Zombie Apocalypse: Me and My Cat — Chapter 183

The weather had turned cold, and farmers from the outskirts were driving their flocks of sheep into the city to sell.

The Tech New District had originally been a suburban area, mostly farmland. Later, a huge tract of land was designated for development and turned into the Tech New District. Outside the residential area and industrial park, it was still countryside.

In the past, the sheep herds raised by nearby villagers had wandered onto the roads of the Tech New District several times, even making the news.

Ever since the massive explosion on October 5, the power had been out.

The Tech New District had immediately assigned an electric-type ability user to keep the cafeteria’s freezers running, and had quickly managed to put together some generators. But there was nothing they could do about the situation in the urban districts.

They could no longer go into the city to search the frozen-meat stores and cold-storage warehouses.

All the meat had gone rotten.

With the prospect of having no meat to eat, Brother Dong said, “Why don’t we take a look around the outskirts?”

Brother Dong’s parents lived in the suburbs. When he had left home, he hadn’t planned on ever going back, so he had given all the chickens and ducks at home to his neighbors.

He knew the rural area around there very well.

“Someone’s bound to have livestock. Let’s go look.”

Even if the owners had died or turned into zombies, there was a chance their cows, sheep, chickens, and ducks were still around. They could pick them up for free.

Of course, nothing was ever truly free.

The livestock and poultry belonging to dead farmers had already been taken in by their surviving neighbors.

When people from the Tech New District really did find some, they had to negotiate a price.

Performance points meant nothing to the villagers. Trading had returned to the level of barter.

Fortunately, the Tech New District had all kinds of supplies, and in the end they managed to reach agreements and purchase sheep, chickens, and ducks.

They had found a source of meat for the Tech New District, though the supply was so limited that rations had to be strictly controlled. Still, it was better than having none at all.

Gao Yuxuan and the others also rigged up the power grid to send electricity into the Bailiang River and catch fish.

That was how everyone managed to keep having meat to eat.

Now that the weather had turned cold, the farmers knew they lacked the strength to get so many animals through the winter. They drove them all to the Tech New District, hoping to sell them.

The Tech New District took them all in.

They did not slaughter everything at once. Instead, they built pens, set up stoves to keep the animals warm, and raised them while slaughtering them gradually.

As time went on, one of the ewes even gave birth to a lamb.

When the little children learned that the lamb would eventually be eaten too, they cried.

The unexpected bonus was that the chickens laid eggs every day.

Zeng Qiang strongly recommended raising chickens on a large scale to ensure a steady supply of eggs.

The farmers wanted to sell their animals before the weather became even colder because they were on their own, and winter feed could no longer be obtained. They had to cut their losses in time.

But for the Tech New District, which had wood-type ability users, this was not difficult.

The real reason the Tech New District had never considered animal husbandry was that its core members were all a bunch of urban young people.

They had started farming because they had been blessed with wood-type abilities.

But animal husbandry depended entirely on human labor, so it had never even occurred to them.

Aunt Pan understood this, actually.

But she was superstitious about educated people. Since all these youngsters were educated and none of them had brought it up, she assumed it must not be necessary.

So she kept quiet.

And so, although the process was a little bumpy, after developing agriculture, the Tech New District finally embarked on the path of animal husbandry as well.

In the end, everything had to depend on their own production.

Jiang Cheng remembered a slogan from a book: “Do it yourself, and you’ll have enough food and clothing.”

That slogan had been coined more than sixty years ago. Back then, conditions had been far worse than they were now.

Yet those people had still made it all the way to prosperity before the disaster.

So we can do it too.

Because shortwave radio could cover such vast distances—even spanning continents—it picked up all kinds of communications.

At first, no one paid attention to one particular transmission.

It was Uncle Jiang who said to Sister Mao first:

“Do you believe it?”

Sister Mao replied, “Give me a reason to.”

Uncle Jiang said, “I have one, but it’s hard to explain.”

