Chapter 14
Night fell silently, without the slightest warning.
The torrential rain slanted down like countless steel marbles, smashing against the old yellowed windowpanes until cracks spread across the glass like spiderwebs. Just listening to it was enough to make one’s heart pound in fear.
“Rumble—”
Amid the lightning and thunder, Wei Cheng lowered his head and saw three pale, terrified little faces beside him.
“Big brother…”
Guanguan buried his head tightly against his shoulder, his tiny body trembling faintly. “Thunder. Scared.”
“Brother Chengcheng…” Mingming and Wang Xiaotiao also pressed themselves tightly against him.
Wei Cheng’s left hand began trembling uncontrollably again.
That problem had carried over from his previous life.
After he found Guanguan’s little shoe in the abandoned base, he set out on the journey to look for his little brother. Not long after, he encountered a tiny zombie with half its body rotted away, one that could only hiss and rasp.
Wei Cheng instinctively pulled out his rusty screwdriver, but his vision blurred and his left hand shook so badly that he could not bring himself to act.
He was relieved that the little zombie was not Guanguan, yet deep inside, he could not help but sink into pessimism.
There were some things he did not even dare think about too deeply.
Having been given a second chance at life, he had calculated and prepared for everything—yet he had never expected the apocalypse to arrive early.
Fortunately, they now had ample supplies. He would never let history repeat itself.
Wei Cheng reached out and pulled Wang Xiaotiao and Mingming close, hugging all three children tightly together as he said steadily, “Cover your ears. Don’t be afraid.”
The moment he finished speaking, a bolt of purple lightning slashed across the sky, the rain poured even harder, and thunder roared violently.
Wang Xiaotiao and Guanguan were so frightened they burst into loud tears on the spot.
Hurried footsteps sounded outside the door.
Teacher Xiaomei, wearing a raincoat, pushed the door open. The weak beam of her flashlight shone into the room. “Don’t be scared. Teacher’s here.”
Wang Xiaotiao and Mingming cried as they ran into Teacher Xiaomei’s arms. “Teacher, teacher!”
Teacher Xiaomei took off her raincoat, panting. “The rain is falling too hard. The security guard was afraid the wiring might catch fire, so I just went with him to shut off the power. Don’t be afraid. Teacher will stay here with you.”
Teacher Xiaomei carried Mingming and Wang Xiaotiao onto the bed, then reached out to touch Guanguan, who was still buried in Wei Cheng’s arms. “Guanguan? Don’t be afraid. When morning comes, the rain will stop. Quickly get into bed with big brother and go to sleep.”
Guanguan was like a fat little mushroom that had grown out of his brother’s arms—he did not dare move at all. The only sound from him was the faint sniffing of his nose.
Wei Cheng said, “Teacher, Guanguan just cried from fright. I’ll hold him a little.”
“All right, Chengcheng. Comfort your little brother.”
Teacher Xiaomei added in surprise, “This storm tonight came out of nowhere. The weather forecast didn’t say anything about rain. I grew up in Huan City, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen a storm this bad.”
Wei Cheng carefully set Guanguan down on the little bed. The moment he lay down, Guanguan curled into his arms like a frightened kitten, eyes squeezed shut and both hands tightly covering his ears.
“With big brother here, don’t be afraid.”
Wei Cheng said softly, “No matter what happens, big brother will protect Guanguan. We even have our secret base, right?”
Only then did Guanguan gradually relax and nod lightly.
That whole night, Wei Cheng listened to the thunder shaking the sky, but his gaze grew clearer and clearer.
After an unknown amount of time, he heard Teacher Xiaomei lowering her voice on the phone.
“What? Huan City’s subway system is flooded? Pedestrians drowned on the roads in Pingcheng District? The rain hasn’t even been falling that long! The welfare home is on high ground, so we’re okay for now, and we still haven’t received any evacuation notice from the community.”
“Was Yuanyuan scared? Did Grandma and Nana get her to sleep?”
“Director Wang isn’t here, and Xiao Chen is unreliable. I can’t leave right now… Husband, thank you for understanding me. You have to take good care of Yuanyuan.”
After that came the constant sound of Teacher Xiaomei searching for storm videos.
