Chapter 75: Northern Plateau
Under everyone's gaze, Xu Tingfeng slowly looked at Chen Fa: "You have a good eye."
Chen Fa did not comment. She was not interested in such meaningless words and continued to ask, "Do you agree? If you agree, we can exchange."
The result was of course affirmative. After all, there were still several cars in their warehouse, all of which were driven out when they evacuated from Pincheng Town. There were also other off-road vehicles, but their configurations were not as good as the one that Chen Fa liked.
Moreover, for their large team, a bus is far more practical than an off-road vehicle. After all, the internal space of an off-road vehicle is not as good as that of a van. As for fuel, they only carry a small amount when they go out, but they actually have some reserves, so they can take the fuel in the car.
Finally, regarding maintenance and reinforcement, this was originally a factory, and there are more or less tools, steel facilities and parts. Reinforcement only takes a little of their time and manpower and is not difficult.
With this calculation, it seems that they are still the ones who got the better deal in this car change.
However, for the three of them, a well-modified and reinforced off-road vehicle is more practical, which is actually a win-win deal.
Xu Tingfeng thought about it and agreed.
On the other hand, Xu Jiechu pulled a long face and was unwilling to do so when he heard that his car was to be replaced. However, he had no choice and it was useless to protest. Chen Fa didn't even look at him.
After the car exchange agreement was reached, Xu Tingfeng continued with his previous material plan. After that, Lu Zheng mainly explained. He planned the approximate driving route and found several alternative routes. At the same time, based on the supplies brought back from Lucheng this time, he roughly set a time to go out.
Because the road conditions from Salt Lake to Youcheng are currently unknown, and the situation is changing every day. Even though they had speculated that they could exchange supplies in the south of Youcheng when there was internet, no one could guess what the situation would be like in the future.
So this time we can’t wait until the supplies are almost used up like before, we have to set out earlier, so the time is set for a week later.
After Lu Zheng finished speaking, Xu Tingfeng proposed another survival plan.
This plan actually originated from what Chen Yuezhen said before: Now that it rains every day, the salt lake may turn back into a freshwater lake.
It looks safe here now, but it is actually not a place to live for a long time. Due to the terrain, the entire Tianyan Salt Lake Scenic Area is a basin between the mountains. According to the topographic map they found in the factory office, the area of the Tianyan Salt Lake was originally only half of its current size.
This also means that the water level of this salt lake has been rising since the rainy weather began, and due to the terrain, the area of the lake has also been expanding.
Initially, the container houses were not actually that close to the lake, and they doubted that if they continued to stay there, the water from the salt lake would soon flood the container houses where they now lived.
It is said that it is better to prepare for a rainy day. They cannot wait until the lake floods before thinking of ways to evacuate.
Sooner or later they will not be able to stay here any longer and will have to find a new place to live.
Therefore, this trip to Youcheng by a new route was also to check if there were any suitable places to live along the way. The two plans did not conflict and could be carried out at the same time. As for Shu Fu and the other two, they did not force them to follow the action plan, but it would be better if they joined.
"Okay, help us reinforce the vehicle as soon as possible, and we'll leave together in seven days." Chen Fa nodded. They also bought a lot of drinking water this time, so they could stay here for a week without any problem. So she directly stated several reinforcement requirements for the off-road vehicle.
Seeing Shu Fu sitting next to him without saying anything, Xu Jiechu deliberately started to stir up trouble: "Hey, why does she make all the decisions on her own? Doesn't she even ask for your opinion?"
Shu Fu glanced at him and replied lazily: "Her opinion is my opinion."
Chen Fa glanced at Xu Jiechu and said to Xu Tingfeng, "Keep your people under control and make sure there are no problems with reinforcing the car. Come back to me to exchange the car keys after the inspection is completed."
The meeting ended and everyone went about their business.
Shu Fu turned to look for Lu Zheng, wanting to chat with him for a few more words, but obviously, apart from the extra memory that shouldn't exist in this world, he didn't have any more information to give her.
And this memory is fragmented and incomplete for him now, just like a few pictures that occasionally flash in his mind. Rather than being a memory, it is more like a picture in a dream to him.
“I’m sorry, do I make you feel troubled? I don’t know what happened, how could I confuse dreams and reality…” Lu Zheng’s expression today was very clear, without the chaotic and fragmented emotions of yesterday. Apparently, after a night, some of his confused memories had become logically consistent.
To Shu Fu, it was like a small wound on his body. The wound last night had healed after a night. If there was no external intervention, the wound would disappear soon.
The question now is, should she intervene, and how?
Not far away, Lu Ce was walking back and forth holding the tabby cat, and it was obvious that he also had something to say to her.
