Chapter 42 Ordinary People.

On the night when the zombies came, Shu Lan taught Shu Maomao how to write with a dictionary under the desk lamp.

After she finished teaching the pinyin, she wrote "yongye" on a piece of white paper and asked Zhongmei, "What do you think this word is?"

Zhongmei said: "Eternal night, the eternal eternal, the night of night."

Shu Lan nodded. "I think so too. Meimei, do you think it's possible that someone can predict what will happen in the future?"

"I think there should be. For example, our deputy commander can infer the remaining life span of each person based on the color of their head. If their life span is short, it means it will be dangerous to go out on the mission and they have to stay in the base. He has saved many people this way."

"This can only be called fortune-telling." Shu Lan lay on the table, looking at the words "Eternal Night" written on the paper. She tilted her head and thought for a moment before saying, "Meimei, if someone told you ten years ago that one day half the world's population would turn into zombies like in the movies, would you believe it?"

"I don't believe it."

Shu Lan didn't believe it either, but it was hard not to care about what Jiang He said when she was unconscious. It felt like someone told her that a woman named Shu Lan would come to her with predators. Otherwise, it couldn't explain why the person they met for the first time would call out her name so accurately.

But Jiang He didn't take any precautions against this, such as issuing a wanted notice for a woman with a child like District 15 did.

How did District 15 know that she was the one who killed him?

Shu Maomao suddenly said, "Three now."

Zhong Mei was bewildered: "Three of what?"

The underground area was well soundproofed. Shu Lan glanced at the vents and said, "It's okay. He's just counting on his fingers."

Shu Maomao curled his lips. He was not that bored. He was counting the zombies that fell into the ditch.

"Baby, have you learned it yet? If you do, I'll have a test. How do you spell the character '人'?"

Zhong Mei said helplessly: "Commander, he took the exam after just studying once. He is too anxious."

Shu Lan disagreed: "Pinyin is such a simple thing, our baby only needs to learn it once."

Shu Maomao wrote "ren" on a piece of paper and pushed it under the lamp for them to see.

Zhong Mei: "Excuse me."

Shu Lan said with satisfaction, "You can learn better if you combine work and rest. I'll study tomorrow. I found a deck of cards today. Let's play poker. Mommy will teach you how to play Landlord."

Shu Maomao, who only learned the vowels and vowels once and spent less than five minutes from beginning to end, played Landlord with two adults for an hour. The loser had a little turtle painted on his face.

In the last hand, Shu Maomao was the landlord, with four kings, a seven, and a two left in his hand. Shu Lan still had six cards in her hand. It was her turn to play. She pretended to drink water and secretly took a card from the deck and put it down. Then she threw it all down and shouted with full energy: "Six, seven, eight, nine, ten, hook, straight, I'm done, hehe!"

Shu Maomao clearly remembered that Zhong Mei had just played three sevens, and he still had a seven in his hand, so there were four sevens in a deck of cards.

He looked at Shu Lan dimly: "Mom——"

Shu Lan, with a face full of little turtles, responded with a smile: "Hey, baby~ Do you want to draw the left or right cheek?"

Shu Maomao threw the cards down and thought, forget it, I won’t expose her.

He closed his eyes and said, "Right."

"Then Meimei, you draw the left side. Symmetry is what makes it cute."

Another woman with a face full of small turtles lowered her head in shame: "I won't draw anymore..."

It's so embarrassing to play Landlord with a four-year-old kid and cheat.

Shu Lan urged, "Hurry up, hurry up, play the game fairly, it's so hard to win!"

Zhong Mei couldn't understand how the commander could say the word "fairness" with such confidence.

During the day, the zombies went into the dark to avoid the sunlight. Shu Lan used an extended sickle to harvest the zombie heads floating in the black slime one by one.

Zhong Mei couldn't do this at first because the zombies in the mucus were moving and had human appearance. They stretched out their hands to her, making her feel like she was killing living people who asked her for help.

But when she saw Shu Lan cleaning up for a while and then running to the toilet to vomit, and coming back pale after vomiting, and then continuing to kill, Zhong Mei still raised the sickle with trembling hands.

The Commander can do it! There's nothing she can't do!

When all the zombies in the ditch stopped moving, the dark brown high viscosity liquid would automatically rise, and the corpses and white crystal cores inside would float to the surface and could be pulled out with a hook.

Zhong Mei looked at the dark brown liquid and said, "This is natural asphalt. There was someone here who could also produce asphalt before, but not in this quantity."

Shu Lan said calmly, "Oh."

"Before the reinforcements arrived, he fled from the base with a team without saying goodbye."

Zhong Mei picked up the crystal core and threw it into the basket beside her. As if she were casually chatting, she mentioned an unimportant person and said in a very natural tone, "They should have already arrived at another base."

Shu Lan chuckled softly: "Who knows? He might die on the way."

They piled the bodies on carts and sent them to the crematorium, dumping them into the incinerator in batches. When there were enough bodies, they burned coal and turned them all into ashes.

When passing by the air-raid shelter, more than ten pairs of eyes were staring at them at the entrance. Shu Maomao pulled Shu Lan's clothes and pointed at several people who were secretly following them from behind.

"Are you killing zombies?"

Shu Lan said, "No, these zombies suddenly died suddenly, and I picked them up on the road."

"Impossible, there aren't so many new corpses nearby."

Shu Lan: "Then why are you asking even though you already know the answer?"

The man who asked the question blushed, but he didn't dare to refute and followed them for a while.

"If you have a powerful combat ability, could you help us? Zombies banged on the door all night last night. We all scattered and blocked it all night. I'm afraid that sooner or later we won't be able to hold on."

Shu Lan said, "I can't. I'm neither your mother nor your father, and I'm certainly not the Bodhisattva in the temple who makes wishes. Helping you would be nothing but a waste of my own energy."

The man said, "We are all human beings. Shouldn't we unite and help each other?"

Hearing this amusing remark, Shu Lan laughed. "Help each other? Zhong Mei and I go back and forth countless times every day to clean up the corpses. Do any of you ever come over to lend a hand? Besides lying in the cave, sighing and complaining that no one in the world cares about your lives, have you ever done anything to contribute to the world?"

"We are ordinary people after all..."

Shu Lan said, "We were all ordinary people before. Skyscrapers, airplanes, and rockets were all built by ordinary people. So it's normal for ordinary people to just lie down? That's hilarious. I'm busy. If you want to chat, wait until I'm free."

She turned around and pushed the cart with Zhongmei.

The entrance to the incinerator was upstairs and the elevator was out of service, so they had to go up the ramp next to it.

Shu Lan is not very strong, so it is only with Shu Maomao's help that Zhong Mei can have less hard work.

At this moment, the sound of footsteps chasing him was heard from behind. Three more pairs of hands appeared on the cart. The bearded man next to him had a dark red face and said, "Excuse me, let us do it."

Shu Lan let go of her hand, patted Zhong Mei, and signaled her to let go as well.

They were on the first floor, watching the three men push the body and walk down embarrassedly.

Shu Lan crossed her arms with a half-smile: "Well, I still have a batch to transport."

"I'll do it!"

"I, I'll go with you."

Shu Lan pointed at the man who spoke to her first and said, "You look the strongest. Come with me."

The man's eyes suddenly became extremely bright: "Okay!"

"You two go back and tell them that I, Qin Xiaoshuang, will be the new commander here. If they trust me and want my protection, they must hand over all their food for me to distribute. From now on, they must obey my command and work for me unconditionally. You only have one day to consider this. When night falls, the lives of those left in the cave will no longer be my business."

"Okay! Qin... Commander!"