This is apocalyptic

Chapter 61: Winter

"Did you hear anything last night?"

Bai Xiao washed himself with a new toothbrush and climbed over the wall again. After getting used to it, he no longer liked to go through the door.

"What's the noise?" Lin Duoduo asked. She knew that Bai Xiao had a keen sense of hearing.

"It's hard to tell, so I asked you."

Bai Xiao felt that the inexplicable noises occurring in this deserted village at night were a bit scary, as if something terrible was hidden in the night wind.

Lin Duoduo thought for a moment and said, "When animals in the mountains can't find food in the winter, they will run down to look for food. I told you before that there are wild boars and sometimes wolves."

Wolves only come down in very rare cases. Sometimes they are chasing prey, and sometimes they are just very hungry and will come out in groups.

Lin Duoduo picked up the gun and stood up and said, "Go to the hillside and see if there is anything in the trap. If you hear any noise at night, don't run out. If it is a wild boar, my gun can't deal with it. I need a gun like Aunt Qian's."

In dry and cold weather, the wind blowing on my face feels like a knife, and the exhaled breath turns into mist.

Bai Xiao didn't wear a helmet, he just came out wearing sunglasses.

The two were wrapped in coats. In winter, this dark green military coat is warmer, just like a quilt. Lin Duoduo's slender figure was hidden under the coat, and the gun in her hand was also inside the clothes.

Slowly coming up the hillside, the trap was empty. Because of the cold weather, there were no obvious traces left on the ground. Only by looking carefully could we find something.

“Not much luck.”

When it snows, the traces will be very obvious. Even if you can't catch it, you can still infer what animal it is from the footprints.

"Don't try to run away if you hear any noise at night." Lin Duoduo reminded him that wild boars were okay, but wolves tend to gather in groups in winter and are very dangerous.

One winter, it snowed heavily and for a long time. She heard wolves howling in the middle of the night. She hid in the house and did not sleep well all night. When she came out to check during the day, she saw large, messy footprints on the snow.

She used bamboo to make marks next to the traps. It hasn't snowed yet, so they remember where the traps are. Once a heavy snow falls, the original marks will be covered with white, and the whole sky and earth will be difficult to identify.

She walked around wrapped in a coat. The cold weather made her hands a little stiff. A gust of wind blew over, and Bai Xiao saw her shrink her neck.

"Let's go back." Bai Xiao said, "I'll go shopping again."

"Be careful not to fall in."

Lin Duoduo reminded that some of the bamboo in the traps were cut by Bai Xiao when he lived under the shed.

Bai Xiao waved his hand, rolled up his sleeves, and strolled around like an old farmer.

He saw Aunt Qian's house in the distance, standing there silently, but he did not go over.

Aunt Qian has lived here for twenty years. After twenty years of loneliness and thinking, she has figured out everything. What she does must be what she wants to do. She lives in seclusion and is not particularly close to Lin Duoduo. Perhaps she has her own considerations.

I don’t know if she is afraid of dragging down Lin Duoduo. She seldom shows up and doesn’t like to drag others down. If the day comes when she can’t live anymore, she won’t come for help.

Maybe I will die quietly one day.

He found some wild radishes in the wild. This kind of root plant can still be found in winter. Since Friday was not around, Bai Xiao carried them in his hands and slowly went back.

The next day, it snowed, but not heavily. Bai Xiao didn't know if it was because of the end of the world that it snowed so early, or because he was insensitive to the passage of time. He always felt that it was not yet deep winter, but the weather was getting colder day by day, very quickly. Lin Duoduo lit the stove. It was very windy outside, and fine snow was falling. She caught a zombie and came to warm herself by the fire.

We should have a hot pot in this kind of weather, but unfortunately there were only chestnuts simmering by the stove, dried apricots, and two strips of pickled dried meat.

The fire was jumping, and Bai Xiao took out the map he was going to copy. Lin Duoduo was sitting opposite him, staring at the flames, her fingertips gently waving above the flames.

"What if you die outside?" Lin Duoduo asked.

"Then I'm very happy to meet you." Bai Xiao said, "After all, this life is a lucky one. I should have died the day I was bitten by a zombie."

"I picked it up too." Lin Duoduo said.

"I want to go from here and head south, and get close to Chenjiabao. Then I can observe the surroundings and see what the situation is like in this place." Bai Xiao pointed to the map.

Chenjiabao is the piece of paper that I found in the city when I and Lin Duoduo went scavenging for the first time, which said there was a settlement there.

"Well... you are so strong, even if we are discovered, we will most likely recruit you into the group." Lin Duoduo looked at the zombies and had to admit that there are really differences between men and women. A tall man asking for directions in the wild is completely different from a lone woman asking for directions.

Especially after the end of the world.

"Yes, after observing Chenjiabao, if they are not large, I will continue to move forward. I may be able to get here before the next winter--" Bai Xiao pointed at the map, "If I still haven't found any news about other shelters after I get here..."

He wondered whether he should come back and start again in a different direction, or continue exploring that direction.

Bai Xiao said slowly: "Disguise as a scavenger and get close to the city. If there is a shelter, they will also spread information in the city, and it should be possible to find it."

Lin Duoduo's father and grandfather had already speculated about this future. If the situation becomes serious, only a few important cities will be selected, and places like Linchuan City will be abandoned.

It would be a long time before they could get rescued. They didn't even know that there were two women alive in this dilapidated mountain village.

——If there really is rescue, the form they might choose would not be to look for people aimlessly, but to leave information for the survivors who are scavenging in places like Linchuan City.

Bai Xiao searched on the map, planning a route, and speculated, "There are no shelters in Linchuan City, otherwise there wouldn't be a place like Chenjiabao, or they are a formal shelter."

After the shelter that Lin Duoduo's father found was moved, the people in this land could not find any organization, so they could only gather together on their own. He speculated that this was the case in Chenjiabao, which was a more reasonable explanation.

Lin Duoduo just listened. What she had considered when she lived alone, Bai Xiao had also considered now. However, the so-called settlements that she had observed from afar were all dispersed.

Bai Xiao put down the map, put his hands over the fire and thought.

A zombie and a human sat by the stove in silence, with only the occasional sound of Lin Duoduo peeling chestnuts.

"You should eat some too." Lin Duoduo said.

"Ah."

Bai Xiao was still thinking, it has been twenty years and Lin Duoduo and the others have not been rescued, have they really been forgotten?
Why did the shelter move without leaving any information?
Seeing Bai Xiao in a trance, Lin Duoduo handed him the peeled chestnuts.

"Thank you." Bai Xiao took it, put his thoughts aside for the moment, and looked down at the map to see if there was anything he had not considered.

(End of this chapter)