Chapter 23 The First Night of the Apocalypse
You Xi closed the sliding window on the balcony and returned to the living room. You's mother had already come back and was sitting next to You's father, accompanying him to call the police. However, the number of calls was always busy.
"Try again later. It's getting dark. Turning on the lights is too conspicuous. Close the windows and draw the curtains first."
Even though their house was on the fifth floor and was far away from the monsters on the ground, as the sky darkened, the overly bright lights still made people feel insecure.
So, at the suggestion of You's father, the two of them closed all the windows that were originally open in the house, drew the curtains, and turned off the lights in other rooms that were not in use, leaving only a small floor lamp in the living room.
Yu's mother suddenly remembered her own grocery store, where there were still a lot of food and water supplies. In the current situation, it was estimated that they could not be taken back.
"Forget it, as long as everyone is safe, fortunately my daughter came back in time, if she is still in school now... Let's take it one step at a time. Let's cook! I'll accompany you."
Yu's father and mother entered the kitchen, not daring to turn on the range hood or the main lights. They only turned on a small light on the range hood and turned on the fire to continue frying the half-cooked dishes.
Yu Xi glanced at the closed kitchen door and quietly walked into the storage room.
Because of the grocery store, Yu's father and mother would store the things that could not be placed in the garage at home every time they received goods.
They had just received the goods about half a month ago, and there were a lot of things piled up in the 10-square-meter storage room, including rice, flour, oil, various drinks and snacks, and a lot of daily necessities, so they didn't have to worry about food and drink for the time being
. She took out all the daily necessities collected from the grocery store and piled them together with other items in the storage room, and then put half of the boxed drinks, boxed instant noodles, snacks and other foods that were not used temporarily into the Xingwu warehouse.
Then she took out a box of apples and three 19L barrels of water. The apples were placed together with the other food, and the three barrels of water were placed in the area dedicated to bottled water on the other side wall, and then several empty barrels were collected.
After that, she went to the refrigerator next to the dining table, and then covered it with the opened refrigerator door. She first took out vegetables, eggs, and milk to fill the fresh food area, then opened the freezer and put two bags of frozen dumplings, several bags of pork bones, several boxes of pork belly, several boxes of oxtail bones, and several boxes of lamb chops in.
The refrigerator is not big, and it can't hold more, but it doesn't matter. With her, the snail girl, there will be no end of the things in the refrigerator as long as the refrigerator has no power outage.
You's father and mother are usually very frugal, and they basically don't buy expensive meat such as oxtail bones and lamb chops. At first, they may not notice it because they are too frightened, but they will definitely notice it after cooking twice.
But You Xi didn't think about hiding it from them.
In the world picture, although You's father and mother are gentle and humble, they dote on her, their only daughter. They can endure hardships and losses themselves, but they are reluctant to let her suffer a little.
Whenever she has something to do, they will put down everything at hand no matter how busy they are.
When they suspect her of the strange food at home and come to her to ask, she will tell them in a suitable way.
After filling the refrigerator, You Xi went into her room and downloaded a map APP that can be used offline while charging her mobile phone.
After that, she started from S City, and downloaded all the maps of all cities, counties, highways, and national roads in the surrounding cities and the whole country.
This offline map APP can be used for mobile navigation without an Internet connection. In addition to the ordinary electronic map function, it can also be switched to a three-dimensional map. All streets, supermarkets, restaurants, cafes, shopping malls, car dealerships, gas stations, landmark buildings, etc. can all be found.
This is very helpful for future travel and continued stocking of items.
In order to avoid problems such as mobile phones being broken and maps being lost, she plans to take the tablet from You's father's room and download the same APP and map as a backup.
The You family has a tablet, which is very small and is used by You's mother to watch dramas at night. It has been used for several years and is still maintained as good as new.
Youxi put down her phone and let it download slowly. She left the room and went into the bathroom. She took out the 500L large bucket that she had used to store water and began to put warm water into it.
This part is for daily use. She saved it first. The water might be cut off at home one day. Moreover, if the purified water is all used up, this water can be boiled and drunk.
After the end of the last world, she refilled five more water storage buckets like this. Now there are ten in total. They are all filled with water and can be used for a long time.
