Chapter 62 Baijiu (Chinese liquor)
Lu An said that the pigs were actually long gone.
This was what Zhao Xuan heard from Lu An the day after Lao Dao left. At that time, she and Lu An were airing out the quilts. The sun was shining brightly, and the two of them had just washed and dried all the quilts and mattresses that Lao Dao had slept in, so that he could use them when he came back.
The two thin blankets that he used to cover himself and protect against the wind in front of his bed were also taken away and washed by Zhao Xuan, and the living room on the first floor was restored to its previous state of being completely open to the outside world.
Because they had a washing machine, washing large quilts was no longer a difficult task for them. Zhao Xuan and Lu An carried the quilts to the rooftop to air them out. Zhao Xuan was just shaking the quilt cover to smooth it out when he heard Lu An say this.
She paused, then poked her head out from behind the drying bedsheets, looked at Lu An who was also shaking out the mattress, and frowned as she asked, "Who told you that?"
Lu An didn't turn around to look at her: "I saw it with my own eyes."
Zhao Xuan had always known that Lu An was someone who could keep things to himself.
Since being with him, she had never experienced the joy of gossiping. She knew Lu An was tight-lipped, but she never expected him to be this tight-lipped!
The reason Lu An didn't tell her was that he was afraid Zhao Xuan would expose the truth in front of Lao Dao.
"What if you accidentally let it slip in front of me one day? Do you want him to go crazy?" That's how Lu An explained it.
He had originally decided that he would keep the secret for as long as Lao Dao stayed there, but Lao Dao left, which made the matter a paradox.
Old Dao left because of Zhu Zhu. He said he would come back after finding Zhu Zhu, but Zhu Zhu is already dead, which means that Old Dao will never find his daughter, and it also means that he will never come back.
At this point, Lu An felt that he shouldn't hide the truth from Zhao Xuan and let Zhao Xuan keep the hope that Lao Dao would come back.
Not only did Lu An know that Zhu Zhu was dead, but Lao Dao himself also knew.
In this apocalypse, too many people have lost their loved ones. Some, like him and Zhao Xuan, survived and lived brightly, while others, like Lao Dao, couldn't survive and went completely insane.
Lu An first met Lao Dao not at the camp, but at the very beginning of the outbreak of the great disease.
The vast city is in complete chaos, with frequent looting and arson incidents. Communications have been cut off, and many places are without water and electricity. Every night, in some dark corner of the city, people can be heard wailing and screaming like demons.
By then, Lu An had become able to calmly deal with the dead bodies that could appear at any time on street corners and alleys. He could pretend not to hear any fighting sounds coming from any alley or any cries for help coming from any passing window.
He wore several thick masks, a hat, carried a backpack on his chest, and held a bloodstained kukri in his hand as he walked through every corner of the city.
—At 1.88 meters tall, he was not the main target of the robbery. Evil people are the most likely to bully the weak and fear the strong. Even a small group of robbers would turn their attention to the weaker women and the elderly after seeing Lu An.
His parents and Zhao Xuan's parents had both passed away from the disease, and he was hiding Zhao Xuan in the small house they had bought together. The house was purchased with financial assistance from both sets of parents, and it was already furnished; they were just waiting for Zhao Xuan to graduate so they could get married and move in.
When the virus first spread in this coastal city, Lu An brought Zhao Xuan back to their small home from school. Then they experienced the city's collapse, starting with the lockdown of hospitals, then the entire city, and then the collapse of society. In a short period of time, the young people experienced the loss of their parents and friends... After that, communication and electricity were cut off, and Lu An belatedly realized that life might never be the same again.
Zhao Xuan was even more devastated. For a long time after her parents passed away, she was somewhat delirious. Sometimes she would stay in a corner for a whole day without eating, drinking, or sleeping. Fortunately, she was very quiet. Lu An boarded up all the windows in the house and locked Zhao Xuan in the house when he went out to find supplies.
At first, Lu An would go out during the day, but later, the survivors were not kind people, and supplies were running out, so Lu An had no choice but to go out at night.
Zhao Xuan was very well-behaved. Even when she cried, she would grit her teeth and cry silently. She was disheveled and looked like a broken doll, but she would also boil water for Lu An with scraps of wood when he came back, and she would cover him with a blanket when he was so tired that he fell into a deep sleep, and she would stand by his side with a weapon for self-defense.
Once, a robber was sweeping through the building. He saw that the doors and windows of this apartment were tightly sealed, so he guessed that someone was inside. There was a window in the apartment that opened onto the connecting corridor. The robber couldn't pry open the security door, so he tried to come in through the window. The window glass was broken. Zhao Xuan, who came running at the sound, bumped into the man. But she was not afraid. She turned around, grabbed a sharpened wooden stick, and poked it at the man's eyes!
