2013

Chapter 17: migration

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As we headed north, in September, the weather finally cooled down, with the temperature dropping to 17 degrees. After a few autumn rains, the survivors finally calmed down.

At Zhang Min's insistence, they stopped by the side of the road every evening. At night, I got on the train again and headed north day and night. No one knows when it will stop completely.

Along the way, the wind is blowing and the grass is yellow, the autumn is long and the sky is wide, ranging from large towns to small gas stations and islands. As long as the convoy stops, all you see are zombies.

They roam the open air, or walk on and off buildings, and make their way slowly towards the motorcade that roars past, never to be caught up.

Occasionally, the life detector sounded a few times, all in big cities a few kilometers away from the national highway. Lin Musen rejected all proposals for search and rescue on the grounds of insecurity and insufficient food.

All the people who followed him out of the chemical plant at the beginning knew very clearly that those reserves were enough to eat.

What's more, whenever Lin Musen saw gas stations and small towns on the road, he ordered to stop and searched for supplies. These days, not only did they have less food, but more and more.

Rou Ma used to be a fashion designer. She took over all the work of mending clothes and started changing clothes.

She always looked at the little bear's head in the pocket of Cassia's coat, her eyes were red in a daze. Caesar gave her the little bear, but she didn't want it, and finally brought some sets of military uniforms, and compared them with Meng Feng, Zhang Min and the others began to modify their figures.

A few days later, the first batch of modified clothes was completed, and most of the men wore the military uniforms found in the barracks and improved for the second time.

Rou Ma smiled and said, "Does it fit, Cassia?"

Cassia sat on a chair by the side of the road, looked up at her, and didn't speak.

Zhang Min said: "Honey, what should I say?"

Rou's mother hurriedly said: "It's okay, the young man is very well dressed." She turned and left.

Jueming was wearing a khaki military uniform and a field team-style hat. There were six junior high school students squatting in front of him.

A little fat man who was two years younger than Cassia Ming and just entered the second year of junior high school pulled him by the shoulder and looked at him, saying, "Is this our team uniform?"

Jueming said: "Well, Uncle Meng said, I will take care of you from now on, you six, you have to listen to me."

"Okay." A boy who was half a head taller than Cassia Ming asked, "I recognize you as the boss, will you lead us to fight zombies? What team will we call?"

Caesar pulled the logo on his arm and showed them that the military uniforms of the children, big and small, were all handmade by Rou’s mother, with cartoon logos sewn on without exception—a purple mushroom head and a thin rod.

Jue Ming said: "We are the cowardly mushroom team. We don't need to rush up to kill the zombies. We just need to hide behind them. If there is a mission, Uncle Meng will tell me."

The children nodded in understanding, and a young man said, "Where's Uncle Meng?"

Jue Ming said: "They are the melon team, and they also have piranhas and ground thorns, which are responsible for hand-to-hand combat and the front line; my dad leads people who can shoot, and they are pea shooters, double shooters and machine gun shooters."

"Where is that person?" The little fat man looked up, at the back of the container under the setting sun, Liu Yan was sitting on the edge of the container, swaying casually, immersing himself in assembling a piece of machinery.

"His name is Liu Yan, and he is a technical worker." Jue Ming said, "He is very powerful, like a robot cat, with many new things. It was his alarm clock that rescued you that day."

The little fat man asked, "Is he a twin sunflower?"

On the chest of Liu Yan's military uniform was a portrait of an uncle with protruding eyes, and Caesar said, "No, he's Crazy Dave, the one who runs the garage shop."

The children laughed.

Jueming imitated Zhang Minjiao's words and said, "Let's talk about you."

Jueming took out the little bear in his pocket, shook it casually, and signaled his team members to talk about themselves, communicate with each other, and get to know each other.

Zhang Min stood in the distance, watching with interest that Jue Ming and his teammates strengthened their relationship.

"Liu Yan." Zhang Min said.

Liu Yan didn't raise his head and said: "What?"

Zhang Min said: "Jiaming is much more cheerful, he didn't have any friends at school before."

Liu Yan hummed, and replied: "You're welcome, you can ask him to make more friends."

Sitting in the car, Xie Fenghua helped Liu Yan register the specification numbers of the parts, and suddenly said, "Jiaming feels too small."

