Chapter 18 Suicheng
Shu Fu remembered that someone wanted to stay at her house before, and when he kept knocking on the door, the lady next door responded. So he turned off the camping light and went over to open the door.
She only opened the door a crack and stood in the crack, blocking the view inside. As soon as the door opened, the aroma of fried cakes came from the corridor. She didn't know who was cooking, so she asked the other party, "What's the matter?"
She opened the door even smaller than last time, but the other party didn't care. He smiled and said to her, "It's like this, sister, you live alone, right? We're going to evacuate at this time tomorrow. I wanted to ask if you want to join us..."
Probably because she was busy in the afternoon, she didn't have time to check out some of the messages in the residents' group. Those were messages from people who evacuated first. If anyone asked, they would talk about it if they wanted to.
The first thing to pay attention to is the evacuation order. Do not fight or rush, and queue up spontaneously to get on the boat. Those who disrupt order and cause trouble will be directly sent to the end of the line or recorded. When they arrive at the resettlement point, they will naturally be taken away individually for processing.
Secondly, most of the evacuation speedboats are small, and can accommodate eight more people in addition to the rescue personnel. The people on the same speedboat are naturally organized into a group. Later, when they go to the official resettlement point and arrange the rest area, they will be numbered according to this team, which is convenient for counting the order of the next progressive evacuation. The same is true when they arrive at the next official resettlement point, and so on.
So to put it simply, as long as you get on the same speedboat during the evacuation, you will be a team for a period of time in the future, and you will be facing each other day and night.
After those who evacuated later received the news from those who evacuated first, they began to form teams spontaneously. After all, in addition to family members, there are always people with whom one has a good relationship in a community. Rather than being with people they are not familiar with, it is natural for them to be together and take care of each other along the way.
Huang Jun and Zhong Li, who were staying at the other party's house, already knew them, so naturally they wanted to be together. Zhong Li was smart. She recommended a family of three on the fourth floor who were taciturn and didn't like to cause trouble, and successfully pulled the other party into the team. There were three men, three women and a teenager, and now there was still one person missing, so the other party thought of the young girl who lived next door.
The other party introduced themselves. Her name was Fang Erwen and her husband was Wang Qian. Shu Fu had moved in a while ago and this was the first time she had talked to her for such a long time.
Fang Xiwen was pretty, and she was straightforward and didn't like beating around the bush. She also had helped her to get rid of the person knocking on the door last time, so she had a good impression of her. If Shu Fu was really just an ordinary disaster victim, she might have agreed.
But now, she could only refuse.
The other party obviously didn't expect her to refuse. After all, the ratio of men to women in this team was just right, and they were neighbors. She didn't understand why Shu Fu refused.
"...Why don't you want to? You don't want to leave? Do you think the water won't flood to the fifth floor?" After all, Fang Xiwen had thought of this before. "I know your windows have been processed and are very sturdy. It's safe to stay in the house, but everyone has left. It will be unsafe for you to stay here sooner or later... Besides, instead of teaming up with someone you don't know, why not join us... I know you live alone and are very alert, but we are not bad people. Didn't we help you out before?"
"Thank you, sorry, you should find someone else." Shu Fu had no way to explain and didn't want to continue chatting. After saying this politely, she closed the door.
"Hey? You little girl, I haven't said anything yet--" Fang Xiwen's voice was trapped outside the door.
She was still saying something, and her husband seemed to pull her back, but she retorted a few words to him, but he finally pulled her back.
Shu Fu thought the matter was over, but she didn't expect that an hour later, someone knocked on the door again. This time, the young couple who were staying next door also came over, but Fang Xiwen was the first one to come. Her husband Wang Qian didn't come. The young couple stood behind her.
The other party first introduced the young couple, and then talked about the same thing, during which she emphasized the other family of three in their group, saying that she actually knew them, the one with a cat on the fourth floor. They were all familiar neighbors, and it would be great to be able to team up and walk together.
From what he said, it was all about taking good care of her, but he did not mention the reason why he had come to her house twice to persuade her to join the team - because of the conflicts and past behavior of Huang Jun and Zhong Li's family and the residents on the first floor, the other residents in the building did not want to team up with the four of them if they had a choice.
They searched for a long time and found that the team was missing one person, which might affect the order of their boarding the speedboat tomorrow. They might have to go around to other buildings to wait for other people who were alone to join them. What if the other person was strong and had a bad temper or was difficult to get along with...
