Chapter 55 p2
Not long after she had gone over, the bathroom door opened, and a refreshed man appeared, still with some water vapor on his body. His eyes immediately scanned the entire room, and after locking onto his target, he quickly went over, hugged the person who was washing vegetables from behind, and casually took a piece of lettuce away. “Are we having hot pot for lunch?”
“That’s right,” Ji Yang nodded. Seeing him take over, she immediately wiped her hands dry, bent down, and slipped out from under his arm. “Since you’re washing the vegetables, I’ll go and prepare the dipping sauce.”
Xie Muzhi sighed faintly. “We haven’t seen each other for more than ten days. You don’t miss me at all.”
“How could that be?” Ji Yang’s footsteps paused, and she refuted righteously. She didn’t run away. She learned from his example and hugged him from behind. But Xie Muzhi was much taller, and she couldn’t hug him. Her two arms could only wrap around his waist, so she just put them on his waist and abdomen.
The next second, she felt the muscles under her hands tense. Her hand also took the opportunity to lift a piece of clothing, went in, and pressed against the firm and smooth muscles. She said with a hint of a smile, “I’m afraid that if I’m here, your work efficiency will decrease.”
With that, she glanced at the washing action that had unnaturally stopped.
Xie Muzhi: “…Ahem.”
He coughed lightly, a little embarrassed. His lips were slightly pursed, and his hands went back to washing the vegetables. He said with a straight face, “It won’t.”
Ji Yang was amused in her heart, but it had indeed been a few days since they had seen each other. Now, they could be considered to be in a long-distance relationship. She suddenly thought of this and laughed out loud. Xie Muzhi asked, “What are you laughing at?”
“I was thinking, we can be considered to be in a long-distance relationship, right?”
Thirty kilometers was not far before the disaster. It would only take thirty minutes to drive. But now, there were all kinds of problems. The ice and snow ground, the waterway, and the coming high-temperature weather would make it even more difficult to go out. The distance that had once felt so close was now so difficult to travel back and forth.
Don’t look at how convenient it seemed for Ji Yang and Xie Muzhi to go out normally. This thirty kilometers, if you had to row with your hands, it would take several hours. An assault boat could use gas, but a liter of gas now cost fifty or sixty points, and the price was still gradually rising.
Ordinary people were reluctant to go so far.
Xie Muzhi sighed slightly, but he said, “A little, but your place is also quite good. It’s quiet.”
Ji Yang was surprised. “Didn’t you always want me to live in the base before?”
Xie Muzhi quickly washed the vegetables, put them in a basket, and patted her mischievous little hand. When the person let go, he held her hand and went to the tea table in the living room. He said helplessly about what had happened in the base:
“These past few days, the number of people injured by piranhas in the base has increased exponentially. A portion of them have died, and a large portion have infected wounds. The medicine is seriously insufficient, and there are no specific medicines for many viruses and bacteria. The doctors are all fumbling to prescribe medicine. The wards are not enough, and some patients who are still conscious cannot be hospitalized. The hospital beds can only be left for the seriously ill, but there are no specific medicines. Now, this group of people is already dying in large numbers. After the news spread, some of them, perhaps seeing that they couldn’t hold on, began to pull others to be buried with them, causing a lot of trouble.”
“The day before yesterday, it was also revealed that many people did not have enough to eat. Although on the surface, there are not many snakes, insects, rats, and ants, that is because the first district has the conditions to disinfect. The other districts do not have so many resources. All kinds of rats, cockroaches, and insects are also rampant. So, in the fourth and fifth districts, many people who were hungry ate rats and cockroaches, and then they had vomiting and diarrhea and ran to the hospital for help. When they found that there were not enough hospital beds, they caused trouble. The government sent troops to suppress them, but they couldn’t hold on for a while. They are already thinking of managing the people centrally.”
“The base has been getting more and more chaotic recently. It just so happens that because of this, there is not much big business, so I thought of letting them all hide at home for the time being and talk about it after the storm has passed.”
There were definitely still small businesses, but they always gave the bottom a way out, so they didn’t do much small business. They basically only sent a few people out to watch, to avoid missing any potential big customers.
The rich, on the other hand, as soon as they saw that something was wrong, immediately tightened their supplies. It was a waste of time to just sit and wait, so they would rest for two days. When those people needed something, they would naturally come looking.
