Chapter 34
The weather is hot, food is expensive and rots quickly. What is even more frustrating is that the cockroaches in the house are becoming more and more rampant.
The situation is better for homes with marble floors. Ever since the photo of the netizen with wooden floors and his home full of cockroaches went viral, many people have posted similar photos. It is not an exaggeration at all. Once the floor is lifted, there is a nest of insects inside. The density is just like bees crawling on a hive. The scene is just like watching a science fiction movie about insect infestation.
As a result, pest control companies and bricklayers instantly became the most sought-after ones. Those decoration companies that went bankrupt one after another due to the closure due to the epidemic and the extremely hot weather have once again ushered in the peak of their business. Even if it is just changing a floor tile, it is a job that can make money. What's more, in the current weather, the price of dispatching workers to do such physical work is definitely not cheap, because there are not enough people, and there are too many customers who need to replace floor tiles to prevent insects. It has reached the point where even if they have money, they can't find anyone to do it.
Mu Nan looked at the news posted by netizens online about various items and food lost in the home due to cockroaches, and sighed: "Fortunately, our house has tiled floors."
Qin Huai smiled when he heard that. The Mu family used to have marble floors, but the boy was naughty and always liked to run around the house and throw toys around. Even though the teacher with a good temper lived downstairs, they couldn't just take advantage of him/her because he/she had a good temper and didn't say anything. Since they couldn't control Mu Nan from playing around at home, they had to replace all the floors in the house with marble.
But it’s a good thing that I changed it at that time, otherwise I would have to go through another trouble now.
But they didn't have to worry about it, but other families were not so lucky. The Zhang family, who had just returned, had a house that had been vacant for a year or two. They were not afraid of people living in it, but they were afraid of it being empty. But the house still had wooden floors installed.
Zhang Jianwen's grandson Zhang Zicong saw the news about cockroaches on the Internet and felt that there were cockroaches everywhere under the wooden floor at home. So he couldn't help but lift up a piece of floor that was slightly warped. When he lifted it up, the whole family went crazy because there was also a nest of cockroaches under their floor.
What made them even more suffocated and desperate was that they had only moved in a few days ago and had been busy packing up things from the house that had caught fire, so they hadn't put away the things they had moved in yet. They were all piled up in the living room. There was a lot of stuff in the house, and the cockroaches that had broken free from the seal on the floor were crawling all over the house and drilling into the piled up items. How could this not drive people crazy?
So several people in the Zhang family screamed and jumped, because there were too many cockroaches and they couldn't step on them. In addition, they didn't have any insecticide, so they had no other way to deal with it except to open the door and hide outside. Once the door was opened, the cockroaches in the house would naturally crawl out. Several people in the Zhang family screamed and jumped in the corridor. The neighbors next door heard such a big commotion outside, so of course they subconsciously opened the door to check the situation. Now, there were no cockroaches in the house, but now several of them ran in.
Qin Huai also came out to check the situation, but he did not open the door. Instead, he stood inside the security door and looked outside through the peephole. He saw the Zhang family jumping up and down and many cockroaches crawling on the ground. So he pushed Mu Nan, who also came out to check the situation, back home and said, "There are cockroaches outside. Go in and close the door tightly."
Mu Nan couldn't help but get goosebumps when he heard this: "There are cockroaches in the corridor? A lot of them?"
Qin Huai said: "It should have run away from Zhang's house. I don't know if his house has wooden floors, but judging from the number, it's probably."
As soon as Qin Huai finished speaking, Mu Nan, who was holding his phone, received a WeChat message. He clicked on it and saw that it was the group where he bought the membrane last time. Yu Zibai's account in the group sent a voice message. When he opened the voice message, it was Jian Chu's voice. Jian Chu shouted with panic and disgust: "Don't open the door, there are so many cockroaches outside!"
Apparently, Yu Zibai's family next door had opened their door, and several cockroaches ran in. Immediately afterwards, Dr. Xu sent another voice message. Although his tone sounded calm, he seemed to be enduring something: "You're too late."
Although Mu Nan felt that he shouldn't laugh at this time, he couldn't help but said, "There are cockroaches in their house."
It would be fine if you haven't seen or known about this thing, but if you know that several of them have run into your house and you don't find them and kill them, you will not be able to sleep well later. Who knows what they are hiding in the corner and gnawing on, whether they will crawl over your bed or your eating bowls and chopsticks, or even mate and reproduce in some corner of your room? Just thinking about it makes my scalp tingle.
Several people from the Zhang family were still jumping outside. The younger one was hiding here and there in resistance, while the older ones started hitting the cockroaches with everything they could, probably thinking that the fewer cockroaches they could kill, the better.
