On the third day of the apocalypse, most of the citizens were retreating, and the city’s public systems collapsed. Buses, subways, high-speed trains, and planes no longer operated.
On the tenth day of the apocalypse, all living people had escaped the city, and the streets were now filled with only wandering zombies.
On the twentieth day of the apocalypse, the power and water systems collapsed, and food and corpses began to rot. The temperature rose, and the air became unbearably foul.
On the thirtieth day of the apocalypse, a chemical factory in the suburbs exploded due to lack of maintenance, causing a massive fire that spread to the city center, burning nearly half of the city’s buildings. It was not until the next day’s heavy rain that the fire was extinguished.
On the fortieth day of the apocalypse, a horde of nearly tens of millions of zombies roamed the dilapidated city. Some were still searching for survivors, while others were gradually spreading to the city’s outskirts.
At ten in the morning, Jiang Miaomiao woke up from her sleep.
She took off her eye mask and earplugs, opened the curtains, and let the slanting sunlight in.
Underneath the window, three zombies were wandering around. They hadn’t left for several days, and perhaps they smelled her scent through the ventilation, trying to find a way inside.
Jiang Miaomiao ignored them, walked into the bathroom, and took a cup of water from a pure water bucket to brush her teeth.
It had been nearly a month since the apocalypse started. According to the progress in the original text, other cities should be similar to this one by now. Survivors followed the army to safe areas, leaving only about 600,000 healthy human beings globally.
The consumption of resources was slower than she had imagined. Up until now, she had only used 10 buckets of pure water, 80 buckets of tap water, 20 packs of instant noodles, 10 packs of self-heating hot pot, 10 packs of bread, 6 bottles of chewing gum, 8 boxes of tissues, half a bag of rice, and various other snacks.
These items combined accounted for only one-tenth of her total inventory. The only thing that was depleting faster was the fuel. Knowing that the natural gas pipeline would be damaged, and fearing that the gas canisters could explode if stored in large quantities, she only bought three canisters of gas. With the need to cook every day, one canister had already been used up. Once all the gas was gone, she would have to rely on alcohol and diesel as substitutes.
However, despite everything, the situation was much better than she had anticipated.
In these days, she had not deprived herself and ate and drank whatever she wanted, yet she had only used so few resources. It showed that a person could survive in this world without needing too many resources.
The life without work or school was quite pleasant. She could sleep until she naturally woke up, have a meal, and then spend her time by the window reading, watching zombies, and passing time.
She also made some mistakes, such as spending 3,000 yuan on buying a generator.
At that time, she only thought about how inconvenient it would be without electricity, but forgot that generators were very noisy when running.
In this world, zombies had strong hearing and smell, were fast, and had great strength. They were like upgraded versions of humans in every aspect except for appearance. Dealing with them was difficult.
More than half a month ago, when the circuit was damaged, she first started the generator, attracting nearly a hundred zombies with the noisy sound. The thin walls of the villa probably wouldn’t withstand their siege for more than three hours. Frightened, she turned it off quickly and poured several bottles of 84 disinfectant into a bucket of tap water and splashed it out of the window. She had to wait for a long time before the zombies gradually dispersed.
Since then, she dared not use the generator anymore. That 3,000 yuan monster just remained idle, causing her great distress.
What was even more difficult was that the villa had no electricity from then on, and she couldn’t afford a backup power source due to financial constraints. After her few power banks were used up, her phone and computer had become decorations, and so were the refrigerator and air conditioner.
She threw out of the window all the meat, fruits, eggs, and other items that needed refrigeration, fearing that they would rot and pollute the air in the house.
There were still two useful electronic devices left.
One was a solar-powered flashlight with an extremely large storage capacity, and the other was the Kindle she hadn’t paid much attention to before, loaded with a bunch of e-books that she started reading only after her phone and computer ran out of power.
She read it for only half an hour a day, with the device in airplane mode, and there was still half of the battery left.
Since she hadn’t died yet, she would continue to live.
After washing up, Jiang Miaomiao went downstairs and cooked herself a bowl of snail noodles as a reward for living another night, adding two braised eggs.
The aroma drifted out through the window, and the zombies moved away a bit.
After finishing the snail noodles, her mouth was red from the spiciness. She sat on a chair, drank water, and planned her day.
She had paper and pen, so she would practice calligraphy in the morning.
For lunch, she would make ham sausage fried rice. The fresh vegetables were gone, but there were dehydrated ones that she could soak and add to the fried rice.
The afternoon was longer, so she would read an e-book for half an hour and then play solitaire.
The evening was the most difficult to endure. Without the sun’s exposure, the zombies would become more active, howling incessantly in the neighborhood, giving her the creeps.
In the past, Jiang Miaomiao had a phone and listened to songs with earplugs, ignoring the outside zombies.
Now she couldn’t play music, and she couldn’t make any noise. She could only rely on her concentration to ignore them.
When she went on a big shopping spree at the supermarket before, she grabbed some paints. So after dinner, she squatted in the living room and practiced painting.
