June 24, 2027, 2:30 a.m.
It was hunger that woke Yu Molan. The kind of hunger where his stomach walls were grinding against each other, eating themselves. His low blood sugar sent waves of blackness across his vision; even in the pitch-black darkness, he could see non-existent spots of gold dancing before his eyes.
He lay still for a while, trying to fight the gnawing ache with sleep, but failed. The sulfurous taste in his throat hadn't faded, and every swallow felt like gulping down a piece of sandpaper. He rolled out of bed, his movements agonizingly slow, afraid of waking the mother and daughter beside him, afraid of wasting the few calories left in his body. His feet met the floor, and a damp chill seeped through his skin, accompanied by a sticky sensation—the floor was slick with condensation, as if it were sweating.
The kitchen was even colder. He felt his way to the stove and, by the faint gray light from the window, saw the water kettle. It held less than half a kettle of yesterday's pale amber "slippery water." He picked it up and, without bothering with a cup, took a sip straight from the spout. A slickness like raw egg whites slid down his esophagus, carrying a nauseating, cloying sweetness and that sulfurous tang. But he couldn't afford to be picky. The liquid was disgusting, but it could at least dilute his stomach acid.
He took two sips and stopped. He didn't dare drink more, partly because there was so little left, and partly because too much of that slickness would make him retch. The refrigerator stood in the corner, now nothing more than an iron box for a corpse. The last of the spoiled frozen meat had been thrown out yesterday. By the time it went into the trash bag, the meat had turned a grayish-green.
Now, there was nothing left in the apartment but half a bag of damp rice and a few packets of noodles.
Returning to the living room, he saw Lin Zhixi half-kneeling by the sofa, sleeping in an extremely awkward position. Xiaoyu was asleep on the inner side of the sofa, her hand still clutching a dirty stuffed rabbit. Xiaoyu didn't have a fever, but she had clearly lost weight over the past few days. Her once-fitted pajamas now hung loosely on her small frame. She was a light sleeper, her brow furrowed as if she were enduring the pangs of hunger even in her dreams.
At the crack of dawn, the rain stopped.
This was an extreme rarity these days. Yu Molan pushed open the balcony door, which had been sealed shut with tape, letting out a muffled ripping sound. An indescribable stench assaulted him. The black water on the ground had receded slightly, revealing the dead husks of plants in the flowerbeds, all of which had dissolved into clumps of black sludge covered in a glistening, oily black film of fungus. The same substance crept up the outer wall of the opposite building, gleaming with an eerie sheen in the faint morning light.
"Lao Liu—Lao Liu—"
A shrill cry suddenly pierced the air from downstairs. The voice was hoarse, tinged with tears, and particularly jarring in the dead silence of the morning.
Yu Molan peered down. It was Aunt Wang from Unit 4. She wasn't wearing a raincoat, her hair plastered to her face. In her hand, she held an empty red plastic bucket. She was standing in the accumulated water, the black liquid rising past her ankles, shouting at a manhole cover.
"Lao Liu—Just answer me—"
No one answered. Only a few mutated flies, the kind with bodies that glowed green, circled above her head, their buzzing as loud as miniature drones. Aunt Wang shouted a few more times, then suddenly fell silent. She slowly squatted down, pushed the red bucket into the black water, and scooped. Then she scooped again.
Finally, she pulled up a shoe. A man's shoe, the kind an old man would wear. She clutched the shoe to her chest and collapsed into the muddy water, her shoulders heaving violently, but no sound of crying escaped her.
Yu Molan slowly pulled his head back inside, closed the balcony door, and resealed it with tape.
8:00 a.m. Lin Zhixi woke up, dark circles ringing her eyes. Her first instinct was to check the sealed bottles in the corner that they used for waste. "We have to throw these out after dark," she whispered. "The smell in here is getting too strong." Get faster updates on novelping(.)com.
Breakfast was a noodle paste, the noodles boiled in a pot of that slick, pale-yellow rainwater.
"Eat," Yu Molan said, dividing it into three bowls. His own was the smallest.
Xiaoyu stared at the paste in her bowl. This time, she didn't cry or throw a tantrum. She picked up her spoon and mechanically brought it to her mouth. Her small face had thinned, making her eyes seem even larger, and in them was a numbness that didn't belong to a child her age.
"Daddy," Xiaoyu suddenly stopped, looking at her bowl. "I want to eat meat. The kind with fat on it."
The hand Yu Molan used to hold his spoon trembled.
"There will be meat," he said, his head bowed, staring at the paste in his bowl. "As soon as the rain stops for good, I'll go out and find some."
"I want Grandma's steamed pork belly," Xiaoyu said, licking the edge of her spoon. "Grandma has lots of meat at her house."