Zhang Min said, "He wasn't very old in the first place."

Xie Fenghua smiled and said: "No, what I mean is that he doesn't have the mentality that a junior high school student should have. A fifteen-year-old boy's thinking and emotional intelligence are close to those of a ten-year-old child, or an eleven-year-old... I Hearing from him, he was only eleven years old when you met him? Maybe it's because you've been protecting him all these years, which has stagnated his interpersonal and communication skills."

Zhang Min said: "No way, he didn't talk to strangers when he was studying, thinking that his classmates were... not very kind to him. When he was 11 years old, he bumped his head once. In fact, the students also liked to laugh at him. I asked the teacher to reflect. Passed several times, changed schools once..."

"No, no." Xie Fenghua said, "The reason lies with you. You are like a safe haven. This is called the wall effect in psychology. The strict protection makes him unwilling to actively seek out others to communicate and seek responsibility."

Zhang Min: "Then what should I do?"

Xie Fenghua said: "Give him some opportunities to exercise appropriately."

Zhang Min: "Impossible, it's too dangerous."

Xie Fenghua smiled and said: "That's right, but it's really inappropriate to put him behind your back."

"A philosopher." Liu Yan said: "I don't think there is anything wrong with this, they have their own way of getting along. If you like me, what can I say? Do you think his intelligence is sound?"

Xie Fenghua put his pen to his chin and thought for a while, then nodded and said, "Intelligence is normal, but it can be said to be very smart. It's just that his thinking is too divergent. Zhang Min, do you really intend to protect him for the rest of his life? This is not realistic."

Zhang Min said: "What's unrealistic about this? Why is it unrealistic?"

Zhang Min's tone was already a bit displeased, but Xie Fenghua didn't continue to speak tit for tat, and nodded tactfully.

Zhang Min seemed to want to distinguish something, and said in a hurried tone that is rarely seen:

"A lifetime is a lifetime, fifty years, sixty years, until the last year, month, day, hour, and second. How is it unrealistic?"

"I made a slip of the tongue." Xie Fenghua said, "I'm sorry."

"It's nothing." Zhang Min's self-cultivation is still very good: "His teacher also said this. You are much gentler than her, thank you for your concern."

Zhang Min turned around and left, Liu Yan laughed, and there was a kind of satisfaction in Xie Fenghua's eyes that Xie Fenghua was finally deflated.

"Philosopher." Liu Yan praised.

Xie Fenghua couldn't laugh or cry, but shook his head helplessly.

"My father and my stepmother..." The little fat man said bitterly, "Just leave me there and run away."

Cassia listened quietly without saying a word.

Someone asked, "What happened next?"

The little fat man said to them: "Later I secretly followed upstairs, my dad went back to pack his things, my grandma jumped out of the room, killed my stepmother in the living room, and bit my dad, they deserved it. "

Jueming said, "Didn't your father take you away?"

The little fat man said cruelly: "I stole the key and locked him at home. Who told him to beat my grandma every day. I threw the key into the sewer. When I ran downstairs, I ran into Pastor Wu, and then I stayed with them." Together."

Cassia nodded, his gaze was a bit complicated.

When Lin Musen gave the order, Meng Feng shouted from a distance: "Sunflower, the Cowardly Mushroom team get on the bus first! The rest of the team are on alert and let's go!"

"Look at the sky." Jueming said.

The sun is setting, and the sky shows a bright autumn starry sky, which is gorgeous and prosperous.

"Aliens will come to save the earth and save mankind." Jue Ming concluded his talk and let his team members get on the bus.

When Liu Yan heard this, the corners of his mouth twitched unnaturally. Zhang Min smiled and said, "Jade Ming's argument... is actually similar to that of a priest. They all think that they can be saved by believing in things in the sky."

With a horrible expression on his face, Liu Yan took a few fleet inspection summaries that were handed over to him, and ordered people to get on the car.

Gasoline is enough to run 3,000 kilometers, but the tires can't hold up, so I have to find another place to resupply along the way, preferably in a city, or even a roadside auto repair shop at worst.

However, there were not many specific tires for the container trucks. The next day they carefully bypassed Wuhan and crossed the Yangtze River Bridge.