“Good morning, viewers. This is an emergency report from the central news station: it is reported that Country A’s national weather bureau has declared the highest-level state of emergency… transportation systems in many regions have been severely paralyzed… the west coast is currently suffering unprecedented torrential rain, with frequent seawater backflow…”
“The intensity of the rain in many areas of our country has broken records… the functions of key disaster-stricken cities are on the verge of collapse, communication networks are disrupted, subway systems are paralyzed, and many construction zones have suffered severe cave-ins… some regions responded in time, with factories shutting down and schools suspending classes… for the safety of you and your family, please do not go outside.”
[Rescue video] [Rescue video] [Rescue video]
[Video: Brothers! It’s the end of the world, the end of the world! The old locust tree in front of my house got charred by lightning! Hahaha, enough talk—hurry and take your ID to the bank and get a loan!]
[Video: Guys, I’m crying to death—my brand-new car! There’s no justice in the world! It got flooded in my own garage!]
[Video: Help! Help! My husband is a delivery driver, and I still can’t reach him. No one at his company can get through to him either. He’s 176 cm tall…]
“Hello? Director?”
Teacher Xiaomei answered the call. “The welfare home hasn’t flooded, everything here is fine, and I’ve been staying with the children.”
“All right, all right, I’ll contact the vegetable vendor right away and ask him to deliver more vegetables. Don’t worry. I heard many flights have been canceled, and trains and high-speed rail are all delayed and unable to leave. The situation still hasn’t been resolved? You can’t make it back? Okay. I can take care of the children. Please don’t worry…”
The door creaked open and then quietly shut again.
Wei Cheng immediately sat up in bed and went to the window.
Today was August 16.
Outside, rain was still pouring down in sheets, with no sign of stopping.
The beginning of the apocalypse in his previous life had been this sudden rainstorm. Since the rain had come early, then would the deadly heat and the strange poisonous fog also repeat themselves according to the memories of his last life?
Back then, in order to give him a better place to study, Grandma had deliberately moved from their old countryside home into the center of Huan City. During summer vacation, the two of them would sometimes go back to stay for stretches of time in the old rural house.
Wei Cheng had long since calculated it: from downtown Huan City to the old countryside home was 120 kilometers, but from Changyang Town it was 370 kilometers. If they rode the wiggle car, it would take only four hours. If they walked, it would take eighty-two hours. And at today’s progress, the wiggle car still needed eleven more days to finish upgrading. Yet with traffic in the city completely paralyzed, they could not even get out of Changyang Town, where floodwater covered everything.
Nor did he want Teacher Xiaomei, the security guard, or the police officers to risk their lives searching for two children who had suddenly disappeared—especially when even he, a reborn person, did not know whether the next thing to arrive would be murderous heat or the toxic fog that caused mutation.
The ten years of the apocalypse had made him selfish and suspicious, but he was not so cold-blooded that he could watch innocent people die because of them.
If he wanted to ensure absolute safety, the only option was to wait until the wiggle car finished upgrading.
“Big brother.”
Guanguan rubbed his eyes and pushed himself upright with his little butt in the air. “Hug.”
Wei Cheng walked over and picked up the child, who had slept in a complete tangle.
Guanguan gave a tiny yawn and buried his snow-white face into his brother’s shoulder.
“What’s wrong? Are you hungry?”
The fluffy little head on his shoulder shook.
Suddenly Guanguan stretched out an arm, as if trying to scratch his head, but because his arms were short and his head round, both hands just flailed around helplessly.
“What is it?”
Wei Cheng lowered his head and saw a new mosquito bite behind Guanguan’s ear.
Rainy weather brought mosquitoes too.
Guanguan scratched at it again at random, getting adorably angry. “Big brother, Guanguan doesn’t want this piece of meat anymore!”
Quite a temper.
Wei Cheng laughed. He took out an anti-itch mosquito patch from the mall, peeled it open, and stuck it behind the child’s ear. “Does it still itch?”
Guanguan tilted his head and waited a moment, then smiled, showing his tiny baby teeth. “It doesn’t itch anymore!”
He pointed toward the window. “Look-look.”
“You want to see whether it’s still raining?”
Wei Cheng carried him to the window and gave the cracked glass an extra glance. “It’s still raining outside. We’ll have to wait for sunny weather before you can go out to play.”
