When a stampede over medicines occurred at Shishan Hospital, Cheng Suming received base supplies delivered to him by government workers led by Yang Wentao.
Si Nan heard the noise and came out. Seeing him holding a bag, he came over and asked, "What supplies were distributed today?"
"Four sweet potatoes, one potato, and half a bottle of water." Cheng Suming showed her what was in the bag.
The sweet potatoes were only the size of a fist, the potatoes were a little green, and the water was a little turbid. This amount of supplies would take two days to last, because the Shishan base now distributes supplies every two days.
Other families complained bitterly, thinking that these supplies were not enough to fill their stomachs, but Sinan thought that in the current drought situation where there had been no rain for nearly four months, it was quite good that the Shishan Base could distribute supplies to everyone for free.
If you place it in other private bases, who will provide you with supplies and who will care about your life or death?
"The sweet potatoes distributed by the base are a little small, and they seem to be yellow-hearted. We can steam them and have them for breakfast later." Si Nan handed the cup he was preparing to scoop water for brushing teeth to Cheng Su Ming: "Just pour the water distributed by the base for me to brush my teeth."
Most people in the base don’t even have enough water to drink, let alone the luxury of using water to brush their teeth, wash their faces, or even take a shower.
Si Nan has a space that stores a large amount of water, so there is no shortage of water. Usually, she asks Cheng Su Ming to pour the water distributed by the base into the water tank in the kitchen, which is used for washing vegetables, washing dishes, washing pots, boiling water for bathing, etc.
All the water they drink comes from the clean water stored in the space.
Cheng Suming unscrewed the bottle cap as he was told and poured the water in the bottle into her cup.
As soon as the cup was filled with water, Si Nan noticed some tiny white particles floating in the cup. She took a closer look and found that the squirming things were actually several tiny worms. She was immediately shocked: "Su Ming, there are worms in this water!"
"Bugs?" Cheng Suming immediately took the cup of water from her hand and took a closer look at it. He then looked at the bottle of water in his hand and made a judgment: "It's a parasite."
After the military at the Shishan Base has pumped out the water, it will be put into large buckets, which will be pushed to the areas under their respective responsibility by government staff from each street area of the base. They will scoop water according to a quota from every household, and each household will prepare their own tools for filling the water.
Cheng Suming is a doctor and has a bit of a mysophobia. He keeps his house very clean inside and out, and even washes the bottles used to hold water distributed at the base every day.
He was very sure that there would be no bugs in his water bottle. If there were bugs, it could only be that there was something wrong with the water bucket at the base or with the water.
Si Nan poured out the water in the cup with disgust and asked Cheng Su Ming: "What harm will these parasites cause to the human body if they are consumed?"
"I don't know yet." Cheng Suming looked solemnly at the water bottle in his hand, with the white bugs wriggling in the remaining water, and took out his mobile phone to call Yang Wentao.
Yang Wentao, Sheng Youqing, and three other staff members from their street were using a cart to pull four buckets of water and six sacks of sweet potatoes and potatoes to deliver supplies door to door.
Hearing the phone ring, Yang Wentao picked up the phone and heard Cheng Suming asking on the other end: "Where did the water come from this time?"
Yang Wentao thought for a moment and said, "The groundwater has basically dried up. We only get a small amount of water from the wells every day. The military should distribute the water that was previously stored in the reservoirs."
Cheng Suming was silent for a while and said, "There are parasites in the water. Don't release the water for now. I will call Yan Hongyi and Brigade Commander Zhou right away to see if there are parasites in the reservoir."
The call was hung up, and Yang Wentao held the phone with a frown.
"Brother Yang, what's wrong?" Sheng Youqing noticed that something was wrong with him and asked.
Yang Wentao said: "Brother Cheng said there are parasites in the water, so he asked us not to distribute water to everyone for the time being."
"No way?" Three staff members nearby came over and said, "Why don't we see any parasites in the water?"
"You are wearing protective clothing and your vision is blocked, so how can you see it?" Sheng Youqing lifted the anti-dust tape covering the buckets one by one, lay down in front of the buckets and looked down carefully. Sure enough, he saw tiny white bugs twisting in each bucket, which were impossible to see without paying close attention.
She was startled, pointed at the four large buckets on the cart and said, "There really are bugs. If you don't believe me, go and see for yourself!"
Three staff members leaned over to look, each with a different look on their face.