Of course, it is impossible for these cockroaches to just stand there and allow people to hit them. They will hide in dark places, so the cockroaches in the corridor soon crawled away along the safety stairs on both sides. But there were no more in the corridor, and there might still be some in Zhang's house. Zhang Zicong said with a look of resistance that he wanted to stay in a hotel and would never enter the house even if he was beaten to death.
Qin Huai looked through the peephole for a while. Because the anti-theft door outside their house was made very tightly, there was not even a gap for the big cockroaches to crawl in. So as long as the iron door was not opened, there was no need to worry about the cockroaches outside running in. Seeing that nothing serious happened, he went back into the house.
As soon as he entered the room, he saw Mu Nan sitting on the bed, hugging a pillow and smiling. He even waved at him and said, "Brother, listen to the next door. It seems that the sound insulation between our two houses is not very good. You couldn't hear the sound before because it was not loud enough." Sitting in the living room, they could all hear Jian Chu's voice next door, who was yelling and directing Yu Zibai to kill cockroaches. Just by listening to the excitement in his broken voice, one could imagine how chaotic their house was at the moment.
The two people next door were indeed feeling really screwed at the moment. They lived in the living room because of the air conditioning, and in order to prevent the cold air from escaping, the doors of the two rooms were always closed. They had seen all kinds of cockroaches outside before, so they were very careful. They picked up things inside and outside the house as high as possible and did not pile them on the ground to provide corners for cockroaches to hide. They would not open the kitchen and bathroom doors every day if possible, for fear that cockroaches would run out from there and pollute where they slept and lived.
But he didn't expect that his efforts to prevent the door from opening once were not enough. As soon as the door opened, Jian Chu saw several cockroaches running in. He quickly stepped on two of them to death, but the others disappeared in the blink of an eye.
At this moment, he and Yu Zibai were rummaging through the drawers and cabinets at home, even lifting the bed to look for cockroaches. If they couldn't find the cockroach, they couldn't sleep.
The situation on Dr. Xu's side was not much better. He just lived alone. Although he was a veterinarian, he also had some of the mysophobic habits of a doctor. His house was always very clean. When cockroaches started to run rampant, he brought back a lot of insecticides from the hospital and cleaned the house inside and out. Unexpectedly, opening the door once made all his previous efforts go to waste.
But what was a little better than Jian Chu's situation was that he lived in the bedroom. In order to keep the temperature in the bedroom, the door was always closed. In other words, he only needed to deal with the living room. Even if he couldn't find the cockroaches that ran in, as long as he closed the door tightly, he wouldn't have to worry about them running into the room. But even so, Dr. Xu still found a roll of tape, and planned to seal all the gaps in the door when he went to bed at night, regardless of whether he could find cockroaches or not!
A bunch of cockroaches caused tragedy for three families.
But it's not just the Zhang family's house that has wooden floors. Although not all houses with wooden floors will have dense swarms of cockroaches, the possibility is much greater than that of marble tiles. In addition, in an old building like theirs, it is inevitable that some low-quality people will throw objects from high places. Some people will throw their garbage into the patio because they are too lazy to go downstairs. Although the patio is cleaned almost every week, there is still a lot of garbage piled up. The more garbage, the more mosquitoes, rats and ants. The lower floors have been tortured before, and now cockroaches are inexplicably rampant, and they have become the worst-hit area.
There were so many insects that several children in the houses downstairs were bitten. Although cockroaches themselves do not contain any toxins, they carry too many viruses. One child developed severe allergies after being bitten, and because he was young, he almost could not be saved.
Given that cockroaches had once become a disaster, the municipal government began issuing documents to the street offices in various regions, asking each community to arrange for people to go to the city to get insecticides. Even if they could not eradicate the scourge, at least they could prevent the cockroaches from becoming so serious that it affected people's lives.
After carrying out pest control work in a community in a certain city, all the cockroach corpses were cleared out and piled up on the ground into a small hill. The sight of this made the scalps of many netizens numb. Many people found it strange. It was just a little higher temperature, so why were there suddenly so many cockroaches?
Some people speculate that this is because the earth's magnetic field is changing, but humans cannot feel this change for the time being. However, nature and insects have been affected. Therefore, the extreme climate and the mutation of pests all indicate that the earth is undergoing a drastic change at this moment.
The community has been carrying out pest control work for three consecutive days. A special notice was posted, and residents were notified of the pest control time several times a day in the group, so that everyone could avoid going out during this period.
The three consecutive days of poisoning have indeed played a big role. At least now people who go out for a walk and chat with others downstairs at night say that after killing the insects, they no longer see cockroaches crawling all over the floor when sitting outside. Although the entire community has carried out poisoning, some residents' homes may not be so easy to solve. What's more, because of the poisoning outside, those insects are running into people's homes more and more, so they still need to find an insecticide company. Some people hope that the community can come forward and help them find someone, and they can just pay directly. But now there are cockroaches everywhere, and the insecticide company has been overwhelmed with orders. Even if the community comes forward, it may not be able to find someone, so they have to come by themselves.
