novelaction Chapter 97 The Survivors of the Neighborhood
Chapter 97 The Survivors of the Neighborhood
DAY103
The countdown for the medical machine had only 23 hours and 29 minutes left. Lu Yuan, Qin Yuan, and Du Wenqing had spent the entire day in the bridal suite. Unlike before, when the snow would stop after a day, this time the heavy snow had continued, only decreasing in intensity at times, allowing Lu Yuan and the others to see the situation outside the window.
After nearly thirty hours of continuous snowfall, a thick layer of snow had covered the area downstairs. The zombies outside were not wandering around, whether because it was too cold due to the snow or simply because the snow made it difficult to move around. Some of them piled up and went into the second floor of the building, while others went to the underground parking garage. In any case, there were no zombies to be seen on the streets today.
Gu Nanfeng's satellite phone rang a few times. At first, Lu Yuan and the others didn't notice what was ringing, but later they realized it was the satellite phone that Gu Nanfeng had put in his backpack.
The last time the phone rang, Qin Yuan answered it, but there was only static on the other end. It seemed like someone was saying something, but unfortunately, he couldn't hear anything. After hanging up, Qin Yuan tried to call back, but there was no response. Lu Yuan took one out of his spatial storage and tried it, but there was no response either. Du Wenqing guessed that it was due to the extreme cold weather.
Lu Yuan added two more batteries and a generator to the room. They used the homeowner's central air conditioning and the heater that Lu Yuan had brought out earlier to make the room feel warmer.
They weren't afraid of being discovered by others, after all, they had already made quite a commotion when they arrived. With two soldiers with superpowers and Lu Yuan having countless weapons in his spatial dimension, they really had nothing to fear.
The floor where they were hiding was the sixth floor, which was one of the lower floors in this residential complex. Qin Yuan didn't need a telescope; his current eyesight was good enough to see very far.
Around noon, the snow lessened and visibility finally improved. Qin Yuan suddenly saw several young people walking out of a building next door. Each of them was carrying a large hiking backpack, but they didn't go far. They just went to a convenience store at the entrance of the residential area.
Unlike the small restaurants and milk tea shops on the next street that had been smashed to pieces by zombies, this convenience store, although it also had countless scratch marks left by zombies on its door, was still tightly closed.
Unlike Qin Yuan, Lu Yuan and Du Wenqing couldn't see that far with their eyesight alone; they both needed binoculars. Lu Yuan saw the outermost roller shutter door of the convenience store, though it was covered in scratches from zombies.
Several young people at the convenience store entrance rhythmically patted the outside roller shutter door, which automatically rolled up and opened. However, Lu Yuan did not expect that there was a very thick security door inside the roller shutter door.
Honestly, these days, what convenience store would install a security door at the front? Lu Yuan hadn't figured it out yet when, a moment later, the security door was opened from the inside, and several young men filed in.
The security door was about the same size as the entrance door in the building. Both sides of the door were blocked off by brick walls, which seemed to have been built by the convenience store owner himself. He only opened the door a little bit, just enough for one person to pass through, so even Du Wenqing, who was holding binoculars at the perfect angle, could not see what was inside.
Twenty minutes later, the young men came out of the convenience store. Their backpacks were clearly full, and the deeper footprints in the snow indicated how much supplies were in their backpacks.
They quickly returned to the building they had come from. Lu Yuan kept following the figures of these people through the windows of the building. They finally stopped at a unit on the fifth floor of that building, which faced into the community. However, the curtains of that unit were all closed, and once they went inside, they could not see anything.
Lu Yuan put down the binoculars and went back to the bedroom to check on Gu Nanfeng's condition. The medical machine screen showed that there were still 18 hours left. He also checked the battery level in the room, replaced the battery with a new one, and then came out of the guest room.
Du Wenqing and Qin Yuan were still looking out the window when Lu Yuan curiously joined them. He picked up his binoculars and saw that the doors of the apartments on the fifth floor of the building opposite, where the people had just entered, were wide open, and many survivors were queuing up at the doors, waiting to receive food.
Meanwhile, downstairs in the residential area, several young men and women carrying extremely large hiking backpacks came out of the convenience store and were walking towards that building.
"It seems that the few survivors in this community are all in that building across the street." Qin Yuan had checked all the other buildings before, and there was no sign of anyone in any of them. However, the number of people in the building across the street seemed to exceed the number of residents in a normal building. It seemed that at some opportune moment, most of the survivors in this community gathered in that building.