A staff member said: "What's the big deal? I saw it two days ago when I was delivering water to the industrial zone. Water has been there for a long time and there are more or less mosquito larvae in it. Drinking it won't kill you. People in the industrial zone drank it for two days without any problems."
Another person said, "You can't say that. Water with bugs in it will make anyone feel sick. The one who called Brother Yang was Doctor Cheng. He told us not to distribute the water. There must be something wrong with the bugs in the water."
"So what if there are problems? There is not much water left in the base's underground wells. We need water to survive. If we don't drink water, we will die of thirst. Most of the people in our area have used up all the water. There are only a few families left. Those people must have drank the newly distributed water."
This sentence reminded Yang Wentao and Sheng Youqing, and they called their families almost at the same time and asked them not to drink the water distributed by the base today.
After receiving a call from Cheng Suming, Brigade Commander Zhou immediately sent someone to report to the military headquarters and set up an investigation team to go to the four large reservoirs covering an area of nearly 500 acres in the military headquarters to investigate the insects in the water.
After a series of microscopic examinations, monitoring, and testing, they finally came to the conclusion that this parasite was most likely a parasite similar to the dragon worm.
This conclusion immediately caused panic among people. Everyone may not know what kind of insect the dragon nematode is, but many people have seen a science fiction movie called "The Dragon Worm Invasion" before the end of the world.
It tells the story of a place in a foreign country where mutated iron wire worms were artificially released into the water source for research. As a result, the people in the film became thirsty after being infected and wanted to drink water madly until they drank to death.
The N79 infectious disease has not been resolved yet, and now the dragon worm has emerged. Everyone is extremely panicked and is cursing the Ishiyama military government for inaction, wanting to kill them all.
The people who had been quarantined obediently could no longer sit still and ran out to find anthelmintics.
Seeing that violence and chaos were about to break out at the base, the authoritative doctors and experts at the Shishan Military Hospital had to make a scientific clarification on the internal website, telling everyone that the dragon worm is different from the iron nematode. Although the dragon worm will also become thirsty, it does not have much impact on human organs.
They mainly appear in tropical and subtropical regions and rarely appear in my country. Although it is not known how the dragon worm larvae suddenly appeared in the Shishan base, after this kind of worm enters the human body, it takes up to a year for it to grow into an adult worm.
After growing into adults, if there is a lack of water, the skin of the parasite will feel burning. If the parasite is immersed in water, the adult insects will become active and crawl out from the soles of the skin. Apart from being a bit disgusting, there is no major harm.
The method to cure them is also very simple. No matter whether they are in the larval stage or the adult stage, as long as you immerse your whole body in water, they will poke their heads out from under the skin. If you see them at this time, pull them out and apply some anti-inflammatory medicine and everything will be fine.
Of course, this is just a normal range statement. The current natural disaster environment is harsh. The dragon nematodes originally found in the tropics have appeared in the Stone Mountain Base. It is not yet known whether they were released artificially or whether the dragon nematodes have appeared all over the world. It is also unknown whether the dragon nematodes have mutated.
The experts just reminded everyone at the base not to panic. The Shishan base will filter the water in the reservoir to kill insects. The water that has been distributed should not be drunk anymore. The Shishan base will produce anthelmintics in the shortest time possible. Please be patient and wait.
If you experience symptoms such as fever, nausea, pain in both lower limbs, rash, blisters, ulcers, etc., these are just normal conditions for dragon worm parasitism, so don't panic.
That being said, on the day the water was distributed, many people were so thirsty that they didn't even boil the water and just shared it among the family and drank a lot of it.
Although experts have repeatedly emphasized that dragon worms will not cause any serious harm to the human body, people who drank the water felt strange when they thought about the parasites in their bodies. They asked everywhere if there was any anthelmintic or if they could buy more water so that the whole family could take turns soaking in the water to see if they could soak out the dragon worms.
For a time, people at the Shishan base were in a panic, and Mao Pingzhen and her daughter were even more panicked, because the water in Sinan's well was running out. They used to fetch a bucket of water every other day, but now they only had half a bucket of water in three days.
There were seven people in their family, and half a bucket of water was not enough for three days. Mao Pingzhen wanted to ask Sinan for more water, but Liu Dalin scolded her for being ungrateful. So on the day of the water distribution, they didn't even boil water and just drank it.
