Chapter 1818
There are four zombies in this house. They should be a family of four: a middle-aged couple, a seventeen or eighteen-year-old son, and a daughter in her early twenties.
They were wandering around the first floor until Xue Ling found them and locked them up in the toilet.
She locked the bathroom door, then waved to Wen Jiuze at the door, motioning him to come in.
They wanted to find some change of clothes, mainly for Xue Ling.
Xue Ling had been dissatisfied with the sunflower print skirt she was wearing for a long time and wanted to change it.
Hearing the noise outside and smelling the human scent, a family of zombies were roaring one after another in the toilet.
Amid the terrifying roar, Wen Jiu stood in front of the large wardrobe in the master bedroom on the first floor, took out a gauze skirt, and asked Xue Ling: "How do you like this skirt?"
Xue Ling thought there was something wrong with his eyesight. This skirt looked like something that a little girl in elementary school would wear. She remembered that she also had a skirt like this when she was about seven or eight years old.
Apart from the little girls' clothes, most of the items in the closet are middle-aged women's style cotton floral short-sleeved shirts and trousers.
"This one is not bad either." Wen Jiuze pointed at a short-sleeved shirt with purple patterns.
Xue Ling slammed the closet door shut, almost pinching his fingers.
Feeling the unspoken threat from Xue Ling, Wen Jiuze shut up and followed her to the second floor.
The clothes in my daughter's room on the second floor are more suitable.
Xue Ling chose a T-shirt from the closet, which only had a few simple letters on it.
Wen Jiuze walked around the room and opened several closet doors one by one. When he opened the last door, he saw a corpse that had turned into bones curled up in the corner of the closet.
It was the skeleton of a little girl of several years old.
She might have died at the beginning of the apocalypse. Her family all turned into zombies. She hid here out of fear and eventually starved to death.
Wen Jiuze's expression did not change, and he did not even pause for a moment as he closed the closet door.
He went to the second closet door, took out a pair of ripped denim shorts with several decorative zippers, and carefully selected a purple skull short-sleeved shirt to match them.
"How about this one?"
Xue Ling turned her head and thought that this girl had also joined the Zangai Family.
She firmly rejected Wen Jiuze's suggestion, snatched the clothes from his hands and put them back into the closet.
Wen Jiuze found another black leather skirt: "This one..."
Xue Ling felt that he was very annoying, so she turned around suddenly, took out an expired Band-Aid from the closet, tore it off and slapped it on Wen Jiuze's mouth, telling him to shut up and not express his opinions.
The expired Band-Aid had no stickiness anymore and it kept swinging back and forth on Wen Jiuze's mouth.
Wen Jiuze let the thing stick to his mouth, shrugged his shoulders, put his hands in his pockets and said nothing more.
Xue Ling picked out the clothes and found two new towels from the cupboard and put them into the bag.
She turned to the last closet and wanted to open it to take a look, but Wen Jiuze was leaning against the door and smiling, with no intention of giving way.
Xue Ling thought he was trying to tease her again. Since she had almost finished her selection, she didn't insist on looking at that closet and walked out with the bag.
After she finished choosing, she asked Wen Jiuze to look for something to wear. Unfortunately, the clothes in the master bedroom on the first floor that belonged to the male owner and the family's son were too small for Wen Jiuze to wear.
The two of them searched the house separately to see if there was anything else they needed.
Wen Jiuze squatted in front of the worm-eaten TV cabinet and tried a pair of scissors he found.
He rarely had the interest to slowly look through things. In the past, if he needed something, he would go directly to the base to exchange it. If he couldn't exchange it, he would go to the city to look for it. He would also have a clear goal in mind and would leave after searching through all the boxes and drawers.
But now, he even went through the family's drawers and saw the photo they took of their family of five and picked it up to look at it.
When he put the photo back, Xue Ling came over from the kitchen carrying a pot.
Wen Jiuze looked at her holding the pot handle and asked uncertainly, "You are not holding this pot to hit me, right?"
Xue Ling: “…”
She threw the pot at Wen Jiuze's feet and held out her other hand, which was clenched into a fist. This meant that she had something in her hand and asked Wen Jiuze to guess.
"What is it?" Wen Jiuze stroked his chin and observed her fist. "You didn't catch a mouse, did you?"
Xue Ling kicked his leg lightly.
She opened her palm and in her slightly dry hand lay a small tomato.
Full, bright red, the size of a bottle cap.
After tearing off the Band-Aid that was floating on his mouth and throwing it away, Xue Ling pushed the tomato forward for him to eat.
Wen Jiuze laughed, picked it up and put it in his mouth. It was overripe and tasted a bit rotten.
"Well, not bad." He praised without changing his expression.
Xue Ling pulled Wen Jiuze by his clothes and led him to the backyard of this house.
The yard was paved with cement, with several pots and foam boxes filled with soil placed on the side.
Now the pots and foam boxes are full of weeds, but there is a tomato in one of the pots, with a few red and half-green fruits hanging on the branches.
Finally, when they left the house, they took the pot of tomatoes away.
The tomato plant grew quite large, so it was placed in the back seat and secured with a seat belt.
They looked around the locked houses and found a lot of things.
Although Wen Jiuze felt that most of the things were unnecessary, and there were some that he didn't know what they were used for, such as a handful of dried mugwort, when Xue Ling took them out and gave them to him, he didn't say anything and stuffed them all into the car.
The trunk can't fit into the back seat, and the luggage rack tied to the roof can't fit into the trunk.
Finally, Xue Ling dug out two baskets of black charcoal.
