Chapter 152
Although he had to squeeze into the same bed as the director, Mr. Xu slept more comfortably that night than he had all week.
He brushed his teeth, took a shower, and changed into clean underwear.
He slept soundly until dawn without a single dream.
The next morning, some middle school students went door to door, announcing, “Come downstairs to collect rice. One share per household. Bring a bowl.”
Everyone poked their heads out and greeted one another.
“How did you sleep last night?”
Their dirty clothes were beyond wearing, so everyone rummaged through the original homeowners’ wardrobes for something to wear. Not every household had clothes in suitable sizes, and people inevitably ended up dressed in all sorts of odd combinations.
Once they were dressed, they took their bowls downstairs.
Zhou Wang presided over the distribution while the elderly residents helped portion everything out.
Zhou Wang picked up a megaphone. “Please cherish every grain of rice. Today is a day for everyone to rest and recover, and it’s also the only day you’ll be able to collect rice.”
Mr. Xu’s ears immediately perked up. “What about tomorrow?”
“Starting tomorrow, we’ll be providing potatoes,” Zhou Wang said. “Everyone needs to understand one thing: this is no longer your home. You can’t go back to your homes because they’re overrun by zombies. In the old days, what we’re doing would have been called fleeing from disaster. These days, we’re all refugees.”
“No one’s going to starve. Potatoes are filling.”
“Don’t worry about too much just yet. Collect today’s rice first. You’ve all been through a lot, so take the day to rest. We’ll discuss the details tomorrow.”
Everyone lined up to collect their rice.
At Auspicious Garden, they didn’t serve meals from one communal kitchen. Every apartment had its own kitchen, stove, cookware, and tableware. Once people received their rice and vegetables, they could take them home and cook for themselves.
Each apartment housed three to five people.
Those who didn’t know how to cook could team up with their neighbors. They would have to work that out among themselves.
Zhou Wang couldn’t wipe everyone’s backs or play nursemaid to them.
At most, he would look after the elderly and children. As for the adults, they had all been out in society long enough to take care of themselves. If anyone was still naïve enough to cling to fantasies, Zhou Wang would be the one to snap them out of it.
“I’ll call out the names of the people who are to come downstairs and see me after they’ve eaten,” Zhou Wang said, raising the megaphone again.
The first person he called was the horticulturist who had come with the people from Mr. Xu’s company.
After breakfast, Jiang Cheng went down to the underground parking garage with Song Jingshuo.
The storage area that had once been used for supplies was back in operation.
“I’ve been waiting for you to come take a look,” Song Jingshuo said, both hands in his pockets.
The space was packed to the brim. It wasn’t the only one, either. Several blast doors had been put into use, carving out multiple spaces to serve as warehouses.
In fact, once everyone had started working in teams and Song Jingshuo had left the field team to remain behind and handle logistics, he had already begun dispatching people to transport supplies here from Mai Duoduo bit by bit, like ants carrying food.
“Before, we only had to consider the people already here.” Song Jingshuo looked around, surveying the results of his work. “Now, all of a sudden, we have so many more people. And there’ll be even more in the future. They need all kinds of things.”
He was tall, handsome, and carried himself with an arrogant, cocky air.
Jiang Cheng gave him a thumbs-up. “Jingshuo, you’re amazing. You’re the most handsome man in the whole complex.”
Nothing about his face, physique, or future made her happier than seeing him actually get things done. That was what truly deserved her praise.
Song Jingshuo had already seen right through her. He turned his head away. “Tsk.”
Yang Xinyan felt terrible.
She and two other homeowners were responsible for the three hotline phones. Since last night, the text messages had been pouring in nonstop.
There were too many pleas for help to count.
“We’re at Huasheng Building. There are eighty-two of us, and we’ve secured the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth floors. Please help us!”
“I’m alone at Tianlong Center! I’ve been hiding everywhere I can. Please save me! There are zombies everywhere! Please, I’m begging you!”
“I’m a teacher at Haifan Elementary School. I have seven adults and more than sixty children here, all elementary school students. Please save the children!”
Every message sounded like a desperate scream.
Some people called directly. As Jiang Cheng had instructed, calls from mobile numbers were hung up immediately. Calls from landlines were answered, questioned, and documented.
That was even harder to bear than reading the messages.
The people on the phone often had hoarse voices, and all their panic and desperation came through loud and clear.
But the message that affected Yang Xinyan most wasn’t even a plea for help.
“This is my father’s phone number. He worked for the municipal government. Is he still alive?”
Yang Xinyan’s fingers stiffened as she typed her reply.
“I’m sorry. No one from the municipal government survived. We found this phone and are using it as a communications tool. I’m sorry.”
The other person replied soon after.
“Okay. It’s all right.”
“Little Yang? Little Yang?”
A hand waved in front of her face, then finally landed on her shoulder with a pat.
Yang Xinyan looked up and saw Manager Wang.
Manager Wang was carrying a bucket. These days, he did every odd job under the sun, always going wherever he was needed. But most of the time, he served as Song Jingshuo’s assistant.
“Are you all right?” Manager Wang asked with concern. “You look out of it. Didn’t sleep well last night?”
Yang Xinyan wiped at her eyes. “Reading these messages is getting to me.”
Manager Wang leaned his large head over to take a look at the computer. He sighed and tried to comfort her. “You can’t think about all that. You need to think about how well we’re doing here.”