Shu Fu remembered that a long time ago, when she was still in Lou Yuncheng, Lu Ce once told her privately that he had a secret related to Lan Lan that even his brother didn't know, so she stretched out her hand to call him over.
Lu Ce is usually impatient, but at this moment he was hesitant, dividing two steps into three and taking them slowly.
Shu Fu glanced at Lu Zheng. Could it be that after so much time, Lu Zheng still didn't know the secret that Lu Ce mentioned?
She thought about it and told Lu Zheng that she wanted to talk to Lu Ce alone. Lu Zheng was always easy to talk to, so he didn't ask what it was. He just nodded and left, going to the modified car area at the other end of the warehouse.
"Do you have something to talk to me about?" Shu Fu walked up to Lu Ce and glanced at the tabby cat hiding in his coat. It had grown a lot bigger than before, but it still liked to stare at her. Whenever she appeared, its blue eyes would chase her.
"Um."
"Is it the thing you mentioned when I was still in Louyun City?"
Lu Ce's expression was tangled. He had said that deliberately because he wanted her to go to Pincheng to find them. In his opinion, the secret about Lan Lan was too shocking, and he didn't even dare to reveal it to his brother. Although he liked Shu Fu very much, she was an adult after all, and he didn't know whether he should say it when the words came to his lips...
Shu Fu waited patiently, but before Lu Ce could say anything, something happened on the other side of the warehouse.
**
The thin and long-faced man fainted when several people were preparing to reinforce the off-road vehicle according to Chen Fa's request.
Although the man with the long and thin face was timid and emotionally unstable, he was very good at modifying cars and was familiar with all the technical work related to cars. So even though he had bite wounds on both legs and had difficulty walking, he was kept behind to provide advice to the people who took action.
He had difficulty moving, so he just sat aside. Unexpectedly, he fell down silently, his face facing downwards, with a broken head. When he was turned over, his face was covered with blood.
Several people were startled, but then found that they couldn't wake him up no matter how hard they called him.
Shu Fu walked over and watched several people wiping his wounds to stop the bleeding while trying to wake him up, until someone noticed his body temperature and said that he was very hot, as if he had a fever.
When Shu Fu heard the word "fever", her heart skipped a beat.
The thin long face had a fever for two consecutive days. He woke up several times, but every time he coughed bitterly, tears and snot flowed, and he looked like he had a bad cold. He was single, had no friends or relatives, so the big guy and his friends were currently taking care of him. They also gave him antipyretics and cold medicine, but the effect was not good.
Especially the fever, which would occasionally go down a little, but would go up again after a few hours, repeating over and over again and causing great torment to the person.
All the symptoms were matched one by one. Chen Fa and Chen Yuezhen told Shu Fu that the person with the long and thin face might have that strange disease. However, they still didn't know the cause of the disease.
"Could it be because of the bite and infection?" Chen Fa speculated and answered himself, "But besides him, I was also bitten, and Xu Tingfeng was also bitten, and his wound was even more serious. Why is he fine now?"
As she spoke, she raised her hand to check. Perhaps because of good dressing and maintenance, the wound on her hand had completely healed, leaving only the scar.
"Well, you and Xu Jiechu have both been stabbed by the female fish's tail spines, but you are both fine." Shu Fu nodded. If the strange fish was really the cause of this strange disease, why was only the thin and long face in trouble?
"There must be other reasons." Chen Yuezhen stood in front of the door of the container house. She had opened a crack in the door and was looking through the crack at the group of container houses in the rain in front of the house. "If he didn't get sick because of the bite of the strange fish, then that means he was already sick before that day, but he just didn't show any symptoms. This means that he could have gotten sick in Lucheng or here."
here?
Salt Lake Scenic Area?
Other townspeople in the Salt Lake Scenic Area soon learned that Slender-faced Man was sick. Everyone was worried at first. After all, he was a member of the team going out to look for supplies. Although he was thin and not as strong as the guy with braids and the big guy, it was not easy to find a few people who were able and willing to work among the remaining people.
Although the conditions in the container house are simple, it is still a safe place to escape from the world compared to the outside world. There is also water and electricity here. Many people get used to living there and don’t want to go out anymore.
When most people retreat, those who are willing to take the initiative to step forward and take risks to go outside to find food and supplies will always have a little halo around them.
So in the first one or two days, everyone was very concerned about Thin Man's condition. Some townspeople would bring some food and visit him in the container house where Thin Man lived. When they saw that he looked so sick, they wondered why he didn't get better after taking the medicine.
Later, because the condition showed no improvement, and the big guy and his friends said that medicine was in short supply and they were afraid that everyone would be infected with the cold, the others stopped going after hearing that.