While waiting for the water to be released, she sat there tidying up the Star House warehouse. The things she had put in since coming to this apocalyptic world currently included thirty-seven barrels of 19L mineral water, nine boxes of fruit, several large bags of various medicines, and all the drinking water supplies on the shelves of the grocery store and in the warehouse behind, as well as some drinking water supplies that had just been collected in the storage room.
Compared to the original things in her Star House warehouse, this pile of things was not much, but it was very mixed, and it was too messy when she collected it. She was too lazy to sort them, so she just let them all hang on the top layer of the Star House warehouse, which was quite interesting to look at.
After Youxi filled two large barrels of hot water, You's father called for dinner outside.
Originally, they were planning to entertain Tan Qian. The dinner was very rich: scrambled eggs with tomatoes, stir-fried pork with chili peppers, steamed sea bass, mapo tofu, stir-fried oil millet, pork ribs and potato soup, and a big pot of salted meat, vegetables and mushroom rice.
Mother You had no appetite, and Father You was not very hungry either, so Mother You picked up food for You Xi all night, looked at her with a distressed look, and said that she had lost weight and must have studied too hard, and asked her to eat more.
You Xi: ...
Whether it is the mother in the original world or the mother in this alien world, they are the same in some ways.
After dinner, Father You washed the dishes, You Xi cleaned the table, put the unfinished dishes in the refrigerator, took out two apples, washed and cut them, and brought them to the living room, and watched the news with Mother You on the sofa.
Two local TV stations have stopped broadcasting, and half of the remaining TV stations are automatically broadcasting a notice of suspension of work and school, and the other half are broadcasting recorded news.
Compared with the peace of the TV stations, major online platforms have long been flooded with various real-time posts.
Some people are anxiously broadcasting live to ask for help, some are uploading the chaotic street scenes they have taken, some cannot contact their relatives and want to report their safety through the Internet, and some are posting to inquire about the situation in other nearby cities...
So far, the infection mutations in S City where Youxi is located, and the neighboring H City and Y City have broken out on a small scale everywhere. Many people got the news and rushed into the nearest supermarket to buy food. Some people bought food safely and left, and some were blocked by the suddenly infected people in the supermarket.
Many people packed up and fled overnight. High-speed rail stations and long-distance bus stations were overcrowded. The large flow of people brought many dangerous factors. From time to time, suddenly mutated infected people appeared in the crowd, causing chaotic stampedes.
Afterwards, the highway was also blocked and traffic in the city was paralyzed. Many students in schools were trapped and unable to leave. All hotels were also blocked by people who could not go home.
Since dinner started, the sounds of ambulances, police cars, and fire trucks have not stopped. Youxi's home is not high, so the vision is limited, but even if you can't see the situation outside clearly, you can imagine the chaotic scene outside from the various noises.
The lights in the security room at the gate of the community have been on. There should be a security guard inside. When the car rear-ended on the road outside, he immediately closed the electric gate.
There is also a small door next to the electric gate, which is the passage for electric vehicles and pedestrians. Residents of the community can enter by scanning their faces.
Probably because the electric gate gives others a sense of security, people who are chased by zombies have been knocking on the door and asking to enter at night.
The small door opened several times at first, but then it stopped opening for some reason. When someone knocked on the door again, it attracted the zombies wandering in the community. Those people were scared away, but the zombies stayed near the gate.
Maybe because of the zombies wandering inside the gate, the zombies on the road outside that were bitten and infected did not gather near the community, but were attracted by the sounds of police cars and ambulances around them and chased them away.
That night, almost no one slept well.
Youxi knew that not only were there new infected people outside, but there were also new infected people inside the community.
In the incident yesterday evening, several people who were bitten fled back home and were infected with the mutation and then spread the infection. She could hear screams, miserable cries of pain, and desperate cries.
Fortunately, their unit building was relatively quiet throughout the night, and no one should be infected with the mutation.
When Youxi got up in the morning, her mother had already prepared breakfast, millet porridge, egg pancakes, fried bacon, and steamed a lot of buns.
The buns were freshly made, with two kinds of fillings: meat and mushrooms and vegetables.
While letting her eat, Yu's mother continued to work in the kitchen: "Your father is afraid that the water and gas will be cut off, so we plan to make all the flour in the storage room into cooked food, wrap it and freeze it in the refrigerator. You can heat it up when you want to eat it."