Yu Molan sat beside her, watching. Suddenly, he said, "Xiaoyu, do you want to go to Grandma's house in the countryside?"
Xiaoyu looked up, her eyes brightening for a moment. "Yes! Grandma has a puppy and chickens!"
Lin Zhixi poked her head out of the kitchen, glancing at him. Yu Molan didn't look at her, just continued, "Once the rain stops, we'll go, okay?" Xiaoyu nodded.
Her grandmother's house was two hundred kilometers away in the countryside. A place like that was probably submerged by the Black Rain, too.
After they ate, Yu Molan took out the hand-crank flashlight he had been saving and sat on the sofa, cranking it. *Squeak... squeak...* The handle made a dry, grating sound as it turned. He cranked it slowly, afraid of making too much noise. After a hundred turns, he pressed the switch. The bulb flickered on for an instant, then died. He frowned and cranked it again. This time, the light was a little more stable, but it was weak, illuminating only a small circle.
He aimed the beam at the Swiss army knife hanging on the wall. He had bought it years ago, and it had been collecting dust in a drawer ever since. He walked over, took it down, and pulled out the main blade. The edge was sharp, reflecting the faint light.
"Molan," Lin Zhixi said, clearing the bowls with quiet movements. "Are you going out?"
"I'm going to take a look. We can't just keep waiting," Yu Molan said, folding the knife and putting it in his pocket. "See if there's anything to scavenge."
2:00 p.m. Yu Molan was fully geared up. He had re-taped the cuffs of his sleeves and pants, put on the goggles caked with black grime, and held a rubber-wrapped pipe wrench in his hand. He didn't use the main door, instead heading down the emergency stairwell.
The stairwell was dark, the air thick with a sour stench. Every floor was silent.
He reached the third floor. The door to Aunt Wang's apartment was ajar.
Yu Molan pressed himself against the wall, held his breath, and crept closer. He nudged the door with the pipe wrench. *Screech.* The hinges let out a piercing cry.
The apartment was dark, the curtains drawn tight. In the dim light from the stairwell, he could see it was a mess. Drawers had been pulled out and thrown on the floor; clothes, photo albums, and shattered porcelain littered the living room. There was no one. No bodies, either. This story is hosted at novelping(.)com.
The only smell was a thick, musty odor. Yu Molan stepped inside, his feet crunching on the photographs. They were pictures of Aunt Wang's family on a trip to the beach.
He went straight to the kitchen. Empty. The rice container was overturned, not a single grain left inside. The refrigerator door was wide open, containing only a puddle of blackened, bloody water. He went to the bedroom. The mattress had been flipped, the wardrobe emptied. It looked like it had been ransacked.
He shot to his feet. Someone had been here. And not long ago.
He quickly backed out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him, only to find the lock had been pried open, the bolt hanging limp. When he got back to his apartment, Lin Zhixi was waiting for him behind the door.
"How was it?"
Yu Molan shook his head, dropping the pipe wrench to the floor with a dull thud. "Someone's prying open doors," he said, walking to the window and staring out at the gray, hazy sky.
Lin Zhixi said nothing, just handed him the kettle of slippery water.
"We can't wait any longer," he said, placing the kettle heavily on the table. "Our supplies are almost gone, and so are everyone else's."
"Then what do we do?"
"When I get a chance, I'm going to the supermarket." Yu Molan pointed toward a plume of smoke still rising in the distance. "There has to be something left. Better to take a gamble than to just sit here and wait to die."
He turned and looked at the family portrait Xiaoyu had drawn, which hung on the wall. In the drawing, the three of them were holding hands, smiling happily under a giant yellow sun.
Only five candles were left. Yu Molan didn't light one. In the darkness, he held his wife and daughter, all of them squeezed onto the sofa. The folding knife was under his pillow, within easy reach.
A series of soft, shuffling footsteps echoed from the hallway. They paused for a moment at their door, then slowly moved away. Yu Molan's hand tightened on the knife's handle, only relaxing when the sound had completely faded.
He sat up, leaning against the back of the sofa, listening to the heavy breathing of his wife and daughter. The window was leaking again, the dripping sound hitting the air conditioner's outdoor unit, one drop after another. He reached out and touched Xiaoyu's forehead, his palm meeting a cold, clammy sweat. He thought of the old man's shoe in Aunt Wang's hands, and then of the army knife in his own pocket. He took the knife out, rubbing its cold metal casing over and over in the dark.
Since chaos had already begun to reign in the building, that security door was no longer a shield. He had to bring back enough to get his family through the next week before someone else made a move. Or, when those people came knocking, he had to have the strength to drive his knife through their throats. He closed his eyes, his mind filled with the image of the viscous noodle paste and the oily film of fungus outside the window.
Proofreader: Peter Pan