It wasn't a big deal, but Zhong Li always liked to calculate these things. For such a major evacuation event, she wanted to plan every aspect and didn't want to suffer any loss, so she finally pushed Fang Xiwen over.
In fact, all these words and rhetoric came from Zhong Li's mouth, but Shu Fu was Fang Xiwen's neighbor, so Zhong Li said that she had to speak first.
Shu Fu opened the door in the same way as before. He did not open the iron gate, but only opened a crack in the gate. Because it was late at night, his whole body was trapped in the pitch-black crack of the door, his face was blurred and only one eye was visible.
She didn't really listen to what Fang Xiwen said. She always felt that the couple's standing posture was a little strange, especially Zhong Li, who always had half of her body hidden behind Huang Jun and Fang Xiwen.
Shu Fu thought of what happened when the couple had a conflict with the family on the first floor. She sneered, "Hehe," then reached out and closed the door. No matter Fang Xiwen's surprised calls or knocks on the door, she ignored them.
Outside the door, Huang Jun turned around and whispered with some complaint: "I told you not to take pictures with your phone, she must have noticed!"
Zhong Li put away the phone half hidden in her sleeve with some embarrassment and turned off the recording function, but she refused to admit it: "How is it possible? It's so dark here, and she doesn't have a candle inside. It's pitch black and you are in front of her, how could she find out? I think she just has a weird temper... She lives in such a big house by herself, and she even reinforced the windows like a turtle shell. I haven't seen her come out these past few days, and she doesn't even show her face when she opens the door. She either has social phobia or psychological problems..."
In her opinion, in modern society, evidence must be kept for everything you do, especially after she tasted the sweetness of doing so last time.
They went to the other party to discuss, what if the other party saw that they actually needed her help and took the opportunity to make some demands? For example, give up a certain share of the backpack so that she could bring more personal belongings...
In short, she has to be careful in such situations and record the process. If anything goes wrong, she can just post it online to expose her!
Although Fang Xiwen felt that it was not nice to say that to others, Zhong Li was her friend after all. In addition, Shu Fu had closed the door in front of her twice, which made her feel a little uncomfortable. She did not blame Zhong Li too much and turned around and said, "Okay, this family will definitely not agree. You should confirm it with the one on the fourth floor. I heard them arguing before."
"Could it be because of the cat again?" Zhong Li obviously knew something about it.
"Well, his son wanted to take the cat with him, but his parents didn't want to, especially his mother, who was strongly against it. She kept complaining to me behind her son's back for a long time..." Fang Xiwen recalled, her expression becoming a little strange, "She seemed to say that the cat was quite evil. In the middle of the night, it would squat in front of the computer to surf the Internet, and it would open the door and go out by itself. She also said something wrong, even though it had happened several times..."
"What?" Zhong Li was puzzled.
"I don't know. He didn't finish. But these words sound mysterious and nonsense. His son definitely doesn't believe them."
"Can you believe this? This sounds like an excuse for not wanting to bring the baby. Let's go downstairs now, or else that family will cause trouble."
…
The sound in the corridor gradually faded away. Inside the door, Shu Fu, who was still standing there, turned on the camping light again.
**
In the evening of the next day, the large-scale evacuation of Ping'an Community began.
Shu Fu lay in front of the tempered glass of the south balcony, quietly watching the evacuation scene below.
The people next door never came to visit again, and she didn't know whether they complained in private or not. She also had no idea whether they managed to get other people to join the team.
At this stage, evacuation is the top priority. The other party can only do some small actions at most. More excessive actions are impossible. After all, we are still hoping to successfully board the rescue team's assault boat.
So when she found out the other party was taking secret photos yesterday, she neither got angry nor cursed, she just closed the door and ended it.
However, before evening, when several people next door left with their backpacks to line up downstairs, Fang Xiwen fell behind alone and came to her door again.
The other party didn't know whether she was inside or not, so he knocked on the door gently. After waiting for a while and seeing no response, he said, "I'm sorry about yesterday," and left and went downstairs.
Shu Fu didn't know why Fang Xiwen came to apologize. After all, they were not really familiar with each other. Zhong Li was her friend, and she was not the one who took the photos. But this apology still made her feel a little relieved.
In addition to their community, several other communities nearby were evacuated at about the same time.
Under the expectant gaze of the crowd, assault boats broke through the rain curtain and quickly sailed away with people loaded on board. Probably to enable them to flexibly navigate around the city, the assault boats were not large, but there were a lot of them. This was not something that could be achieved by the rescue forces of Suicheng alone. It must be external reinforcements.
