Some people lived in sheds. Some lived in scattered little mud houses in the fields. Others simply leaned against trees.
No matter where they were, without exception, they all looked dispirited. Skin diseases were visible all over their bodies, and they seemed to be on their last breath.
Fu Erdie exchanged a glance with Sang Wenhao, who was dragging the box van. It seemed that the D City base no longer allowed any more ordinary people inside.
Cars and trucks sped past on the road beside them. Every time a vehicle passed, it stirred up a large cloud of dust. But the survivors by the roadside merely closed their eyes. They did not even have the strength to cover their noses. They just lay there like that.
It was not that Fu Erdie had never seen survivors before. But the ones she had seen in the past had either been hiding in buildings, barely surviving but still somewhat alert, or had been driven into a dead end by the flood and desperately asking for help. None of them had been like these people, lying by the roadside as if quietly waiting to die.
Because those waiting to die in the city or in the flood had long since died or turned into zombies.
Only now, outside the base, were people everywhere as far as the eye could see. Because the zombies within a ten-kilometre radius had already been cleared out, there was no zombie threat.
But because there was no food, and the base would not accept them and had no ability to settle them, they could only wait here to die.
Those who still had the strength to walk had already left. The people remaining here had probably used their last breath to reach the base, only to run out of supplies and strength, leaving them with no other option.
Fu Erdie’s heart, which had just been filled with excitement and anticipation at the thought of seeing her grandmother, slowly cooled.
The two of them had walked five kilometres, getting themselves covered in dust and looking much more down-to-earth. But those refugees could tell at a glance that these two were ability users.
At least one of them was an ability user. Otherwise, it would have been impossible for them to travel such a long distance and still look so strong and energetic.
The box van they were pulling also looked quite heavy. It probably contained a lot of grain.
The survivors stared at Fu Erdie, and Fu Erdie looked back at them, guessing that someone would come to rob them of their food.
However, to her surprise, from the time the two of them were far away until they walked close to the crowd, no one came over to rob them.
An old man seemed to see Fu Erdie’s confusion. He let out a sneer but said nothing.
An old woman beside him glanced sideways at the two of them and said, “Ability users are so impressive. Who would dare rob you?”
Fu Erdie heard the sarcastic tone but said nothing and quietly passed through.
Were they hungry? Of course they were.
But after struggling for half a year, these people had long since learned the difference between ordinary people and ability users. They would never come forward and court death now.
However, there were still a small number of people who were waiting to die, yet not completely waiting to die.
They still had a little strength left to struggle. They exchanged glances, thinking that if they rushed forward together, they could somehow hold the two down and snatch away some supplies.
So when the two had walked about one kilometre into the crowd, many sallow and emaciated people suddenly surrounded them from all directions.
A child dropped to his knees with a thud right in the path Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao had to pass through, begging Fu Erdie for some grain to save his life. While he drew Fu Erdie’s attention, the surrounding survivors rushed forward all at once, determined to use human-wave tactics to suppress them.
Metal blades rose into the air, appearing above the heads of the survivors in the front row. While forcing the front-row refugees back, they also intimidated the refugees behind them.
Then the front row stopped, but the rear row did not care about the lives of those in front. They wanted the front row to use their bodies to fill the gap so they could take the chance to squeeze in.
Sang Wenhao’s eyes turned cold. He quickly changed his approach. The knife edge turned into the back of the blade, and he sent a group of people hidden in the middle who were pushing others flying away. The people behind them also collapsed to the ground in a heap.
The front-row people had just taken a walk before the gates of hell beneath the blade. If Sang Wenhao had not restrained his strength in time, their heads would have slammed straight into it.
This time, they could no longer care about any crooked thoughts. They all fled in panic.
Seeing this, the refugees watching from the side felt a little regretful, but they could not help mocking those people for overestimating themselves. They had actually wanted to fight ability users. Why had they not died? If they died, the onlookers could shed a tear and then eat the dead.
Under the gazes of the densely packed crowd, Fu Erdie walked step by step toward the base gate.
Jealousy, hatred, despair, madness, pleading — all kinds of gazes slid across them, and in the end, all turned into silence.
Fu Erdie’s heart was heavy. The distance of only a few kilometres felt as exhausting as crossing thousands of mountains and rivers.
Finally, they arrived at the city gate and applied to enter.
As expected, the guards said that only ability users and their teammates or relatives could enter. If there were ordinary people among their companions, then the ability user had to be responsible for arranging accommodation for those ordinary people. Either they lived together in the small single room allocated to the ability user by the base, or they regularly paid compensation to rent another house or a communal sleeping area.
Sang Wenhao said he understood and went to do the ability test first.
Third-rank ability user.
The guard’s expression instantly became much better. Then he tested Fu Erdie and found that she was an ordinary person, so he told her to go to the women’s room, take off her clothes, and check whether there were any bite marks on her body.
Ability users had resistance to zombie mutation. Even if bitten, they would not turn into zombies. Only ordinary people injured by zombies could possibly zombify.
After confirming that there was no problem with Fu Erdie, the guard called over a person in charge. The two sides began the handover, and the person in charge carefully introduced the situation of the base.