Five days after crossing the river to the north, they bypassed Henan and entered the border of Shaanxi. The tire of the first container truck blew out. At four o'clock in the morning, the last container truck honked its horn suddenly, and the front of the truck swayed. Six vehicles passed on the road one after another. Edge stopped.

Fortunately, Liu Yan had expected it and adjusted the order of the convoy, otherwise a series of car accidents would be unavoidable.

Everyone woke up in the dark night, making a lot of noise.

Meng Feng said: "Stay in the car!" He jumped out of the car in the middle, went to the back to check, and shined three flashlights on the tires.

Liu Yan said: "It's overweight, you've brought too many things, plus the natural damage caused by excessive wear and tear, according to the test, it's only been a few days."

Lin Musen said: "There is no spare tire, what should I do?"

Liu Yan had already thought about this problem, and only hoped to find a spare tire along the way, but along the way, there were no tires at all in the auto parts store.

"Wait for dawn." The executive Hu Jue got out of the car and suggested, "If you don't want to abandon the car, you can only look around after dawn."

Lin Musen accepted the proposal, Meng Feng arranged for people to patrol, and Liu Yan set up a detector on the roof of the car.

After dawn, Meng Feng and Zhang Min each led a team to investigate along the fork at the end of the road. Lin Musen's expression was cloudy and he was very irritable.

In the evening, the two teams returned almost at the same time.

"There is a residential area in front." Zhang Min took off his gloves and said with a sigh: "There are a few grocery stores inside, but they are already empty, like a small village, there are small groups of zombies wandering around, about a thousand, No direct contact."

Meng Feng said: "Following our direction, we walked for four hours and found a Hope Primary School. To the west of the road, at the intersection of two forked roads, there was no abnormality found on a rough look. There was an excavator. fix it."

Lin Musen was silent for a moment, and then said: "Go to the west, bypass that group of zombies, the two cars go over first to have a look."

On the morning of the third day, two container trucks arrived at a lonely building in the wilderness.

This place has entered the geological zone of the Loess Plateau, and the autumn wind and sandstorms are severe. As far as the eye can see, this is the only place on the continuous plain where a school has been built.

In the desolate suburbs nearly twenty miles away from here, on the other side of the dirt hill is the small village that Zhang Min mentioned.

There is loess on all sides, the wilderness is very flat, and the place that is almost invisible to the eyes is the Qinling Mountains that separate the sky from the earth.

A small river rushes by in the distance, judging from where it goes, it should flow into the Yellow River.

The road here is difficult to walk, and it is two days' drive from Xi'an. The village is remote and the land is barren. Liu Yan tentatively looked at Lin Musen's face, it was uncertain.

Meng Feng and Zhang Min led people in to inspect the entire unfinished school, while Liu Yan looked outside with his pocket in his pocket. After Hu Jue came, Lin Musen began to consult his opinion. Hu Jue spoke well, and the suggestions he made were to the point. Compared with Liu Yan's straightforwardness, Hu Jue obviously liked Lin Musen more.

This is exactly what Liu Yan wanted. He didn't want to explain too much to Lin Musen again and again. After all, his specialty is machinery rather than public relations and interpersonal communication.

"What do you think of this place, Liu Yan?" Lin Musen looked at Liu Yan expectantly after talking with his think tank for a while, this was the first time he asked Liu Yan for his opinion in several days.

Liu Yan nodded, but did not speak.

"Are we going to make a home here?" a teenager asked.

A few children were rolling a hoop and passing by them, Lin Musen said impatiently: "Casia! Take your scout troop away! Don't hang around here!"

Liu Yan said: "I want to go in and have a look."

"Go." Lin Musen said happily, "Meng Feng will protect you."

Liu Yan walked into the school. It was not yet completed. Cement bags were piled up on the back school playground. Slides, rings, swings, and horizontal bars were built. The basketball court was not cemented, and cinders were piled up on the runway.

The plaster walls have been painted, and in the corner of the first floor, shocking bloodstains and purple-black handprints are sprayed on the wall.

"Hey—" a zombie knocked open the door, Liu Yan pulled back abruptly, a gunshot rang out, Meng Feng appeared on the stairs, and shot the zombie to death.

"What are you doing here?" Meng Feng said.

