Chapter 43

The strange atmosphere did not last long, because they soon arrived at the next intersection and had to continue adjusting the route by referring to the map.

Now they have reached a provincial road where people are relatively sparsely populated. The box truck no longer needs to maintain a height of more than twenty floors, but only needs to fly about four or five meters above the ground.

On the way, they came across an electric car that was still intact. They directed the house to change the interface, charged the electric car, and then fixed the box car on the top of the electric car and drove it for a while.

At two o'clock in the afternoon, the two arrived at the place where their grandmother was when communication was briefly restored at the end of June.

This is a branch of a provincial road, one side goes out of the province, and the other side goes to Baochang County where my grandmother's destination is.

Fu Erdie went straight towards Baochang County.

In fact, in Fu Erdie’s childhood memory, she and her grandmother came to Xiangde Village, Baochang County to play.

At that time, there was no expressway and the provincial road had not been built to this place. Fu Erdie took a long-distance bus for a whole day, felt carsick and had no place to go to the toilet. It took a long and winding journey to Baochang County, and then took a local motorcycle to finally reach Xiangde Village.

The initial journey was so painful that Fu Erdie never came to the countryside with her grandmother again, and now she has no memory of it.

But Fu Erdie knew that although they could reach their destination by following the map, they might be diverted due to various accidents. Grandma would follow her experience and memory of the old roads and take mountain roads that might not be found on the map.

This worry was confirmed when we came to a blocked road.

As expected, grandma was unable to reach the countryside directly via this road.

Scattered zombies heard the noise and gathered here. Sang Wenhao got rid of them, gave dandelions and potatoes as a snack, and then let the dandelions stir up and disperse the human breath.

Fu Erdie drew a line on the paper map from where her grandmother had stayed to where the road was blocked now, and marked several intersections in the middle.

In fact, there are some country roads that are not shown on the map, but cars can drive on them, but they are not shown on the map.

Fu Erdie changed the color of the pen and marked the approximate locations of the several paths he had just noted down.

"We still have to follow the original route and go to Xiangde Village in Baochang County to check the situation. If there is no one there, we may have to look for people again from these marked forks in the road."

Fu Erdie pursed her lips.

Grandma, you must be well and wait for me somewhere to pick you up... You must wait for me.

The rest of the flight went smoothly, and at 5pm, they successfully arrived at the county seat of Baochang County.

Fu Erdie had imagined many situations. The best one was that everyone was still alive, with grandmother, aunt, and cousin living with relatives or with empty rooms. They could then work hard to farm or find a local granary, and barely but still survive.

The worst... was the entire county and the surrounding rural areas. They were not spared just because there were fewer people. Everyone either turned into zombies or failed to gain food over others, so they died of disease and hunger one after another within half a year.

Fu Erdie hoped for a good outcome. If not, even a bad outcome would be fine. As long as the person was still alive, everything would be fine.

However, Fu Erdie did not expect that when she arrived at the county town, she would see an empty space.

There were no zombies, and no human figures. There were a lot of rotting and smelly remains of corpses on the ground, but it was obvious that they had been there for several months and were not new.

The box truck moved forward steadily along the ground. Fu Erdie walked around the county town but didn't see any living people, so he hurried towards the village nervously.

There were some zombies along the way, the kind that could be easily dealt with, but there were still no living people.

It was not until she came to a vast field that was obviously tended by someone that Fu Erdie finally sensed the presence of a living being.

She took out a telescope and looked around, and finally saw a gray figure doing farm work on an inconspicuous ridge.

Fu Erdie quickly took out two buckets to fill the house with water, and let the potato seedlings produce a few potatoes.

The potatoes obtained from the normal state of potato sprouts are already as big as footballs. The potatoes here will not spoil, and can be eaten directly, without poison. They have been mutated to be extremely humane, and are very sufficient for exchange. Ordinary people can eat one for ten days if they eat sparingly. Fu Erdie took out three potatoes, which is enough for one person for a month.

Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao cannot eat that much at mealtime, so they control the size of the potatoes and only produce palm-sized potatoes.

After preparing the materials for exchanging information, the two men controlled the box truck and floated towards the farmers who were working.

The farmer was very alert and looked around from time to time. He saw a black thing floating towards him from afar. He was startled and ran away.

But his speed was not faster than the box truck which was traveling at a very high speed and he was soon caught up by it.

Fu Erdie did not shout loudly, but said politely at a distance that was just audible to human ears: "We are not bad people, we are here to look for relatives and want to inquire about the news."

When the farmer heard a normal person's voice, he paused slightly.

As he stopped, the box truck passed him and came up to him.

At this time, the box car had already been turned upright, just like the most common cable car in the Doomsday Foreground Scenic Area.

A man and a woman were sitting in the window of a small cable car. Above their heads were a bunch of large, cotton-like dandelions. They looked like people in a painting.

It took a while for the farmer to react. He breathed a sigh of relief but was also very alert: "Are you people with special abilities? Who are you looking for?"

Fu Erdie reported the grandmother's name, Cao Xiufen. The man said "Oh" and seemed to relax a lot: "There are three of them in total, old, middle-aged and young, right? In addition to her, there are also her daughter and grandson?"

"Yes!" Fu Erdie opened her eyes wide, "You know them, that's great! Where are they now?"

"They have left." The farmer wanted to continue working on the farm, but considering that these two people were people with special abilities, he did not dare to offend them.

Fu Erdie could clearly see the farmer's reluctance and picked up a bucket of water from under the window: "Do you have a container for water? This is clean water, drinkable. I'll pour it for you."

The farmer's eyes lit up.

