Chapter 56
The four of them were blindfolded and shoved into a vehicle.
Twenty minutes later, they were pushed back out, prodded into walking down flight after flight of stairs. The air was thick with a heavy, damp, fishy smell.
All the while, Wei Cheng kept holding Guanguan’s soft little hand.
After what felt like a long time, the black cloths over their eyes were yanked off one by one, and they finally saw where they were.
Flashlights cast a dim yellow glow, lighting up a dark, decaying underground passage.
All over the floor were makeshift beds of various sizes.
The whole place reeked of damp, sticky filth.
Not far away stood a wall of stacked bricks, with a yellowing white cloth hung over it as a door curtain.
Behind it came overlapping coughing sounds.
The curtain stirred, and a stooped old man with graying hair stepped out.
“Dad, why aren’t you asleep yet?” Uncle Zhong hurried over to support him.
“You all hadn’t come back.” The old man adjusted his reading glasses. “And these people are…?”
The boy yawned and said, “Grandpa, Third Uncle mistook them for those bad people from Watcher Community!”
The old man’s gaze landed on the two children’s clean little faces, and he frowned. “A-Zhong, why did you tie up children!”
Uncle Zhong stiffened his neck. “I tied up the adults too.”
Wei Cheng glanced at Yi Qi. Yi Qi understood—they needed to say something now.
Yi Qi said, “Brother, anyone with eyes can tell we’re not from Watcher Community. We’re just ordinary people who came into the city looking for supplies. We’re not crossing paths with you, so why exactly did you drag our family of four here?”
“At first I thought you were from Watcher Community, so I wanted to kill you and take your supplies. I didn’t realize you weren’t those animals from Watcher Community.”
Uncle Zhong stared hard at Shen Zheng and Yi Qi. “You two have crossbows and full quivers. You’re not ordinary.”
Then he looked at the little chubby cub swaying side to side by Wei Cheng’s leg and gave a cold laugh. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a child with cheeks as round as two steamed buns and eyes this innocent.”
Guanguan was suddenly singled out and got so startled he stopped swinging his feet. With both little hands, he tightly pinched his cheeks, trying to hide the meat. “Uncle, Guanguan’s meat is gone!”
Uncle Zhong narrowed his eyes. “Your name is Guanguan?”
Wei Cheng grabbed Guanguan’s hands to stop him from pinching himself and stared coldly at the middle-aged man in front of him. “What exactly do you mean?”
“First, you definitely have plenty of supplies.”
Uncle Zhong said with certainty, “And you’re collecting cement and building materials to prepare for building your own base.”
He continued, “Since you aren’t from Watcher Community, that means you aren’t our enemies, so I’m not after your supplies or your base.”
“But right now we’re short-handed, and we have to rescue the people Watcher Community took away.”
Uncle Zhong said, “You managed to get building materials and cement smoothly. Don’t tell me you really thought there were no zombies in that area? My people and I risked our lives driving those zombies away. No matter how you look at it, you owe us for that, so I want you two grown men to help us rescue people. The children will stay here in the base, and no one will hurt them. But if you try anything, your children won’t live either.”
Shen Zheng asked, “Rescue who?”
Uncle Zhong clenched both fists. “My daughter.”
Another man said, “My son.”
“And my dad!”
“And my old mother!”
One man cried out in grief, “My little brother is only sixteen!”
“And there are the two kids we picked up, plus a few other people!”
They all started cursing at once, talking over each other.
Uncle Zhong said, “They’re randomly seizing people now. We don’t know what for. Maybe research, maybe just to expand their base. I heard they were planning to take those people to Watcher Community’s main base in Wuzhou City. My informant says they haven’t left yet.”
Wuzhou City was some distance from Wuqing City.
Wei Cheng clenched his fist. Watcher Community really was every bit as rotten as in his previous life!
Coldly, he asked, “Where are they now?”
Uncle Zhong didn’t ignore Wei Cheng just because he looked like a child. On the contrary, he felt there was something extraordinary about him.
Otherwise, he would not have searched the child first.
