◎Happy Day 136: Polluted Waters◎
Jiang Muyun thought for a moment and said, "Let's follow our original route first. If we encounter anyone rowing a homemade boat along the way, we'll stop them and ask them."
There was no other way but to keep going.
We can't just turn around now and search the world for survivors who rowed their own boats.
Although he didn't know what happened in the north, Jiang Muyun felt that since those people who paddled small rafts with their families could escape to the south, there was no reason why they would be killed as soon as they met from a distance.
Moreover, the mutant animals they brought with them showed no resistance to going north.
Given the mutant animals' keen sense of danger, there's no reason why they wouldn't react at all if a major disaster struck the north.
Captain Yu wiped the rain from his face and said without hesitation, "Okay. Chen Cheng, you take the direction first. I'll keep an eye on the surroundings. If I see a suitable boat, I'll just shoot and force it to stop."
It wasn't hard to find survivors heading south in their homemade boats.
Only a very few people can get a proper motor boat, and not many can even afford a raft.
Ordinary survivors basically use homemade rafts or makeshift escape boats made of plastic barrels and other items to escape.
After just over an hour, Captain Yu found a suitable target.
It was a small fleet consisting of several simple rafts tied together. There were about twenty people in the team, including not only the elderly and children, but also a woman who was either injured or sick.
The woman was well taken care of. The team had nailed a rough wooden bed for her on the raft so that she wouldn't be soaked in water when she lay down. There were also several children around her, who covered her with a blanket, handed her water, and talked to her from time to time.
They look like a large family of relatives.
People were busy on their way, and when they heard the roar of the engine, they just looked up, then silently adjusted the direction and paddled farther away from them.
Captain Yu aimed and fired a shot not far in front of their boat. Water splashed along with the sound of the gunshot, and the people on the boat were a little panicked for a moment.
"Uncle, what do they mean?" A young man holding the oar looked pale and looked at the middle-aged man standing at the bow.
The middle-aged man gritted his teeth and said, "Could it be that we've been mugged? Let's turn around and walk away from them. Let's try to avoid them. What if it's just a misunderstanding?"
Seeing that the group of people turned around, Captain Yu fired another shot.
Oil is very precious nowadays, and running one more meter is a waste. Captain Yu doesn't want to play the game of chase with others.
This time the bullet landed closer to them, and the splashing water even hit the middle-aged man's face directly, making everyone on the boat shocked and angry.
Could it really be a robbery?
"Brother, stop first." The woman lying on the wooden bed shouted to the middle-aged man, "This shouldn't be a robbery."
When the children sitting next to the woman saw that she wanted to get up, they hurriedly moved wooden boards and bedding to pad behind her so that she could sit more comfortably.
The woman leaned against the old quilt, which was soaked with moisture and smelled musty. She took two deep breaths and then said, "They are sailing and firing guns. Even if they tear our family bones apart, it wouldn't be as expensive as the oil they burn. How could they be doing this for money?"
The teenager standing at the stern of the boat also said, "They can still shoot us from such a long distance. They probably have a sniper. If they really want to attack us, their bullets won't hit the water, but directly at people."
The woman on the bed said in a weak voice, "You can't get away. Take down the boat and give it to Mom and Dad and the girls. Xiaohao and Nannan, you guys row the boat over there first, and we'll wait here."
For a moment, the ship was filled with a scene of life and death separation.
Fortunately, Jiang Muyun and his companions were quite fast. When the small boat on the other side just launched into the water, the distance between the two boats was less than a hundred meters.
"We have no ill intentions. We stopped you just to get some information."
As soon as the small boat was pushed out, Captain Yu's voice came over amid the sound of rain.
The people on the boat paused in pushing the boat carrying the elderly and children out, and looked at each other, somewhat skeptical about what the company commander said.
The middle-aged man looked at the woman on the bed. The woman thought for a moment and then said to the man, "Ask them what they want to know."
The man nodded, took a deep breath, and spoke loudly, "Ask us anything you want. We'll tell you everything we know. We've been a family forcing our way here from the north, and we don't have much of anything valuable. If you find it appealing, take it all. Consider it a friendship. Just leave us alive and a boat."
As they were talking, Jiang Muyun and his companions' rafts had already arrived in front of the small rafts, and the waves they created pushed the small rafts away.
The engines shut down. Jiang Muyun didn't care who was in charge on the boat, and simply asked, "That's what we want to inquire about. You guys said you fled from the north. I wonder where exactly, and what happened?"
The people on the boat looked at each other in confusion. After a moment, the middle-aged man hesitated and said, "We came from Qi City. In fact, it's not just Qi City. People from several cities around Qi City are all running south."
The middle-aged man looked at the guns in the hands of Jiang Muyun and others and swallowed unconsciously.
The lives of his entire family are in someone else's hands, so he can't help but be afraid.
Before he could continue, a weak female voice came over: "There was a large battery processing factory in Qi City. Later, a disaster struck and destroyed the factory. Everything inside floated out with the water."