“I’m more curious about that convenience store than the other survivors are in that building.” As they spoke, the group of men and women from before returned to the fifth floor. They walked through the queue and went inside. Soon, another group of six or seven young people came out of the building with empty backpacks and headed towards the convenience store.
Lu Yuan and his group heated up the self-heating pot and kept an eye on the convenience store and the building across the street. The survivors in the building across the street would go out in groups of six or seven each time. They ran back and forth ten times before finally stopping.
Before long, there was no one queuing in front of the fifth floor. Lu Yuan did a quick calculation and found that the buildings in this community were all pretty much the same, so the building opposite was probably like theirs with two elevators and four households per floor. The entire building had 32 floors and about 128 households.
From the moment the fifth floor opened and people lined up to receive supplies, Qin Yuan and his team counted the buildings across the street. In the past three hours, about 60 people had come to line up. From their perspective, at least half of the building across the street was unfinished, with empty windows. Therefore, based on their count, at least 60 households lived in that building.
In this new residential complex, many owners may not live in their apartments even after they've renovated them, just like the new apartment where Lu Yuan and his group are currently staying. Therefore, Qin Yuan still believes that the building in question must contain all the survivors of the entire complex.
“They made these ten round trips, mostly in groups of six or seven. When there were seven people, the extra person just carried a larger backpack. In total, they brought back more than sixty backpacks full of supplies.” Lu Yuan took out paper and pen from his spatial storage and wrote as he spoke. “I saw that each of them brought rice, flour, cooking oil, water, and gas canisters. How could such a small convenience store have so much stock?”
"That's really strange." Qin Yuan adjusted the telescope and looked at the top floor of the building. There seemed to be some kind of device up there, but their floor was too low to see clearly. "We need to use a drone to fly up and take a look."
Upon hearing Qin Yuan's words, Lu Yuan quickly took out a drone from his own space and handed it to Qin Yuan. He continued to doodle on the paper. His mind was not as quick as that of the academic genius Gu Nanfeng, but fortunately, as a history major, he had a good memory. He planned to list all the supplies that everyone he had seen had received on the paper.
Du Wenqing had more experience operating drones than Qin Yuan. The two opened the ventilation window in the living room and launched the drone, which flew straight to the roof of the building opposite.
Sure enough, just as they had guessed, the survivors had built a water purification and circulation system on the roof of the opposite building, based on the water tanks in the community building. There was also a place that was supposed to be used for solar power generation, but it seemed that they hadn't had time to make the changes before the heavy snow started.
Lu Yuan checked all the items listed on the paper, and then took them out of his space according to the quantity. The quantity of everything he took out surprised the three of them. They were not surprised that so many people in the building across the street needed so many supplies, but rather that the seemingly ordinary convenience store was surprising.
Lu Yuan put the things he had taken out back into the warehouse. Du Wenqing couldn't help but ask, "Where did you get all these things?"
"Before they arrived at the G City base, they raided a warehouse belonging to the Pei family's chain supermarkets. After that, we emptied the warehouse of the Gu family's resort in G City. Where do you think all these things came from?" Before Lu Yuan could answer, Qin Yuan interrupted him, "As for those firearms, Tang swords, armored vehicles, and the like, I really don't know where they came from."
Qin Yuan brought it up at this time because he wanted to get to the bottom of things, but Lu Yuan remained silent like a quail, and continued to tidy up the supplies he had laid out.
By the time he finished packing everything up, it was almost dark outside. The snow had gotten heavier, and with the strong winds, Qin Yuan and the others were almost blown away when they were retrieving the drone.
The group gathered around the electric heater and started cooking a small hot pot. At this point, there were less than ten hours left before Gu Nanfeng's treatment was over.
Around 10 PM, the heavy snow finally stopped. Lu Yuan used night-vision binoculars to observe the buildings across the street, just like the night before—not a single light was on. They now knew that the solar power system across the street wasn't fully installed yet, and the entire building was probably without power. However, it was still quite puzzling that they didn't even have candlelight or flashlights. And in such cold weather, how were they keeping warm?
As Lu Yuan was about to put away his binoculars and return to his room to sleep on the floor, he saw zombies appear in the community garden downstairs. They came out from all directions, gathered in an orderly manner, and then left through the community gate, leaving traces of their passage in the snow that had accumulated for a day and a night.