Liu Yan: "Look at the situation."

Meng Feng said, "Follow me."

The team members scattered into the two-story school, Meng Feng led Liu Yan, walked up the stairs to the second floor, his military boots stepped on the corridor making a steady and firm sound.

Liu Yan held the armrest and looked up, Meng Feng said: "If there is an emergency, you can scream in fear and put your arm around Sergeant Meng Feng's waist from behind."

"Huh?" Liu Yan said, "How many zombies have you found?"

The sky was gloomy and gloomy. Meng Feng patrolled the corridor and replied: "Very few, including the one just now, there are only three in total. One of them is wearing a hard hat and should be a worker. Lin Musen plans to Have you settled here?"

Liu Yan: "Who knows?"

He walked into a classroom, pushed open the aluminum alloy window and looked towards the back campus. There was a school building on the other side of the basketball court.

After Zhang Min patrolled the east, he brought people over to join Meng Feng.

"Report casualties." Meng Feng said: "I heard someone calling, was it scratched?"

Zhang Min said: "Bite, alone, I sent him to find Lin Musen."

"Is that it?" Liu Yan raised his chin to signal them to look out the window.

On the basketball court, Hu Jue in a suit led a man under the backboard and said a few words.

Meng Feng narrowed his eyes.

The man turned around and ran away. Hu Jue drew out his gun and fired, killing the man on the spot.

The three of them were silent for a while, then Hu Jue put the penis into the inner pocket of his suit, turned and left.

Liu Yan said: "I don't like this place very much, and I don't like some of his practices..."

The door was pushed open, and Hu Jue stood outside and asked, "Liu Yan, Brother Sen is looking for you."

They left the classroom, Hu Jue whispered: "You'd better give him some advice, I don't think this place is suitable, the terrain is too open, like an isolated island."

Liu Yan replied in a low voice: "Didn't you find out, he really wants to develop here for a long time, otherwise he wouldn't let Meng Feng search carefully."

Hu Jue nodded, and Liu Yan asked, "How does it feel to kill someone?"

Hu Jue was silent for a moment, and then replied: "Frankly speaking, it's bad. You've also handed in the nomination certificate? How many people have you killed?"

Liu Yan said: "No, he made me kill people in different ways, and I never listened to him."

Hu Jue said: "But most of the food we eat is still given by him."

"Yes." Liu Yan said casually, "What's the matter, Meng Feng can protect us, I hope he will be safe."

Hu Jue said: "I will be responsible for keeping an eye on him, don't worry, I have never had a chance to say, thank you very much for saving me."

Liu Yan smiled: "It's a small thing."

Meng Feng patted Hu Jue on the shoulder and said, "Thank you so much, dear."

The four went downstairs.

Lin Musen said: "Liu Yan, do you think this place is suitable for living?"

Liu Yan said: "That's right, there are enough classrooms, and there are still rooms in the rear school building. I can make a few wind turbines by myself, and I can live there temporarily."

Lin Musen nodded in satisfaction and said, "Very well, I think so too."

Liu Yan said: "Or we can spend the winter here, but after winter..."

Lin Musen smiled, and handed over a cigarette, Liu Yan licked his lips and took it, after thinking about it, Lin Musen lit a cigarette for Liu Yan himself, put one hand on his shoulder, and said: "You have to understand me, I also do it for the good of everyone."

Liu Yan said: "How should I put it..."

"Needless to say." Lin Musen said: "Just do it well."

He draped Liu Yan's shoulders and walked across the basketball court in the wind. Liu Yan tried his best not to look at the corpse lying in a pool of blood.

"You and Hu Jue." Lin Musen said: "From now on, you will be my right-hand man. You are not very good at dealing with people. I understand that. People who engage in learning don't like to socialize. I heard that Qian Xuesen has never participated in socializing..."

"Qian Zhongshu." Liu Yan said.

Lin Musen smiled very kindly, and said: "Anyway, it's Qian. Brother Sen understands you autistic...scholars. So Brother Sen also figured it out. Your personality is really not suitable for coordination, and it is easy to offend people. In the future, Hu Jue You are in charge of personnel affairs, you are in charge of construction, and our home will be handed over to you, Brother Sen will never interfere with you. Tell Hu Jue how many people you need to help, and let them listen to you."

