Invasion of America

Chapter 130 Containment
A small, thin figure timidly walked across the street, his clothes dirty and wrinkled, clearly having not been washed in a long time.

Jennifer greeted the girl as gently as possible, letting her lift her clothes and turn around, which was considered the end of the examination.

She then had the little girl sit down in the shade by the roadside, opened a can of fruit, and fed her spoonful by spoonful.

The little girl was very obedient; she would smile after each bite, her voice clear and crisp, conveying a sense of exceptional comfort and satisfaction.

"What's your name?"

"Gina."

Gina, where are your mom and dad?

"They told me to wait by the roadside, and then... they disappeared."

"Is it by the roadside in town?" Zhou Qingfeng asked, frowning.

The little girl shook her head, trying hard to remember: "Not here, it's a roadside that's very, very far away."

The child didn't seem too sad; her eyes were full of innocence. Only when her parents were mentioned did she slightly pout, as if she was about to cry, but she held it back and continued to open her little mouth, looking forward to the next spoonful of fruit.

Looking at the little girl's thin appearance, Jennifer didn't dare to feed her too much at once. She only fed her half a can before stopping and gently coaxing her to eat more later.

The little girl nodded understandingly, then tilted her head and asked, "Sister, can I give the remaining half can to my friends? They must want some too."

Jennifer's heart softened, and she smiled and agreed. Then she said to Zhou Qingfeng in a deep voice, "The town has been experiencing food shortages for half a year. The first to starve to death are often the elderly and children."

Kangus crossed his arms and said coldly, "If we had stupidly come out of the shelter six months ago, believe it or not, the starving residents of this town could have devoured us until there were no bones left."

Having been a police officer for over a decade, I know all too well how selfish and reckless ordinary people can become in dire circumstances. Take this little girl, for example—how can you be sure she wasn't abandoned by her parents?

Jennifer was speechless after Conger's words and could only sigh helplessly.

Before the apocalypse, she was a pampered and beloved young woman, but now she is just like any other ordinary person, struggling to survive.

She was just lucky to have met Zhou Qingfeng at the beginning of the apocalypse, which allowed her to survive until now.

Otherwise, if riots break out in big cities, beautiful women like her, who have no ability to protect themselves, are often the first to be harmed.
-
As Xiao Jinlang envisioned, the exploration team needed to avoid direct confrontation with any opponent as much as possible, and should not easily venture into towns where the situation was unknown.

After all, there are only about ten people. It's better to be timid and admit defeat than to be reckless and forceful.

Zhou Qingfeng and his men were very obedient. Upon hearing the gunfire from the other side, they immediately formed a semicircle with the five modified pickup trucks, and all of them hid inside the semicircle on guard.

The young girl was so engrossed in eating that she only remembered she had come to make a contact when she was half full.

She skipped back with her small legs, and soon led over a mother and her child, along with three teenagers, all of whom were skin and bones.

These men had empty, yearning eyes and staggered steps. As soon as they got close to the pickup truck, they eagerly reached out their hands and begged for food in hoarse voices.

There's no shortage of food on the electric pickup truck.

Potatoes can be grown in the shelter. Although they are not fertilized or sprayed with pesticides, the yield per acre is equivalent to four or five hundred kilograms of grain.

Every pickup truck has barrels of homemade potato preserves in its back compartment. These are made by peeling fresh potatoes, adding citric acid, cooking them, and then sealing them.

Potatoes are the second most hated food in the shelter. The exploration team brought these things along purely to use up their stock, because the potatoes were growing well this year and would have to be thrown away if they weren't eaten soon.

The people who came begging for food looked like reincarnated starving ghosts, their eyes glowing green, seemingly devoid of reason. They surrounded a bucket of canned potatoes, reaching into it with their blackened fingers and shoveling the broth and all into their mouths.

Rogge, acting as the army medic, had to shout louder and louder at them, telling them to eat slowly, not to swallow big mouthfuls, and not to choke.

But the warning was useless, and soon some people choked because they swallowed too quickly, their eyes going blank.

Roger could only call on a few of his team members to hug these 'starving ghosts' from behind, squeezing their chests to force the food stuck in their throats out.

After several attempts, the group's emotions stabilized somewhat, and they realized they needed to eat slowly.

Chen Rui's gaze swept over the teenager, then fixed on the mother and child, and shook his head, saying, "No way, either too young or too old, the quality is too poor. When will I be able to have my own foreign maid?"