Some people come by themselves, but it makes life difficult for those who live on the same floor, such as the Zhang family.
Since the cockroach was hiding under the floor, all the floors should be lifted up so that the cockroaches have nowhere to hide. The Zhang family probably had good conditions and even had several sets of protective clothing. In order to avoid being crawled on by cockroaches, they pried the floor at home in protective clothing. Once the floor was pried, many cockroaches crawled everywhere, making it impossible for the two neighboring families to open the door. If it was just that they couldn't open the door, it wouldn't be a big problem, just try not to go out, but their kitchen window faces the patio, and cockroaches can run around unscrupulously along the wall. In addition, they are just tenants. The previous owner did not install a closed range hood, but only installed an exhaust fan on the stove window, so cockroaches ran into their home.
Although the doors and windows are tightly sealed to prevent the high temperature from coming in, it is still disgusting to see several cockroaches crawling on the balcony and the kitchen floor through the window. Moreover, the floor of the whole room was pried up over several days, so sometimes when they were waiting for the elevator in the corridor, cockroaches would crawl over their feet at high speed. This was too unbearable.
So Jian Chu, who could no longer bear it, went straight to the Zhang family, hoping that they would deal with the matter as soon as possible. Not to mention anything else, could you solve the problem within a day by prying open the floor so that they would suffer less? Or could you spray insecticide while prying it open? If there is no insecticide company to deal with it, you can just use insecticide to kill the cockroaches yourself. Kill as many as you can. It is better than prying open the floor and letting the cockroaches crawl everywhere.
Zhang Jianwen was a man who cared about his reputation. Even if others were negotiating with him and their words were not impolite, he would feel embarrassed when they pointed it out to him. So his tone was not very good: "It's easy to say. Go buy a bottle of insecticide and try it. If you can buy it, I'll pay double the price!"
Jian Chu was almost laughing at the other party: "You can't buy insecticide, so you just let other people's homes be full of insects? If you are really in trouble, you can go to the community. There are still some insecticides in the community. I saw that the residents downstairs got the medicine from the community..."
Before Jian Chu could finish his words, Zhang Jianwen said impatiently, "Do you think they can give it to you just because you want it? You have to queue up! If we can't get the medicine and kill the insects, then should we just not stay here? You pay for the hotel? You young people don't think before you speak or act. You really don't know any manners!"
With just these two sentences, Yu Zibai could almost figure out that the other party was not a reasonable and easy to get along with person, so he directly pulled Jian Chu back into the house.
Jian Chu stared at him angrily, "Why are you pulling me? That old man is really unreasonable! What do you mean I don't know manners? If I didn't know manners, I would have kicked the door the first time they caused cockroaches to break into our house! What the hell!"
Yu Zibai said helplessly, "Forget it. Insecticide is hard to buy now, even harder than masks before. It's normal that people can't buy it. We just need to close the doors and windows tightly. The community does need to apply, but I applied at the beginning. They said that there may be stock in the next two days. When the medicine is available, we will go and get some and clean the house inside and out."
Even though he was comforted, Jian Chu was still very angry. Couldn't he just speak nicely? He should at least say sorry. And he even said that he was impolite. What kind of person is he?
There were cockroaches crawling on the balcony of Jian Chu's family. Naturally, Mu Nan's family, who lived next door to them, would also be affected. However, their balcony was sealed, so the cockroaches that crawled over could only crawl outside the window. Mu Nan didn't notice this at first, but one day he suddenly wanted to remove the sunshade inside the house to see what was happening outside during the day, and he saw many cockroaches crawling on the window outside their balcony.
Because the temperature inside the house is low and there is a layer of insulation outside the glass, the cockroaches cannot get into the house. They probably want to find a cooler place, so they crawl in through the gaps in the shelter to avoid the scorching sun, but they also want to take advantage of the low temperature that penetrates into the window, so they simply use the area outside the window as their nest.
Seeing this scene, Mu Nan instantly performed a tenor performance on the spot.
Qin Huai was washing his face and brushing his teeth in the bathroom. When he heard Mu Nan's voice, he was so scared that he ran out of the bathroom holding his toothbrush. Seeing Mu Nan still jumping on the bed vigorously, he was relieved: "What's wrong?"
Mu Nan pointed at the window and said, "It's turning into a worm nest outside! It's so disgusting!"
Qin Huai brushed his teeth and said, "Don't move yet, let me handle it."