“Our base is different from other bases. Ability users who come to join us do not need to pay an entrance fee, and they can try living in the assigned room for one week. Only if you decide to officially join will we start assigning the amount of work you need to complete outside the city, as well as the minimum weekly standard of resources you must hand in. Whether it’s grain, minerals, or special parts collected from designated locations, all of it counts toward the workload.”
“The minimum resources to hand in are fairly low. Basically, any ability user can complete it. But if you want the base to reward you with more crystal cores, then you need to complete more tasks in exchange.”
The person in charge arranged temporary accommodation and led the two of them there.
The temporary accommodation was an abandoned, pitch-black building. On the first floor was a strength-type ability user guarding the door. Upstairs were a few scattered ability users living there temporarily.
After Sang Wenhao confirmed the room number, he raised the box van from outside and brought it directly into the room through the window. After placing their things down and taking the key, they went out.
The person in charge brought the two of them around the area and introduced the basic layout of the base, such as where to go to the toilet, where to eat in the communal canteen, where to collect tasks, where to hand in tasks, and so on.
After circling around the topic, Fu Erdie finally guided the conversation to the survivors inside the base.
The person in charge thought Fu Erdie wanted somewhere quiet to avoid them and pointed at a quiet area of dilapidated buildings. “They’re over there. If you mind, just don’t go near that area at night. During the day, they’re working. If you want to look, you can go and see.”
Fu Erdie said casually, “Are those buildings divided by region? I’m from C City. I want to go there and see whether there are any familiar faces.”
The person in charge led the two of them to a shabby little eight-storey building in the middle.
As soon as they got close, they could smell the stench coming from inside. Even though there was not a single person there, just the clothes and quilts were already extremely foul-smelling.
Fu Erdie walked closer to the building and saw row after row of communal sleeping platforms inside. Many people’s clothes were casually piled on the ground. Those who were slightly better off had a locked cabinet, but it was impossible to tell whether the lock was good or broken, as it hung crookedly to one side.
The eight-storey building was not large. Housing two or three thousand people meant that every floor was packed tightly with three or four hundred people.
The more Fu Erdie looked, the heavier her heart became.
The sound of a cart came from outside.
Someone pushed large buckets filled with food to the downstairs entrance.
The person in charge explained, “Because ordinary people don’t have enough water to wash up, they become smellier and smellier after working every day. So they can’t go to the canteen to eat. Instead, someone specifically pushes the food over and delivers it to the entrance downstairs. After they finish work, they sit at the door, receive a bucket of food, eat, return the bucket, and then go back upstairs.”
Fu Erdie went to the entrance and looked at the food buckets. At one glance, she felt physically uncomfortable.
Inside was a relatively dry porridge containing rice, millet, lotus root slices, potato chunks, and many other things. Who knew where the ingredients had come from? Quite a few smelled mouldy and spoiled. Regardless of whether they were suitable to be cooked into the same pot of porridge, everything had been thrown together into one pot. The clumps of flour and dough that had congealed together looked extremely unpleasant.
“We don’t have enough food, and our food sources are unstable,” the person in charge explained. “We don’t have enough seasonings either, so we can only cook everything together like this and add a little salt. Being able to fill people’s stomachs is already pretty good. Actually, ordinary speed-type ability users like us, whether we’re responsible for reception or passing messages, don’t eat much better. People like you, who can go outside and fight alone, definitely have it much better than us.”
Fu Erdie looked at the person in charge’s thin and weathered figure, then looked toward the westering sun and the army of ordinary people gradually approaching in the distance. Her heart grew heavier and heavier.
If Grandma had not come to the base, would she have lived better in the countryside?
Not just Grandma, but all those ordinary people too. If they had stayed in the countryside and honestly farmed, would things have been much easier?
At least when she went to Xiangde Village at the end of last month, that farmer uncle had been an ordinary person, yet he had been living well.
Although when they left, his fields had been flooded…
Fu Erdie took a deep breath.
Yes. Outside, they had more freedom and could farm for themselves. If one mu of land could not support them, they could plant two mu. If two mu were not enough, they could plant three.
But natural disasters and man-made calamities were all irresistible forces. A heavy rain, a snow disaster, a drought, a disease outbreak — or when the grain had gone through countless hardships and was finally about to ripen, one ability user or ability zombie could appear. Just one. No more than one was needed to destroy everything.
Hadn’t Professor Zhao said that many independent ability-user squads had been wiped out after encountering third-rank or even fourth-rank zombies?
No matter how smelly or bitter life in the base was, at least there were walls to shelter them.
Once the winter sun began to “fall into ruin,” the sky darkened especially quickly.
In the blink of an eye, the sky had turned deep blue. In the entire base, only a few scattered lights shone on the city wall. The people still rushing home all hurried through the darkness, desperate to return to their residences and eat a mouthful of bad-tasting but still warm food.
Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao let the person in charge go back. The two of them stood at the entrance of the building, searching the crowd for traces of her grandmother and the other two.
Finally, just as Fu Erdie saw an old couple and a middle-aged mother and daughter supporting each other as they came over, their features vaguely resembling her grandmother and aunt in the dimness, an especially surprised male voice rang out:
“Cousin Fu Erdie!! Is that you?!”
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