Ji Yang had long expected that it would come to this and was not surprised. But to face this situation again, she didn’t know what to say for a moment. In this situation, she could only wait, wait for the medicine for those viruses to be researched.
Xie Muzhi squeezed her palm reassuringly. “So I suddenly feel that your place is quite good. It’s safe with few people. But you still have to be careful normally. There are not a few survivors who haven’t gone to the base. Their living environment will only be worse than in the base. It will be a trouble if they target you.”
The situation in the base was getting worse day by day, and the number of deaths was also increasing exponentially. Many of the serious cases were entire families being wiped out. So, even the crisis of the extreme heat could not stop that group of people from being crazy. On the contrary, it had aggravated their recklessness. Perhaps because they felt that they would definitely not be able to get through it, they would just find more people to be buried with them.
The first district had many rich people, and they were even more afraid of death. They had even established a security team to patrol every day, for fear of being bullied by those who were infected. Many of the owners also had guns, so they didn’t have to worry about the general situation.
Xie Muzhi had also paid a sum of points and at the same time had arranged for a few trained single young men to guard the villa. But he couldn’t arrange for everyone.
Most of them had families, and the villa could not accommodate so many people. At this time, he could only secretly leave them some guns and ammunition for them to protect themselves.
Therefore, in comparison, outside the base, the only things to guard against were insects and rats. Ji Yang’s place was well-renovated. The water pipes and the like were all sealed with cement, and the screen windows were also sturdy. She would spray some insecticide regularly, and there were not many insects in the house.
At least the situation he saw was much better than he had expected. He had been quite worried that she would be poisoned by spraying too much insecticide because of too many insects.
The water was boiling, and the spicy smell of the hot pot was rushing to his face. Ji Yang went over and kissed Xie Muzhi on his somewhat serious and handsome face, breaking this somewhat heavy atmosphere. “Alright, let’s not talk about these things. Let’s eat first.”
Xie Muzhi smiled, his mood suddenly relaxed, and he squeezed Ji Yang’s hand. “Mm, I’ll blanch it for you. What do you want to eat first?”
—
Changnan Base
The situation was actually a little worse than what Xie Muzhi had said.
As a security guard, Feng Yexing could have guarded the security pavilion alone in the final stages of the extreme cold, but not now. At the very least, they had to be in a group of four, and the guns in their hands were always held, in a state where they could be loaded and fired at any time.
The other three colleagues around her were no exception.
The four of them did not stop for a moment. It would take about half an hour to patrol the entire area.
There was no choice. There was not enough manpower in the first place, and at this time, they had to be together, so they could only patrol a little more. After one round of patrol was over, they could rest for five minutes.
One person said, “It’s finally a little quieter—mm!”
Before he could finish speaking, his mouth was covered by someone. “Don’t say that!”
The person was a newcomer. They were basically a ratio of two newcomers and two old-timers. Their business was not proficient enough. Hearing this, he said in a daze, “Wh-what’s wrong?”
Feng Yexing had a lingering fear. “Because it will come true.”
“Ah?” he began to panic. “It can’t be that serious, right?”
He had only been on the job for two days. As a novice, he had already witnessed more than ten disputes, all of which were similar to being scratched by a dirty lens, being stabbed with a knife, and while chatting, the other party suddenly splashed a cup of dirty water on his face, or threw a cockroach into his mouth…
A full twelve hours of work a day, he was almost constantly busy.
Now, it was close to noon, and he hadn’t seen a dispute for more than an hour, so he had let out a sigh of relief.
Feng Yexing shook her head seriously. “I don’t know.”
The four of them were all on tenterhooks. It wasn’t until the five-minute break was over that they got up to continue their patrol. Before they could take a step, a scream broke the silence of the surroundings.
“Ah, ah! You madman!”
“Pervert!”
“Help—”
The four of them’s faces turned grim, and they immediately ran over. They saw a person pressing another person down and biting them. In the high temperature, everyone’s clothes were very thin. At a glance, they could see that the person who was being bitten’s neck was already bleeding a lot.
At this point, the four of them decisively made a move.
Two of them went over to pull him away, and the other went to support the victim. Feng Yexing quickly went forward and punched him in the temple with a gloved hand.
Bullets were precious, so they should not be used if they could be avoided.
With a “thump,” the person, who had originally been flailing his arms and legs after being pulled away, and whose face was covered in blood, looked very ferocious and scary. But after being hit like that, his movements paused, and he rolled his eyes and fainted.
