CH 41.2

October, early autumn.

The sky is high, the clouds are light, and the road that has been left unattended for half a year is covered with withered and yellow leaves.

It’s a pity they missed the ripening of the peaches.

Now there are only weeds that grow wildly in the green belt and bushes that grow more and more scribbled.

Since she didn’t wear protective clothing and didn’t smear the blood of the zombies, Jiang Miao Miao was very vigilant and had no time to appreciate the scenery. She always paid attention to the changes around her and was ready to draw her gun whenever there were zombies.

But they didn’t see a single zombie after walking a few hundred meters.

The city soaked in water was desolate and quiet as if it had really become a dead city.

“Did you encounter zombies when you came out last time?”

She asked Lu Qiming.

The other party nodded.

“It’s strange why there is no one today.”

“I guess they knew you were coming out, so they all ran away in fright.”

“…If you don’t make fun of me, I think I will die.”

Lu Qiming was about to speak when he suddenly saw a convenience store and was about to go in and look around.

Convenience stores have bottled water, and bottled water is generally well-sealed. As long as it is not washed away by the flood, it is probably still drinkable.

The two walked in one after the other, and the store was completely changed after being ravaged by the flood.

The shelves are all down, and the paint is cracked and rusty.

The food on the shelf is piled up everywhere, like a garbage dump.

She searched on the left, and Lu Qiming searched on the right, always keeping a distance of about three meters.

Jiang Miao Miao picked up a tin box of fruit candies, shook it, and opened it.

The sugar inside sticks into a big lump, all colors are mixed together, and the smell is pungent.

She frowned and threw it away to check other things.

Potato chips, biscuits, candied fruit, chocolate… The snacks she used to love have either been eaten away by insects and ants or soaked in floods. Or it has deteriorated so much that people are afraid of breaking their hands even if they touch it.

Not to mention those bento boxes and sandwiches that have a shelf life of only a few days and have not had time to sell before the end of the world.

Jiang Miao Miao once had a whimsical idea.

No one else is in the city, and all the resources belong to her. As long as the zombies don’t come back, she can rely on these resources to survive until the end of the world.

It’s naive to think about it now.

The fact that the resources are left untouched does not mean that the food will be waiting for her to eat as it is.

Every day that passes, countless foods rot in silence.

According to the current speed, if she stays here for several consecutive years and does not find a replacement, she will have to wait to starve to death.

“See a bottle of water?”

Lu Qiming asked.

She recovered and shook her head, “What about you?”

Lu Qiming shrugged his shoulders and said that he didn’t. Looking at the furnishings in the store, he found a door soaked in water, which probably led to the warehouse, so he was about to walk through it.

There was a rope between them. He moved, and Jiang Miao Miao also moved, walking faster than him.

She stopped abruptly, her whole face wrinkled into a ball as if she saw something disgusting.

“What’s wrong?”

“There are zombies. I want to vomit… it stinks.”

She pointed to the back of a shelf, shielding her eyes with her hands and not wanting to look.

Lu Qiming got closer, and sure enough, he found a rotting corpse lying on the ground, densely covered with maggots. The picture was quite heavy. No wonder she refused to look at it.

He brought a billboard, intending to cover it, bypass it and continue to the warehouse.

When he was about to strike, he stopped and looked at the corpse motionlessly.

Jiang Miao Miao asked curiously, “What are you looking at?”

“There’s something wrong with this corpse…”

“Is there?”

She peered through her fingers, trying to ignore the disgusting maggots and observe the zombies.

This should be a male, a little over 1.7 meters tall, wearing a full suit, tie, and leather shoes.

He was either a financial elite or an insurance seller during his lifetime.

Maggots almost ate his flesh and body. Only a bit of flesh remained on his face and fingers, and worms wriggled inside his leather shoes.

The maggots have been crawling, occasionally exposing the underlying bones.

The bones of the zombies have decayed for a long time, most of them are gray-black, and a few are white.

But he was light red, he didn’t look like a zombie, he looked like a big pig bone that was put on the stall in the vegetable market in the morning, giving people a very fresh feeling.

There were maggots in front of his eyes, and when the word “fresh” flashed in her mind, Jiang Miao Miao almost couldn’t spit it out.

She clutched her throat and said, “Isn’t he a zombie but looks like a normal person who just died?”

Lu Qiming didn’t know either, so he took a few pieces of paper from the ground, took out a lighter and lit it, blew it out, and smoked the maggots.

They fled in all directions, and Jiang Miao Miao quickly climbed to a high place and stood there for fear of the maggots crawling on her.

The maggots were scattered, revealing the complete skeleton.

From skull to toes, all pale pink.

Pale pink bones…why is it so familiar? Was it written in the original novel?

Jiang Miao Miao had a vague memory, but it was too long. She couldn’t remember anything and patted her head angrily.

Lu Qiming looked at it for a long time but didn’t see any secrets. He lost interest and suggested:

“Leave it alone, and let’s find some water.”

“Okay.”

The two opened the warehouse door, which was full of boxes, of which more than a dozen boxes were filled with mineral water.

The outer plastic bottle was soaked and shattered when touched, but the bottled water inside was well-preserved and drinkable.

Jiang Miao Miao was thrilled.