Yu Xi ate the buns and nodded repeatedly, without exposing Yu's father's words.
He was afraid of water and gas outages, but was he not afraid of power outages?
Even if the flour and rice were cooked, if the power was cut off, the refrigerator would lose its refrigeration function, and the food would go bad quickly in this weather.
She looked at Yu's father's expression and knew that he said this to find something for Yu's mother to do. If you have work to do, you won't always have random thoughts.
However, Yu's father's move reminded her that the water and solid fuel storage in her Star House warehouse would be consumed if the water and gas were cut off, but she was not afraid of power outages.
Because she has her own large fresh-keeping space, in the first few days after the apocalypse, while there is still water and electricity, she has to persuade Yu's mother to make all raw food into cooked food, and at the same time "increase" the consumption of cooked food.
So, while Yu's father and mother went to the kitchen, she quietly moved five steamed buns from the pile to the food shelf in the Xingwu warehouse.
After that, she continued to eat the buns and went to the refrigerator, and moved two bags of buns that Yu's mother had already made and placed in the freezer to the food shelf.
She sat down at the dining table again and was drinking porridge when there was a sudden knock on the door, which startled Yu's father and mother in the kitchen. Yu Xi put down her chopsticks, motioned them to be quiet, and then walked to the door to look at the cat's eyes.
There were two young men standing outside the door, wearing security uniforms, one tall and one short. They were the ones who subdued the zombie in front of the small park yesterday.
"Hello, is anyone here?"
"What's up?"
"Hello, this is what happened. We are the security guards of the community. When we were escaping yesterday, we accidentally entered this corridor with other residents. It was very chaotic outside last night, and it was dark, so we stayed inside the building.
But the situation outside did not get better today. One of our colleagues in the security room closed the power gate in time yesterday, but we lost contact with him this morning. That... monster is still wandering around the community. If this goes on, everyone will be trapped in the building to death.
We want to find a few people to get rid of the monsters in the community together, and then gather everyone to discuss what to do next. "
This community is very small, with a total of two entrances and exits. There is an iron gate on the east wall that is closed all year round. The door is tall and solid, and it is connected to the wall next to it. It is three or four meters high. There is no need to worry about being broken in by monsters outside for the time being.
The other is the south entrance and exit, which consists of an electric gate and a small iron gate. Although it is solid, it is only about two meters high, and the gap in the electric gate is large, and there are many footholds. Any adult can climb in. Who knows, one day the monsters may become smart and stack a lot of Arhats to break in.
The situation outside is chaotic now, and it is unknown when rescue will come. Instead of waiting for death, it is better to find a solution by ourselves.
They not only want to deal with the monsters in the community, but also want to reinforce the South Gate. So they want to find a few strong people to help, but unfortunately everyone is scared by the sudden change. They knocked on doors from the third floor to the fifth floor, but did not find anyone willing to join.
There are two households on the fifth floor. No one is at home in the left one. In addition, now they hear a young female voice answering the door on the right. They no longer have any hope. They just want to simply explain the matter and go downstairs.
However, at this moment, the tightly closed door opened, and a beautiful girl of seventeen or eighteen years old stood in the door, wearing a neat black sportswear, with her hair tied up in a bun, holding a metal baton in her hand: "I'll go with you."
**
Father You closed the door of his daughter's room, pretending that she was sleeping in it, so as not to let Mother You, who was busy in the kitchen, know.
He reached into his pocket and tightly grasped the electric baton that You Xi had handed him ten minutes ago, trying to suppress his worry and nervousness.
"Dad, remember, don't open the door no matter who knocks." She taught him how to use the electric baton, and told him to use it immediately if someone broke in through the door, without hesitation.
Of course, the chance of this happening is very small, after all, the doors of all their residences open outwards.
That is to say, if you want to break the door inward, the door frame will block it and it will not be possible for a while. If you want to break the door outward, it is even more impossible because there is no place to exert force. Not
only that, she also dragged him to the storage room and conjured up a box of small watermelons out of thin air.
She told him that she had a space that was invisible and intangible, but things could be put in and taken out at any time and anywhere.
This happened a long time ago, and she had been hesitant to tell them before, mainly because she was afraid that this unusual thing would cause trouble.