Mu Nan directly pulled open the curtains in the room. For convenience, he had installed a thin cotton rope on the outer film. The rope was always pressed on the gap of the window, and he could pull the cotton rope from inside the house at any time to pull up the outer insulation film. When Qin Huai came out of the bathroom, he saw Mu Nan struggling to pull the rope, muttering: "I'll burn you to death! The high temperature will burn you!"
Qin Huai stepped forward with a smile: "Don't let the cockroaches not die, but get yourself sunburned instead."
There was a news story not long ago. A child, about seven or eight years old, opened the curtains in the middle of the day when the adults were not paying attention. He wanted to look outside. It was not known whether the child had not seen the sun for a long time or he was stupid enough to look directly at the sun. When his family noticed his actions and hurriedly pulled down the sunshade, the child's eyes had turned white and he could not see anything. Although he felt a little better after a while, his eyes were still blurred. He was sent to the hospital for examination and found out that many people have suffered irreversible eye damage due to the stimulation of strong light, and some have even become blind.
Seeing Mu Nan trying to pull open the thick membrane on the outside, Qin Huai naturally stepped forward: "I'll do it, you stand back."
Mu Nan also thought of the strong light outside, so he quickly took out two pairs of sunglasses from the space and put one on Qin Huai: "Don't look at the sun later, just pull it up a little to drive away the cockroaches."
As soon as the membrane was pulled up, the instantaneous scorching heat made the cockroaches that loved the coolness flee in all directions. Soon all the cockroaches on their window glass had run away.
Mu Nan said: "They ran away today, but they may come back tomorrow. How come there are suddenly so many cockroaches?" In the previous life, there was no solution to the sudden increase in cockroaches. Later, the situation became worse and worse, and there were more and more rats, insects and the like. But at that time, people’s focus was no longer on the harm of those things, but whether they could be eaten. No one cared why these things became more and more. If they could be eaten, they would be food.
Qin Huai guessed: "Could it be because of the earthquake?"
Mu Nan was stunned: "You mean the abnormality of birds and animals before the big earthquake? But the earthquake will not happen for at least two months. Are those animals feeling uneasy now?"
Although Qin Huai didn't know, it was possible: "Maybe it's not necessarily an earthquake, but the climate conditions of the entire nature are changing, so all living things have become restless."
Mu Nan was too lazy to investigate further. He made sure that all the doors and windows in the house were covered before going to the bathroom to brush his teeth. It was dawn, the sun was out, and it was time for them to go to bed.
The power outages have eased slightly, and most people have adapted to a life without power for at least a few hours a day. However, as the temperature remains high, it has not rained in various regions for several months, the water level has dropped significantly, and water supply has become increasingly tight. It is said that some communities have been without water for nearly a week, and water trucks are arranged every day to supply water. Each person can only receive five liters of water per day. The water provided now is still enough. Although it cannot meet everyone's daily water expenses, at least there is something to drink and use, so they will not die of thirst, save a little, and even take a bath every two days.
Of course, this water is definitely not enough if it is also used to meet physiological needs. Therefore, the public toilets that were once provided to passers-by or tourists have become places for many people to meet their physiological needs. More people go there, but because there is no water to clean them in time, the environment inside is so bad that people have to take a detour even if they are ten meters away.
The situation in Mu Nan's area was slightly better, but water use was also restricted. Unlike electricity, electricity needs to be consumed continuously, so power outages can only be carried out periodically. However, water can be supplied in a certain period of time, so in order to relieve the pressure of water use, water was also provided periodically. From 12:00 to 1:00 every night, water would be supplied for an hour, and residents were asked to prepare water collection utensils at home and store enough water for one day's use.
Mu Nan stored a lot of water in his space, and he didn't even need to rely on containers to store water. He could gather the water into a ball, like a lake, but the water he put in that way could only be taken out with his hands. When he was confined at home and had no difficulty using water, Mu Nan would put a large storage box in the bathroom every day, and when it was full, he would reach out to collect a wave. He could not collect the storage box, but directly collect the water in it into the space. Although the space did not take up space, a storage box was a bit expensive. At first, he collected water in boxes, but later he really didn't have enough money to buy so many containers, so he tried to collect water directly, and he didn't expect it to work.
But even though there was a lot of water, he didn't dare to waste it, so after starting to limit the use of water, Mu Nan looked at Qin Huai and asked, "Do you want to use our cat litter?"
Qin Huai felt that it was not necessary for the time being. After all, they could still provide one hour of water every day, so he said, "Let's put it aside for now. Maybe we can trade cat litter with others in the future."
Mu Nan also felt a little embarrassed. If he was alone it would be fine, but now there were two of them, it would be a bit awkward. What's more, it really hasn't reached that point yet, so he temporarily gave up the idea and diligently stored water at the appointed time every day.
However, when the normal amount of water in the faucet decreased day by day and finally became a trickle, the pressure of dissatisfaction with water usage still broke out.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