Si Yufang was also nervous. She always remembered what Si Nan had told her, that the water sent from the base should be placed in a container to settle for a day before being boiled and cooled before drinking, in order to avoid infection with parasites.
But on the morning of the water distribution, the boiled water at home was all drunk. Her eldest grandson Zhuangzhuang said he was thirsty, and before she could react, he drank one-third of the water distributed by the base in the morning.
After several days, Zhuangzhuang developed a rash and fever. Si Yufang was panicking and called Si Nan crying, "Xiao Nan, your nephew drank the water with parasites and seems to have the guinea worm disease that the experts mentioned. What should we do?"
Si Nan was also surprised on the other end of the phone. Isn't the growth period of guinea worm one year? How come the parasitic symptoms appeared so early? Could it be that the guinea worm has mutated?
She comforted Si Yufang: "Aunt, don't worry, I have some anthelmintics in stock. I'll ask Yang Wentao to bring them to you later. You can give them to Zhuangzhuang according to the instructions. It shouldn't be a big deal."
She took out a bunch of anthelmintics from the space, and told Cheng Suming about the symptoms that Mao Pingzhen and her daughter, and Zhuangzhuang, suffered after being infected with dragon worms, and asked Cheng Suming which medicine was suitable for them.
Cheng Suming picked out a few boxes of medicine and said, "These medicines are all good at repelling insects. Just take them according to the instructions."
Si Nan called Yang Wentao and asked him to come and get the medicine and help give it to Si Yufang and the others.
When Mao Pingzhen saw the medicine, she took out several kinds of anthelmintic tablets and stuffed them into her mouth without even reading the instructions.
Liu Yue saw this and stopped her: "Mom, these anthelmintics are usually taken in two tablets, and they are taken at night before going to bed. Why did you take eight tablets at once, and take them during the day? Aren't you afraid that your body can't handle it?"
"Is there anything I can't eat? I always take as much medicine as I want. If I don't take a few more pills, how can my body get better quickly?"
Mao Pingzhen swallowed all the medicine in her mouth with the clean well water that Sinan had just given her. Then she slowly said to Liu Yue, "I have always taken medicine like this before, and I have never had any problems with my body."
Liu Yue couldn't stop her, she was angry and anxious: "Mom, I've told you so many times that medicine is poisonous. You must take medicine according to the doctor's instructions. You should take as many pills as the doctor says. How can you take as many as you want? You always take medicine according to your own ideas. Why do you need the doctor's instructions? What if something happens to you?"
"What can happen?" Mao Pingzhen glared at her angrily: "It's just taking anthelmintic medicine, don't curse me."
As a result, within less than an hour, Mao Pingzhen felt unwell. First, she had diarrhea and kept running to the toilet at least seven or eight times. Her face turned blue. Then she felt nauseous, had stomach pain, vomited and had diarrhea. She rolled on the ground holding her stomach in pain.
"Mom, are you okay? Don't scare us." Seeing that her face was pale from pain, Liu Ming and Liu Yue hurried over to help her up from the ground.
Mao Pingzhen cried in their arms, "It hurts so much, I feel like someone is scraping my intestines and stomach with a knife, it hurts so much!"
Liu Yue was so scared that she burst into tears. She immediately took Mao Pingzhen's phone number and called Si Nan, asking her to ask Cheng Suming to come over and take a look.
Cheng Suming took Si Nan's phone and said calmly, "She took too much medicine too quickly, which may have caused the dragon worms in her stomach to become disordered and run around in her internal organs. It would be useless for me to go there. Give her some warm salt water to drink to replenish her water. Once she gets over the pain and the parasites in her stomach are expelled, she'll be fine."
The Liu Yue sisters had no choice but to do as they were told.
That night, the Liu family didn't sleep. They helped Mao Pingzhen go to the toilet to relieve her diarrhea, gave her salt water to drink, and then she started vomiting, so they had to get a bucket to catch it for her...
The whole family was tormented all night. When it was almost dawn, Mao Pingzhen vomited again. Liu Yue patted her back and said with tears in her eyes, "Mom, hold on. I hope nothing happens to you."
Liu Ming, who was standing by, waited for her to finish vomiting, wiped her mouth with tissue, and was about to give her some water to moisten her throat when he suddenly saw a group of long, thin white worms like pine needles in the bucket. He screamed in shock, "Oh my god, is this a guinea worm?"