They found it so quickly that there was no need to go farther.

They can use more than a dozen boxes of water for a month.

But… how to get it back?

Lu Qiming was looking for boxes everywhere. She saw a handle in the corner, grabbed it, and dragged it out. It was a single-deck trolley that he used to see employees loading goods in supermarkets.

The structure of the cart is very simple, with only four wheels, a heavy iron platform, and a handle like the back of a chair.

There is not even a chain, so it can still be used after rusting but is very slow to push.

She called Lu Qiming, who took a screwdriver from his backpack and inserted it into the wheel to remove the rust.

After a while, the trolley regained its flexibility before rusting.

Together, they piled the water on the cart and prepared to go back.

When passing by the corpse, Jiang Miao Miao tried hard to recall the details in the book but unfortunately found nothing and then thought of other things.

“One convenience store has so much drinking water in stock. Let’s find a few more and move them all back. It will last at least half a year.”

Lu Qiming couldn’t help but laugh.

“You nest in it every day. Isn’t it uncomfortable?”

“It’s not uncomfortable. There is food, drinks, birds, and dogs. It’s much better than I expected.”

He nodded, “That’s right, it’s better to be alive than dead.”

“It’s mainly luck to find a supermarket that big without being flooded. If at that time…”

As she spoke, she walked out, and out of the corner of her eye, she suddenly caught a glimpse of a zombie rushing toward her. Without even thinking about it, she took out a pistol from her backpack, aimed at it, and pulled the trigger.

Boom–

After the loud noise, the recoil carried her backward to Lu Qiming.

The bullet flew through the air at least ten centimeters away from the zombie and hit the wall behind it.

It was stunned by the loud noise but continued to charge after reacting.

Lu Qiming sighed, let go of the trolley, held her hand holding gun with both hands, leaned his chin on her shoulder, and taught her to aim.

“Don’t aim for the head. Aim for the chest, the probability of hitting is higher, like this.”

There was another loud bang, and the zombie’s chest exploded.

His body fell to the ground like a broken branch.

Its spine was broken, and it could not stand up, but it was not dead, staring at them with cloudy eyes, trying to crawl in their direction.

Jiang Miao Miao didn’t want to look at it, so she put away her gun and planned to leave.

Thinking of that strange skeleton, Lu Qiming took out a knife. She walked towards the zombie, stepped on the zombie’s hand with the sole of his shoe, and cut open the flesh on its arm, exposing the skeleton.

The light pink color is very eye-catching.

The city is still quiet. These sporadic zombies are not enough to threaten their lives.

But there seems to be some huge danger hidden around them, if they are not careful, they will be completely engulfed.

The two returned to the building, hoisted the water up little by little with a rope, and incorporated it into the inventory.

They originally planned to collect supplies for the next few days. Still, they didn’t expect that it would start to rain heavily the next day, so they just saved themselves from going out and moved all the containers on hand to catch the rainwater.

After all, the water basin and bucket area are too small and won’t take much for half a day.

Jiang Miao Miao, thinking of a way, went to the office area to find a waterproof advertising cloth as big as half the wall, and stretched it with a fishing rod.

She and Lu Qiming lifted one side and handed it out to the balcony.

The advertising cloth has a large area and can receive a lot of rainwater.

They put a bucket under it, and the water flowed like a waterfall. A bucket was filled quickly, and a new one was replaced immediately when it was full.

After being so busy all morning, the results are very impressive. There are more than 40 buckets of water in the inventory, filling the whole room, which is just right for washing clothes and showering.

They were exhausted, and neither had the energy to cook at noon, so they ate biscuits to satisfy their hunger.

The heavy rain was still falling, and Jiang Miao Miao sat behind the floor-to-ceiling windows, enjoying the rain scene while eating butter cookies.

The raindrops are very dense as if a fairy poured water from the sky.

Pour water… That’s right!

She slapped her thigh sharply.

“I remembered!”

Lu Qiming, who was reading Journey to the West on Kindle, was taken aback by her and turned around and asked:

“What do you remember?”

She finally knew why the bones of those two zombies were pink!

In the original novel, although the government led the people to temporarily flee the city, they never gave up their goal of returning.

While relying on the army to establish a safe base, experts also work hard to study drugs against zombies.

The research is divided into three groups.

One is a vaccine to help normal people resist infection, the other is a special medicine to restore zombies to normal people, and the third is a toxin that accelerates the death of zombies.

Saving people is always more difficult than killing people. The last of the three directions has made the fastest progress. The first production batch was developed less than a year after the zombie outbreak.

They selected a few cities with a small number of zombies as pilots to facilitate control. The toxin is dissolved into an aerosol sprayed from the air by airplane.

The plane she saw over a month ago was most likely for this purpose. No wonder it flew so low.

Jiang Miao Miao finally figured out what was bothering her, her expression became more serious, and she rushed over to grab Lu Qiming’s hand.

“We’d better not go out again recently.”

The latter was puzzled.

“Why? Didn’t you promise to go find water when the rain stops?”

Jiang Miao Miao looked embarrassed, she didn’t know how to explain to him, but she had to convince him.

After all, in the original novel, the description of this pilot operation is – a complete failure.

She doesn’t want to be a victim of an experiment.