He pulled a strawberry from his pocket. “Here, eat this. Xiao Song says the strawberry fields are going to be cleared tomorrow. After that, fruit will be rationed.”
For the past two days, everyone had been free to pick strawberries.
“Why?” Yang Xinyan asked.
“We need to grow real food. Strawberries don’t fill your stomach,” Manager Wang said. “Don’t worry. They’re moving the strawberries into the south-facing apartments, so we’ll still be able to eat them. We just won’t be able to pick them whenever we want.”
Manager Wang then asked about her work. “How are you holding up?”
Yang Xinyan had been working hard for the past few days. She wasn’t a homeowner but a property management employee, so she had to handle the basic duties of property management.
There was no one left in property management.
Aunt Pan had already left the property management team and become part of the combat force and labor pool for the complex.
That left Manager Wang, Little Fang the security guard, and Yang Xinyan handling property management.
The homeowners also took on work around the complex, but they rotated through different assignments. They might do one job today and another tomorrow. The three of them, however, were permanent staff. Yang Xinyan in particular was assigned a great deal of physically demanding work, and it was exhausting.
When Jiang Cheng said they needed someone to keep a close eye on the messages coming through the phones, Manager Wang immediately took the opportunity to put Yang Xinyan forward.
Yang Xinyan pointed at the computer. “Jiang Cheng told me to sort them by location and start by selecting the areas with the largest groups of people.”
Manager Wang glanced at the endless stream of messages on the screen and hurried away. “I’m not looking, I’m not looking.”
Anyone who read them would feel awful.
No wonder the girl looked so dazed.
Only people as tough as Jiang Cheng, Song Jingshuo, Li Jiangbing, and Zhao Yi could withstand it.
The Youth Apartments still served meals in a cafeteria.
The cafeteria was different from communal meals. The main reason the Youth Apartments had a cafeteria was that nearly everyone there was single, and cooking individually would waste too much time, so they ate together.
Almost no one in the Youth Apartments was idle. Even the combat team had a reserve unit, and everyone had to take turns resting.
Little by little, everyone was finding their own place in the new ecosystem.
The complex remained clean and orderly. When a lightbulb burned out, someone replaced it. When a pipe became clogged, someone cleared it.
Seeing the refugees in wrinkled clothes, with foul breath and vacant eyes, made everyone understand even more clearly just how difficult it was to maintain this seemingly “normal” life.
After breakfast, everyone went off to take care of their own tasks.
Zhou Wang arrived with Auntie Lin, Auntie Qian, and a middle-aged man. All three of them were wood-element superpowered people.
“This is Master Luo. Master Luo is also a wood-element superpowered person.”
The way he addressed him as “Master Luo” left everyone in the Youth Apartment momentarily dazed.
Aunt Pan was squatting nearby with a bowl of porridge, helping Song Jingshuo turn over the soil as she ate. At the words, she turned her head and stared for a while before facing forward again.
It felt as though a very long time had passed, but when they thought about it carefully, it had only been seven or eight days.
People had already adapted. They had already begun to forget.
They quickly came to an agreement with Master Luo.
He could move into the Youth Apartment.
Zhou Wang and Jiang Cheng had already reached an agreement: several wood-element superpowered people would work together, and all the food cultivation for both residential compounds would be handled here at the Youth Apartment.
Because of this decision, Xiao Dan had pulled Zhou Wang aside for a private talk that morning.
Xiao Dan wondered why everything had to be handed over to the Youth Apartment. Why couldn’t they keep it in their own hands?
Zhou Wang sighed. “I’m exhausted. How about I leave everything here for you to manage?”
Xiao Dan immediately fell silent.
The reason was simple: Xiao Dan had no superpowers. Under the current circumstances, a leader couldn’t be weak. If they were weak, they wouldn’t be able to keep everyone in line.
Although her daughter, Wang Yunya, was a fire-element superpowered person, she was too young. Besides, she spent all day with the people from the Youth Apartment.
Actually, Zhou Wang could understand Xiao Dan.
Once people got a taste of power, it was very easy for them to become distorted by it.
During the previous disaster, Xiao Dan had merely been a key member’s family member in Auspicious Garden. This time, she had become a key figure herself.
She had a strong personality, and people with strong personalities naturally tended to have a greater desire for control than ordinary people.
When that desire for control grew large enough, it was called a lust for power—or ambition.
“This is your first time taking part in something like this,” Zhou Wang said. “You haven’t experienced how difficult it really is to manage so many people.”
“You think it isn’t difficult right now only because the Youth Apartment is taking on so much of the burden. We don’t feel the difficulty because we’re simply benefiting from their efforts.”
“If you really separated from the Youth Apartment, you’d immediately realize how hard it is.”
“Do you dare?”
Xiao Dan certainly didn’t.
However, when Zhou Wang went to find Auntie Lin and Auntie Qian, Xiao Dan tested the waters with her daughter.
Wang Yunya rolled her eyes. “Of course we should listen to the Youth Apartment. Who else would we listen to? Isn’t the Youth Apartment organizing everything? Weren’t we rescued by them too?”
“Don’t make breakfast for me anymore. I’m going to eat over there. It sounds like we’re going into the city today.”
“From now on, you don’t need to make breakfast for me at all. I’ll eat over there. Team members can eat in the cafeteria. Xu En and the others eat there too.”
“I’m off!”
The fire-element girl fastened her armor and ran off at top speed.