Liu Yue leaned over to take a look, then turned her head away immediately, feeling extremely disgusted. "Sister, didn't the Shishan military experts say that it takes a year for the dragon worm to grow? How come the worms in this bucket are at least three or four centimeters long? They're growing too fast!"
What Liu Ming was more concerned about was that Cheng Suming clearly said that the dragon worm would be fine if it was pulled out, so why did her mother spit it out of her mouth!
If she had taken the deworming pills, would those guinea pigs have come out of her mouth? That would be disgusting!
For this reason, she specially checked the toilet to see if there were any worms when Mao Pingzhen went to the toilet again, and sure enough, there were.
Fortunately, Mao Pingzhen's frequency of vomiting and diarrhea gradually decreased after dawn. On the second day, he recovered, was able to eat and drink, and his complexion gradually became rosy. On the third day, he could talk and walk normally. I think the dragon worms in his body should have been expelled.
Seeing that Mao Pingzhen only took three days to cure the disease after taking so many anthelmintics, the two sisters Liu Ming and Liu Yue made up their minds to get their husbands and children involved, and had the whole family take the pills according to the instructions.
They took the medicine strictly according to the instructions, but they didn't know if it was because the dragon worms in their bodies grew too fast, so they went through the same process as Mao Pingzhen. After taking the medicine, they rolled on the ground in pain in their internal organs. They tossed and turned for two days, and then they pulled out worms that were longer than Mao Pingzhen's. The whole family was scared.
Si Yufang waited and watched for several days. When she heard Liu Yue and the others say that the dragon worms in their bodies were growing rapidly, she was afraid that something unexpected would happen if she delayed any further, so she quickly gave the medicine to Zhuangzhuang.
Other people in the base were not as lucky as them. They had anthelmintics to take. Some people chose to believe the experts and ignore the parasites in their bodies for the time being.
Some people save water and fill half a bucket with water. The whole family takes turns soaking in the water to soak out the dragon nematodes and clean them up.
Even more people are at a loss, living in anxiety every day, not knowing when these days will end.
Si Nan asked Cheng Su Ming: "Isn't it a year for the guinea worm to grow? It's only been over a week and the guinea worm has grown to half its adult size in the human body. Is it a mutation?"
Cheng Suming said: "It's not surprising. The environment is changing, and it's very likely that these parasites will mutate."
Si Nan pulled out a stool and sat opposite him: "Should we tell Yan Hongyi and the others about this news?"
"Yes, we should let the military know about this and make some preparations in advance." Cheng Suming put down the electric shaver, took out his mobile phone and called Yan Hongyi.
Si Nan watched him hang up the phone, shook his head and said, "The weather is so dry now, there is a lack of water, medicinal herbs cannot be grown, and all kinds of anthelmintics cannot be produced. It's useless even if the military knows about the mutation of the dragon nematode."
Cheng Suming picked up the electric razor and continued shaving: "We know about the mutation of the dragon worm. Let's tell them so that they can be mentally prepared."
Si Nan muttered, "In fact, it doesn't matter if there is no medicine. As long as it rains, the problem at hand can be solved. After a heavy rain, everyone will be soaked in the rain water. The dragon nematodes will be attracted by the water and will crawl out from the skin and soles of the feet. We can just tear them off and let them die in the sun. But I don't know when it will rain. It's almost New Year's Day."
Speaking of this, Cheng Suming asked: "Today is the New Year, you are not putting up couplets, but making delicious food to celebrate the festival?"
In previous years, no matter where he was, as long as it was Chinese New Year, Si Nan would put up couplets and get up early in the morning to cook all kinds of delicious dishes in the kitchen in preparation for the New Year.
There was no movement today, and Cheng Suming felt a little strange.
"What are we doing? This year everyone is under lockdown and quarantined at home. What's the point of just the two of us celebrating the holidays?"
Sinan lazily took out some previously prepared meals from the space, such as spicy cold chicken, braised lion head, spicy rabbit with young ginger, sausage and bacon, some butcher's meat, stewed meat, vegetables, etc.
She divided all the food into five portions, put them into four cloth bags, and said to Cheng Suming, "After Youqing and the others get off work, I'll ask him and Yang Wentao to help deliver all the food to my uncle and aunt, and also get some melon seeds, peanuts, candies, and snacks. We can't be together for the New Year this year, so it's good to have a good meal at our respective homes."