"Captain Qin, it seems like all the zombies in the neighborhood have left." Lu Yuan looked around for a while, then turned around and called out to Qin Yuan behind him. Qin Yuan picked up his night vision binoculars and came over.
The two watched as zombies emerged from different buildings downstairs. Even two or three zombies came out of the building opposite. When they reached the bottom of the building, they joined the zombie horde and headed out of the residential area together.
Because of the angle, they couldn't see where the zombies went after leaving the neighborhood.
“Many novels describe zombies forming hordes in winter and fleeing to the south to escape the cold. Do they also…” Lu Yuan wanted to say that they went to the south, but he stopped himself.
In China, besides X province, this is already one of the southernmost inland cities. Where else can zombies go to escape the cold? Should they just leave China and go to a small country near the equator to escape the cold?
"It's really strange." Qin Yuan felt a little itchy. There was a strange convenience store in this neighborhood, a strange building with strange survivors, and even the zombies were so strange. He really wanted to go out and take a look, but he held back. After all, he only had a fire-type ability, not immortality.
"You said that zombies in novels can form hordes?" Du Wenqing, who had just come out of the bathroom after washing himself, suddenly interjected when he heard their conversation. "A horde, to call it a 'horde,' must they be destructive?"
Experienced veterans think more than two young men in their twenties. When Lu Yuan heard Du Wenqing say this, countless post-apocalyptic novels he had read flashed through his mind.
“The novel says that zombie hordes are usually very destructive and can even topple tall buildings,” Lu Yuan said, then quickly added, “Of course, these are all literary creations.”
“Before seeing these zombies with my own eyes, I also thought they only existed in literary works,” Du Wenqing said in a deep voice, leaning back on the sofa. “But now they have indeed appeared before our eyes.”
"Humans are always so insignificant in the face of the unknown world," Lu Yuan sighed. But they didn't really know why these zombies were gathering like this. They had already left the neighborhood. Although Qin Yuan and Du Wenqing had both evolved superpowers, they were not saviors. At least for now, they didn't know what they could do.
Lu Yuan put away his binoculars and returned to the guest room. He checked Gu Nanfeng's medical machine again. There were less than 9 hours left, around 8 a.m. tomorrow, when the medical machine would stop providing treatment. At that time, they would have no idea what Gu Nanfeng's condition would be.
Lu Yuan turned up the heater in the guest room a little higher, tidied his sleeping bag, crawled in, and fell into a deep sleep.
DAY104
At seven o'clock in the morning, Lu Yuan's biological clock woke him up automatically. Just as he finished packing his sleeping bag, Qin Yuan and Du Wenqing opened the door and walked in. Everyone knew that in another hour, the medical machine would finish reading the data.
"I'm so nervous." Lu Yuan was at a loss. After Gu Nanfeng entered the medical machine, the door closed. They couldn't even touch Gu Nanfeng and didn't know if his fever had subsided or what his current condition was. They could only see from the display screen that at least his heartbeat was normal.
"Oh well, let's leave it to fate." Du Wenqing walked to the small sofa by the window and sat down. Older people tend to be more easygoing about things, and he was more relaxed than Lu Yuan and Qin Yuan at the moment.
Unlike Du Wenqing, Qin Yuan and Lu Yuan stayed by the medical machine, their eyes fixed on the progress bar on the screen, watching it jump little by little, from 90%, 91%, 92%... all the way to 99%.
When the medical machine's progress bar reached 100%, Lu Yuan and Qin Yuan both breathed a sigh of relief. They had been holding their breath, fearing that the progress from 99% to 100% would never be completed.
The progress bar has finally finished running, and a bunch of data that Lu Yuan and the other person couldn't understand flashed across the medical machine screen. Although they couldn't understand it, they still stared at it intently, as if afraid of missing something.
The data processing was completed quickly, and the medical machine's display screen eventually showed a row of ellipses.
Lu Yuan looked at Qin Yuan beside him and asked, "Ellipsis? What does that mean?"
"How should I know?" Qin Yuan was also completely bewildered. He looked at Lu Yuan seriously, took a deep breath, and said in a deep voice, "We...we didn't mess this up, did we?"
Hearing their conversation, Du Wenqing walked over. The medical machine still showed six dots. With so many years of battlefield experience, Du Wenqing had used countless medical machines, both himself and his comrades, but he had never seen one like the one Lu Yuan had brought out before. The machine was completely empty, with only six dots remaining.
The three of them were at a loss and didn't know what to do for a moment.