Fourteen-year-old Johnson cautiously poked his head out of the rubble.
The rain stopped.
There was a loud noise in the distance, and the high-power self-made portable lamp was dazzlingly bright.
Hovering over the stagnant water were hovercraft, kayaks, and people in raincoats, using harpoons-like things to pick up obstacles and rummage for valuables.
— They are not search and rescue personnel, but hurricane survivors.
They violently scrambled for valuables, rushed into the half-collapsed store, forcibly pried open the cash register box, took out wet banknotes, and scattered coins slipped between their fingers and rolled into the stagnant water.
"Look! Old Hawley, poor old fellow!"
After the body lying in the rubble was found, the thugs kicked it maliciously and laughed loudly
"Where's the gold ring on this old guy's hand, did you take it?"
"I didn't see it!" The man who was the first to lift the furniture to find the body raised his hands high and defended loudly.
Others obviously did not believe it, and soon a fight began.
Johnson took advantage of the chaos of yelling and scuffles and ran away.
"Huh, huh." The panting boy was about to slow down when he heard the muffled sound of screams and sharp weapons slashing into flesh and blood from the ruins behind him. Johnson shivered, unable to take a rest. Shade hurriedly fled.
He hadn't experienced such a terrible disaster, but he knew what people would do for money. There were a lot of bankrupt people and stowaways in Pedorion, the economy was poor, and there were no large factories. The food distributed by the church is limited, as are the houses. Many people can only put up a broken tent in the slum.
Johnson lived in the tent with his uncle Lake for many years. He had seen clients who murdered prostitutes, gamblers who had lost red eyes and stabbed people to death, and scumbags who swindled sick old women out of the last of their money.
At the age of seven, one of his little friends died in a remote and quiet alley.
When a criminal who had just succeeded in a robbery rushed into the alley to escape, he shot the boy who kindly called him to get food.
Johnson brought food from the church. He didn't wait for his friends to show up. When he ran back to look for it, all he saw was a cold body lying in a pool of blood in the alley.
The case was broken a month later.
The criminal robbed a basketball player who was on vacation in a seaside city. He also had a blood hole in his chest, but he was lucky to survive. The robber originally only wanted money, but after finding that the prey was muscular and worried that he would not be able to succeed, he shot first and then searched for the money.
After escaping two streets, he encountered a child calling his name, and the robber fired a shot without thinking about it...
The case was a big deal, and the criminal was imprisoned. The newspaper was very concerned about the innocent child who died. The whole page of condolences condemned the prisoner, but even the child's name was misspelled.
Compared to his buddies, Johnson has been lucky. Newspapers let many people know that there are still some children in Pedolion, South Saskatchewan, who can't fill their stomachs and don't even have a house at home.
Things got attention right away. The ghetto was expanded and many homeless families moved in, including Johnson and his uncle. It's just that after life improved, Lake slowly became addicted to gambling.
Johnson started school a year later than the other children, but he was finally able to go to school and eat free brunch at school.
No matter what, Johnson will insist on reading the book, the opportunity is hard-won, easy to get people will not understand.
- When Johnson made up his mind, he would never have imagined that one day he would blow up his school.
Dodging the thugs who were scrambling for valuables, Johnson struggled to swim in the stagnant water. When he woke up in the ruins four days ago, he found a strength in his body.
But Johnson didn't dare to use it at all. He remembered the tragic situation of the school very clearly.
He wants to go out, to a less affected place, to seek help, or to pretend to be an orphan separated from his family. Fourteen-year-old Johnson Brown believes that living is the most important thing.
No matter how scared he is, he will leave here.
Two days later, with the food he found in the rubble, Johnson finally walked out of the hardest-hit area and found a rescue point set up in a small town after the hurricane.
The scrawny child immediately attracted attention, and soon he had a warm blanket, a glass of hot milk, and easily digestible biscuits.
He was very hungry, but restrained himself.
The act of drinking milk slowly seemed very educated, no one suspected that this was a child in a slum, they asked Johnson's family, the boy bowed his head and did not speak.
"God! The poor boy!"
The one who distributed the supplies was a chubby old woman who sympathetically hugged the boy.
Johnson was stiff because he knew the old woman.
The old woman, the owner of a bakery in Pedolion, always chased the homeless away viciously, and she broke Johnson's head with a cane as a child. The old woman's current behavior obviously did not remember Johnson at all. She was hugging the boy who lost his family in the hurricane, not the child who came out of the dirty slum and will definitely become a criminal in the future.
The embrace was warm, but Johnson's heart was cold.
This embarrassment didn't last long. The South Saskatchewan rescue team came back. They brought back many survivors, and the rescue station became busy. No one continued to ask Johnson's origin.
The boy breathed a sigh of relief, looked around, and suddenly someone stopped him in surprise.
