Chapter 7 Weeds.
Just the task of moving the garbage took Shu Lan a lot of time. Perhaps because the location of the garbage dump was too remote, no zombies came to disturb it for several months. While transporting supplies from the city, she built a fortress made of garbage mountains.
To keep out the odor, she dug up a lot of plants and flowers and planted them in the open space inside the garbage castle. Some of the plants died, but some survived tenaciously. Although their effect on purifying the air was not great, with the plants, her residence would look like a farmyard.
As the weather gradually grew colder, Shu Lan discovered that her waist had become thicker than before and her physique had become weaker. She could have been busy all day, but now she had to sit down and rest after only two or three hours of activity.
At first I thought it was because I was dizzy from eating noodles, but then I realized that my period seemed to have not come for a long time.
Did she succeed in her bet?
Shu Lan couldn't explain how she felt. On the one hand, she was surprised at her good luck and could get pregnant as she wanted. On the other hand, she felt sad that she suddenly became a mother because she had never even kissed a boy on the mouth in her life.
She decided to get the shot mainly because she was stimulated by the "predators" and the zombie chase that night.
Shu Lan has always been dissatisfied with her ordinary physique and the fact that she has not awakened any special abilities.
If we want to mutate, everyone should mutate together. How can it be fair that only some people have superpowers?
Sometimes she felt regretful. She had heard that giving birth was like walking through the gates of hell, with no doctors or nurses to help her. What if she stumbled and went through the gates of hell? What if the child took after its mother and was an ordinary child? How would a mother without special powers raise a child without special powers?
She just wants to live her life as she wants!
Day after day passed with random thoughts like this. When the north wind blew all day and all night, Shu Lan became extremely sleepy. She only got up to eat, drink water, and go to the toilet. The rest of the time she stayed in bed and slept.
She used the firewood she saved to boil water for cooking, and her only way to keep warm was to hide under the quilt.
Perhaps it was a side effect of pregnancy, but Shu Lan didn't suffer from insomnia at all, and she could sleep twenty hours a day without any problem. The advantage was that sleeping more meant she consumed less energy, and one meal could sustain her for the whole day.
After she had a good sleep that day, she put on the thickest clothes she could wear and opened the door to find that it was snowing outside.
The heavy snow fell from the gloomy sky like goose feathers, landing on the backs of the two people lying in the trap in front.
Two people?!
Shu Lan's laziness was immediately scared away. She turned around, picked up the fish-killing knife on the cabinet, held the handle with both hands, and moved out step by step.
Zombies have no ability to think. They will not look at what is on the ground, but will just rush towards the place where there is the smell of living people.
So Shu Lan buried the things she found in the garbage dump, such as nails, long pieces of broken glass, wooden sticks with sharpened ends, and long knives looted from the city, in the ground with the sharp ends facing upwards. She then wrapped wire or rope around these sharp objects and hung a bell on the rope to create a trap.
If a zombie climbed over the garbage mountain and tried to get close to the house, it would most likely be tripped by the rope and then pierced by the sharp weapons densely packed like needles in the trap, ringing the bell to wake her up.
Perhaps it was because the weather was getting colder that the microorganisms became slack in their work and stopped breaking down the garbage to emit a rotting smell, which gave the zombies an opportunity to take advantage.
Shu Lan also became lazy and slept so soundly that she didn't hear any sound coming from the trap.
When she got closer, she found that the two people lying face down had stiff limbs and were covered with a thin layer of snow. They looked dead.
Just in case, Shu Lan closed her eyes and stabbed each zombie in the head.
While doing this, Shu Lan's body was shaking, not because of the cold, but because of fear.
She had always been hiding from zombies and had never killed one, and since they all looked like humans, she felt like she was killing people.
After stabbing their heads, Shu Lan used a shovel to pick the two bodies out of the trap. She couldn't let them lie there and pave the way for the zombies behind them.
Halfway through picking, she couldn't bear it anymore, so she suddenly stood up and ran to the side to vomit. But she didn't vomit anything because she only drank a cup of hot water today and hadn't had time to cook.