Some people whose cell phones still had power sat down on the boat and began to use their cell phones in waterproof bags to record this once-in-a-century disaster evacuation scene: the flooded city, the turbid water with floating construction waste, the gloomy sky, the heavy rain that continued to fall, the speedboats breaking through the waves, the people on the boats wearing raincoats and life jackets, and the familiar buildings that gradually disappeared from the boats...
In just two weeks, the city has become bizarre and the familiar streets are now submerged under water.
There are still many people in some of the surrounding high-rise buildings. The buildings they are in are taller, and it is not time to arrange a large-scale evacuation yet.
Even through the glass, the people on the speedboat could feel the envy and vague uneasiness in those eyes.
Even though they knew they would evacuate, as long as they were still there for a day, they would still feel uneasy when watching people in other districts evacuate, fearing that they would be left behind by the large group being transferred.
The evacuation of Ping'an Community and nearby areas lasted from dusk until late at night. The entire community was basically empty. After two days, the water level had reached the houses of residents on the third floor, reaching an unprecedented and terrifying depth.
Except for a very few people who were 100% sure that there would be other ships to pick them up and take them to other resettlement sites, other residents in the area, even if they wanted to go to other resettlement sites, eventually boarded the rescue team's speedboat.
On the morning of the fourth day, Shu Fu set the alarm and woke up very early. In addition to the electricity, the gas and water in the house were also cut off one after another.
She took out hot water from the space to wash up, then took out a bowl of beef ramen and enjoyed her last leisurely and free meal time in recent times.
After breakfast, she changed into warm, lightweight, sweat-wicking base clothes, put on an easy-to-remove fleece coat on her upper body, and put on a warm waterproof jacket on the outside. She also changed her shoes into professional non-slip and waterproof boots.
Then, she put all the things left outside the house, even large items like air conditioners and mattresses, into the bracelet space, and then took out the waterproof backpack and the hand-held boat bag containing the self-inflating boat that had been packed long ago.
The items in the waterproof backpack were all selected by her. It contained a small outdoor portable first aid kit, a portable electric kettle, and a large-capacity foldable water bottle filled with purified water.
The electric kettle is foldable, so as long as the location is suitable, you can boil water at any time, and it is also possible to cook instant noodles. The foldable water bottle has an opaque body, so you can't see the remaining liquid and color inside. It is also light in weight, so it is more discreet than using a mineral water bottle.
In addition, there are several buckets of cup noodles, several bags of vacuum-topped rice, a bag of ham sausage, a bag of dried fruits and vegetables, a can of chocolate beans, canned granular candy, and a bottle of vitamin C effervescent tablets. These are all ready to eat after opening the bag, and the cup noodles only need to be poured with hot water and wait for a few minutes, so they are not complicated to eat.
In terms of supplies, I brought a box of disposable underwear, a bag of compressed towels, a single sleeping bag to sleep in at night, a large-capacity power bank with a full charge, a raincoat and some disposable tableware.
These are things that are placed in plain sight. Some of them take up a lot of space and cannot be taken out from the space temporarily, but most of them are not very important, so it doesn’t matter even if they are really lost.
She checked the house one last time to make sure nothing was left behind. Then she checked all the windows and made sure they were closed before sending a message to Lu Zheng.
After a while, the other party replied. Shu Fu put on the safety life jacket distributed by the rescue team earlier over the waterproof jacket, pulled up the big hood of the jacket, put on the backpack, carried the boat bag and walked out of the house.
She carefully locked both doors and walked along the quiet corridor to the stairwell. After a few days, the stairwell became extremely dirty, with all kinds of garbage piled in the corners and daily necessities that the residents could not take away scattered all over the floor.
The last few steps leading to the third floor from the fourth floor had already been submerged by the muddy water. She took out two waterproof shoe covers that were longer than her knees from her jacket pocket and added another layer of equipment to her waterproof boots.
The water on the third floor had reached below her knees. The shoe covers could barely block it, but she needed to be careful when walking. If she moved too much, it would stir up waves and the shoe covers would get water into them.
She walked slowly to the corridor on the third floor, picked up the boat bag in the rain, and according to the instructions she had seen before, threw the boat bag into the water outside the corridor fence, and then pulled the rope outside the boat bag hard.
After the boat bag was opened, the steel cylinder inside quickly inflated the rubber boat. In just over twenty seconds, a small hexagonal rubber boat was inflated, and a triangular tent automatically arched up on the top.