“At Leyu Hotel.”
At that moment, the coughing behind the curtain worsened.
A woman suddenly threw the curtain aside in panic. “Third Uncle, my son has a fever again!”
Shen Zheng clenched his fists. “A fever?”
Wasn’t fever one of the symptoms of infection?
“He’s just got a cold. Turning into a zombie takes several hours or a whole day of fever, but this child has no wounds. His symptoms are those of a severe cold. He only burns up at night. He hasn’t been infected.” Uncle Zhong sighed. “It wasn’t enough for those people to drive us out of Leyu Hotel and force us to survive here—they also took our people and robbed us of every last bit of food and medicine.”
The curtain was pulled all the way open, and they could clearly see the floor inside lined with bedding. Curled up on them were quite a few elderly people, women, and children, shivering.
A five- or six-year-old boy was burning with fever, his face bright red, his body limp as a kitten in his mother’s arms. He kept trembling and whispering, “Mom, I only feel a little bad. Mom, don’t cry.”
The woman held her child and wept quietly.
She didn’t even dare cry loudly, afraid of drawing zombies and getting everyone killed.
No one on the bedding was asleep. Several old people lay there breathing heavily. Several children were so thin their eye sockets had sunk in. Their faces held no trace of sleepiness, only timid fear.
Yi Qi couldn’t bear it. He walked over. “I’m a doctor. Let me take a look.”
The woman immediately acted as though she had seen a savior. She dropped to her knees and kowtowed. “Doctor, doctor, please save my child! Please!”
“Big sister, get up first. I’ll… I’ll take a look.” He had the sense not to say that he was a vet. But in the apocalypse, people were mammals too.
After a careful examination, Yi Qi’s gaze swept over Wei Cheng, then landed on Uncle Zhong. “Physical cooling methods aren’t enough anymore. If he doesn’t get fever medicine now, the child will be in danger.”
“Where are we supposed to find fever medicine!”
“The medicine we worked so hard to collect was all stolen!”
“Brother, that little older brother is so pitiful.” Guanguan pressed himself against his brother’s leg and said in a tiny voice, “He kind of looks like Xiaotiao.”
Wei Cheng looked at the child. He really did resemble Wang Xiaotiao—both had that same sturdy, round-faced look.
The child began coughing violently again, and his mother covered her mouth as she cried.
Suddenly Wei Cheng said, “We have medicine.”
Everyone froze, every eye in the room turning toward the child who looked only around ten.
“We can give you medicine, but we have conditions.”
Wei Cheng said coldly, “If we give you the fever medicine, you let us take the cement and building materials and leave.”
That sixteen- or seventeen-year-old boy said, “Where do you have medicine? We already took your bags!”
“Third Uncle! Save Junjun!” the woman cried.
Uncle Zhong gritted his teeth. “Where is the medicine!”
Wei Cheng said, “You’re the leader here. Your brothers and family all follow you. You have to agree first before we’ll hand the medicine over.”
“Uncle Zhong, just agree! Saving him matters most!”
“Yeah! Even if those two grown men really went with us, they might not actually help us save people sincerely!”
“Save Xiao Jun first!”
Uncle Zhong squeezed his fists tight. “I agree to let you go. Where is the medicine?”
“I hid it in the truck. Take the few of us back there.”
One man said, “You and the adults can come with us. The fat cub stays!”
Wei Cheng stared at him coldly. “Then we can all just wait to die.”
Uncle Zhong had already seen how fiercely this child protected his younger brother. He waved his hand. “I’ll take them there myself.”
This time they didn’t blindfold them, but several guns stayed jammed into their waists the whole way.
They walked up the stairs for a while, got into a vehicle again, and came back to the truck with the blown tire.
Uncle Zhong was out of patience. “Where is the medicine!”
Wei Cheng circled the truck once. “It’s in the truck. I’ll get up there and look.”
Before climbing in, he glanced at Shen Zheng and Yi Qi.
Shen Zheng silently moved Guanguan behind him.
The two childhood friends who had known each other for years exchanged a look and quietly loosened their knuckles.
