It was already night when we left J City.
Driving at night without headlights is dangerous, but driving with headlights on can easily attract zombies from the surrounding area.
Qiao An'an and the others were not familiar with the roads here and dared not act rashly, so they decided to wait until dawn before continuing their journey.
The water in the truck's water tank had long since run out, and Li Jianguo and Ye Jing hadn't showered in a long time. The weather in May wasn't hot to begin with, and the truck was also stuffy, so they both smelled terrible.
Chen Zhou found a spot near the river to stop the truck and prepared to fill the water tank on the truck.
This water is not for drinking; it can only be used for showering and flushing the toilet.
As he filled the water tank, he said to Li Jianguo, "The water in the river looks very clear, but you smell terrible. Go wash up."
Li Jianguo didn't like taking showers in the first place, and he didn't want to take a shower in the middle of the night, so he opened the window and climbed onto the roof of the truck: "If I sleep on the roof, I won't be bothered by the smell, and I can also stand guard."
Ye Jing raised his arm and smelled himself. He was only slightly better than Li Jianguo. He didn't want to bother An'an and the others with his smell, so he jumped into the river to take a bath.
Qiao An'an originally wanted Ye Jing to take a hot shower in the freight car, where there was a solar water heater in the toilet, but Ye Jing refused. Qiao An'an thought that the river water wasn't too cold now, and Chi Xiaoyu and Ya Ya were asleep, so she let Ye Jing go into the river, but told him, "Don't go into the deep water, it's dangerous."
"I'm a great swimmer!"
Ye Jing dove into the water and disappeared.
Qiao An'an didn't take it seriously at first.
But Ye Jing didn't come back even after washing for a long time.
Not a single ripple could be seen on the dark river surface.
Qiao An'an was already worried about Ye Jing swimming in the river, and now she was even more concerned.
What if the child encounters a poisonous snake or gets his foot tangled in the river weeds?
Qiao An'an grew increasingly worried, but dared not shout loudly in the empty night for fear of attracting zombies. She could only whisper Ye Jing's name along the riverbank: "Ye Jing? Where are you?"
After searching for a long time, Qiao An'an finally found Ye Jing in the grass on the other side of the river.
He was using a skinned frog tied with a plastic rope to fish for crayfish. Beside him, an empty rapeseed oil bottle he'd found somewhere was already more than half full of crayfish. Seeing Qiao An'an, he looked a little guilty: "Sister An'an..."
When Qiao An'an was little, she also loved to catch crayfish.
But the adults wouldn't let them catch them, saying it was dangerous for children to play by the river.
She would always sneak off to the stream with her friends while her parents were taking their afternoon nap. They would use the yarn her mother used for knitting to tie together chicken intestines and fish entrails that the adults threw away to catch crayfish. Her little face would be tanned dark by the midday sun, but she dared not bring the crayfish she caught home, for fear of being beaten by her parents.
But if you walk by the river often enough, you're bound to get your shoes wet.
Qiao An'an thought that the expression on her face when her parents found out she had sneaked out to fish for crayfish was probably exactly the same as Ye Jing's expression now.
She didn't criticize Ye Jing for acting on his own, but urged him, "It would be dangerous if you encountered zombies here alone. Go back to the car quickly."
Ye Jing was somewhat troubled: "What should we do with these crayfish?"
Qiao An'an could tell that Ye Jing was reluctant to part with the fruits of his labor, so she smiled and said to Ye Jing, "Take it, it'll be your breakfast tomorrow morning."
Ye Jing grunted in agreement and climbed into the driver's seat, carrying his bountiful harvest of crayfish.
The next morning, just as dawn was breaking.
Ye Jing was awakened by the pleasant fragrance.
He scrambled up from the back seat of the driver's seat and found that Shen Zhou had switched shifts with Li Jianguo. Now Li Jianguo was sleeping in the front. No wonder there was a slight stench mixed in with the pleasant fragrance; it was Li Jianguo's body odor.
Ye Jing pinched his nose and walked out of the driver's seat.
Then I saw Qiao An'an cooking lobsters inside the carriage.
There was no kitchen in the truck, only a large multi-functional kettle for boiling water. At this moment, the transparent kettle was cooking the crayfish he had caught yesterday. In addition to the crayfish, there were also two packets of self-heating spicy hot pot broth in the kettle, which is why it smelled so good.
The fragrance attracted not only the leaves.
She even woke up Chi Xiaoyu and Yaya from their beds, and the two of them came over and asked, "Sister An'an (Mom), what are you cooking that smells so good?"
"crayfish."
After taking the cooked crayfish out, Qiao An'an put a few packets of instant noodles in the pot.
Breakfast consisted of spicy crayfish and instant noodles.
Qiao An'an counted them before cooking; there were a total of 37 lobsters.
She put ten crayfish in the instant noodles for Chi Xiaoyu and Ya Ya, and eleven for Ye Jing: "These are the ones you caught, here's one extra for you."
The remaining six crayfish were divided among the three adults, with two for each of them: "We adults will just have two to try."
After eating and drinking their fill, Shenzhou, who was guarding the ship for the rest of the night, went to sleep in the back seat. Ye Jing sat in the passenger seat, and Li Jianguo drove.
Before driving, everyone voted to require Li Jianguo to take a shower.
Li Jianguo reluctantly went to the river to take a bath, washed his clothes, and hung them on the back of the car to dry.
The car drove towards the dock.
The dock is located on the outskirts of the city.
It's rather desolate.
Before the apocalypse, houses here weren't easy to sell. Many houses were built but no one bought them and they just remained empty. There were also unfinished buildings where the developers ran off with the money, so you could hardly see any cars on the road leading to the dock.
The group found a private gas station less than ten kilometers from the dock.
They parked the car and went out to search for supplies, only to find that the gas station had been looted and not a single drop of fuel was left.
The small supermarket inside the gas station was also completely ransacked.
After examining the dust accumulated on the items scattered under the shelves, Shen Zhou said, "These things that fell on the ground have accumulated a thick layer of dust, which means that those people came here a long time ago. There are no new footprints on the dust on the ground, which means that no one has come here since then."
After listening to Shen Zhou's analysis, Qiao An'an's expression turned serious: "There are only two possibilities for these people to be able to come here to search for supplies a long time ago. One is that they were passing through this place, and the other is that they are people from the neighborhood who know that there is gasoline here. Judging from the current situation, the second possibility is more likely. If they were just passing through, they would at most fill up their car with gas and take a few cans of oil. It is impossible for them to take every last drop of oil here."
Shen Zhou strongly agreed with Qiao An'an's analysis.
Li Jianguo looked around again and again: "Are they around here? Where?"
Chen Zhou: "Unsure."
Qiao An'an: "What I'm most worried about right now is that they're using the dock as a base."
Shen Zhou: "It's very likely."
Seeing this, Li Jianguo immediately said, "Then why don't we just not go to the dock?"
Shen Zhou shook his head: "We have less than half a tank of gas left, and we're already in a bind. Compared to running out of gas halfway and having to walk, getting to the dock is nothing."
Qiao An'an also agreed with this view: "If they are reasonable, we will exchange food for oil; if they are unreasonable, we will beat them until they are reasonable."
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