A pale-faced woman leaned heavily on the shoulder of a half-grown boy as she staggered to the bow of the boat. She said to Jiang Muyun and the others, "We didn't take it seriously before. There were strange-looking things everywhere anyway, until this flood."
The woman struggled to stand up straight, and with her left hand, she lifted up her shirt, revealing the festering flesh beneath. "There are so many... fish in the water?"
The woman said, giving Jiang Muyun and the others a wry smile: "I don't know if those things can be considered fish. They can come ashore, bite people, and jump as high as a person. If you get bit by them, the wound will rot immediately, just like the ones on me."
Even though Jiang Muyun was used to seeing all kinds of tragic situations, he couldn't help but frown after seeing the wounds on this woman's body.
The shape of the wound could no longer be seen.
It was more like a pool of mud that was rolled into a ball and stuck directly between the woman's waist and abdomen.
A faint blue-purple metallic luster can still be seen on the sludge.
"It's just a tooth mark, the flesh hasn't fallen off yet." The woman swayed a few times on the boat. The young man next to her hurriedly supported her and tried to let the woman lean on him.
The woman used the boy's strength to steady herself, then refused his attempt to support her and struggled to pull open the wide collar of her T-shirt.
Her right shoulder, which had festered like a rotting corpse, was exposed to everyone.
From the collarbone to the upper arm, the skin and flesh of the entire shoulder were turned outward, as if someone had used a blunt knife to scrape off the fish scales in reverse. Instead of scraping off the scales, they stood up in pieces of different sizes and hung on the fish skin in a random pattern.
Among the dense, charred, muddy, rotten meat and fish scales, you can occasionally see a piece of lifeless, white bones.
The woman tore off a piece of rotten flesh and held it in her hand to show Jiang Muyun and the others: "Two pieces of flesh were bitten off my shoulder four days ago, and the flesh around the wound has rotted away bit by bit. It hurt at first, but now it's so painful that I can't feel it anymore."
After doing this, the woman seemed to be exhausted.
She threw away the piece of flesh she had torn from her own body and leaned hunched over the boy.
Professor Chen had unconsciously turned his head away, unable to bear to look at this horrific scene any longer.
Chen Cheng, who was originally standing behind Jiang Muyun, unconsciously hugged Jiang Muyun's arm when the woman tore off the flesh on his shoulder.
No matter how smart she is, she is only a thirteen-year-old child. Before the end of the world, she would have just started junior high school.
She had seen many dead people, but this was the first time she had seen such a cruel scene.
Chen Cheng subconsciously hid behind Jiang Muyun, trying to avoid such a horrifying scene.
Jiang Muyun sensed her fear.
Jiang Muyun touched Chen Cheng's head soothingly, but did not hide her behind him.
Chen Cheng had no choice but to bury his face in Jiang Muyun's arms.
Jiang Muyun did not stop her this time. He and Chu Buwen just talked to the woman for a few words, and carefully inquired about the news about the mutant fish.
Gradually, the fear that was surging in Chen Cheng's heart subsided.
She raised her head and glanced at the woman who seemed to have been drained of all her energy and blood, and then her eyes fell on the piece of dirty black flesh that had fallen on the raft.
Jiang Muyun turned around and whispered a few words to Chu Buwen. Chu Buwen nodded, turned around and went back into the awning. After a while, Chu Buwen was holding a small cloth bag wrapped in non-woven fabric in his hand.
Jiang Muyun took the small cloth bag and threw it onto the raft: "We bought this information. Thank you very much."
Jiang Muyun returned to the awning, brushing off the water droplets on his body, and asked Chen Cheng, "Are you scared?"
Chen Cheng nodded and said frankly, "I'm afraid."
Jiang Muyun smiled and said, "I was afraid you would still be staring at me."
Chen Cheng's last action of staring at the rotten meat was not ignored by Jiang Muyun.
Chen Cheng thought for a moment and said, "I need to take a closer look. If I'm not afraid anymore after seeing this, I'll be able to stay calmer when I encounter this kind of thing in the future, and have a better chance of survival."
Captain Yu couldn't help but tease the child: "But aren't you still scared after watching it?"
Chen Cheng pursed his lips and said seriously, "So I thought, I will definitely learn from grandma and try to make these things disappear as soon as possible. Grandma can't do it alone, there are still many grandparents in the capital, and I will learn with them. When I get tired of learning, I will think about that person today, that piece of meat."
Captain Yu was silent for a moment before saying, "Uncle Yu apologizes to you. You wanted to use today's events to motivate yourself and benefit the world, but I was just trying to play a joke on you. It was you, Uncle Yu, who was wrong. Our Chen City is much bigger than your Uncle Yu."
Chen Cheng was silent for a moment, then slowly said, "It's not to motivate myself. It's mainly because when I think of the scene I saw today, I will be shocked awake. Thinking about it when I feel sleepy is quite refreshing."
Captain Yu ran to drive the boat without saying a word, and squatted at the stern with an autistic look on his face.
