Chapter 75 A Glimpse of Desolation
The gate to the small base appeared to have been damaged by something, and was in a dilapidated state.
When their convoy arrived at the gate, no one from the base came out.
It was Zhao Lei and the others who got out of the car and pushed open the gate to the small base.
The door opened with a gentle push, offering absolutely no defense.
This place was originally a private mountain village. In the apocalypse, because of its high altitude, it was not flooded and was used as a temporary base by the surrounding residents.
However, the scale was not very large. The snowplows that Zhao Lei and his team brought cleared a space on the road of the small base so that they could park there.
Just as they parked their car, a loudspeaker blared from a building:
"Are you sent by the Shengshi base to rescue people?"
Then Zhao Lei, holding a megaphone, replied: "Yes, we are the team leader sent by our Shengshi base for rescue. My name is Zhao Lei."
Which house are you in? Could someone come and meet us?
After he finished speaking, the door of the house to Zhao Lei's left opened, and a frail woman walked out.
"Captain Zhao, right? All the survivors of our base are in this room. You've finally arrived."
As she spoke, the woman was about to cry.
Zhao Lei quickly comforted her, "Don't cry, you need to explain to us what happened at your base."
The woman held back her tears, then calmed herself down:
"My name is Zhang Hongmei. Our base was attacked by a herd of mutated wild boars two weeks ago."
They knocked down some houses, and after the mutated wild boars came once, another flock of mutated birds arrived.
The men in the base fought desperately to protect us, the elderly, women, and children, from the mutated bird flock.
Almost none of the men in our base have survived.
After being scratched by the mutated birds, they seemed to have contracted a virus, and many of them died that very night.
We didn't dare leave the body at the base, so a few of the women dragged it outside and burned it with firewood.
If an epidemic breaks out, we will be even less likely to survive, and then their sacrifices would have been in vain.
You have to save us! Right now, besides the mutated wild boar that died after crashing into a house, we have absolutely nothing to eat in the base.
We wanted to go out and find food, but the mutated wild boars were too powerful and we couldn't defeat them. We had no choice but to try and get help from the Shengshi base.
Zhang Hongmei rattled off a string of words in one breath, and Zhao Lei quickly asked someone to get her a glass of water to calm down.
After drinking some water, Zhang Hongmei led Zhao Lei and Bai Tang's team into the house.
The house is quite large, and you can tell at a glance that it's used to escape the summer heat, so the windows are very large and don't retain heat.
A charcoal brazier was burning in the middle of the room, and a group of people were gathered around it.
The smell in the room was a bit pungent, but Bai Tang, Zhao Lei, and their team didn't say anything.
After all, it's already quite difficult for a small base to survive, so who would care about these trivial matters?
Bai Tang looked closely and saw that the group consisted almost entirely of emaciated old people, thin children, and frail women, about twenty in total, but she didn't see a single man.
Seeing this scene made Bai Tang feel a little uncomfortable. Although she had seen such scenes many times in her previous life, seeing them again inevitably brought her sadness.
Zhang Hongmei said to the people inside the house, "We have hope of survival. Captain Zhao was sent by the large base to rescue us."
Everyone in the room cheered.
Zhang Hongmei called someone to pour water for Zhao Lei and Bai Tang.
Bai Tang politely declined Zhang Hongmei's offer, saying, "No need to trouble yourself, we have water in the car."
Zhao Lei also said, "We all brought them, no need to trouble yourself."
Then Zhang Hongmei instructed someone to boil some more hot water and cook something for them to eat.
Zhang Hongmei led Zhao Lei and the others to the dead wild boar, and Bai Tang and the others naturally followed behind.
Although the room was warm, the smell was truly unpleasant.
They could only come out for some fresh air, and soon they saw a mutated wild boar that was only half its original size.
Zhang Hongmei explained, "Because this wild boar was too heavy, and all of us who were left were elderly, weak, women and children, we couldn't move it, so we simply left it here."
"Just send someone to collect it when it's time to eat; those mutated wild boars don't eat their own kind anyway."
As she spoke, Zhang Hongmei used a knife to cut a piece of meat off the mutated wild boar.
I plan to take it back and cook it for Bai Tang and the others.
When they were outside, neither Zhao Lei nor Bai Tang refused Zhang Hongmei.
Back inside, both teams found a spot, put down their things, and rested.
Fortunately, the house is big enough; it looks like it should be the main house here.
Zhang Hongmei handed the chopped wild boar meat to another woman, asking her to boil it in snow water.
At this point, Zhao Lei and Bai Tang finally spoke up to refuse, saying, "You can eat, we have some dry rations we brought."
After saying that, Zhao Lei instructed his men to take out some of the dry rations they had brought and distribute them to Zhang Hongmei and the others.
Bai Tang also asked Lin Zhou and Lin Feng to bring out some food.
Zhao Lei took out some coarse grain steamed buns and some compressed biscuits.
Zhao Lei and his team were the main ones who took on this mission, so he prepared food for the rescued people in advance.
What Bai Tang took out were several packets of instant noodles and a few cans of meat.
Although Zhang Hongmei and her group had mutated wild boar meat, they probably didn't have any seasonings, so the pork wouldn't taste good.
The group of people stared at what Bai Tang and his group had taken out, swallowing hard, but no one dared to snatch it.
They all seem like good people, but one cannot be without human conscience.
Zhang Hongmei instructed people to put those things in a new pot and cook them, including instant noodles, compressed biscuits, and canned meat.
It was practically a hodgepodge, but even so, it was a rare delicacy for Zhang Hongmei and her friends.
Although they had a mutated wild boar, eating meat every day would cause indigestion and constipation.
In addition, the survivors were mostly the elderly, women, and children, whose teeth and digestive systems were not very good, so even if there was mutated pork, they could not eat it every day.
Furthermore, they were unsure whether the Shengshi base could receive their distress signal.
If no one comes to rescue them, that half-eaten wild boar might be their last hope.
So some women and elderly people save the food for the children. Although the children in these children look very thin, they are at least healthy.
When Bai Tang and his team saw this scene, the others didn't say much.
They all knew there was plenty of food in the space, but taking it out now wouldn't make them seem like good people; instead, they'd easily be seen as easy targets.
We can't say we think of Zhang Hongmei and her group as entirely bad; we can only say that one should always be wary of others.
Therefore, Bai Tang's team and Zhao Lei's team ate the same compressed biscuits and drank the water they brought themselves.