Wen Jiuzhe: "..."
He almost understood what Xue Ling meant. She wanted him to cook.
There was rice in Wen Jiuze's car. It had been thrown in the corner of the trunk for three months and he hadn't touched it.
He thought that eating anything was the same and it was more convenient and quick to solve the problem of eating, so why bother to light a fire and cook.
But Xue Ling pointed to the small stove he had found, pointed to the charcoal, and picked up a new clay pot.
Wen Jiuze raised his head, touched the back of his neck and sighed: "Okay, okay."
Xue Ling had asked him to prepare the tools and sat aside watching eagerly. Wen Jiuze was unable to join in.
He lit a fire and heated the charcoal, cleaned the clay pot, put rice and water in it, and put it on the stove.
While waiting, Xue Ling stood up and walked towards their temporary camp.
Wen Jiuze followed him, and the two found a few lettuces in an abandoned private plot of land nearby.
The bean vines hung on the blackened bamboo racks, intertwined with the winter melon vines.
I harvested a dozen long beans, but unfortunately the winter melons haven't ripened yet and are still blooming.
After searching carefully for a while, I found another pumpkin in the weeds. It was a long pumpkin with green skin.
They returned with a full load and went back to the camp to process the food.
When Wen Jiuze was holding a can of meat and was about to open it and pour it into the casserole to cook with the rice, Xue Ling pulled out a pot from the car.
He had no choice but to withdraw his hand, wash the pot, pour the canned meat into the iron pot and fry it.
Xue Ling stared at him. Wen Jiuze wanted to take the lazy approach of chopping up the vegetables and stewing them in a casserole, but Xue Ling rejected his idea with a look.
After frying the canned meat, the vegetables were stir-fried, and the aroma and smoke wafted out.
Xue Ling was watching him busying himself beside him.
When the two of them lived together, Wen Jiuze would also do some work at her request.
However, she initially thought that Wen Jiuze could not do any work, but later she found that he was actually quite skilled at his work. He could take care of people and cook, but he was not very particular about the work.
He likes to cook everything by putting it directly in the pot with water and stewing it until it is soft and mushy, and it all tastes the same.
It feels like she has been a cook before, but no one taught her, so she has developed these habits on her own.
Xue Ling taught him how thick the meat should be cut and fried in oil to make it tasty, and how well the vegetables should be stir-fried to make them tasty.
He was distracted while listening and was not taking it seriously at all, but I didn't expect that he still remembered it so clearly.
Although his movements were unfamiliar, he was not in a hurry, so he really looked like a chef.
The fried meat and stir-fried vegetables are placed on the snow-white rice, and two sliced tomatoes are placed on top. It looks very good.
Wen Jiuze carried the clay pot and placed it on the makeshift table. The steaming rice and vegetables gave people an indescribable feeling as soon as they took a bite.
It felt like I was not sitting on some unknown roadside, but at home.
Xue Ling sat opposite him, chin propped up, eyes fixed on the casserole in front of him.
What was she thinking about? Was she thinking about how hungry she was and how she envied him for being able to eat? Or was she thinking about the times they used to sit at the dining table and eat together?
Wen Jiuze chewed the food that had been sitting in his mouth for a long time and suddenly asked, "What are you thinking about?"
Xue Ling took the writing board next to her, quickly wrote a sentence and showed it to him.
"Did you add salt?"
Xue Ling recalled the cooking process and found a problem. Wen Jiuze didn't seem to add salt! How can the food taste good without salt?
Wen Jiuzhai: "... canned meat and the soup in the can taste salty."
He immediately looked relieved when he saw Xue Ling.
She lowered her head and wrote: "I didn't find any salt today. I'll look for it somewhere else tomorrow."
Wen Jiuze looked at it, suddenly laughed, and stuffed a big mouthful of food into his mouth. He ate the food in big mouthfuls, which made the zombie look very hungry.
Xue Ling looked at him and thought that humans were more difficult to keep than zombies.
Before going to bed at night, Xue Ling asked him to take out the dried mugwort and burn it. Only then did Wen Jiuze realize that the function of that thing was to repel mosquitoes.
But this night, despite the smell of mugwort smoke lingering around him and fewer mosquitoes, Wen Jiuze still couldn't fall asleep.
Xue Ling checked to see if he was still awake every once in a while, and found that he had no intention of sleeping in the middle of the night, so she got up and went to the car to look for her medicine bag.
A box of sleeping pills was placed in front of Wen Jiuze.
She was really thoughtful and even provided sleeping pills.
Wen Jiuze refused.
Xue Ling took the medicine box back with regret. This medicine would expire in more than a month, and it would be a real waste if she didn't take it.
For the rest of the journey, they took turns driving. When the road conditions were good, Xue Ling would practice driving, and when the road conditions were bad, Wen Jiuze would come.
Wen Jiuze is also responsible for guiding the route, because when Xue Ling drives, he can drive wherever the road is convenient, and he can do whatever he wants.
But Wen Jiuze had to make sure they were heading towards Andong City.
However, even if they heard about it, they didn't know all the roads. In today's world without navigation, they only knew where they were when they saw road signs on the side of the road.
The car stopped at an intersection. Wen Jiuze compared several maps and said to Xue Ling, "It seems we have arrived at Yuanhu City."
If they were going to Andong City, they would have to go north and bypass Yuanhu City.
He had just put the map away when he saw Xue Ling holding up a sign: "I want to travel to Yuanhu City!"
Wen Jiuzhe: "..."
Suddenly I remembered that three years ago Xue Ling said he wanted to travel to Yuanhu City.
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