"Okay." Liu Yan nodded.

Holding a cigarette in his finger, Lin Musen pointed to the excavator in the distance, and said, "Can you convert that into a crane? You have to prepare for unloading first. Come, let me help you."

Liu Yan looked at the huge excavator and felt like crying.

Of course, it was impossible for Lin Musen to really help him. After working for a while, his subordinates used other excuses to call him away. And Liu Yan led several people to work until ten o'clock in the evening. He was extremely exhausted, and used the excavator as a crane to unload the containers one by one.

Three days later, Zhang Min began to train the survivors, and the process was still the same as in the previous chemical plant.

Meng Feng and Liu Yan took people out, Meng Feng proceeded step by step, carefully sweeping the villages and towns twenty miles away, Liu Yan removed the driver's seat lock cover, pulled the wires to touch the spark, started the car, and drove them one by one. return.

Old-fashioned electric vehicles, motorcycles, and tractors are the only equipment in the nearby villages and towns. Power outages are frequent in the northwest region, and there are unexpectedly many batteries and generators.

Liu Yan picked up a bunch of usable and discarded ones as if he had found a treasure, almost all of them came in handy as long as the discarded generators were simply renovated.

After half a month of running around, the intersection of Shaanxi, Henan, and Hubei is finally on the right track and can be used as a new foothold.

Liu Yan has always felt that this place is not very good, it was an indescribable intuition, but Lin Musen insisted on going his own way, and no one was willing to make trouble, just like what Meng Feng said: "How do you convince him? Could it be that you tell him that there is something wrong with Fengshui here? question?"

Liu Yan had no choice but to take it as he came, so he took it easy. He dismantled the three flagpoles in the elementary school, matched them with a dozen blades of electric fans, and began to try to make three ten-meter-high windmills. This process took him nearly a month, and all the labor force was transferred to training by him. After training during the day, everyone was so exhausted that Liu Yan didn't dare to ask anyone to help.

Only when Meng Feng finished his patrol at night, the two of them drove a small generator to weld and cut in the empty playground until two o'clock in the middle of the night.

Finally, on the day when the generator was erected, Lin Musen took time out of his busy schedule to observe it. He stood far away, fearing that these things would explode.

"Can this thing work?" Lin Musen asked from a distance, he felt that Liu Yan was doing handwork.

Liu Yan took off his gloves, his hands were full of blood blisters, he glanced at him, and said, "Not sure! Hope!"

Lin Musen: "Have you done this before?"

Liu Yan: "No, it's the first time I'm doing it, and it needs to be improved."

Lin Musen said: "Come on, I support your invention and creation."

"If you touch your lips, you will support it." Meng Feng muttered dissatisfied: "What do I say if I give you a strong man for two months?"

Meng Feng cast them with cement and stood them firmly on the top of the slope. The multi-loop coils are pulled out, and the first round of diesel generators fully charges the magnetic coils, and the magnetism is abundant.

"You are the power of love, and he doesn't love me. Didn't you notice that the way he looks at us and Zhang Min is only a little less defensive than looking at zombies..." Liu Yan whispered.

Meng Feng: "Why?"

Liu Yan: "I'm afraid we have AIDS."

Meng Feng: "..."

Liu Yan: "The preparations have begun, dear, let's pray."

Meng Feng: "What are you praying for, dear, who are you praying to? Shall I kowtow to you?"

Liu Yan: "Pray don't fail, I really want the pastor to come and pray for me..."

Meng Feng said disapprovingly: "It doesn't matter, isn't science like this. If you fail, just treat it as a physical exercise. It's not ashamed..." Then he pouted at Lin Musen: "Anyway, that guy doesn't know what we are doing."

Lin Musen was standing on the edge of the slope smoking a cigarette and watching, the wind blowing his coat wildly.

Amidst the deafening sound of the wind and the hum of the generator, Liu Yan explained loudly to Lin Musen: "This is only the first round of power supply! A diesel generator should be used to magnetize the coil, and after the wind drives it to rotate, the electric energy generated by itself will flow through the circuit..."

Lin Musen said: "No need to explain! Turn it on!"

The strong wind in the northwest made the flagpole tremble, Meng Feng pulled out the steel bar that locked the axle, Liu Yan turned off the generator, and switched the power supply circuit.