The water he drinks now is all well water and river water. But the taste of this water is very strange, and many people have died from drinking it before. He doesn't want to drink mutated dirty water at all. It would be great if there was clean water for him to drink normally!

He immediately changed his attitude, looked around, and after making sure there were no other people or zombies, he took the initiative to invite them to his home, obviously willing to have a long talk.

This farmer's home is a very ordinary small bungalow that can be seen everywhere in the countryside, and it is pitch black inside.

He found a room that could still see the sunset and invited the two of them to sit in. After Fu Erdie took out a potato as big as a football, his smile became more genuine.

"As you all know, there are very few people in the countryside, and most of them are elderly people and left-behind children. After the apocalypse, many elderly people did not turn into zombies, but simply died of heart problems due to being frightened by the situation outside."

Fu Erdie couldn't help but interrupt: "Can you tell me where my grandma went?"

"Don't worry," the farmer waved his hand. "Your grandmother has gone to the base. The road is not easy to travel on, and there may be many accidents. It will not be easy to find her in one or two days. Just listen to what I have to say."

base?

Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao looked at each other.

When Sang Wenhao was being chased by zombies and escaped from the university town, didn't he meet a team from the base looking for survivors, and got a sniper rifle?

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Could it be that this village also encountered a passing army? Fu Erdie nodded to his uncle: "Excuse me, please continue."

The sun slowly set in the west, and when it finally reached the horizon, Fu Erdie finally understood the entire story.

This is the apocalyptic life of an ordinary person living in a remote village without many special powers.

Just as the old man said, after the end of the world, many people turned into zombies and many elderly people were scared to death.

But these zombies were not the speed zombies that Fu Erdie encountered on the first day of the apocalypse. They walked slowly and limped. Normal people could deal with them when there were no groups of disaster sites.

In fact, this also proves that it is the right choice for people in the city to flee to the countryside. The countryside is indeed much safer.

But the zombies can be dealt with, but there is not enough food.

They planted rice in the fields here. Due to the continuous high temperatures and no rain, the rice died within a few days.

Later, we continued to plant crops, but it rained heavily every now and then, and we didn't know where the seeds were washed away. In short, after working hard for several months, we still had no food.

One thing that is better in the countryside than in the city is that almost every household has food stored. And everyone is born and raised in the local area, so they know where the grain warehouses that buy crops are. They drive their trucks there tremblingly, kill a few crooked zombies, and then they can bring back a truckload of food.

Fu Erdie's grandmother Cao Xiufen was almost lost when she ran into a convoy going to the gas station to pick up gasoline and diesel, and was able to successfully arrive at Xiangde Village, Baochang County.

Fu Erdie felt a little scared when she thought about that scene.

Even my grandmother, who goes back to the countryside for vacation every year, got the wrong way. If I really let her go to find her, I don’t know what kind of missed opportunities she would have…

"But even if we have food now, we can't just sit there and eat it all. We still have to find a way to grow crops."

At this point, the uncle sighed and said, "I just thought that even if the land is polluted and the weather is sometimes dry and sometimes wet, we still have to plant the land. Besides, it doesn't matter where we plant the land. Does that mean we don't have to plant the land if we go to those bases? It's still the same."

In early September, a convoy from the base passed by this area. They sent someone to repair the town's wireless radio for a short time and began to broadcast a notice on the loudspeaker, telling those who wanted to follow the convoy to the base to start now. The convoy would wait at a landmark square in the town.

"At that time, there were actually some zombies in the town that had not been killed yet. The people in the convoy cleared all the zombies and asked everyone to go there before the scattered zombies gathered again. So many people went there, and your grandmother and her grandchildren were among them."

After listening to the whole story, Fu Erdie felt a little relieved.

But she noticed that the farmer kept using the term "convoy" to describe the group of people instead of "army". What was going on? The farmer said, "It is said that there is no longer much of an army. Because to protect a convoy, guns alone are not enough, and a lot of superpowers are needed. And these superpowers certainly cannot just be soldiers in the past, and the army cannot use military discipline to require new superpowers. So now, whether it is ordinary people or the base itself, they all call it a convoy."

"To be honest, it's not easy for these people with special abilities to help ordinary people like us even though they have no relatives or friends."

The farmer shuddered as he spoke. How could he have forgotten that these two people were also supernatural beings!

He tried to make amends: "I'm not saying it's bad if you don't help..."

"It's okay, I know what you mean."

Fu Erdie poured a whole bucket of water into the farmer's water barrel and gave him three big potatoes. After saying goodbye to him, she returned to the truck in the last rays of the setting sun and flew away.

Fu Erdie was afraid of deviating from the route on the map, so he did not go too far. Instead, he chose a wasteland and planned to stop there tonight and sleep in the box truck.

She sorted out the information the farmers gave her and found several points that were very clear and important.

First of all, grandma and the other three don’t have any special powers.

Secondly, although the base no longer has the concept of various official organizations as before, and will undergo different changes due to the participation of psychics, it will generally take care of ordinary people. For ordinary people like my grandmother who have many old age diseases but no medicine, there will be healing psychics to help them temporarily recover their health.

It is said that after arriving at the base, one can seek treatment with healing powers every month as an alternative to medication.

Third, using superpowers instead of drugs requires "paying". This is related to the labor value exchange of the base.

The people going to the base have very heavy work to do. The people in the convoy did not hide this and directly said that the current construction basis of the base is to find all kinds of uncontaminated soil, transport the soil back, and then spread layers of soil on the abandoned high-rise buildings and plant shade-loving crops.

In addition to farming, many jobs that were originally done by machines now require a lot of manpower. Coal mining and transportation, food processing, fabric weaving, and so on, a series of jobs have to return to the stage of being completed by manpower.

(End of this chapter)