I roughly calculated the time, and if I wasn't mistaken, the chaos started on a Saturday morning when Yangyang and I discovered it.
According to this person's diary, it seemed to be the first day of the chaos in their area, although they didn't understand what was happening at the time.
I flipped through the rest of the diary and found that it mostly described the situation and the writer's mental state.
I've met people who are generally optimistic, probably due to their youth, so despite the difficult circumstances, they've managed to stay relatively positive.
Compared to the writer of this diary, we're still in a better situation.
Reading his diary, I felt that towards the end, his mental state had been completely crushed, and he was only driven by the instinct to survive.
As I flipped through the pages, a small detail caught my attention.
The entry read:
"Er Waizi is such a worry, he's not listening at all.
I told him not to drink cold water, but he wouldn't listen, and now he has a bad stomach.
I have no way to get him medicine, what am I supposed to do?"
Reading this, I suddenly made a connection to something that had been bothering me.
When I saw the villagers, I had a nagging feeling that something was off, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.
Now, it clicked into place.
The village didn't have convenience stores or supermarkets like the county or city, so they must have been relying on their own food and water supply.
While they had their own grain, which was better than the biscuits and jerky we had, the water was a different story.
Without supermarkets, they wouldn't have had access to bottled water, meaning they must have been drinking well water or tap water.
I had seen a faucet in Zhang Hongsheng's courtyard, but I wasn't sure if it was connected to the tap water or a well.
Regardless, I could now confirm that the water might not be as dangerous as I thought, given that many people had been drinking it without issue.
However, this also made me wonder if Er Waizi, Zhang Tiejun, and the two deceased children had gotten sick from drinking the same water.
Suo Tian had previously suggested that the symptoms resembling malaria might actually be a complication of the walker virus infection.
I recalled a similar scene from a foreign movie where people bitten by the infected would develop a high fever, die, and then reanimate.
Of course, this was just my speculation, and many questions remained unanswered, such as why the walkers in the pit didn't decay like others and remained relatively intact after months.
I sat in the chair, lost in thought, but my mind became increasingly jumbled.
The constant pounding on the gate outside, accompanied by the moans, was making me anxious.
I had no idea how much time had passed.
I stood up, stretched, and walked to the door, wondering why Suo Tian and the others hadn't arrived yet.
I crouched by the door for a while, until my legs went numb, then stood up again.
Sighing, I returned to the room, thinking that they might have encountered some trouble.
But no, they couldn't have.
The thought of it was too dire to consider.
I tried to convince myself that they just hadn't found me yet, given the size of the village.
I sat on the kang, leaning against the wall.
At first, I was alert, listening to the noises outside, but as time passed, my thoughts became increasingly muddled.
Eventually, the moans of the walkers outside couldn't keep my attention, and I curled up, covering myself with a dusty blanket that had been lying on the kang for months.
I fell into a deep sleep.
In a half-awake state, I seemed to hear several gunshots, but I couldn't distinguish the distance or direction of the sounds.
Even after realizing it was gunfire, I drifted back to sleep.
I'm usually a light sleeper, but I was surprised that I slept so soundly despite the circumstances.
I slept until dawn, and when I woke up, I stared blankly for a while, collecting my thoughts.
Then, I quickly got up from the kang, put on my shoes, and rushed towards the courtyard.
However, as I reached the doorway, I froze.
The sun was already up outside, and the snow in the courtyard was starting to melt.
There were only my solitary footprints from last night on the snow, and the walkers outside the gate continued to moan.
I stood there in a daze for a while, gradually realizing that Suo Tian and the others hadn't come all night.
Had they not found me? Or... what happened to them?
As soon as the thought crossed my mind, my body shivered involuntarily.
A strong, eerie feeling enveloped me, mixed with fear, loneliness, and unknown terrors.
I took several deep breaths, trying to calm myself down, but it was no use.
I didn't know what to calm down about or how to calm down.
My inner self seemed calm, but something inside me was surging with turmoil.
Shaking my head forcefully, I walked towards the gate, planning to check if the number of walkers had decreased through the gap.
Actually, just listening to the roars outside was enough to tell that the number of walkers had increased compared to last night.
There was no need to check specifically, but I didn't know what else to do, so I went through the motions.
As I was about to approach the gate, I caught a glimpse of the left wall out of the corner of my eye.
My heart skipped a beat, and I stopped, turning to look.
Since the courtyard was in the middle of the alley, the wall on the left side must have belonged to another household.
The diary mentioned the neighbor, so there should be another family's courtyard on the other side.
I recalled the layout of the households in Zhang Hongsheng's alley, where the courtyards were adjacent to each other with little to no gaps.
Given the proximity of this alley to theirs, the layout should be similar.
After a moment's pause, I walked over to the wall, estimating its height.
If I could climb over to the neighboring household, I might be able to escape from there.
The walkers were currently concentrated in front of the gate of my current courtyard, and they weren't intelligent enough to guard other exits.
My mind was preoccupied with the safety of Yangyang, Suo Tian, and the others.
If they were okay, they would have come to find me by now.
Since I had a plan, I decided to act on it immediately.
The wall wasn't extremely high, but I wasn't Suo Tian, who had the skills to climb walls effortlessly.
I went back to the living room, picked up the two wooden stools that were lying on the ground, and stacked them in the corner of the wall.
After ensuring the stools were stable, I stepped on them, and the height was just right for me to hoist myself up to the top of the wall.
I quickly scanned the neighboring courtyard.
The situation wasn't too bad.
The gate of the courtyard was half-open, and two walkers that had wandered in were aimlessly wandering around.
However, they weren't a significant threat, and I was confident I could handle them.
As soon as I poked my upper body over the wall, the walkers noticed me and began to moan, moving towards the wall.
To prevent their noise from attracting more walkers, I didn't dare linger on the wall.
I supported my upper body on the wall and struggled to move my entire body onto it.
I was relieved that there were no broken glass or spikes on the wall; otherwise, I would have gotten seriously injured.
The wall was quite tall, and when the two walkers reached the wall, they stretched out their arms to grab me, but I was just out of their reach.
I was relieved that they couldn't jump; otherwise, they might have caught my ankles.
Standing on the wall, I looked down and felt my legs trembling involuntarily.
I hadn't realized how high it was from down below.
Taking a few deep breaths, I focused on the width of the wall and took a few quick steps along it.
Before the slow-moving walkers could react and chase after me, I steeled myself and jumped down into the courtyard.
The snow on the ground hadn't completely melted, so the impact of the jump wasn't too severe.
However, when my feet touched the ground, the unmelted snow was slippery, and I lost my balance, falling to the ground.
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