Chapter 142
At four in the morning, in Anju Residential Area, there were no streetlights, only the faint light from cell phones shining through the corridor of Building 3, like the last breath of a dying person.
The sound of banging on the door came from Unit 5, mixed with a woman's cries and a man's roars, shattering in the frigid air.
This is the seventh day without water and food, the fifth day since the water pipes froze and burst, and the last bit of food stored in the community was sold out yesterday.
Old Wang, from apartment 101 in building 3, was leaning against the roller shutter of his supermarket with his back against it, clutching a sharpened steel pipe in his hand.
The sound of crowbars prying at the door grew closer. "Old Wang! Open the door! Hand over the rest of the instant noodles! Or we'll smash your door!" It was Zhao Qiang from the neighborhood, the young man who used to come to buy cigarettes. Now his voice was filled with the ferocity of someone starving.
Old Wang's throat tightened. There were only two boxes of instant noodles left in the supermarket, which were meant for his bedridden wife. He shouted in a hoarse voice, "That's all! That's really all! They were all taken the day before yesterday!"
"Bullshit! I saw you moving things through the back door yesterday!" Suddenly, the crowbar got stuck in the gap of the roller shutter door, and with a sharp tug, the roller shutter door was torn open with a "whoosh." Zhao Qiang squeezed in with three other men who were also pale and thin. The light from the cell phone shone on the shelves—empty, with only a corner of a cardboard box hidden in the corner showing.
"There it is!" Zhao Qiang, with his sharp eyes, rushed over to grab it. Old Wang tried to stop him with a steel pipe in hand, but one of the men grabbed him around the waist. Zhao Qiang turned around and punched Old Wang in the eye socket, and blood flowed down instantly.
The cardboard box was torn open, and two boxes of instant noodles rolled on the ground. Zhao Qiang grabbed the instant noodle box and ran out. The rest of the people were still rummaging through the shelves, not even letting go of the empty plastic bags on the shelves.
Old Wang lay on the ground, watching his wife crawl out of the inner room, weakly calling "water...water." He crawled over to help her, but found that her hands were already frozen purple and there was blood at the corner of her mouth—in the chaos just now, someone had knocked over the thermos on the table, and boiling water had splashed on her legs, but because it was too cold, even the redness and swelling from the burns hadn't shown.
"My dear wife..." Old Wang's cries were drowned out by the chaos in the stairwell, and then shouts of "Someone is stealing water! In Building 5!" came from afar.
In the hallway on the third floor of Building 5, Aunt Li was tightly clutching a water jug, the jug still covered in ice shards.
She had collected this ice from the well in the community three days ago and stored it in the storage room in the stairwell. Her neighbor, Brother Liu, just saw it.
"Aunt Li, give me half a bucket of water! My child is dying of thirst!" Brother Liu reached out to grab it, but Aunt Li dodged backward. The bucket hit the wall, spilling some water on the ground, which instantly froze.
"No! I spent half the night chiseling this out! Can't you chisel it yourself?" Aunt Li's voice trembled, and she gripped the bucket in her arms even tighter.
"The ice in the well has all been stolen! You won't give me any, huh?" Brother Liu's eyes reddened, and he suddenly lunged forward, grabbing Aunt Li's neck with both hands. "If my child dies of thirst, you won't live either!"
Aunt Li kicked the ground, and the bucket fell to the ground with a clatter, rolling to the corner of the stairwell. Brother Liu let go and chased after the bucket. Aunt Li coughed, clutching her neck, but then saw Brother Liu pick up the bucket, turn around, and lunge at her again, still clutching a piece of broken brick in his hand—
"You know too much! Keeping you around is just another way to steal water!" A brick smashed into Aunt Li's head, and blood splattered on the icy ground like a strange flower. Brother Liu, carrying the water bucket, ran away without looking back, leaving Aunt Li's body to slowly grow cold.
The door to room 302 in building 2 was kicked open.
When Zhang Qiang rushed in with two men, Lin's wife was holding her five-year-old son, huddled on the sofa, with half a hard, dry steamed bun on the coffee table—her last bit of food.
"Hand over the steamed buns! And the water!" Zhang Qiang held a knife to Lin Ge's neck. Lin Ge had just gotten home from get off work and hadn't even had time to take off his coat. His face was blue from the cold, but he stood firmly in front of his wife and children, pleading, "The steamed buns are yours! The water... we really have no water left! The pipes have been frozen for days!"
"No water? I don't believe it!" One of the men climbed into the kitchen, turned on the tap, and after running it for a while, only ice crystals fell out. He cursed, then snatched the steamed bun from the coffee table, broke it into three pieces, and gave one to Zhang Qiang and the other man. The child saw the bun being taken away...
He burst into tears: "Mommy! I'm hungry!" Zhang Qiang kicked the sofa in frustration: "What are you crying for! If you cry again, I'll throw you out to freeze!"
Aunt Lin quickly covered the child's mouth, her tears falling onto the child's clothes, where they instantly turned cold.
After finishing his steamed bun, Zhang Qiang rummaged through the wardrobe again, but finding nothing to eat, he left cursing. Before leaving, he kicked Brother Lin: "Next time you find food, hand it over voluntarily, or don't blame us for being impolite!" The door was not closed, and a cold wind blew in. Brother Lin, holding his wife and children, heard someone crying in the hallway again, but he didn't even have the strength to stand up and close the door.
The basement of Building 7 was even darker. Sister Zhang huddled in a corner piled with clutter, a hot water bottle tucked into her arms—filled with melted snow water from yesterday, barely kept from freezing inside her down jacket.
She was single and had been hiding here since the neighborhood became chaotic. She didn't dare go out during the day and only dared to sneak out at night to find snow water. But just now, she heard the basement door being pushed open, and the footsteps of two men getting closer and closer. "I just saw a woman hide in here, maybe she has some food!" They were thugs from the neighborhood who used to follow Zhao Qiang around.
Sister Zhang held her breath and shrank even closer into the pile of clutter, but accidentally knocked over a cardboard box with a loud crash. "There it is!" Footsteps rushed over, and a phone light shone on her face. One of the men smiled, "It really is a woman, and she's quite pretty..." Sister Zhang tried to run, but one man grabbed her arm, and another held down her leg. "Let go of me! What are you doing!"
She struggled, her nails digging into the man's hand, drawing blood. The man, however, became even more excited: "Pretty intense! I'm hungry, let's play around a bit before finding something to eat!"
Zhang Jie's cries were muffled, her down jacket was torn, and cold wind rushed into her clothes. She looked at the basement ceiling, which was covered with frost flowers, just like her heart at that moment.
From afar came the sound of a loudspeaker at the entrance of the residential area. Someone was shouting, "I heard from the shortwave that things are even worse in the US! Cities are on fire! Shoot anyone who tries to loot food!" But the sound meant nothing to her anymore—in this extremely cold apocalypse, she was barely able to maintain her dignity to survive.
The chaos in the neighborhood continues: someone beat someone to death over half a bottle of iced tea, and the body lies on the roadside, with no one caring;
Some people break into other people's refrigerators, and even if there is only frozen cabbage inside, they will fight tooth and nail to get it.
An elderly man sat on a stone bench downstairs, clutching an empty sack of grain, slowly freezing, his eyes still fixed on the direction of the supermarket. A cold wind blew, stirring up bits of grain and bloodstains on the ground; the distant sky was a hazy gray, devoid of any light.
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