The man covered his eyes and screamed as he fled downstairs, leaving only scattered bloodstains on the corridor floor.
Zhao Xuan took some wooden strips and repaired the window. Then he snuggled up next to Lu An. Lu An was so tired that he wasn't woken up by the noise. Zhao Xuan tucked him in, and he slept soundly.
In just a few days, the new building, which already had a low occupancy rate, became even more deserted and eerie. Some people died of illness, and others left with their families. Later, Lu An even wondered if there were only the two of them left in the building, as he felt the echo was terrifyingly loud every time he went down the stairs.
That was probably the fifth day of anarchy, and also the twenty-ninth day that Lu An and Zhao Xuan had been trapped in the city. There was no food left at home, and no matter how unwilling Lu An was, he had to go out in the dark.
His height and youth were his greatest advantages. He chose to walk on less crowded paths, and occasionally he would encounter small groups of three or five armed men. But after exchanging glances, they would silently walk past each other.
Not far away, lights flickered; they weren't lamplight, but the flames of a building engulfed in flames. The bright flames emitted thick smoke, like demons reveling within.
By then, Lu An no longer cared about his own life. He had witnessed too much death during this period and had become numb. That's how people are; when someone exudes an aura of recklessness, others are often more afraid of them, and he survived time and time again while searching for supplies.
Lu An had fought with some people who wanted to steal his supplies. He had stabbed and slashed people. He didn't know if those wounded people would die after fleeing in panic. His remaining sense of morality prevented him from robbing other people's supplies. The places he went to had basically been looted and had lost their owners.
The large shops and supermarkets in the city center had been looted, so Lu An could only head out to some small shops and wholesale warehouses on the outskirts of the city, where there should still be some food available.
He spent a long time making his way to the edge of the city, and it was extremely quiet along the way, with only occasional screams or loud noises of things being smashed coming from afar.
There were an unusually large number of corpses, of all kinds of ways they died and of all kinds of decomposition. Some were lying naked on the ground, being eaten by wild cats and dogs.
Lu An, wearing two masks, frowned as he stepped over the corpses. He was dressed in protective clothing and gloves, with his backpack held to his chest, a kukri in his hand, and a fruit knife tucked into his waistband.
As he walked, he wondered if he should take Zhao Xuan away from here.
Soon, this place will become a ruin littered with corpses. The enormous pollution from the corpses will not allow the living to continue to survive here.
After walking for more than two hours, the surrounding houses changed from high-rise buildings to low-rise houses.
Most of the roadside shops had been broken into, and some grocery stores were even worse. Lu An walked around, stopping frequently, searching for the supplies he needed among the messy shops. Some residential buildings had also been broken into, and he would go up to them. Some houses had half-open doors, indicating that they had been looted. Most of the houses contained corpses, or at the very least, walls covered in bloodstains. These scenes were terrifying at night, but Lu An went in as if he was used to it. If he was lucky, he could find some rice, salt, or snacks that hadn't gone moldy.
Tonight wasn't very smooth. He searched many stores but only found a few expired drinks, a bag of dried noodles, and a few bottles of liquor.
There was really nothing left to eat. Lu An thought that these few unopened bottles of strong liquor could at least be used as alcohol—he also had wounds, not serious, but healing very slowly.
Lu An did not rob households that already had owners, even if those households were full of the elderly, weak, sick, and disabled, which made the collection of supplies very uncertain.
In the early hours of the morning, he finally filled his backpack and prepared to head back.
He did not return the way he came; he thought that the new journey might bring new gains.
He walked along a river towards home. There was a wide pedestrian path along the riverbank, and no tall buildings were around, so he wouldn't be ambushed if he walked this way.
He heard crying along the way.
The crying wasn't actually loud, but the surroundings were so quiet that the sound came through very clearly. It was the voice of an adult man, suppressed and sorrowful, as he murmured: "Piggy, my piggy..."
Lu An had heard far too many cries of this kind during this period; they were the cries of someone who had lost a loved one. Lu An himself had cried like that too—just over ten days ago, when communication was still possible, he received the news that his parents had died from the virus.
Lu An slowed down immediately. Following the sound, he saw, in the light reflected from the water, a very strong man holding the body of a little girl, crying his heart out.
The little girl must have been dead for some time, as rigor mortis had already set in. Her body was being held by the man in a very unnatural position, with her hands stiffly outstretched and raised in mid-air.
The man, dressed in a dirty police uniform, was holding the girl in one arm and digging a hole with the other. He was digging with his bare hands and had already dug a small pit; he probably intended to bury the girl.
