"Who would dare cause trouble? Do you think no one in this neighborhood is watching us? Plenty are. That thing with the thirty-plus people last time? Word spread fast. Two of us took care of over thirty people, and they still couldn't do anything to us. Do you think anyone here dares make trouble now?" Ling Jiang gave a short, derisive laugh.
Don't think she had just sat idle at home during the week Lan Jin went to the industrial park for supplies. She had been gathering plenty of information, though none of it was important enough to bring up until now.
After that incident, Lan Jin, Ling Jiang, and even the dog had become something like local grim reapers. Anyone who saw them kept their distance. It wasn't that no one wanted to cause trouble. It was that no one dared.
To Lan Jin, that was a good thing. "As long as life is quiet, why bother caring about anything else?"
Since they had a decent amount of supplies at home, it felt safer to leave someone behind. Lao Gao volunteered to stay and guard the house while tinkering with a small generator that could power the home for four people. Huang Jinghe, on the other hand, decided to come along with them for a stroll.
When it came to the market, Huang Jinghe was eager to get friendly with the vendors. He was hoping to find a way to contact his parents through them. The chances were slim, but you never knew unless you tried.
Lan Jin never went out alone. She had to bring the child and the dog, so their little outing ended up quite lively.
The liveliest of all was Nana, strutting at the front of the group as if leading them into battle. Lan Jin couldn't help but laugh. "Nana, we're just going to the market. Don't look like you're going to fight. You're scaring people."
Speaking of scary, after just over a month of the extreme cold, Nana's fur seemed tougher and denser than before. It didn't feel prickly to the touch, but it was clearly different—almost as if it had adapted to survive the deep freeze.
Lan Jin eyed her suspiciously. "Nana, have you mutated? This fur looks made to resist the cold."
If that was the case, the extreme cold might not be going away anytime soon.
And if Nana had started mutating, then maybe other surviving animals had too.
"You mean like rats and cockroaches?" Huang Jinghe asked. "Yeah, those things survive just about anything. Mutating to stay alive wouldn't be strange."
Then he frowned slightly. "Wait, Sister Lan, are you saying they might become a disaster later? Like the insect plague we had before?"
"Exactly. Rats and cockroaches already have incredible survival instincts. If they manage to keep breeding, who knows what danger they might bring to humans. Of course, maybe I'm just overthinking it. I've read too many apocalypse stories. I keep worrying about this and that."
Ling Jiang waved it off. "I've heard plenty of end-of-the-world talk, but we've only got natural disasters. As long as you can endure them, you won't die. You don't know how many times I've thanked the heavens that we don't have zombies. If we had both disasters and zombies… Forget mutations, just staying alive would be impossible."
"Disasters and zombies? You really thought that up?"
Lan Jin didn't even want to imagine it. Disasters alone were bad enough. Add zombies on top, and it'd be like the heavens wanted to wipe humanity out and start over. Even if that was the goal, it shouldn't be done in such a twisted way.
"Stop it, Sister Ling. That's too scary," Huang Jinghe said with a wry smile.
Qiao Qiao looked up curiously. "Brother Huang, zombie is what?"
"Uh…" Huang Jinghe thought for a moment. "It's a creature scarier than Nana. If it bites you, you get sick and turn into one too, then you go around biting people. So if you ever see a zombie, you must hide far away."
Qiao Qiao's eyes widened. "Then… see zombie, Qiao Qiao can hit?"
"If you can win, sure. But I think it's better if you just hide."
While Qiao Qiao mulled that over, they finally caught sight of the market ahead.
Something seemed different today. From a distance, a certain spot in the market was unusually crowded, with almost everyone gathered there.
Ling Jiang, always eager for a bit of excitement, lit up. "Hey, what's going on there? Let's go take a look."
As they got closer, a strange, foul smell drifted through the air. Lan Jin wrinkled her nose. "What's that smell? It's awful."
Even Nana refused to move forward, pressing her front paws over her nose in clear discomfort.
Seeing the dog stop, Ling Jiang said, "You wait here. I'll go see. With that many people, there must be something good."
"Alright. We'll stay here."
Huang Jinghe didn't feel comfortable letting her go alone, so he followed. Qiao Qiao, though, was itching to join the fun. "Mama, we go see too?"
"We're not going. Nana feels awful. If you want to know, they'll tell us when they come back."
"Not same…"
Being told about something after the fact wasn't the same as seeing it with her own eyes.
Still, Lan Jin shook her head. "Even if Nana could go, you're too small. I'm not taking you into a crowd like that. Too many people could hurt you. Just wait patiently."
It didn't take long for Ling Jiang to return, weaving her way out of the crowd. Her expression was strangely excited. "Lan Jin, someone over there is selling flour. I looked—it really is flour, but it's… odd."
Lan Jin tilted her head. "Odd how?"
"It's not white, it's yellowish, and it stinks. But they say it's still edible after cooking. The seller even has a stove and is making flatbreads on the spot. You can buy the flour or just buy the bread to try. Prices aren't too bad—you can pay with contribution points or trade goods. I saw someone trade a packet of instant noodles for about a jin of flour."
A packet of instant noodles could stretch for maybe a day at most. But a jin of flour, with extra water, could last several days. No wonder there was such a crowd.
Still, that smell…
With Nana clearly uncomfortable and plenty of supplies stored away, Lan Jin wasn't about to buy something of unknown origin. If it made someone sick, the cost wouldn't be worth it at all.
===
Slight spoiler and maybe foreshadow by the author in this chapter. There's no zombies, as this apocalypse is about natural disaster. But there will be mutation because of this. And one of the factors that become 'switch' of that, was mentioned in this chapter.