filled with the faces from the ditch.
They floated up, one by one, from the murky black water. First, they were blurry silhouettes, then their features became swollen and bloated. They drew closer and closer, so close he could see the deathly gray mold spots on their eyeballs, so close he could smell the fetid stench of bodies long-soaked.
The rain had stopped by the time he woke.
A bleak, pale gray line appeared on the horizon. It wasn't bright, but it was clean.
The water level in Beigou had receded somewhat, revealing the churned-up sludge beneath. It was a deep, dark color, like caked pig's blood. A few waterlogged branches, stripped of their bark, lay by the water's edge. Their edges were ragged, making them look less like wood and more like uncollected bones.
A few green-headed flies landed on them, rubbing their legs together before buzzing away.
When he got back to the shack, Lin Zhixi was already up.
She was squatting by the moldy straw mat, wiping Xiaoyu’s face. The child was in a deep sleep, her breathing so faint the rise and fall of her chest was almost invisible. Her cheeks were flushed from the damp, cold air, but when Lin Zhixi touched her forehead, it was ice-cold. She wiped slowly, the towel tracing gently over the child's ears and neck, as if afraid of breaking this fragile porcelain doll.
The smell in the shack was heavy.
It was a mixture of the sour stench of unwashed bodies, the musty rot of straw, and the persistent stink of rat piss that never seemed to fade. A rat had snuck in sometime last night, gnawing at something under the straw for a long time. Then the sound had suddenly stopped. It was impossible to know if it had left or simply died in there.
Yu Molan sat down behind her and pulled half a bottle of water from his backpack, moistening his cracked throat.
"Lao Zhou wants to go to the County Town."
Lin Zhixi's hand stopped abruptly.
She didn't turn around, just placed the towel back in the basin and wrung it out again. Water dripped into the plastic basin, the *plink, plink* sound exceptionally piercing in the early morning quiet.
After a long moment, she asked, "How many people?"
"Four, for now."
"Who?"
"Lao Zhou, Xiao Wu, Lao Zhao, and me."
He paused, then added, "I can drive. Lao Zhou has his eye on that Santana in the school's backyard."
Lin Zhixi's shoulders slumped slightly, as if her spine had been removed. She folded the towel into a small square, placed it in the basin, and pushed the basin aside, clearing a little space for herself to breathe.
"When?"
"The day after tomorrow," Yu Molan said. "We leave at dawn, while the rain has let up."
Someone was already starting a fire in the shantytown.
Aunt Wang was feeding wood into the open-air stove. The damp wood was hard to light, and thick smoke snaked out along the ground, making people cough. A large iron pot was bubbling away, the smell of corn porridge slowly drifting out.
The smell wasn't fragrant, it even carried a hint of being burnt, but to these people who had been hungry all night, it was the most wonderful scent in the world. Stomachs would involuntarily clench in response, secreting sour fluids.
Today's porridge was even thinner.
There wasn't a single drop of oil, and the chopped wild greens were pitifully few, floating sparsely on the murky surface.
Yu Molan remembered passing the stove on his way back from his shift last night and hearing Lao Lian and Aunt Wang arguing in hushed, tense voices. You are reading on novelping dot com, the official source.
"The flour's almost gone," Aunt Wang's voice was on the verge of tears. "If we keep eating like this, we'll have three days at most."
"Mix in the bran," Lao Lian's voice was cold. "Mix in the leftover bran we used to feed the pigs."
"That stuff scratches your throat... What about the children?"
"A scratched throat is better than starving to death."
When the porridge was being distributed for breakfast, Lao Lian laid the plan to go to the County Town out in the open.
A crowd quickly gathered on the playground. No one stood too close, each person maintaining a wary distance from the others. After they heard him out, the crowd's reaction was muted, almost numb. It was as if this was bound to happen sooner or later; the final pretense had just been torn away.
Someone asked, "Is there anything left in the County Town?"
Lao Zhou stood on the steps, the shotgun cradled in his hands. His voice wasn't loud. "Supermarkets, pharmacies, gas stations. There's bound to be something left. That stuff will just rot if we don't get it."
Someone else asked, "Are there a lot of infected?"
This time, Lao Zhou didn't answer. He just gazed toward the gray, hazy sky in the distance.
Lao Lian picked up the thread, his voice like iron scraping against glass. "If we don't go, there'll be even less to eat. Wait here to die, or go out and fight for a chance. It's simple math."
At his words, the crowd fell silent for a moment, then slowly dispersed. There were no arguments, and no one asked any more cruel details.
The young man who had tried to buy rice with money before sidled over again.
He was still clutching those few hundred-yuan bills, their corners now soft and frayed, their color faded to a dirty gray, like a stack of waste paper. He lowered his voice, a pleading tone in it as he asked Lao Zhou, "Can I go with you? I have money, over twenty thousand... I can pay for gas."
Lao Zhou glanced at him. His gaze was flat, devoid of mockery, only cold indifference. "Save the money to wipe your ass. These days, the price of gas is paid with your life."
"What can you do?"
