Chapter 6: Transforming the garbage dump.
There were abandoned cars parked everywhere on the road, and beautiful clothes and jewelry were displayed in the shops. These expensive things were now not as valuable as the food in Shu Lan's suitcase, so she didn't even look at them.
She found an unlocked shared bike, put her suitcase on the back seat, and carefully rode out of the city.
Shu Lan couldn't drive, so she couldn't go far. She didn't know which city was safe. She planned to find a secluded place in Ci'an to stay for a few months and see what would happen in her belly.
So many people died in Ci'an, and there are no survivors. The zombies nearby will not be attracted here, and there will not be another huge zombie wave like the one in the past few days.
Fortunately, Shu Lan did not encounter any moving people while searching for a hiding place. However, she saw many corpses, all exposed in broad daylight. At first, Shu Lan would look away to avoid seeing the images that should be blurred. Later, after seeing so many times, she became numb.
Before dark, she passed by a suburban landfill, stopped, and looked quietly at the pile of garbage that was like a small mountain and no one had cleaned it up.
The smell is strong enough and the location is remote enough that both zombies and humans will stay away.
The most important thing is that there is a shack inside that was built by some waste recycler, and it is connected to water pipes and electrical wires. Of course, these two things are no longer usable, which only means that people have lived in the shack before and can live in it in the future.
She thought for a long time, looked up at the gradually darkening sky, and walked in with her bicycle up and down. Suddenly, a huge black mass emerged from the garbage dump. It was so vague that she couldn't see what it was. It was as big as a rabbit and rushed towards Shu Lan's calf.
Oh shit!
Shu Lan was so frightened that her body trembled, and she blurted out a Chinese quintessence. She picked up the fish-killing knife in the front basket and stabbed it into the black ball, nailing it to the ground.
“Squeak! Squeak!”
She looked carefully and saw that it had a pointed beak, long whiskers and black eyes, and was a rat.
This is what happens to animals infected with the virus. Their body size becomes twice their normal size. Mice become like rabbits, rabbits become like dogs, and dogs become like lions.
But at the same time, they would lose all reason like zombies and only attack their own kind. The rat didn't mean to bite her, it just passed by Shu Lan.
She pulled out her fish-killing knife and quickly stabbed the rat several times until its legs stopped kicking, only then did she breathe a sigh of relief.
Soon, a second big rat crawled past Shu Lan's eyes, and there seemed to be a swaying black shadow in the distance.
A gust of wind blew by, and goose bumps appeared on Shu Lan's arms. It was not because of the cold, but because of the disgusting feeling.
Does she really want to live here and live with the mutant rats day and night?
The retreat drum sounded quietly, and Shu Lan couldn't move her feet as she looked at the small shack twenty meters away.
It is dirty, messy, and smelly here, with mutant rats and crawling cockroaches.
The city is clean, but there might be zombies passing by after dark.
After a while, Shu Lan sighed deeply.
Compared to zombies that can even tear down burglar bars with their bare hands, big rats that can be killed easily make people feel safer.
She held the fish-killing knife in her hand the whole time, piercing the black mass that rushed towards her. The rat blood dyed the knife deep red. Dead rats lay sprawled on the ground wherever she passed.
She reached the end, pushed open the rusty iron gate, gripped the knife tightly, and walked in carefully.
The small courtyard inside was very clean and the smell was not strong. It was surrounded by stacked cardboard, cans and plastic bottles that had been flattened and tied with nets. There was an old tricycle next to it with a wooden board hanging on it with the words "Recycled Waste" written on it.
Her eyes lit up. This tricycle was very useful. It made it convenient for her to go to the city to "purchase goods."
There was a lock on the door, and a bunch of keys hung on the lock. Inside the house were tables, chairs, beds, and kitchen utensils. There were signs of human life everywhere, but no one was there.
Shu Lan guessed that the owner might have been bitten outside and turned into a zombie and went to another place.
The electric light didn't work, but the tap water worked intermittently. Shu Lan quickly cleaned the bucket and connected it. To her surprise, there was a large bag of candles and a lighter in the drawer, so she didn't have to move in the dark.
The water from the pipe was a bit turbid, so she cut the mosquito net of the original owner and filtered the dirty water. She didn't dare drink it, so she planned to boil it into water to use for wiping her body.
Shu Lan was a little happy. The situation here was much better than she had expected.
She locked the door and windows, changed into the clothes she had picked up, chewed a piece of instant noodles, drank half a bottle of water, turned over the original owner's sheets and pillowcases, lay down, closed her eyes, and ended the day's running around.
In the following time, Shu Lan was busy thinking about how to make this small nest in the garbage dump more livable.
She gave herself the code name "Rat Killer King" because in the first half of the month, she killed no less than twenty rats every day. Fortunately, these mutant rats did not run as fast as ordinary rats, so she could kill them with every chop.
She piled up the corpses of the mutant rats and set them on fire. The rats' fur smelled bad when burned, but after the fur was burned clean, the bad smell was mixed with a faint aroma of burnt meat.
Shu Lan hadn't tasted meat for more than a year, and her eyes widened many times.
I’m greedy...but I definitely can’t eat it!
After about a month, the sightings of rats gradually became rare. The rats that had been infected with the virus had lost the desire to reproduce. After she killed all the remaining first-generation mutant rats, the species was basically extinct.
Sometimes Shu Lan thought that the reason why this era was called the end of the world might be because after everyone turned into zombies, the zombies lost their targets of attack, no longer reproduced new life, and wandered around all day until all their energy was exhausted and they collapsed. In the end, they would probably become extinct like rats in a garbage dump.
Before new zombies arrived in Ci'an, Shu Lan would ride her tricycle into the city every day, enter the houses with open doors, load all the supplies that might be needed for life into the truck bed, and transport them to the garbage dump again and again.
Whenever she saw a moving shadow or heard any movement other than her own, she would immediately put down what she was holding, get on her tricycle, and pedal as fast as she could to get home, regardless of whether the other person was alive or dead.
In this way, Shu Lan went back and forth one after another, constantly carrying various tools, food, and combustible materials for burning into the small house in the garbage dump.
The tap water pipe stopped dripping after two days, so Shu Lan didn't go out on rainy days. She placed all the water containers in the yard, and when they were full, she would find something to cover them and keep them for later use.
Shu Lan had no other thoughts, she just wanted to survive, the longer the better.
She only went into the city during the day, and ran away when she saw zombies. She rode her bike so fast that the zombies couldn't catch up with her.
She blocked the way to the cabin with a mountain of garbage, surrounding the house like a wall, and the inner ground was surrounded by a circle of traps and things that would make noises.
In this way, if a zombie crawls over the garbage mountain and approaches her shelter, Shu Lan will know immediately.
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