“If you have one, then say it.”

“I already told you, it’s hard to explain.”

Sister Mao gave a cold laugh. “Stop being so cryptic.”

Since the two of them had a large audience at the youth apartments, everyone was drawn to the discussion they were having and began listening to the broadcast in question.

Among the mutterings, curses, doomsday theories, and religious preaching of all sorts of lunatics and psychotics, they found the voice of a middle-aged man. It was deep and low, and seemed to be a recording, because it repeated the same words over and over:

“Everyone, be prepared. Extreme weather is coming soon.”

...

It sounded no different from the ravings of the other lunatics.

If not for Uncle Jiang and Sister Mao, everyone would probably have skipped past it while tuning the radio.

But Uncle Jiang and Sister Mao were seriously discussing the possibility of extreme weather.

Uncle Jiang firmly believed the man, claiming that he had a reason for doing so, but refusing to say what it was.

The more he acted that way, the more intriguing it became.

Jiang Cheng called a meeting of the district’s key personnel.

“What do you all think?”

“Sounds like a charlatan to me.”

“We’ve tried calling him, but Uncle Jiang never responds. He only responds to Sister Mao.”

Even so, the two of them played off each other so well that they were extremely captivating.

Jiang Cheng said, “Let’s first discuss what extreme weather might actually mean and how it would affect us.”

Everyone was surprised. “You’re taking it seriously?”

“Yes,” Jiang Cheng said. “Let’s discuss it as if it were real.”

Jiang Cheng never joked about serious matters, nor did she waste meeting time on jokes.

Everyone became serious.

Someone spoke first. “First, we need to define ‘extreme weather.’ The lowest temperature in S City during winter is usually around minus fifteen degrees Celsius, right? In my hometown, it gets down to minus thirty. If that happened in S City, wouldn’t that count as extreme weather?”

“My God, I’d freeze to death at minus thirty! I hate the cold most of all.”

“That’s why you’re a fire-type, haha.”

“Thank heavens I’m a fire-type. Seriously, I sleep with a fireball burning beside me now. I can keep it from changing even after I fall asleep.”

Song Jingshuo said, “Stay on topic.”

“Oh. So, low temperatures, freezing conditions, hail, freezing rain, things like that?”

“More or less,” Jiang Cheng said. “What impact would those have on us?”

This time, everyone gave serious answers.

“Going outside would become difficult. Heavy snow and ice would make both walking and driving extremely hard. If we needed supplies, even going out to look for them would be difficult.”

“If the low temperatures continued, we couldn’t let the stoves inside the buildings go out. At the temperatures in my hometown, people would freeze to death if the fires stopped.”

“The soil would freeze solid, and no one could work outdoors. Farming would definitely have to stop, which would affect our food supply.”

Those were more or less all the likely consequences.

Jiang Cheng asked, “What countermeasures do we have?”

Song Jingshuo said, “If the roads freeze, we can put snow chains on the tires. They’re simple enough to make ourselves.”

Someone else said, “We’ll have to see how cold it gets. If it’s truly severe, we’ll either need to burn more coal or house everyone together.”

The most important point was this: “We have to make sure there’s enough food. That’s the most important thing.”

Jiang Cheng reported the subject of the meeting to the other districts over the radio.

“Even if the man is a charlatan, we’re the government. We should still prepare an emergency plan.”

“If it really happens, failing to respond in time could get people killed.”

After the radio communication ended, someone sighed.

“She still thinks she’s the government.”

Under the immense pressure of survival, the high spirits many people had possessed when they first established the temporary government had nearly been worn away.

The person beside him was silent for a moment before saying, “Forget everyone else—but her, she deserves it.”

Everyone regularly exchanged updates and shared whatever information they had.

They all knew more or less what was happening in the Technology New District. It was the largest survivor settlement in S City by population. It should have been under the greatest pressure to survive, yet it was actually the best-managed of all the settlements.