Holding back the churning in her stomach, she wrapped the body in rags, dragged it up the garbage pile, and threw it out to the periphery.
The temperature was low and the soil was a little frozen and hard. She poured hot water on it and barely repaired the inner circle of the trap.
After doing all this, Shu Lan washed her hands and knife three times with soap, lit a fire, and prepared to cook noodles.
But after the water boiled, she suddenly didn't want to eat anymore. Her nose felt particularly sour and her tears fell uncontrollably along with the heavy snow.
Regardless of whether the child has special abilities or will become a burden, she hopes that he or she will come into this world healthy.
She could hardly bear such a lonely and panic-filled life even if she were still alive.
Winter passed without any major problems, and one spring rain after another awakened the earth, bringing lush greenery to the world.
Shu Lan's waist was getting more and more sore. Other people gained weight when they were pregnant, but she became thinner than before. Her arms and legs were like thin sticks, and her belly was swollen like a balloon.
Sometimes Shu Lan even admired herself. She could actually survive safely in this garbage dump for six months alone. It seemed that human beings have strong adaptability no matter when or where.
While she still had the strength, Shu Lan scattered the vegetable seeds she had accidentally found in the city on the ground and buried it hastily.
She didn't grow up in the countryside, and her education level was only high school. Her parents divorced and remarried, and no one was willing to spend money on her, so she lived with her grandmother. After her grandmother passed away, Shu Lan had nowhere to go, so she simply dropped out of school, not even taking the college entrance examination, and became one of the idle people in society.
Therefore, Shu Lan’s only knowledge about growing vegetables is “dig a hole, cover it with soil, and count one, two, three, four, and five.”
If it grows, it grows. If it doesn't, forget it. After grandma passed away, no one cared about her, but she still lived a good life.
Perhaps they were infected by Shu Lan's tenacious spirit. After five or six days, tiny green sprouts actually appeared on the land, and soon it turned into a colorful vegetable field.
Shu Lan touched her belly with relief: "Baby, you have to be as ambitious as them."
His belly moved, as if responding to her words.
Soon, Shu Lan began to feel intermittent pain. The pain lasted for nearly a day. When she couldn't stand up straight, Shu Lan thought she might be giving birth and began to regret saying, "You... shouldn't... be so proud... ah..."
She was uneducated and didn't know how long it took for others to be pregnant, so she thought it took ten months.
But her child began to struggle to come into this not-so-beautiful world in the seventh month.
Shu Lan had found some medical books on childbirth in the city before, and she prepared hot water and scissors according to what was written in the books.
After a day of pain, first her amniotic fluid broke, followed by severe pain as if her body was being torn apart. Shu Lan lay on the bed cursing her parents and crying for more than an hour. Her sweat soaked the bedding. She took deep breaths and exerted herself continuously before she finally got rid of the burden that was tormenting her.
When watching TV, all babies would cry loudly when they were born, but Shu Lan didn't hear any sound at all. She was originally so weak that she was about to faint, but when she thought of this, she was suddenly awakened by the shock. She forced herself to sit up, cut the umbilical cord with sterilized scissors, and wrapped the placenta and put it aside.
She didn't care about her own mess and used the lightest force to pick up the wet little thing under her.
It was a boy, with his eyes closed, his skin all over red, and he was motionless with his eyes closed.
Shu Lan was so anxious that she didn't know what to do, and her crying voice was filled with despair.
"And then... and then? I don't understand. Why aren't you crying? Is it because I didn't provide enough nutrition, causing you to be born so early and kill you? If I had known, I wouldn't have saved your food. I'm sorry, baby..."
The little baby, who had been motionless with his eyes closed, suddenly opened his eyes and let out a weak "ah" like a kitten.
Alive, he is still alive!
Shu Lan opened her eyes wide and cried with joy. The baby's response brought her a magical power, as if the world that had been hopeless had become bright again.
She has a child, a part separated from her, a life that belongs completely to her!
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