In an instant, the sky and the earth fell silent. Thirty fan blades buzzed and turned into phantoms in the strong wind, like magnificent flowers blooming in the blood-colored dusk. The magnetic coils rotated at high speed, cutting the magnetic field to generate electricity, and the three indicator lights came on. rise.

In the thick cables scattered on the ground, the current flew to the distance in an instant, and the whole school flashed first, and then successfully energized.

The campus was lit up with bright lights in an instant, the children screamed with joy, and everyone cheered.

Lin Musen nodded, stepped on the electric car and went back to school.

Liu Yan and Meng Feng held hands, each other's hands were blistered with blood, they walked down the slope, and went back to that warm home in the black wind that stretched across the world and created the world for thousands of years.

October 1, 2012.

The founding day was not celebrated, and we ushered in the first ray of light amidst cheers.

Edison's pioneering light illuminated our long dark night, and in the forty-seventh day after the outbreak of the zombie tide, electricity returned to our lives.

The current power supply can only be simple lighting, most of the electric energy is stored in the battery pack, and the wind generator needs regular maintenance and oiling. The next step is to prepare the Tesla high-voltage coil as a defense facility, hoping to resist zombies.

Where there is electricity, there is light, and when there is hope, the improved chip left by Cui Xiaokun can finally play a role. The mystery in the barracks was solved a month ago.

I turned on the video. Most of the zombies that Meng Feng and Zhang Min killed that day were scattered, and something seemed to have changed in the middle of the pile of corpses. After the second death, the body of the zombie floated off the ground like weightlessness, slowly approached a certain point in the middle, and was absorbed together.

More and more corpses gathered towards the center, layer by layer, more than a thousand zombies that had lost their mobility and had their brains destroyed were glued together with flesh and blood, forming a huge ten-meter-high monster standing there.

It didn't do anything at first, like after completing some kind of fusion and mutation, the flesh giant was still standing 5 hours after the time point of the video, the battery was exhausted, and the image was gone.

what does that mean? I watched the video several times, and I didn’t miss a minute or a second during the tedious five hours. It was watched by almost everyone who might have an opinion. suggestion.

Everyone was amazed, surprised that the zombies mutated again after they were completely dead.

There is another doubt: where is this giant going on a long journey

After watching the video, Jueming said that it was as if a flying saucer shot down a light beam in the sky, and many corpses slowly floated up, and it felt like they were sucked together.

His idea was a bit unique, but at that time the perspective was fixed, there was no way to turn to the sky, we couldn't see what was in the sky. But I think there may be a "nucleus" where the infrared camera can't capture it.

Maybe this nucleus is invisible to the naked eye? Could it be that it aggregated all the corpses. The idea of extraterrestrial life is so incredible that it is unlikely. The clues were cut off just like that, so they had to be put aside.

Meng Feng found a lot of grain seeds in a nearby town. Hu Jue and I discussed carefully that we can try to sow seeds in the next spring. Although everyone is ignorant about farming and has no experience at all, at least Lin Musen's reserves You can also eat for a long time.

You have to try everything first. I believe that before his ten-year supply of food is exhausted, he will always be able to grow something.

Meng Feng believes that although the terrain here is simple and unfavorable, it is not completely impossible to defend. We and Zhang Min have made a detailed plan for the terrain and buildings. It referred to almost everyone's suggestions, including Lin Musen's, although he couldn't explain why other than "do it well" and "support you".

On the contrary, Deng Changhe, a small policeman, mentioned the effect of electricity on zombies.

He once turned over several zombies with a 20,000-volt electric baton. Referring to this point, everything is easy to handle when there is electricity. Meng Feng analyzed the density of zombies and pointed out that as long as there is a power grid blocking the surroundings of the school, it is enough to resist thousands of zombies attacking at the same time.

I designed a Tesla coil and experimented with a few walking zombies, and it worked fine.

Combining nail bombs, power grids, and Tesla coils, it's not difficult to hold this place. I hope this time I can build a real home. I don't want to run away anymore.

I wonder how many people are still alive on this land

I wonder if under the same sky, there are still many people like us, struggling to survive in the disasters of the last days, waiting for the arrival of hope.