It could even be said to have enough food and clothing.

With the water, electricity, and gas all cut off, the residents somehow still looked remarkably spirited.

In a way, the Technology New District had become everyone’s spiritual pillar.

Whenever they felt exhausted and wanted to throw in the towel, they only had to think of the Technology New District to feel that perhaps they could keep going after all.

On certain difficult roads, what people needed was comrades by their side.

Zheng Junwei of Yuanshilong District called his people together for a meeting and said, “Jiang Cheng is right. We should have had emergency plans in place from the start. Let’s get ours ready too.”

On November 14, they began receiving broadcasts from Uncle Jiang early in the morning:

“Go listen! Everyone, go listen!”

They switched frequencies and found the low voice of a middle-aged man.

He kept repeating:

“There’s going to be a major temperature drop today. Extreme weather is coming. Everyone, get prepared!”

Someone immediately reported it to Jiang Cheng.

Jiang Cheng furrowed her brows slightly. After a moment, she decided, “Notify every residential compound to implement the cold-weather emergency plan.”

Then she added, “Get in touch with all the districts and remind them as well.”

After the communications towers went down, mobile phones became useless. For several days, it was extremely difficult for the residential compounds to contact one another, and people had to deliver messages in person.

Later, with Song Jingshuo’s guidance, they searched everywhere for off-road vehicles with large numbers pasted onto their rear windows and antennas mounted on top. They removed the radios from these vehicles and installed one in each residential compound. At last, their communications evolved from the primitive civilization of shouting back and forth into the modern civilization of radio.

Every compound received the warning.

At Jixiang Jiayuan, Mr. Xu went from room to room inspecting things.

“Have you all added enough coal? Add more. Fill it up. Leave the stove opening uncovered—don’t close it.”

“Make do for now. Stop complaining. What’s wrong with squeezing together?”

“Listen to the government.”

Each household had only one iron stove, without exception installed in the living room. The temporary government of the Technology New District required everyone to sleep in the living room.

Mr. Xu and Director Yu had long since become familiar faces around Jiang Cheng. They were even qualified to sit in on some meetings.

They could also speak up and offer suggestions, and several of their proposals had been adopted.

The longer they stayed together, the more they trusted Jiang Cheng.

As a company manager, Mr. Xu knew very well that the people below had to be properly supervised if instructions were to be carried out without problems. So he inspected every room, forcing the employees to follow Jiang Cheng’s requirements.

The four of them had also moved their mattresses into the living room. They pushed the coffee table aside and joined the mattresses together, sleeping squeezed up against one another.

The living room was indeed much warmer than the bedrooms.

Looking up at the ceiling, Mr. Xu said, “Actually, I think we could sleep like this all winter. It’s warmer.”

It was warmer, all right, but everyone still woke up freezing in the middle of the night.

Sneezes rang out everywhere.

“Fuck, why is it so cold?”

“Did the fire go out?”

“Get up and check.”

Shivering, they lit a candle and climbed to their feet to take a look. The fire hadn’t gone out. The stove was still burning, yet the room was cold.

The temperature really had dropped sharply.

There was a thermometer on the wall of the apartment. Mr. Xu’s teeth were chattering as he carried the candle over to look at it.

It was November 14. In previous years, central heating in S City usually began on November 15.

At this time of year, the lowest nighttime temperature in S City should normally have been one or two degrees Celsius. It was rare for the temperature to fall below zero so early in the season.

Every time Mr. Xu opened his mouth, white vapor poured out and fogged the thermometer.

He reached out and wiped the vapor from its surface.

The round thermometer had a fan-shaped temperature scale. The right side was red, with a maximum temperature of fifty degrees. The left side was blue, with a minimum of minus thirty degrees.

By the candlelight, Mr. Xu saw the needle hanging limply on the left, below the blue “-30,” in the empty space beneath it.

Mr. Xu felt cold all over.

Cold from the inside out.