Chapter 51: My Partner Knocks on the Door
The village road the cars were traveling on was already narrow, and the damage caused by the earthquake made the journey even more bumpy. The trucks, being heavily loaded, fared a bit better, but for those in the off-road vehicle, the journey became torture after more than an hour. Especially with the hot weather preventing them from opening the windows, the stuffiness combined with the body aches left the group with only the instinct to move forward, with almost no communication.
Fortunately, as they entered the rural road area, more zombies appeared, which slightly diverted their attention.
It was the height of summer in July and August, and the dead skin on the zombies gradually began to rot, with patches of decaying flesh visible, clearly indicating their abnormal state. At the same time, the stench of decay began to spread in the air.
Just as it was approaching noon, the weather suddenly turned into a torrential downpour. Not only did the road become even muddier, but it also directly affected visibility. The group, who had only planned to refuel and leave, had no choice but to drive into the town.
The supplies in the two large trucks prevented them from stopping just anywhere. After circling around, the leading Li Zhuang parked the trucks in front of a half-collapsed government office building.
There were four or five cars parked haphazardly in the yard. Li Zhuang didn’t pay much attention at first. After dealing with the zombies in the yard and closing the gate, he went inside and discovered that the hall was already crowded with more than a dozen people.
Three women and two children sat in a corner. A man in his thirties or forties held a weak man by the neck with a knife. Several other men were snatching something from the arms of a boy lying on the ground.
Li Zhuang’s sudden entry caused a pause in the hall. All the men looked over warily.
“Sheltering from the rain,” Li Zhuang glanced around and then turned his attention to an empty space. Antonio and Dean, who followed him in, also glanced around and then stayed behind Li Zhuang, not wanting to interfere.
Seeing that the newcomers had no intention of intervening, the men’s attention returned to the boy on the ground.
The man holding the hostage gestured for the others surrounding the boy to move aside. He leaned down towards the boy in his grasp, who seemed to be barely clinging to life. “If you don’t hand it over, I’ll kill him.”
“Yeah, brat, hurry up and give us the stuff.”
“Quickly, or we’ll let you see some blood.”
The men spoke one after another. The boy lying on the ground raised his head, glaring fiercely at the circle of people around him, like a little wolf cub. Just as the knife in the man’s hand was about to cut the boy’s neck, he quickly took out a black backpack from under his body where he had been hiding it. “Let… let him go.”
“Should have handed it over earlier,” a man closest to him quickly snatched the bag.
The leader pushed the person he had been holding onto the boy. The boy scrambled up and quickly embraced the person in his arms.
The men who had robbed the bag didn’t seem satisfied. They glanced at the two large trucks outside, huddled together, and whispered, their eyes occasionally looking at Li Zhuang, who met their gaze with a faint smile.
The leader ignored the whispering men. He took out bread from the stolen backpack and handed it to the women and children sitting in the corner. He threw the remaining few compressed biscuits to the other men to divide.
By this time, the rest of their group had gradually entered, all shaking off the water from their clothes. Lu Weiyi, who was last to enter, had a towel Lin Yimu had taken out of his backpack covering his head, and slowly walked in amidst Lin Yimu’s urging.
His gaze swept around, and he immediately recognized the bag in the man’s hand. He raised an eyebrow. “Hey! Where did you get that bag?”
The temporary calm in the hall was broken by his words, and everyone immediately looked over.
Before the man holding the bag could speak, Li Zhuang asked first, “Stolen, what else? What’s so special about this bag?”
“Mine,” Lu Weiyi replied.
“You say it’s yours, so it’s yours? Is your name written on it, or does it respond when you call it? I could just as easily say it’s mine,” an older woman in the corner grabbed the bag and clutched it tightly to her chest.
“Actually, it is written on it. LWY in the bottom right corner, brand custom-made, one hundred and sixty thousand yuan,” Lu Weiyi said expressionlessly. Seeing the change in the men’s faces, he asked again, “Where did you get it?” He remembered giving this bag, along with another one, to the man who had visited him in prison.
“Stolen from over there,” Li Zhuang raised his chin towards a corner on the side.
Lu Weiyi looked over. A small boy was sitting there, his bare upper body covered in bruises, his face also injured, and his lips cracked and bleeding. He was tightly holding someone wrapped in a coat, making it impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman.
“Where did you get it?” Lu Weiyi asked again.
The group over there heard that they didn’t know the person and immediately breathed a sigh of relief.
“I… I…”
“Mine,” Lu Weiyi said again.
“I… Brother Sa’s,” the boy finally managed to say with difficulty.
Lu Weiyi pursed his lips. “Where did he get it?”
“He… he… his friend… gave it to him.”
A friend gave it to him?
I didn’t give it to anyone, did I?
Lu Weiyi reacted for a moment, then tentatively asked the boy about that “Brother Sa,” “Xu Sa?”
The boy’s eyes suddenly lit up, like a puppy seeing food. “Save… save…”
“Yeah, I know it’s him. Where is he?”
“…Save him.” As the boy spoke, he lifted a corner of the tightly wrapped man, revealing none other than Xu Er Gou’s androgynous face.
Lu Weiyi was quite annoyed by this completely uncoordinated communication. Li Zhuang on the side simply laughed without any restraint, earning him a glare from Lu Weiyi, which made him restrain himself a little.
Lu Weiyi walked over to the two in a few steps, squatted down, patted Xu Sa’s face, and called out, “Xu Er Gou? Xu Er Gou?”
