Chapter 149 Coal Truck

"Brother Hui, Brother Hui, please help me find it."

Outside the airport in City A, more than twenty trucks were parked outside the base gate.

The passenger door of the first car opened and a young man in a thick cotton coat got out.

The young man took out a black-covered ID from his pocket and showed it to the guard at the entrance of the base. The gate of the base, which was originally tightly closed, opened.

The guard at the gate directed the people and the vehicles behind them to enter. After they parked their vehicles in a suitable location, he said, "Stay here, my car. Someone will unload the cargo shortly. As for you, you must first go to the nearby infirmary to be examined by a doctor. You can only enter the base if you have no obvious injuries."

Each base has two doors, one inside and one outside. Anyone coming from the outside must be checked between the two doors to see if there are any signs of abnormalities before entering the base.

The young man nodded, obviously used to it. "I know. We will follow the instructions."

He was easy to talk to, and the guard was relieved. "Okay, then you can ask everyone in the car to get out first, and then line up and go in for inspection. Don't worry, there are stoves in the duty room, so it won't be that cold."

"Hey, thank you!"

The young man thanked them, asked for the address of the clinic, and then went to inform the people in the cars behind him.

As he walked, the doors of the twenty or so cars behind him opened one after another, and more than eighty tall and strong men in thick clothes got out of the cabs one after another.

After getting off the car, they stomped their feet on the snow a few times, then followed the young man in line and went to the door of the health center.

Someone who had just come out of another clinic saw so many people and curiously asked the guard standing guard nearby.

"Where are all these people from? Why are they here in the middle of winter?"

After the weather turned cold, although the rescue team still did not stop the rescue operation, it had been so long since the incident, and even though the rescue team had never stopped the rescue, the number of survivors returning with the vehicles every day was decreasing.

In order to speed up the rescue, the rescue team no longer cleared all the zombies during the rescue, but left these zombies that moved slowly due to the low temperature to the people who came out specifically in this snowy and icy place to fight zombies and dig out crystal cores.

Going out to kill zombies in this weather is tough, but not too dangerous. Everyone knows supplies will be scarce this winter, so they're willing to save up crystal cores while they can still go out, exchanging them for supplies for emergencies. The person asking the question had just returned from digging for crystal cores.

The guard at the gate had been in frequent contact with these people recently and was familiar with them, so he explained, "They are from P City, transporting coal here."

The weather is getting colder and colder. Even though the houses built later were built with thermal insulation in mind, most of the houses people live in near the airport are still the houses in the village. They have poor insulation and are almost leaky everywhere.

There's no way to provide heating to every household, so they rely on coal stoves for warmth. Fearing carbon monoxide poisoning, the base also advises families to keep their doors and windows closed while burning stoves indoors. As a result, this warmth-keeping measure ultimately had no noticeable effect, but it was better than nothing.

City P is a famous resource-based city in their province. It has famous coal mines and oil fields in their province. Although it is almost being mined out now and the coal production is not that much, it is still more than enough to supply the surrounding cities.

The questioner suddenly remembered hearing someone say the base was running low on coal, but they expected a shipment soon. When the guard said these people were from City P, he suddenly realized what was happening.

"So we have coal to use, right? When can we get it?" Although a coal stove wouldn't be very warm in this weather, it was better than nothing.

The guards were unable to give a definite time for this question.

"The coal has just been shipped over, but it still needs to be made into briquettes. It will probably take some time before it can be used! Just wait for now, the higher-ups will make arrangements as soon as possible."

The questioner, though somewhat disappointed, was understandable. Resources are scarce these days, and I've heard this winter is expected to be long. Of course, turning coal into energy-efficient honeycomb briquettes would be better, and more sustainable.

"Then I'll go back and tell everyone else about this good news! People in our area have been worried about this."

"Okay!" the guard nodded.

Someone must have seen the more than 20 coal-carrying trucks coming in. Besides, there is nothing secret about this news. Appropriate disclosure of good news will help stabilize people's hearts.

Afterwards, the guards continued to stand guard, and the person who had just spoken went into the base to announce the new information he had received.

Because the infection mutated quickly, it was easy to tell if something was normal, so the infirmary's inspection was quick. After discovering that the new arrivals had no obvious abnormal wounds, they gave the inspection results to the guards on duty at the door.

The captain of the guards took the inspection results, checked that there was no problem, put them under the plywood hanging on the wall, and then signed a note to let them go.

"Once you go through that door, you'll see a small room with a sign saying 'Outsiders' Resettlement Office.' The staff inside will arrange accommodation and meals for you."

"Okay, thank you."

The young man who was in the lead received the note and led a group of people into the base.

Although the base at the airport in City A was hastily built in the past six months, most of the buildings are village bungalows. Later, more than 20 small buildings were built to accommodate the rescued survivors. Due to limited circumstances, they only had a layer of cement on the outside and looked gray.

Although the buildings weren't particularly attractive, the base showed signs of being well-planned. The roads within the base were wide and straight, and the houses were built side by side, giving it a well-organized appearance.