And because of this, the person fell away, and his shirt was pulled up, revealing a festering and stinking wound on his waist and abdomen, which was extremely horrifying.
The crowd around them was so scared that they all retreated. “Oh my god, so scary!”
“Didn’t the government say that they are already counting the infected and want to isolate them and not let them out? How did this person run out?!”
“He must have sneaked out. Let’s go, let’s go. If we get infected…”
Feng Yexing turned to look at the victim.
The victim, a certain gentleman, was also shocked. Then he covered his face and cried, “I was just walking on the road, and that person insisted on asking me how many points I would sell for once. I said I wouldn’t sell, and he touched my crotch. I scolded him, and he suddenly pounced on me and bit me. I’m done for, I’m done for. I must be infected too…”
He was in a panic. The one who was supporting him was a new security guard. He quickly said, “No, no. If you go to the hospital to get medicine now, you can still prevent it.”
“Really?” the person’s eyes lit up.
The security guard nodded. “Definitely!”
The person was overjoyed. Then, he suddenly made a move, touched the wound on his neck, and abruptly stuffed his hand into the security guard’s mouth. “Then you try it too. See if that medicine can really block the virus?!”
The security guard: ???
!!!
Holy crap!
The change was too fast. Feng Yexing had expected this. She quickly went over and twisted this person’s arm. The already tattered clothes broke open, revealing a patch of festering on his arm.
“He’s also infected!!!”
The security guard was vomiting frantically, wanting to spit out all the blood. He was so disgusted that he even vomited out stomach acid. He only felt that his stomach and intestines were all twisted together because of this earth-shattering vomiting.
*
After a chaotic mess, the new security guard was sent to take medicine and get an injection. It was said that it could prevent virus infection to a certain extent.
But in fact, the people from the virus research institute could not be sure that this was effective.
The time was too short, and the virus was developing too fast, and there were too many kinds.
Feng Yexing took the other two and went back to their patrol area in a daze. They didn’t say anything along the way, and the atmosphere was low. The only thing that was comfortable was that after this incident, it was unexpectedly quiet for the rest of the day, which had reduced a lot of things for their patrol.
In fact, ever since the infected had found that there was no cure, and some people had started to become mentally abnormal, besides appeasing the public, the government had also set aside a separate building to house this group of infected.
But at present, everything was still in progress. There were many who had slipped through the net. And… the security team, which was already severely short of manpower, was even more so, trying to expand.
Ever since the base had been flooded once, even though the government had quickly stepped in and the water level had dropped, the after-effects had remained. The number of snakes, insects, rats, and ants had suddenly increased. Increasing the frequency of disinfection was still useless. A batch of these guys would die, and in the blink of an eye, another batch would grow.
As a result, many of the daily supplies had been contaminated. The government even had to spare a portion of its manpower to start distributing free relief food. The things were not much, a cornbread that would grind your throat in the morning and evening, and a bowl of thin coarse grain porridge in the morning.
But at present, to be able to receive relief food, you had to meet some conditions, such as living in the fourth or fifth district, and having less than thirty points on your account. There were still a lot of people, and they were extremely busy.
But even so, it still couldn’t stop more and more people with mental breakdowns from choosing to retaliate against society. This kind of single person was still okay. They were just afraid of groups. There was even a curfew. The security guards on duty at night were still easily injured.
At five in the afternoon, their shift came to an end.
The three of them quietly got off work. Suddenly, the only remaining new security guard spoke, “Sister Feng, I want to resign.”
Feng Yexing opened her mouth to persuade him, but she didn’t know what to say. She could only pat his shoulder. “Think it over.”
The salary of a security guard was high, and the work was tiring, but with all the benefits added up, it was really much better than an ordinary survivor. It was just that the danger was unbearable, and the resignation rate was also getting higher and higher.
But Feng Yexing was not planning to resign.
More than ten days ago, she and her cousin had taken leave and gone out for a trip.
After the tornado, there was still accumulated water. The danger of a long journey was only the changeable weather. They were very lucky to have picked up their relatives in another base during those few calm days.
But everyone was not doing well. Their cousins were actually the ones who were doing the best. After coming to this base, they had to spend points to rent a house and eat. Her family depended entirely on her, so she could only hold on.
Just endure it.
She could always get through it. Thinking back to when it was minus fifty or sixty degrees and there were frequent blizzards, they had all gotten through it. A mere man-made disaster, the base would definitely be able to have a plan soon!