Marco sighed from the side, "How did they get themselves into this state? They could have easily farmed a little land and not starved to death!"

"Farming?" Kang Ge scoffed from the side. "It's not easy to farm, and besides, these people probably never even thought about farming."
-
After the starving men had eaten their fill, they began to relax. The underage children, in particular, slumped over and simply fell asleep by the roadside.

The exploration team can only question the only adult in the shelter to confirm their name, age, background, and family situation, especially to gather information about other towns.

This also unveils a small mystery—why don't they farm?

"Before the disaster broke out, I heeded the government's advice and stockpiled enough fresh vegetables for half a month and staple and non-staple foods for two months.

But as it turns out, this amount of reserves was far from enough.

When food was running low, I had to think about what to eat tomorrow, not what I would get six months later. So I drove out of the city and into the countryside.

The roads were in complete chaos. We hadn't gone far when we were robbed. The criminals had set up roadblocks.

My husband died in that conflict. I couldn't even afford a funeral for him; I could only leave his body by the roadside and continue searching for a place to stay with my children.

The mother in the mother-son pair is named Leila, and she is in her forties. She explained, "It's hard for me to stay in one place for long, and it's impossible for me to wait for the crops in the field to ripen."

At first, searching some houses always yielded food. But the readily available food quickly ran out, and we had to constantly migrate to other places in search of food.

Gradually, the car ran out of gas, making it increasingly difficult to obtain food. They also faced competition for food, and it was possible to work all day without reaping any rewards.

I'd like to join a team, but many groups don't need someone like me. The reason I came to Awoni is because it's an agricultural town.

But the town's farmers themselves had all fled and their whereabouts were unknown, while the remaining people said that without seed companies providing seedlings, agriculture would definitely collapse.

Without food, we lacked the strength to move, and without movement, obtaining food became even more impossible. Over time, my child and I were trapped in one place, waiting to die.

The team members listened with a sense of shared experience and all looked at Zhou Qingfeng.

It was this guy who prepared shelters in advance and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to stockpile enough supplies for living and production, which allowed everyone to calmly face the arrival of the apocalypse.

This also raised a major question in everyone's mind—was Xiao Zhou from the future? 'Grey Shark' had already spread this idea throughout the entire shelter, but he never admitted it. Leila looked at the armed personnel before her, and following their gaze to Zhou Qingfeng, realizing that this young man was the leader, she timidly asked:

"You'll take us in, right? I used to be a clerk, but now I can do any job. Please, give me a job, I just need to have enough to eat."

Zhou Qingfeng nodded in agreement. "Don't worry, we're here to provide humanitarian aid. Of course, our capacity is limited, so we'll prioritize women and children. We currently have twenty slots available."

Leila's eyes lit up, and she nodded happily, "That's great! There should still be some vulnerable people in town who need help. We can definitely find twenty. I'm willing to help you find them."

The rest is simple.

Leila led a small group to the town to take in other refugees, and within a few hours they had managed to gather over forty people. Two-thirds of them were able-bodied men.

This situation was expected, and the expedition team did not refuse. Zhou Qingfeng used the radio to inform the shelter and chose a relatively intact house in the town to settle down.

Neither Xiao Jinlang nor Zhou Qingfeng, nor even Kang Ge and Jennifer, ever considered taking the outside survivors directly to the shelter.

There is still a sense of vigilance in everyone's mind.

The team members distributed food to the survivors but avoided discussing their origins. When asked about the purpose of the shelter, they only said that they were there for humanitarian relief.

This ambiguous statement was clearly insufficient to appease people, but the food was real, and people still came to collect it.

Omar mingled in the crowd. When Leila returned with the message, he wanted to see what the origins of this group of foreign armed men were.
Upon arriving at the house where the expedition team was staying, they saw five electric pickup trucks. Remote-controlled weapon stations were mounted on the tops of the trucks, and machine guns were also mounted on them.

Zhou Qingfeng had at least some experience working in the upper echelons of the US government, so secretly acquiring some automatic weapons wasn't difficult for him. As for the remote weapon stations, those were civilian equipment imported from 'Dongda' before the virus outbreak.

With machine guns in place, the exploration team's deterrent effect increased significantly.

The survivors who came to observe were initially arguing with each other, but once they got closer and saw the machine gun, they immediately quieted down and spoke in hushed tones.

Omar glanced at the expedition team and confirmed that they all had rosy complexions, were physically strong, and their equipment and clothing were very clean, so they did not look poor and destitute.