Lu An's heart instantly settled down. Like many others, even in the most chaotic times, he had an inexplicable trust in soldiers, police officers, and firefighters.
When the major disease first infected the city, there were many people like this who maintained order. However, the number of deaths was too high, and panic caused the city to fall. Those who worked hard to maintain the city's peace generally did not have a good ending in the turmoil.
Nowadays, unless you're a real police officer, no one dares to show their face in this uniform.
The policeman's crying was very clear, and so was Lu An's footsteps.
Just as Lu An approached, the man's crying stopped abruptly, and he turned precisely toward Lu An, asking warily, "Who's there?"
When he turned his head, Lu An saw the scar that extended from his face to his ear.
Lu An replied, "I was just passing by, I meant no harm." Although he knew the man before him was in deep sorrow, he still asked inappropriately, "Brother, are you a policeman? Do you have any news from outside? Is the government still planning to rescue us?"
The man paused, seemingly realizing that Lu An meant no harm. Instead of answering Lu An's question directly, he said, "This place is no good, you should run for your life..." He added halfway through his sentence, "The next city is no good either, I just came back from a mission there."
Lu An nodded. He didn't ask anything more. He unzipped his bag and took out two cotton masks he had sewn himself and a bag of biscuits. He placed these items not far from the man and said, "Thanks, brother. It's not much, don't mind." He got up to leave, but the man called him back.
"Hey bro, you got some liquor in your bag?" He noticed the exposed neck of a liquor bottle as Lu An rummaged through his backpack.
Lu An nodded.
"Can I have a bottle? I don't need any of these things, just give me a bottle of wine."
Lu An accepted the mask and biscuits as instructed, then took out a bottle of liquor and placed it on the ground not far from the man.
The man carefully put the little girl's body down from his arms, then squatted down to get the wine: "Thanks, brother." He unscrewed the bottle and was about to drink when he paused again and said in the direction Lu An had left: "Brother, you can go to the neighboring city of A. There's a scenic area there, and the government has a temporary outpost there. If you want to go, hurry up."
Lu An neither stopped nor replied, but he remembered the man's words clearly.
City A is an inconspicuous county-level city. Nowadays, people flee to big cities with better medical care. Most of the people going to City A are returning to their hometowns. Communication has been interrupted for a long time, and ordinary people probably don't know that there is a government station in the scenic area of City A.
That night, he and Zhao Xuan packed all their belongings and headed to City A.
They were lucky; they became the last batch of refugees to be taken in by the Xiao A City scenic area shelter without any major incidents. Later, the number of refugees arriving exceeded the shelter's capacity, and the shelter was attacked by refugees outside many times. Some people smeared the blood of infected people on the shelter's walls and threw clothes infected with the virus inside.
Their desperate measures were effective; the shelter fell, and they themselves had long since died of illness outside the shelter.
Lu An and Zhao Xuan escaped together again. They were actually very lucky. During the time they were taken in by the shelter, the country was in chaos. Human life was like bacteria in boiling water; once the water boiled, all the life inside was burned away.
They became one of the small group of survivors.
At this point, the world is paralyzed, technology grinds to a halt, and cities become giant tombs.
If it weren't for the policeman's advice that night, Lu An and Zhao Xuan would have died in that most turbulent moment. Lu An was always grateful to him.
Later, Lu An and Zhao Xuan wandered around and almost starved to death until they joined the camp to save their lives and met the person who had saved them again.
His name is Lao Dao, and he is a very righteous and straightforward good man.
Lu An recognized him at a glance because of his conspicuous scar, but Lao Dao did not recognize him, after all, he was wearing two masks that night and was wrapped up tightly.
He was always outside, riding his cool motorcycle, seemingly searching for something.
Later, someone told Lu An that Lao Dao was looking for her daughter, Zhu Zhu.
He was originally a retired veteran who became a patrol and special police officer. His wife passed away at the beginning of a major illness outbreak. Zhuzhu was his only relative. The world was in chaos, so he had to lock Zhuzhu in the house and go on missions by himself.
He would usually be gone for several days at a time, and the last time he returned, the door was broken open and the pig was gone.
When people talked about Lao Dao, their tone was numb. Who in this world hasn't lost loved ones? Many people in this camp have lost their entire families and are now all alone.
So let Lao Dao go look for her if he wants to—even though everyone knows that if a teenage girl goes missing, she's probably dead.
Everyone thought that Piggy was dead, and Lu An and Lao Dao knew it too, but Lu An also knew that Lao Dao had gone mad.
He did the most insane things with the most normal mental state.
He had to go mad like this to survive.
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