She had no talent for painting. She couldn’t draw without something as a reference. Fortunately, there were several ins-style hanging paintings on the villa’s walls. Jiang Miaomiao practiced facing them every day for a few days and could now draw something somewhat similar.
After procrastinating for a while, it was midnight.
Jiang Miaomiao brushed her teeth, took a shower, changed into her pajamas, and stood by the window to say goodbye to the zombies.
She regretted it. If she had used the money for the generator to buy two dogs, it would have been much better. Living alone for ten days was leisurely, for twenty days was carefree, for thirty days was lonely.
Living one more day without electricity or the internet was just self-torture.
Climbing into bed and closing her eyes, she isolated the
zombies’ howls with her earplugs.
Jiang Miaomiao had been dreaming, drowsy and sluggish.
Suddenly, there was a scratching sound in the darkness. The sound was too close, and even the earplugs couldn’t block it.
She abruptly opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling, confirming that the sound was coming from above.
Could it be that the zombies had climbed to the top floor and entered through the ventilation duct?
The villa used a central air conditioning system, and there were vents in the rooms. It would only take a moment for the other side to find her bedroom.
Was she finally going to die? With her petite figure, she had no chance against the zombies.
Jiang Miaomiao hesitated. Should she hide? Or should she open the gas canister and end it all together?
No, she should eat some good food first.
Without even wearing shoes, Jiang Miaomiao grabbed her flashlight and ran downstairs. As a result, when Lu Qiming walked down the stairs, he saw a beam of light in the living room, and a girl in her pajamas was standing in the light, munching on a bag of beef jerky.
The light shone from below, making her look like a ghost, scarier than the zombies.
The girl also saw him and widened her eyes in shock.
“Are, are you a human?”
Then she called out again, “Oh my God, are you injured? Why is there so much blood on you?”
After that, she hid behind a chair.
“Have you been infected? Don’t come near me!”
Lu Qiming: “…”
An awkward silence filled the air. Jiang Miaomiao kept her head down and hid for a while, only to realize that the other person had no intention of answering. It seemed that she was overreacting, so she cautiously poked her head out.
“Hey, are you still human?”
The man glanced at her, seemingly disdainful of answering, and looked around with a tired voice. His face was covered in blood, making it hard to see his features clearly, but she could tell he was tall and had long limbs.
Jiang Miaomiao nodded, her eyes wary.
In apocalyptic stories, it was not uncommon for survivors to kill each other or fight over resources. Who knew if this person was a good person or a bad one?
She couldn’t fight zombies, and she couldn’t fight him either. If he really wanted to kill and rob her… she just hoped she could finish the beef jerky first.
The man asked again, “How many people live here?”
Here it comes, is he testing her?
Jiang Miaomiao answered without hesitation, “Four.”
“Where are the others?”
“They went out to look for power banks. There’s no electricity at home.”
The man looked skeptical, “With so many zombies outside, they just ran out like that?”
Jiang Miaomiao confidently replied, “My brother and father were both policemen before, and my mother was in the women’s volleyball team. They are skilled, and they have guns. They can move freely in the crowds of thousands of zombies. Besides, you just came in from outside, and you are still alive. Why can’t others survive?”
The man was indeed convinced by her argument and stopped asking.
Seeing that he showed no sign of using force, Jiang Miaomiao felt bolder.
“Where did you come from? I can see you don’t have any weapons on you. Did the zombies not bite you? What’s with all that blood?”
The man didn’t bother with her and turned to walk upstairs, asking as he walked, “Do you have a wrench? Give me one.”
Jiang Miaomiao was prepared with this basic tool, so she handed him the wrench. After taking the wrench, the man put it in his pants pocket, easily jumped, and grabbed the ventilation duct with both hands, quickly climbing inside.
Curious about what he was up to, Jiang Miaomiao tried to imitate him and jumped a few times. However, due to her short stature, she couldn’t reach it and could only watch from below as she heard a constant tapping sound from above.
Just when she was worried that the noise might attract zombies, the man returned, sealing the ventilation duct and nailing it shut, before tossing the wrench back to her.
She caught it with both hands and asked in astonishment, “Aren’t you planning to leave?”
The front door had been blocked since the first day of the apocalypse, and now with the ventilation duct sealed, there was no way out.
Could it be that this person wanted to stay and leech off her food and resources?
The man took out a cigarette from his pocket, smoked it halfway, and then said, “Your brother and father were both policemen, yet they didn’t even think to seal up such a fragile ventilation duct. The central air conditioning duct on the rooftop is an open invitation for things to crawl in. You’ve survived this long, relying on imaginary family members or just pure luck?”
Jiang Miaomiao blushed, holding the wrench without saying a word.
As the smoke filled the air, the man squinted at her for a while, then extinguished the cigarette and asked, “Where’s the bathroom? I need to take a shower.”
She pointed in the direction, and the man brought two buckets of water from the living room into the bathroom, acting as if he were in his own home.
The sound of rushing water continued to come out of the bathroom. Jiang Miaomiao sat on the bed, hugging the flashlight, suddenly realizing that her life might never be as comfortable as before.
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