He walked in along the temporary cordon and immediately saw his 'neighbor' Nedved. The latter usually stayed in his own 'fortress' and didn't come out. After not seeing him for a long time, he looked like a wild man.

When the two enemies met, they quickly avoided each other's eyes, pretending not to know each other, and slowly made their way to the table where the food was being distributed.

When there are many people, a sour and foul smell permeates the scene.

The town not only lost power, but also water. Power outages can be solved with solar power, but water outages are truly unavoidable—the shelters rely on digging their own wells, but there are no wells in this town.
-
Omar received a heavy bucket of potato cans, about five liters in capacity, enough to barely sustain three or four people for a day.

The containers weren't standardized tin cans, but rather a motley collection of all sorts: there were heavy glass jars, rough ceramic pots, and even deformed plastic buckets.

Each bucket exudes an apocalyptic atmosphere, with a rugged, "truly handmade" style, as if it were salvaged from ruins.

Nedved also received a bucket, but he frowned and said disdainfully, "You only have canned potatoes? Don't you have anything else? Condensed milk, jam, or even a little beef would be nice!"

Jennifer, who was in charge of distributing food, was furious when she heard this—there was still some condensed milk and jam in the shelter, but fresh beef was a real luxury in this post-apocalyptic world and there was no supply at all.

Even the residents of the shelter themselves struggle to guarantee a sufficient supply of fresh meat. Even if such good things were available, they would never share them with the newly taken-in survivors.

The only thing that could be supplied in large quantities was these cheap and filling potatoes.

The other survivors eagerly surrounded the exploration team members, bombarding them with questions about the shelter and their future lives.

Nedved, however, glanced at everyone present, then picked up his can and left.

Omar quickly caught up with Nedved and, upon getting closer, lowered his voice and said, "Nedved, why did you provoke those Chinese people just now?"

"Chinese?" Nedved paused, turning back to look at Omar with a puzzled expression. "How can you be so sure they're Chinese?"

Omar glanced back, then pretended to be friendly and tried to put his arm around Nedved's shoulder.

The two had clashed several times over resources in the past year. Nedved was very wary of Omar. He took a half step back without making a sound and said coldly, "You can say whatever you want to say."

Seeing this, Omar didn't seem to care and said mysteriously, "Didn't you notice that this group is actually mostly of Chinese descent?"
Their leader was that young Chinese man, whom I recognized. He used to be a wealthy man from Dongda University and was somewhat famous online.

About two years ago, the amusement park near the town that had been abandoned for many years was rented out. The mayor at the time thought that some big investor had come and was overjoyed.

Later, many heavy trucks delivered goods to the amusement park, which did indeed look like it was about to reopen.

I helped out with some odd jobs in the renovations and found that this group of Chinese people just dismantled the old rides at the amusement park, and then there was no further investment.

Nedved listened impatiently, "So what?"

Omar said with certainty, "I bet this team came from that amusement park. They must have stockpiled a lot of supplies, but not many people."

Of all those words, only the last sentence is truly important—there aren't many people.

Nedved wasn't stupid; he immediately understood the hidden meaning in Omar's words.

Instead of humbly begging for food and barely surviving, why not take the risk of robbing and seizing developed resources to become the new ruler?
Omar continued to incite, "Since these Chinese can grow potatoes, it means they have turned that amusement park into a farm."

They are now taking in refugees because they are definitely short-handed.

If we could take over their farms, why would we have to eat these unpalatable canned potatoes every day?
Look at their complexions, especially the woman's; they're rosy and glowing—that's definitely not something you can achieve by eating potatoes alone.

Nedved couldn't help but turn back again, his gaze sweeping greedily over Jennifer, who was busy at work.

The beautiful woman not only had a beautiful face, but her complexion was also far better than those of the survivors struggling on the brink of starvation, which further confirmed Omar's statement.

But Nedved shook his head. "God knows how strong these guys are. I don't want to go and die for nothing."

Since they're willing to come out and shelter people, you could try asking them; you might be able to get a stable job. As for me, I'd rather stay home for now.

After saying that, Nedved picked up the bucket of potato cans, turned around and returned to his 'doomsday fortress', ignoring Omar.

Omar paid no attention and turned back to actively contact the other survivors in the town, repeating his tempting and ambitious words over and over again.

Some were moved by what they heard, some shook their heads cautiously, and most simply watched silently from the sidelines, unwilling to express their opinions easily.

(End of this chapter)