Compared with a normal six-person inflatable boat, this boat is smaller and has fewer internal accessories, but it has all the basics, such as a repair tool bag, oars, flashlights, smoke signals, whistles, warm gear, a small first aid kit... It's just extremely simplified and is a low-end version of a sea lifeboat.
Shu Fu secured the inflatable boat with a rope, carefully climbed over the fence, and landed on the boat little by little.
She first threw her backpack into the inflatable boat tent, then folded up the boat bag floating on the water and threw it into the tent, untied the rope, put it on the inflatable boat, then found the oars in the tent, assembled them, and began to row hard.
It was still raining outside, but compared to the previous rainstorm, the rain was not heavy at this moment, and most importantly, the wind was not strong. The smaller the wind and waves, the better for traveling, which was why she decisively contacted the Lu Zheng brothers and decided to set off immediately.
Shu Fu had paddled a canoe when traveling before. The inflatable boat was light and much less labor-intensive than a canoe, but the inflatable boat was hexagonal, and she was alone on the boat, so she needed to paddle left and right to control the direction. So she circled around twice at first, and after she got used to the feel of the boat, she was able to successfully bypass the building and head towards a building behind.
When the inflatable boat reached between two buildings, she heard a subtle yet familiar movement in the rain. She turned her head and saw a familiar little figure on the windowsill of a household on the third floor on the south side of the building where she lived.
The blue-eyed tabby cat was curled up on the narrow windowsill, all wet, as if trapped. It couldn't get out, and didn't dare to go into the water. It squatted in the rain and shivered.
I don’t know if it was because he saw her, but at this moment he was calling out to her in a low voice, looking so pitiful.
Shu Fu: ...
She immediately pulled down the brim of her windbreaker's hood, hoping to pretend she didn't see it and just paddle away.
But when she cut a little, the cat's cry became shrill, and it meowed non-stop in her direction.
Shu Fu sighed, moved the inflatable boat close to the south wall, and pointed to an empty space on the inflatable boat: "Just jump off and I'll take you away."
A moment later, the cat was wrapped in a thick towel and placed in the corner of the inflatable boat tent.
"We agreed that you can't pee or poop anywhere in the tent, otherwise we might get lost on the road at any time!" Shu Fu tapped the wet little head of the tabby cat. It meowed and huddled obediently in the towel.
Although she didn't want to keep it, she could take this opportunity to go to the library and take it to a safe place.
Brother Lu Zheng had already been waiting in front of the window of the stairwell on the third floor of the building behind. When he saw her coming, Lu Ce smiled under his rain hat and waved at her vigorously: "Sister Fu Fu!"
Shu Fu also waved at him. Everyone else in the community had evacuated, and the two of them could wait for another twelve hours without asking her where she got the rubber boat. In the end, they trusted her.
Lu Zheng took the rope she threw and helped her move the inflatable boat closer to the window. Then the two brothers threw their backpacks onto the boat first, and then carefully boarded the inflatable boat one after the other.
Lu Ce saw the cat in the tent at a glance and shouted in surprise: "Why is there a cat?"
"Well, I just rescued him. This stupid guy was squatting on the windowsill of the outer wall and was trapped."
"Sister Fu Fu, you are such a nice person!" Lu Ce said from the bottom of his heart.
Shu Fu: ...
In fact, she pretended not to see it...
She heard everything Fang Xiwen said yesterday. She felt creepy after hearing it. She always felt that the mother of the boy on the fourth floor might not be talking nonsense.
After all, there are time travelers and reborn people, so it’s not surprising to have another weird cat - or a cat-like creature.
The tent in front of the inflatable boat was open, and two-thirds of the boat was covered by the tent, leaving only the front third for rowing. Once the two brothers got on, Shu Fu had no choice but to give up the rowing position and go into the tent.
However, Lu Zheng had not thought of letting her row the boat alone. It was raining heavily outside, and there were only two oars, which was just enough for the two of them to do the work. Lu Zheng even thoughtfully closed the curtain of the tent to prevent the heavy rain from entering too quickly and causing water to accumulate in the tent.
However, the tent and its surroundings share the same hull, so water accumulation is inevitable; it is only a matter of time.
Shu Fu was not idle either. She sat in the tent, turned on the phone in the waterproof bag hanging around her neck, called up the map she had downloaded before, turned on the navigation mode, and said to the two of them, "Let's go."
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