For example, if someone discovered it and reported it, it would become a research tool; or if someone with ulterior motives targeted it and turned it into a tool for smuggling crimes.
No matter what the outcome, it would be terrible. In order to protect herself, she kept it a secret and began to learn various self-defense techniques and free fighting martial arts.
Unexpectedly, a zombie crisis suddenly broke out in the school, and she relied on the martial arts she had learned before to escape from the school safely and return home.
Afterwards, his seemingly slender and weak daughter lifted two 50-kilogram bags of rice with one hand to prove that she was not just showing off, but that she really had the ability to protect herself.
But for now, she could only tell him about this matter, and it had to be kept secret from Yu's mother for the time being.
Yu's father was stunned by this operation, and it took him a while to recover. But having seen the zombies yesterday, it didn't seem so difficult to accept one more now.
He was quick to accept, and he immediately understood the importance of this matter.
Yu's mother was soft-hearted and had a strong ability to empathize. It might not be a big deal under normal circumstances, but now this situation might bring trouble to her family because of sympathy.
Afterwards, she gave You's father a task, which was to cook all the raw food in the refrigerator and storage room into cooked food before the water and gas were cut off, because her space could keep fresh.
Vegetables, eggs, meat, flour, rice and grains... No matter what the ingredients, as long as they were cooked, she would quietly put them into the space when You's mother was not paying attention.
You's father also understood that his daughter wanted him to cover up.
From the time the accident happened yesterday to now, while there was a signal, he talked to several relatives and friends, and the other end of the phone was in chaos without exception, with people who went to work or school missing, children crying, and the elderly panicking and anxious.
In contrast, his daughter was brave and resourceful. She got out of school safely and returned home, and informed them of the situation outside in time. Now that he knew his daughter's secret, he felt more at ease. His
daughter had a plan, and he had to trust her, help her keep the secret, and not hold her back.
Thinking of this, Father You walked to the refrigerator, opened the door, and took out several boxes of pork belly, several bags of pork bones, and several boxes of lamb chops, and then took out two boxes of eggs.
After these ingredients are cooked and cooled, they can be directly packed in take-out boxes for his daughter to put away.
His family runs a grocery store, and take-out boxes are also one of the products, so there are plenty of storage rooms.
"Wife, our daughter is too thin. It's rare for her to come home, so let's nourish her. Let's cook a big pot of braised pork and eggs today, and make another pot of pork bone soup, and grill lamb chops for her, okay?"
Mother You: ...
***
At this moment, on the ground floor of the corridor, You Xi and two security guards - the tall security guard Gao Yun, the short security guard Wu Di, the resident on the third floor, and the young man Bian An who accidentally ran into this corridor with the security guards because he was blocked when picking up the express delivery, a total of five people are making preparations before the action.
The resident on the third floor is a strong man in his thirties. His name is Chen Ya. He is a fitness coach and the father who was almost hit by a car and hit the tree yesterday.
His child is only five years old. When the chaos happened yesterday, he was standing aside and failed to get there in time. He was almost knocked down by the chaotic residents. The key moment was when the young man who picked up the express picked up the child.
After that, he took them to run. The corridor door of this unit was originally closed, and many people passed by but could not open the door.
Fortunately, Chen Ya brought the door card. Although the five of them ran behind, they hid in the corridor in time.
After that, they were trapped and couldn't get out, so he took them back home. The three of them had a simple meal at Chen Ya's house and slept on the floor for one night.
Today, after discussing, several people decided to clean up the crisis in the community. Two security guards knocked on the door from the third floor upwards, while Chen Ya and Bian An were responsible for the third floor and below.
As a result, Chen Ya and Bian An got nothing, and the security guard took Youxi back.
The four grown men looked at the young girl's delicate face and slender arms, and fell silent.
Finally, the tall security guard Gao Yun said, "It's okay. We will use the electric car later. Just let her open the door for us."
Youxi sighed, walked to the electric car, and lifted it up directly: "I have a foundation in martial arts and I am very strong."
The four men:... ! !
Youxi put down the electric car, took out a pen and paper from his pocket, and drew a topographic map of the entire community in a few seconds. He said in a sophisticated tone: "Come on, tell me your planned route first."
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