Sheng Youqing received her message and came to get food. She saw her putting boxes of food into four large bags. In addition to food, there were also many snacks in the bags. Sheng Youqing carried the bags with difficulty and said, "Xiaonan, I feel like you are like Santa Claus, handing out gifts to relatives and friends on holidays. I love you so much."
Many people at the Shishan Base could not fill their stomachs with the supplies distributed by the base. They had been isolated and unable to go out to find food. All the crops outside had died, and there was no way to get food. Many people began to pay attention to rats.
In order to prevent the spread of infectious diseases, the Shishan base previously organized a large number of personnel to roam the streets, sewers, and ditches from morning to night, chasing, intercepting, and killing rats, cockroaches, and mosquitoes.
In the first two months, the dense piles of rat carcasses were higher than the mountain, and were towed outside the base by military vehicles and burned in trucks.
At the time, someone said, "What a pity! These mice are quite fat. If you skin them, they would have two taels of meat. If you wash these mice and eat them, they would taste pretty good."
Someone said with disdain: "Mice are full of bacteria, and you don't feel disgusted when you eat mouse meat. Aren't you afraid of getting sick?"
"When you are starving to death, you will realize that you want to eat rat meat regardless of whether it contains bacteria or not." The previous man answered meaningfully.
By now, what that person said has been proven true. Everyone is starving to death, so it is good enough to have something to eat. Who would complain about the variety of food?
Many families no longer block their doors and windows, but leave them open, waiting for the mice to come in and then the whole family will catch them.
However, the rats in the Shishan base were basically captured and killed. Even if everyone opened the doors and windows, rats were rarely seen.
In order to give their children more food, many adults had to peel tree bark and grass roots and eat Guanyin soil to fill their stomachs, creating a scene of suffering from hunger, famine and years.
In this situation, Si Nan, who has space, took out so many delicious meals and distributed them to relatives and friends. In Sheng Youqing's eyes, he is comparable to Santa Claus.
Si Nan pushed her and Yang Wentao out the door and said, "Hurry up and leave with your things. You are carrying so many bags. People who don't know the truth might think you are abusing your power and taking advantage of your job to embezzle supplies. Walk faster so that no one can find you."
"We are upright and have nothing to fear from being criticized. Who should be afraid of being seen by others?" Sheng Youqing muttered a few words. After all, food was in short supply in the Shishan base and everyone was hungry. If someone saw her carrying something in her hands, they would ask her where the food came from, and she would have a hard time explaining.
She didn't waste any more words and put her own food away first, then followed Yang Wentao to deliver it to Liu Dalin and his family.
Around seven o'clock in the evening, Si Nan and Cheng Su Ming officially started to eat the fifth New Year's Eve dinner after the apocalypse.
The table was filled with various delicious dishes. Si Nan also opened a bottle of red wine and sat in the room on the second floor with Cheng Su Ming, chatting while watching the programs on TV.
A new weather program was being broadcast on TV. A male host was interviewing two heavyweight climate experts, asking them when it would rain and when the drought would end.
The two experts expressed their opinions and came to the same conclusion that the weather today is different from before, and the weather monitored by the meteorological stations that the capital has painstakingly maintained is always capricious and not necessarily accurate.
The two called on people everywhere who could watch their TV programs to be prepared for the next natural disaster at any time.
Seeing this, Si Nan suddenly said, "Su Ming, why don't we dig the empty room on the left side of the first floor into a cellar."
"Why do you suddenly want to dig a cellar?" Cheng Suming asked after putting down his chopsticks.
"Didn't I exchange all my points for food a few months ago? I lied to the logistics department that I had a cellar at home that could store as much food as I wanted? I was thinking that if an outsider came to our house and found that there was no cellar, I would have a hard time explaining it. In addition, it hasn't rained for four months. As the old saying goes, a long drought is likely to be caused by something. I'm worried that the next natural disaster will come unexpectedly. If it's a thunderstorm or typhoon, we can build a cellar so that we can hide there."
"...That makes sense. Now that we are all in quarantine, we can't ask anyone to come over to dig a cellar for us. Don't you have an electric drill in your space? Starting tomorrow, we can dig it ourselves."
"good."
The author has something to say:
Do you have any relatives or elders around you who take medicine indiscriminately? There are quite a lot of them around me. For example, my aunt took Sanhuang tablets. The instructions said to take four pills, but she took eight, and no amount of persuasion could stop her.
She kept saying that I had been eating like this all my life and I had never died. I was speechless.
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