Not to mention that our own people have turned into zombies, the main door on the first floor can’t be closed, and the windows on the first floor have been smashed by zombies. More and more zombies have entered the building.
Fu Erdie is on the sixteenth floor, temporarily not directly facing the zombie horde, but just by listening to the screams from below, she knows that the situation is not good.
She holds her dog in her arms, strokes its black and smooth fur, and silently listens to the sounds coming from all directions.
She knows that something is not right with herself and she must immediately pull herself together.
She had already planned it out, to live for just one more month.
Even if she can’t survive for a month, at least before she dies, she can still enjoy the cool air from the air conditioner, cuddle her dog, and eat plain rice.
That’s already much better than being scared and directly devoured by zombies, isn’t it?
With this thought in mind, Fu Erdie brainwashes herself like crazy. She eats three meals a day, with a lot more rice than usual, paired with pickled vegetables. After all, when the power goes out, the remaining rice will be useless.
The eggs, pancakes, and dried meat that she couldn’t bear to eat in the past two days, she takes them all out now to accompany the rice.
Every meal is treated as the last one.
This self-calming state of decadence continues until the tenth day of the apocalypse.
On this day, Fu Erdie suddenly realizes that she hasn’t thrown away any garbage.
There isn’t much household waste now, just some snack wrappers. But she dutifully puts the wrappers into the cardboard box that was meant for decorative plants and intends to throw it away when it’s full.
But in the blink of an eye, it’s already June 15th, and after so many days, that garbage box is still not full?
She sits up from the sofa and goes to the balcony to open the cardboard box. On the surface are the garbage from yesterday, but there is no odour coming from the garbage below.
Is it because of the air conditioning that the smell is suppressed? Delaying the decay?
Unlikely. Even the balcony is around 28 degrees Celsius.
She thinks for a moment and picks up a small wooden board next to her, flipping open the garbage on the surface.
At first, she feels the board hitting something hard. But when she exposes the objects underneath, Fu Erdie is stunned.
Instead of being filled with garbage as it should be, the lower layer is now completely covered in a dense network of roots.
She hesitates to touch it with her hand, feeling the rough texture, confirming that it is indeed roots.
She lifts the cardboard box, applying a little force, and the box falls apart. Fu Erdie then realizes that the box is only a hollow shell on all four sides, while the bottom and other garbage have long turned into nutrients for the plants and disappeared.
And the plant roots have become like tightly packed steel bars, penetrating into the floor, extending who knows where.
Her mind, which has been in a daze for the past few days, suddenly awakens with a ringing sound, shaking her to life.
“Mutated plants” two words surface in her mind.
She immediately realizes the situation and quickly retreats to the living room, putting some distance between her and the plants.
In novels, plants like these are known to eat people!
Could it be that her peaceful days in the final few days of her life have come to an end?
But being eaten by plants seems much better than being eaten by zombies.
She relaxes her body, which had been pressed against the wall in fear.
The countless times she had persuaded herself to face death calmly seemed to have had some effect at this moment.
She returns to the balcony and cautiously pokes the leaves of the plants with a clothesline pole from a distance.
No reaction.
She sidesteps and throws a crumpled piece of paper at the plants.
Still no reaction.
She repeats this probing five or six times, but the plants remain motionless.
Fu Erdie feels a slight relief in her heart. She approaches again, gently touching the stems and leaves of the plants.
Actually, she doesn’t really like flowers and plants. These were all planted by her aunt and grandmother when they came to visit her.
There are gardenias, pothos, spider plants, and succulents.
Fu Erdie hasn’t even fertilized them, only remembering to water them when she thinks about it, and the plants have thrived and grown on their own.
It can be said that their vitality is strong, or it can be said that only plants with strong vitality can survive under her semi-feral care.
Fu Erdie didn’t expect that even in the apocalypse, these plants could mutate and take root in such a way, adapting rapidly to the changing environment. For now, they seem harmless, but she doesn’t know what will happen in the future.
No, saying they’re harmless now is too absolute. She doesn’t know to what extent the roots of these plants have spread or how other people’s plants in their homes might have changed.
If every plant is so tenacious, will the buildings be destroyed and hollowed out by the roots of the plants?
Thinking about the roots of these plants, densely occupying all the steel and concrete in the entire building like ivy, causing tall buildings to collapse, Fu Erdie’s scalp tingles.
She takes out a saw she obtained from the neighbouring apartment and stares at the plants.
After a long while, she puts the saw aside.
They have such strong vitality, it’s their ability.
She, who only has a month to live, why should she cut off their lifeline?
As for the other people in the building, she can’t manage that much.
After all, even if she clears her own plants, those neglected plants in other people’s homes will still be there.
Buildings that can’t be saved, can’t be saved.
And with these mutated plants around, she seems to not need to worry about how to dispose of garbage, she only needs to worry about whether she will be treated as garbage herself.
She reassembles the cardboard box with only four sides, writes “Dedicated Box for Environmentally Friendly Plants” on it with a marker, and then puts the garbage back in, closing the lid symbolically.
On the twentieth day of the apocalypse, June 25th, Fu Erdie observes the mutated plants she has named “environmentally friendly plants” every day. When she has nothing else to do, she draws their daily changes in her sketchbook.
She discovers that the small green spider plant, not the originally stronger gardenias, is growing the best. Its stems are the thickest, and its leaves have grown much larger, almost the size of two palms, doubling in size.
Moreover, the spider plant’s roots are able to distinguish between garbage and non-garbage.
When she touches it with her hand, nothing happens.
When she wipes the roots with an unused tissue, there is no reaction either.
But when she places snack wrappers on the roots, the roots release a faint green substance. The colour is very light, barely noticeable unless you look closely.
This substance silently dissolves and absorbs the plastic waste, becoming part of its own nutrients.
Fu Erdie suddenly feels like she’s taking care of a pet. The pet only eats what she feeds it and doesn’t bite anything else.
Not to mention that the tiles next to its roots remain intact, even the cardboard box that serves as its “nest” is still in good shape.
Fu Erdie finds it quite fascinating. The pressure brought by the apocalypse has also been alleviated to some extent.
However, although she has found relief mentally, her physical discomfort persists.
Because the number of zombies in the building is increasing. The zombies that were killed earlier are starting to emit a foul smell in the hallway. Even with several rooms’ distance, the putrid odour can still be detected. Flies and mosquitoes have multiplied, and they have begun to swarm around the doors and windows, infiltrating through every opening.
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