"Hi, Little Johnson!"
Johnson took a cautious step back, like a frightened hamster.
The man didn't grab him rashly, but just looked worriedly: "Katie called me just now. After seeing the news, she was very worried about your safety. It's great that you're fine."
Katie, the public school teacher who helped Johnson, left South Saskatchewan after she was fired.
This caring man, who was also tightening the blanket for Johnson, was a friend of the female teacher, and a lawyer who once wanted to get rid of school violence for Johnson, because he could not find evidence and witnesses, and ultimately failed.
"How did you get here, your uncle Rick?"
"I don't know," Johnson whispered.
The lawyer looked at the boy sympathetically: "Forgive me, Johnson, although this is very rude, I still think that it is actually a good thing for you that your guardian is legally missing or dead."
Johnson looked up.
"You didn't want to leave your uncle before. Rick was nice to you when he wasn't gambling, but as long as he had money, he disappeared."
"But..." Johnson felt pain.
Poverty is a shackle, but in the eyes of children, poverty used to be a good thing. When they lived in dilapidated tents, Uncle Lake used to give him the food they received when they were hungry. But with a house and steady monthly relief benefits, Lake would rather go to gamble on an empty stomach, since the children can eat free meals at school anyway.
"Children who have lost loved ones in a hurricane have the opportunity to be adopted by good middle-class families in other states, and you can get a better education, a new environment, and a bright future."
"but I do not know… "
Johnson bowed his head, as if to shrink himself into a ball, so pitiful that he wanted to pat his head.
"I really don't know where Uncle Rick is, maybe he... he actually escaped."
"Yes, it's very possible! God will bless you, Johnson." The lawyer touched the boy's head, deliberately not saying what God would bless him, and he was satisfied to see Johnson struggling and restless.
— Expecting a dear uncle to die is a bit of a guilt for a child.
The man patiently said to Johnson: "Katie and I will get married next year. Because of work, we don't plan to have children for the time being, but we don't mind making an extra breakfast every day. Johnson, the night will not last forever, go out and you beat it."
Johnson nodded slowly.
"Good boy." The lawyer patted the boy on the shoulder, like a father encouraging his child.
Gambler Rick? Long dead, of course, shot before the hurricane and left in a roadside ditch.
***
The thick foggy weather for three consecutive days has seriously affected the smooth flow of the Haihuai Expressway.
Long-haul trucks were jammed at the highway entrance, and several drivers, yawning, left their cabs for a stroll nearby. It was really boring to wait, and someone talked about strange things.
"...On this road! I hit here a few days ago, surrounded by the interview car and followed the police!" The middle-aged driver with a cigarette flicked the ashtray, "I heard that it was a young girl who died under the river embankment. "
"Nonsense! There are roads here, and there are guardrails. You can't die if you roll all the way down. Could it be suicide by jumping into the river?"
"Who knows, according to my son, there are two little girls who went to the movies at night and never came back. Until now, there is still one who is not alive or dead."
The middle-aged driver deliberately went to his cab and took out a newspaper and pointed it to everyone: "The missing little girl's family is willing to pay 30,000 yuan and offer a reward for clues. You have to keep your eyes open, maybe you can get some extra money... "
Just as he was talking, someone suddenly pointed at the thick fog and called out.
The crowd was amazed.
"Just now, there was a figure in the fog just now." The shouting driver's voice trembled, "It seems to be a female student, she looks... similar to this photo."
The crowd burst into laughter.
"Brother, your suit is too outdated! To be scary, you should say that you are a drenched female ghost!"
"Really! Suddenly disappeared!" The driver blushed.
There was another burst of ridicule, and no one paid attention to the truck parked in the thick fog. Suddenly, the door of a cab opened slowly and closed again after half a minute.
A hundred meters away by the river bank, a girl appeared out of thin air in the half-person-high grass, with the exact same appearance as the missing girl. She opened the small black bag she stole from the cab just now, and was satisfied to see a stack of pink banknotes inside. After putting the things in her arms, she flipped through the newspaper.
If you want to blame it, the driver is unlucky, and she wants to put this newspaper against the window glass, just as she is in a hurry to leave Huai City and is short of money.
"Hurricane Jennifer hit South Saskatchewan, USA, with amazing power. Not far from the landing site, a school's substation exploded..." The girl was reading the news when she suddenly saw a figure appearing in the surrounding fog, she was taken aback, Activate the ability, and the figure disappears instantly.
The crowd rushing out of the thick fog threw a large net around their heads!
The net rope was tightened, and the strangely protruding middle was an invisible cuboid.
"Clap!"
Suddenly two durians popped out of the cuboid,
But the people who closed the net were armed police with riot shields, and they were easily stopped.
"Report to Major Zhang, the target has been captured, please proceed to the next step."