“He… he… he…” The boy anxiously wanted to say something but couldn’t, and in frustration, slapped himself.
“He has a fever, I can feel it.”
Gu Qingyue walked over and, under the surprised gazes of the others, took out a small box from his bag. Inside were a stethoscope and a thermometer, everything needed. He took Xu Sa’s temperature and, while tapping Xu Sa’s body, smiled. “Professional habit.”
“Very high,” Lu Weiyi said, looking at the thermometer after he finished the percussion.
39.5 degrees Celsius (approximately 103.1 degrees Fahrenheit).
“He’s about to become a fool,” Lu Weiyi said, handing the thermometer to Gu Qingyue.
“We need to bring his fever down first. Do we have any medicine in the car?” The supplies they had found were mostly food and daily necessities; there was really no medicine at all. It depended on whether Lu Weiyi had anything at home, Gu Qingyue asked Lin Yimu, who was packing things.
“I have some.” Lu Weiyi said, going out to the car, taking a medicine box from his space, stuffing a fever reducer into Xu Sa’s mouth, and directly pouring some water in.
“Cough cough cough… cough cough…” Xu Sa choked and coughed. The boy reached out to cover his mouth, preventing him from spitting out the medicine. “Eat… eat it.”
Xu Sa groggily opened his eyes a slit and saw Lu Weiyi.
“Take your medicine,” Lu Weiyi said first.
Xu Sa blinked, and under the boy’s semi-forced action, he swallowed the pill and fell asleep again.
Lu Weiyi had the boy feed him some water before turning to him. “I’m his childhood friend, Lu Weiyi. What’s your name?”
“Liu Rui.”
“How did you two meet?”
“Pri… prison mates.”
“How long has he been sick?”
“O… one week.”
While Lu Weiyi was asking Liu Rui about the situation, Li Zhuang on the other side looked at the few men opposite them. “Guys, you took the stuff, that’s that, but can we have the bag back?”
The old woman was clearly unwilling but was pulled over by the man beside her and thrown towards Li Zhuang. Worried that they would team up to cause trouble, he lowered his stance. “The woman and children haven’t eaten for two days. We were really forced to.”
You were forced to, so you cut off other people’s means of survival?
Li Zhuang reached out and steadily caught the bag without even looking at the man. He flipped through it. “Oh, it really does have our little friend’s name on it. We must keep it safe.” He turned around and threw it back to Lu Weiyi, who took it and handed it back to Liu Rui.
The man had lost face but was also adaptable. He didn’t say another word, picked up a knife, sat down beside the children, and began unpacking things for them to eat while warily watching them in case they teamed up to attack.
Lu Weiyi actually had no intention of bothering with them. It was still that saying: in the apocalypse, the strong survive, big fish eat small fish, and small fish eat shrimp. Besides, compared to those who killed and looted, he had only taken things, which was already quite good.
Liu Rui had difficulty speaking. Lu Weiyi saw that he still had a strong desire to express himself, even though the cracks on his lips were bleeding. He was still struggling to speak, so Lu Weiyi handed him a bottle of water, signaling him to speak slowly.
Liu Rui took a small sip and spoke for a long time, repeating each word several times. Finally, he roughly made himself clear.
When Xu Sa initially received Lu Weiyi’s things, he found it quite strange. After all, with Zhuang Mingxu’s leniency, he had received textbooks, phones, computers, cigarettes, alcohol, and so on, but never a pack of instant noodles, ham sausage, or compressed biscuits.
After the earthquake, these things were delivered immediately. Xu Sa complained to his little follower, Liu Rui, about what kind of junk was being sent, but in his heart, he was quite happy to be remembered.
When communications were cut off and showed no signs of recovery, and the surrounding prisoners began to break out, Xu Sa also sensed that something was wrong and quickly and secretly hid the things.
He was not far from his legitimate release date. Xu Sa didn’t sneak away like the others. At first, he even helped the prison guards maintain some order. It wasn’t until a few days later, when rescue still hadn’t arrived and the zombies appeared, that he felt it was no longer safe.
At that time, he was thinking of going to the community to find Lu Weiyi according to the message Lu Weiyi had sent, but he directly fell ill.
Liu Rui was a small-town stutterer with no education and couldn’t speak clearly to others. In this chaotic situation, no one was willing to spend time listening to him ask for directions, so he simply took Xu Sa and followed a group of fellow prisoners to escape.
At first, Liu Rui wanted to take him to the Ping An Safe Zone to see a doctor, but everyone at the base was on edge, and sick people were not allowed to enter at all. They even almost treated him as someone about to turn into a zombie. Liu Rui could only take him and hide, the hardships of which were self-evident.
They had to guard against zombies and also guard against people. Fortunately, Liu Rui later awakened a fire-type ability, which deterred some people, but the number of zombies kept increasing, and their lives didn’t change much. In addition, Liu Rui couldn’t drive, and Xu Sa couldn’t let him take a burden and cross half the city to find someone. His own body also deteriorated from initial weakness to increasingly severe illness.
On the night the Ping An Base was attacked by zombies, Liu Rui witnessed it with his own eyes. That day, seeing a team leave the city, Liu Rui spent a lot of supplies to exchange for two spots to have them taken along. Who knew that on the way, Xu Sa developed a high fever and fell into a coma? The driver refused to take them any further, even returning some of the supplies, and threw the two of them here.