Guanguan nodded obediently. “Okay!”
The rain lasted a full three days, from August 16 all the way to August 18, while the wiggle car still had nine days left before the upgrade would be complete.
The rain poured from morning until night, growing heavier and heavier, without the slightest sign of stopping.
The classroom television kept broadcasting disaster updates from all over the country.
Many cities were suffering severe flooding. Asphalt roads looked like swimming pools filled with water, with cars submerged all across them while one rubber raft after another shuttled back and forth in rescue efforts. The countryside looked even worse—houses collapsed, crops flooded, old people with bent backs crouched atop crumbling rooftops with crying grandchildren in their arms… Even many parts of Changyang Town were affected. The first floor of the welfare home was already seeping groundwater.
Sheltered beneath the wings of the adults around them, the children of the welfare home wore their little rain boots and played happily on the first floor, innocent and carefree, with no idea what kind of disaster was about to descend on them.
At dawn on the fourth day—August 19—the violent wind and rain suddenly stopped. The water level began to drop slowly, but all of Changyang Town was left devastated and muddy beyond recognition.
Wei Cheng, who had not slept the whole time, finally let out a breath of relief and closed his heavy eyelids.
This time, things had finally developed according to the memories of his previous life.
The rain had stopped after three days. Next, temperatures around the world would begin rising at a strange and unnatural rate. After lasting for a week, the heat would suddenly drop. Then, just as everyone relaxed and prepared to return to work and school, a viral poisonous fog would sweep across the globe.
A few days later, Changyang Town—with its huge number of construction sites and factories—would become a horrifying town of walking corpses.
Breakfast that morning was very simple: one boiled egg and one bowl of plain rice porridge per person.
Teacher Xiaomei wiped the sweat from her face. “Xiao Chen, in a little while you and I are going out. The vendor we order vegetables from is taking advantage of the situation, saying the storm flooded the village greenhouses, and lots of vegetables can’t be delivered. One bundle of lettuce costs dozens of yuan now, and the vegetables and eggs in the town supermarkets have all already been bought out. The children are small—they can’t go without vegetables. We’ll drive to Fengshui District in a bit and take a look.”
Then she sighed. “Good thing the director stocked up early on lots of rice, flour, and frozen meat. Otherwise I really wouldn’t know what to do these last few days.”
Doctor Chen answered with a sour face, “Fine,” then added, “There are lots of people in Fengshui District, and I’ll have to find parking. Let Wei Cheng come too and help you carry the vegetables.”
Wei Cheng could not have wanted it more. “Teacher, I’ll come with you.”
At the side, Guanguan raised one little hand while taking a big bite of his egg. “Guanguan too!”
Wang Xiaotiao wanted to join the excitement too, but after glancing at the timid Mingming, he obediently kept eating.
Teacher Xiaomei frowned. “Xiao Chen, I’ve noticed these last two days that every time I ask you to do something, you make it difficult. The rain may have stopped, but the roads outside are still full of standing water. Why drag a child around through all that mess with us?”
“Wei Cheng is the oldest child in the welfare home. He’s tall, mature, and sensible. What’s wrong with him helping adults in this kind of situation? I have to find parking and park the car. By the time I get inside, what vegetables will you still be able to grab it, Teacher Liu?”
“Teacher, I can go.”
Wei Cheng said, “Aren’t we also going to the building materials market to buy glass? When the time comes, I can help carry the vegetables.”
Several old windowpanes in the welfare home had shattered in the storm, so once the rain stopped they definitely had to buy new glass and reinstall it. These past few days, they had nearly run out of mosquito coils.
Teacher Xiaomei hesitated for a moment. “All right then. Wei Cheng can come with teacher. As for Guanguan…”
“Teacher Xiaomei, let Guanguan go too.”
Guanguan jumped down from his little stool, grabbed the hem of Teacher Xiaomei’s clothes with both hands, and wheedled in his soft milky voice, “Teacher Xiaomei, you turn off the darkest lights, you boil the roundest eggs, you’re the bestest, bestest teacher of all.”
Teacher Xiaomei was so charmed she went completely blank for a moment. Unable to resist, she pinched his chubby cheek. “You little baby really are such a little flatterer!”
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