Jiang Muyun rubbed Chen Cheng's head with amusement and whispered, "Look how much you've amused your Uncle Yu."
Chen Cheng smiled and said, "Who asked him to tease me first?"
Seeing Jiang Muyun and his group turn around and leave, everyone on the raft breathed a sigh of relief. The woman who was supported by the boy even collapsed directly on the boy and almost fell with him.
The young man helped the woman sit back on the wooden bed. She gasped and asked, "What did they throw at me?"
A middle-aged man holding a piece of unwoven fabric in his hands, with several small sealed bags in the fabric, said in surprise: "It seems, it seems to be fine salt."
It is something they can use, cannot afford, and is not eye-catching.
The woman touched her abdomen, which still felt painful, and looked at the simple awning above her head. She smiled faintly and said, "I'm so lucky."
"Let's go, keep heading south. Avoid Hai City and head to the military bases in Nan City." The woman's chest rose and fell slightly. "Our family shouldn't die."
"Are we still following the original route?" Chu Buwen frowned and marked out all the areas on the map where the woman said mutant fish appeared, and then circled them all into a large area.
Qi City is not far from where they are now. If they follow the route they planned, they will be near Qi City tomorrow.
Since the group of mutant fish did not chase the fleeing people south, it is very likely that they will only move in polluted waters. It is not difficult for them to bypass that area, but it is not easy either.
Or they could go west and circle back inland. The risk was that if they did that, they wouldn't have enough fuel to make it all the way north to the capital.
Moreover, if you go north from the inland, you may not be able to take the water route later.
Since we can’t travel by water, slowing down the speed is not the most important thing.
The problem is that the north is probably in a state where the floods have just receded.
Before the rainy season arrived, the north had already become a desert.
After a flood, what remains is most likely either wet quicksand or swampland.
Of all the breathing creatures present, perhaps only the parrot and the sloth could make it alive.
Or go east and pass directly along the boundary between fresh and salt water.
According to the information they heard from the various caravans in the transit station, the tsunami had affected a very large area. No one could escape within a hundred kilometers to the north and south of Hai City, including where they were now.
They were currently some distance from the coastline, not directly at the forefront of the tsunami. High-rise buildings were already quite rare here, and if they were actually at the beach, directly facing the tsunami's impact, there would definitely be only a pile of ruins left.
The advantage of traveling through a pile of ruins is that they can walk in a straight line, and it is difficult to encounter survivors in the vicinity. It is also possible to travel at night with lights on.
If they gritted their teeth and hurried on, they might be able to travel 200 kilometers north in a day, which would be equivalent to the amount they had traveled in the previous four or five days.
However, the disadvantages are also obvious.
If they encounter any unexpected situation, they won’t know where to hide and will be in a dead end.
If the water flow was normal, Jiang Muyun would definitely lead the team eastward and north along the coastline.
But now that the rain was getting lighter and lighter, but the water was flowing faster and faster, she was tired of living and went to the beach.
Jiang Muyun and the others had worried looks on their faces, but Xiaolan and the others looked carefree. Dabai was even in the mood to squat on Chu Buwen's shoulder and wag his tail.
Jiang Muyun grabbed Dabai by the scruff of the neck and stared at Dabai for a while with an innocent look on his face.
"I'm wondering what's wrong." Jiang Muyun shook Dabai. "The woman's injuries look horrific, but they're all external. She survived for several days and there's no sign of poisoning."
Chu Buwen looked at Jiang Muyun: "You mean?"
Jiang Muyun handed Dabai to Chu Buwen and said, "Do you remember when we went to the river to fetch water and we ran into a rainstorm?"
Chu Buwen took Dabai and said, "Of course I remember. The wind was so strong that it almost blew us up into the sky, but these two guys were all thinking about the fish, and each one looked happier than the other."
Jiang Muyun gestured to Chu Buwen to look at the little sloth in the water, who was desperately trying to twist himself into a bow, and then pointed at the big white in his hand: "Look how happy they are now. Do they look familiar?"
Gao Liang and Zhou Fei next door seemed to be thinking deeply after hearing this.
Zhou Fei looked at his bald dog and said, "The woman wasn't poisoned to death, which proves that the poison of those fish isn't very strong. At least for the bald dogs, it has no effect. That's why they are just excited, not scared."
Jiang Muyun took the map from Chu Buwen, crossed out their original resting point for tonight, and set a new route.
"Let's take another route," Jiang Muyun said. "This road will pass by several hills. Judging from their height, only the tip of the hills can be seen outside. Few survivors would choose to stay in a place that could be flooded at any time."
"Whenever we come across an uninhabited hilltop, we stop there to add protective layers to the kayaks in preparation for crossing polluted waters."
Jiang Muyun looked at everyone and said, "Whether we go west or east, it's too risky to bypass such a large area. Anyway, the lazy ones aren't afraid of those mutant fish and might even use them as a snack. Why don't we just go straight through."
"Reinforce the boat and protect yourself from being bitten. This is definitely much safer than taking a detour."
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