The big truck had already been ransacked top to bottom by these people. Only the floor mat in the back seat hadn’t been touched.
Wei Cheng quickly took out a strip of fever medicine, already removed from its packaging, from the safehouse and tossed it out through the truck window. “This one?”
The beam of the flashlight swung toward it at once. The sound of the silver medication blister hitting the ground overlapped with another much subtler sound.
The men all rushed to pick it up and cried out in relief, “It’s fever medicine!”
Once they heard it really was fever medicine, even Uncle Zhong, always on guard, relaxed a little.
And in the very next second, something cold pressed against his temple.
Yi Qi held a gun to him. “Don’t move. I’m actually a vet. I’m not very good with guns.”
“Uncle Zhong! Uncle Zhong!”
“Damn it! You’re playing dirty!”
Shen Zheng held Guanguan behind him with one arm while aiming a gun at the others.
Wei Cheng jumped down from the truck, gun in hand. He said coldly, “You threatened us first.”
Uncle Zhong gripped his gun tightly, but he didn’t dare raise it and force a confrontation. His daughter was still in those monsters’ hands. If he died, who would lead these people to rescue anyone?
He spat out, “I really didn’t misjudge you—you little bastard are vicious!”
Wei Cheng’s face stayed calm, as though he hadn’t even heard the insult. He looked at the people beside him. “Why aren’t you hurrying to deliver the medicine to that child?”
“Uncle Zhong…”
“Take the medicine back to Junjun!”
One man drove back to deliver the medicine, while the others held their guns but looked utterly lost.
Uncle Zhong was their backbone. If he died, could they still keep going?
And the guns in their hands…
Wei Cheng said, “We made use of the road you’d already cleared to find building materials, and you used our medicine to save a life. That evens the score. So now let’s talk again—if we help you save your people, what can you offer us?”
Uncle Zhong was silent for a while. “We don’t have anything to offer.”
Shen Zheng suddenly asked, “Are all those women, children, and old people your family?”
“No.” Uncle Zhong closed his eyes. “Only my father and my nephew are mine. My daughter was taken. The rest are friends, and some I saved. The old people and children lying there were picked up when they were close to starving. Believe it or not.”
Wei Cheng asked, “Where did your guns come from?”
“A month ago, Watcher Community came to Wuqing City’s hospital looking for supplies. They got into a conflict with another small group. My brothers and I saw them tearing each other apart, and afterward we picked up their guns. Actually, aside from the one I have, the rest are empty shells meant only to scare people.”
Uncle Zhong looked at the people behind him. “You can take the guns apart and let them see.”
That was also the reason they had tied them up immediately when they saw the two crossbows.
One by one, the men dismantled their guns.
Empty. No bullets.
“You have no value.”
Wei Cheng lifted his eyes coldly. “Not worth risking my family for.”
Hearing words like that from a child who didn’t even look ten was enough to send a chill down one’s spine.
As though inside him was a cold, calculating soul.
Uncle Zhong fixed his gaze on the child who was still being protected. “Is your little brother called Guanguan?”
A faint flicker passed through Wei Cheng’s eyes. He remembered this man asking that exact question once before in the underground tunnel.
Uncle Zhong’s breathing turned tight. “I saved a few people. One child was mute. Another looked a lot like Xiao Jun. That kid was stupid in a simple sort of way, skinny as a worm from hunger, and every day he kept muttering that he missed Guanguan.”
At the word stupid, Guanguan suddenly poked his head out from beside Shen Zheng’s leg. “Is it Xiaotiao?”
“Yes!”
Uncle Zhong said, “His name is Wang Xiaotiao, and there’s also a Mingming. They were both taken by Watcher Community too. That silly kid kept calling an old man ‘Director Grandpa,’ and there was also a young married couple with them!”
Guanguan gasped and covered his mouth. “That’s Guanguan’s Director Grandpa and Teacher Xiaomei!”
Author’s Note:
Xiaotiao and Mingming really miss Guanguan so much. Sigh. [crying hard]