During this period, after Xu Tingfeng talked with Lu Zheng, he met Chen Fa alone and asked him some questions. When he left, his face was very solemn.
On the evening of the fifth day, someone went to visit the thin man alone.
She was a young girl in the town named Xiaoyi. Xiaoyi was a single-parent family. Her father was caught in a mudslide during the evacuation and both he and his car fell off the cliff and disappeared.
Xiaoyi jumped out of the car, but she also rolled down the cliff and almost fell off. At the critical moment, other people rushed forward to rescue her, and finally Xu Tingfeng grabbed her hand and pulled her up. But her father and all the supplies he carried were gone along with the car. Skinny liked her before, and he had been taking good care of her since that time. He found all the food and clothing for her.
The thin guy is not good-looking and did not have a proper job before the turbulent times. He had pursued her several times in the past but she had rejected him. Now he goes out frequently for her and brings her some extra things she needs every time he comes back.
Although Xiaoyi accepted his kindness, she still had no feelings for him. She liked calm and steady men like Xu Tingfeng, and Xu Tingfeng had a good-looking face.
Later, somehow, Shouzi found out that she liked Xu Tingfeng. At that time, Shouzi already regarded her as his girlfriend. He didn't dare to ask Xiaoyi, but went to find Xu Tingfeng, and had a conflict with him because of this.
Xu Tingfeng was only thinking about how to live with everyone, and never paid attention to the relationship. He couldn't find Xiaoyi to explain it clearly, and directly alienated her unilaterally. When Xiaoyi noticed Xu Tingfeng's indifference and found out the reason, she realized that she had become a fickle woman in Xu Tingfeng's heart.
Since then, she began to keep her distance from Skinny, and no longer took the extra things he brought for her, and only took one share of supplies like everyone else. So after Skinny came back from his injury, she never saw him, until she heard that he had a fever for several days and hadn't recovered. After thinking about it, she cooked some rice porridge and came to visit him.
In addition, she also planned to return the key that the other party had previously given her along with the supplies.
At that time, the thin girl showed her affection unilaterally and imitated being romantic. She wrote a note and wrapped the key in it. The main meaning of her note was "my home is your home". If he was not around and she needed anything, she could go directly to his room to get it.
Xiaoyi only discovered this key later. He had never used it before, so he wanted to bring it back to him.
The thin man's door was locked, and she didn't think much about it, so she took out the key and opened the door.
However, not long after she entered, she ran out in fright. She was so panicked that she even forgot to wear a raincoat. She screamed all the way through the entire container house complex and ran towards her own house.
Her voice alarmed other people, and someone came out to stop her and asked her what happened.
Xiaoyi turned pale, and stammered that the skinny guy seemed to have turned into a zombie, which was too scary...
Zombies! ?
To most of the young and middle-aged people in the town, zombies are not a strange word. Movies and TV series have been played eight hundred times. They naturally know what they are and why they appear.
Maybe people wouldn’t have believed it in the past, but now there are so many natural disasters and man-made tragedies. I heard from those who went out this time that strange fish have appeared in Lucheng that will jump onto the shore and attack people. So the appearance of zombies at this time does not seem so incredible.
If it really is a zombie, it would be terrible. If the news spreads from one person to ten people, and from ten to a hundred people, it could wipe out all the survivors in the entire Salt Lake Scenic Area overnight. They must go and check it out.
Therefore, when Xu Tingfeng and others received the news, the townspeople had already come out together and surrounded the container house where the thin man lived.
The mayor brought a young man with a stick in to check the situation. The thin man lying on the bed did not respond when they called him. His head shook left and right, and when he turned around, he revealed a pair of scary eyes full of red bloodshot, but his eyes were dull and the whole person looked dull, as if he was completely unrecognizable.
As he shook his head, the thin blanket covering him slid down, revealing large areas of skin on his chin, neck, and chest.
Gray spots appeared on the normal human skin, which looked like scabs. Each scab was very small and densely stacked together, looking like gray scales, which made people feel physically uncomfortable...
The mayor and the young man fled out tumbling. The young man reacted quickly and even closed the door with his backhand. He immediately shouted for someone to use that thing to block the door.
The others waiting outside were all shocked: "Did they really turn into zombies?"
The young man also had a lot of experience watching zombie movies. He nodded continuously at this moment: "It should be in the process of transformation. Once the transformation is complete, it will start to bite and attack people! Lock the door first, and then find a way to deal with him!"
"Who dares to deal with him!" Xu Tingfeng appeared at this time. They were originally modifying the cars in the warehouse. In addition to the off-road vehicles, the buses also needed to have their windows repaired and be reinforced. Because there were only a few days left before the agreed time to go out, everyone went to help. The big guy even locked the door when he left, but he didn't expect an accident to happen.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com