"Brother Hui, is this where the station is?" The young boy following behind him looked around and sighed to the young man in the lead, "The people here look different from ours." They were obviously more energetic than the people in their base.

The man called Brother Hui thought about the appearance of the person who had passed by them before and agreed with the boy's opinion.

"I guess there's no shortage of food! I heard that even though there was heavy rain, this area didn't flood, so the wheat in the fields was harvested in time. Later, they also planted a crop of corn and harvested it before the cold weather came."

The young boy sighed, "The villagers around here are really lucky. Not only do they have food and drink, but they also have a train station that takes them everywhere. It would be great if our city P could have the same food and drink as here."

P City is a resource-based city, most of which is coal mines, and the rest is oil fields. There was originally little arable land, and a flood occurred before, which not only collapsed several coal mines but also made most of the land unproductive.

Seeing the boy was a little envious, the young man comforted him, "Before we came this time, the two bases had an agreement. We will deliver coal to them, and on our return, they will load our trucks with food. We won't be short of food in the future."

"You're right." The young man cheered up. "Isn't this what we came here for?"

Although City A and City P were adjacent, the two bases weren't close together. While there weren't many zombies out there, the roads were covered in ice and snow, making it difficult to drive quickly. A journey that used to take two hours took them two days. They'd made such a arduous journey just to bring back some food for the winter.

"By the way, Brother Hui, isn't your hometown City A? We still need to wait a few days before we can go back. Where is your hometown? Do you want to go back and take a look? Or do you want to take the opportunity to look for someone or something?"

"No need." The man shook his head. "My uncle and his friends told me when they came to see me that there's no one left in my hometown, so there's no need to go back."

"Oh," the boy didn't expect that his words touched a sore spot. He was about to say something to ease the atmosphere when he found that they had walked to the door of the reception desk for outsiders.

When I opened the cotton curtain at the door, I saw two elderly men sitting behind the table as soon as I entered.

The two old men were dozing off, but they were startled by the cold wind that blew in when they lifted the curtain and woke up suddenly.

As a dozen tall and strong men entered the room, the light in the room was mostly blocked out. Seeing that there seemed to be many people outside, the two uncles hurriedly stopped them, "Alright, alright, don't come in. There's not enough space in the room. Just give me the note."

The person near the door shouted outside, and everyone who was about to come in stopped.

The young man took out the note given to him by the captain of the guards. One of the old men took it and took out a bunch of keys from the drawer of the table after taking a look at it.

"Okay, follow me."

The group followed the old man to the three-story building behind the cottage.

The old man took them into the lobby on the first floor and did not go upstairs anymore. He took out nine keys from the key chain in his hand and gave them to them.

"There are nine rooms here, each of which can accommodate ten people. The keys and doors are numbered, so you can choose the rooms among yourselves. There are beds in the rooms, but the blankets may not be thick enough. If you have other warm things, you can bring them here. It's quite cold here at night."

The old man pointed to the resettlement area and said, "There are stoves in each room. If you're afraid of the cold, you can go get some coal briquettes from me. Just don't seal the doors and windows at night. There's a canteen for meals, and they provide meals. I'll take you there when it's time."

"We understand, thank you, sir."

"Okay, then you know, I'm leaving. You're on a business trip, and I'm next door, so just let me know if you need anything."

"Okay, thank you for your help. We'll send someone over as soon as we've made the arrangements."

After seeing the old man off, more than eighty people were divided into rooms.

Each room has bunk beds with mattresses and covers. They look quite clean and must have been washed before. The quilt is a bit thin, just as the old man said.

The room was quite nice, but I didn't know if anyone had lived there before. However, it was the end of the world, and people weren't particular. When conditions were limited, they had slept in the wild before. This situation was already much better than they had imagined.

When they set out yesterday, they were worried about having to spend the night on the road, so they brought some bedding that they could just take from the car.

After the rooms were assigned, some people were told to go get their belongings from the car. Of course, the remaining few people weren't idle either. Since there were a lot of people, nine rooms were allocated, and nine coal briquettes were needed to light the stove, they had to get ready early.

But there were so many people this time that after all the work was assigned to people, there were still about a dozen people left. So, the remaining empty-handed people decided to wander around the small building and the surrounding area.

When the young man came out of the bathroom, he saw that everyone who was still in the dormitory had left.

He followed the sound and walked outside, and saw that all the people who had disappeared before were gathered in the hall, crowded together, and looking at the glass bulletin board on the wall.

"What are you doing?" the young man asked as he approached. He squinted his eyes, trying to read what was written on the notice board, but before he could see clearly, he was pulled into the crowd.

"Brother Hui, Brother Hui, please help me look for them." The young boy pulled him and shouted, "This is a notice board for finding relatives. It's full of information written by others about their relatives they're looking for, from all over the place. Please help me check if there's any information about me. If there is, maybe it was written by my sister's family!"

【Author’s words】

Young man: Guess who I am? [Dog head holding a rose]

Thanks to everyone's support, the channel's gold list rose twenty places overnight and is now 61st!

I'm so happy, I'm starting to think that surpassing the historical record might be just around the corner!

There will still be updates tomorrow, in the afternoon or evening.