The young man froze, his Adam's apple bobbing. "I... I'm a programmer. I can fix computers, and I can write code."
Lao Zhou waved a hand as if shooing a fly. "Then don't go. We won't be needing code on the road."
The young man stood rooted to the spot, his grip on the money tightening. After a moment, he turned and went back to his shack, slumping down onto the muddy ground. He stared blankly at the earth, like a puppet with its soul torn out.
At noon, a few new items appeared on the broken classroom desk in the trading area.
A small bag of moldy dried sweet potatoes, a rusty sickle, and a bottle of cold medicine. The medicine's paper box was completely damp, the words blurred. It rattled when shaken; there was no telling how many pills inside hadn't dissolved.
Yu Molan took out the half-bag of salt he had been hoarding and traded it for a small piece of cured meat from Aunt Wang.
It was from Lao Zhao's family's old stash, air-dried until it was hard as a rock. Tapping it with a knuckle produced a dull thud. But it was substantial. Though only the size of a palm, it was solid fat and protein. That piece of cured meat could buy a few more days of life for the growing Xiaoyu.
When they made the trade, Aunt Wang gave him a deep look but said nothing. She took the bag of salt and immediately tied it shut, as if afraid the very saltiness might escape.
Yu Molan kept the dregs of the salt, sealed it in a new plastic bag, and stuffed it into the deepest part of his pack.
Lin Zhixi didn't stop him.
There was plenty of salt in the world, but no more was coming. Soon, those who found it would have enough to die of it, and those who didn't would be waiting to bloat and swell. This was the currency of life now.
In the afternoon, Lao Zhou called Yu Molan over to a corner of the playground to talk about the vehicle.
Two vehicles were parked in the overgrown weeds of the elementary school's backyard.
One was an old Wuling van. Its battery was long dead, and one of the doors was rusted shut, refusing to budge no matter how hard they pulled. The other was a black Volkswagen; it was the car Lao Zhao used to use to run an unlicensed taxi. The tank was still half-full, and though the two front tires were flat, they could be patched.
Lao Zhou squatted by the car, shining a flashlight on the mud-caked chassis. "The roads are shot. This car's chassis is decent, but we'll definitely get stuck. Xiao Yu, you're a better driver than Lao Zhao, so you'll drive."
"I'll bring the gun."
Yu Molan asked, "What's the exact route?"
"First, the gas station on the east side." Lao Zhou drew in the dirt with a stick. "It's a major PetroChina station. The underground tanks must still have fuel. We'll bring a hose and siphon it. Once we have gas, we can go farther."
"Then, the back warehouse of that Jia Jia Le supermarket. I heard the roller door wasn't pried open. If that's true, we'll have hit the jackpot."
"Last, the pharmacy. We'll take as much as we can carry. Especially anti-inflammatories and painkillers."
Yu Molan nodded, then asked the most crucial question. "How do we divide what we bring back?"
Lao Zhou let out a short, humorless laugh. "The usual rules. It goes into the public store first, Lao Lian will keep the records. The bulk is divided by headcount. The rest is a bonus for the four of us who are risking our lives."
The rules were loose, and vague.
But Yu Molan knew that if he didn't go, they wouldn't last long on even that thin porridge mixed with bran.
That evening, Lin Zhixi sliced the rock-hard cured meat into pieces so thin they were translucent and put them in the porridge to boil.
As the water temperature rose, the fat slowly rendered, and a few glistening droplets of oil floated to the surface. In that instant, an aroma of meat so good it could make you cry filled the shack.
Xiaoyu's eyes lit up like two small lightbulbs.
The three of them scraped the bottom of the pot clean, licking up the very last drop of broth.
Xiaoyu ate two bowls. Before lying down, she patted her slightly bulging tummy and asked in a small voice, "Mama, can we have meat again tomorrow?"
In the darkness, Lin Zhixi's hand stroked her sallow hair. "Yes. Papa is going to find some for us."
Yu Molan sat at the entrance of the shack, watching the sky outside.
The clouds hung low and heavy, black as an overturned wok. On the other side of the playground, the static from Ma Shifu's broken radio crackled again, "Kshhh— kshhh—," intermittent, like the gasps of a dying man.
Ma Shifu was cranking the hand-generator, his movements much slower now, clearly weak from hunger.
Lin Zhixi came and sat down beside him. Her body was cold.
"Are you scared?" she asked.
Yu Molan was silent for a moment. "Yes."
"But I have to go."
She said no more, just rested her head on his shoulder. He hadn't realized when she had gotten so thin. Her shoulder blades felt like two knives digging into his flesh.
That night, the rain returned.
The drops hammered against the plastic sheet, *pat, pat*, one after another, like someone counting down.
Yu Molan tossed and turned, unable to sleep. He listened to the rain, and he heard Lao Zhou sharpening his knife in the distance.
*Shhh— shhh—*
The sound of blade on stone was steady, and cold.
The County Town was over twenty kilometers away. He didn't know how bad the roads were, nor how many hungry mouths were hiding in the shadows of those ruins, waiting to eat.
He would leave the day after tomorrow.