Invasion of America

Chapter 99 Self-rescue
On the seventh day of the lockdown, the sky in Washington, D.C. was as gloomy as a wet rag, emitting a damp chill.

In the Thomas family's kitchen, Lucy was preparing to make lunch. She opened the door of the refrigerator compartment and found it was empty.

Shelves once teeming with fresh vegetables, beef, and cheese now held only a few wilted carrots and a dollop of dry butter, and the freezer contained only a bag of frozen peas.

She turned and shouted towards the second floor, "Victor! You have to go to the market and get some vegetables and meat, otherwise we'll just have bread!"

Zhou Qingfeng has a big appetite and can feed two or three people in one meal, which doubles the food consumption at home.

The supplies they had stockpiled before the lockdown were consumed rapidly. If there hadn't been a few bags of flour and sugar in the garage, they would have been living on canned food like their neighbors on the street.

Fortunately, there was an oven and a bread machine in the kitchen of this villa. Lucy started kneading and fermenting the dough early, turning the flour into golden and crispy bread.

This significantly reduces food consumption.

This morning, she baked another batch of butter bread. The aroma overflowed from the oven and filled the entire living room. Even old man Hammer couldn't help but raise his head from the sofa and sniff.

Hearing the shouts, Zhou Qingfeng came down from the second floor, put on a mask, goggles, and a jacket with a Superman pattern on it. He was wrapped up tightly, like a patient who was afraid of the light.

"If you see people exchanging sanitary napkins and toilet paper, remember to bring some back." Lucy put dozens of bread bags into a paper bag.

Zhou Qingfeng picked up the paper bag, grabbed one of the loaves of bread and stuffed it into his mouth. He chewed it a few times, then pulled a cart through the bushes and hedges in the backyard and walked towards the next block.

The "market" two streets away is a trading point spontaneously set up by residents and located in a parking lot.

Many people simply set up a table, spread a cloth, and exchanged all kinds of odds and ends from their homes - from cans to batteries, from blankets to tools, everything is available.

Here are high-ranking officials, university professors, and industry elites.

But at this moment everyone is equal, wearing masks and gloves, wrapped in thick clothes, covering themselves like a mummy, for fear of exposing an inch of skin.

The lockdown has made money meaningless. US dollar bills are not even worth wiping your hands with. All transactions rely on barter to see who has the more practical things.

The cart is near the first stall.

He was a big fat man, wearing a loose T-shirt with a cartoon bear head printed on it and a pair of loose sweatpants. His figure was particularly conspicuous in the crowd.

Zhou Qingfeng recognized the other person by his iconic outfit and greeted him in a low voice: "Hey, Tim, what are you selling today?"

"Ice cream." Tim answered in a muffled voice, his voice coming out muffled through the mask.

He pulled a tub of white commercial ice cream from the plastic bin behind him, the tub still caked with condensation.

"Don't ask me why there's ice cream. I don't know. The soldiers drove up in their truck yesterday and stuffed a bucket of it into every house on our block without thinking.

Now I can exchange one kilogram of bread for a bucket of ice cream, do you want it?"

That bucket of ice cream weighs five kilograms.

There was no freezer in the market and the temperature was high, so the stuff couldn't be kept. Tim found a plastic box to store it, but a small puddle of water had already accumulated next to his stall.

The fat man looked helpless, obviously knowing that ice cream couldn't be eaten at this time. Although he didn't say anything, it was obvious that he really wanted to trade this damn thing for some bread.

However, ice cream is a high-fat food, which is an unexpected surprise for a calorie-consuming person like Zhou Qingfeng.

He took out five pieces of bread baked by Lucy from the cart - the surface was golden, with a faint buttery aroma, and the soft texture inside could be felt when pressed with fingers.

Tim's eyes lit up, and he took it hurriedly, as if he was afraid that Zhou Qingfeng would change his mind. He sniffed the bread and muttered softly:
"Thanks, brother. You don't know how hard it is to feed my two children. This bread will be enough for at least one day."

Zhou Qingfeng didn't say much, bent down to pick up the bucket of ice cream and put it into the cart.
-
In seven days, the National Guard, responsible for the lockdown, arrived three times, and each time it felt like a scene from a science fiction movie.
The soldiers were wrapped in white protective suits, their eyes behind the masks were cold and tired, and their boots made a dull "thump thump" sound as they stepped on the ground.

The first time we arrived, it was just dawn and the roar of military truck engines woke the community from their sleep.

Several soldiers knocked on doors from house to house. If they couldn't open the doors, they would break in directly.

They didn't care who lived in the house, let alone their identities. They just asked coldly, "Is anyone dead in the house?"

If the answer is "yes", they will drag in a black body bag, load the body onto a truck, and drive it to an unknown place for cremation.

If someone is sick, whether they have a fever and cough or are dying, they will just shrug and say, "We will report it and send an ambulance to pick them up."

But everyone knows that hospitals in Washington, D.C. have long been overcrowded, the sounds of ambulances are becoming less and less frequent, medical staff themselves are falling ill in batches, and even protective clothing is beginning to be insufficient.

In the following days, whenever the sound of engines was heard on the streets, soldiers in protective suits could almost always be seen carrying corpses.

Every time they came, they could carry away about ten bodies. Most of the dead were elderly people, their shriveled bodies wrapped tightly.

Word gradually spread in the community that the hospital beds were already full and seriously ill patients were lying on stretchers in the corridors.

The crematorium operates 24 hours a day because the morgue is overwhelmed with bodies.

With so many patients, it would be possible to transfer them to Maryland or Virginia, right?

The two states surrounding Washington refused to accept patients, preferring to reserve their own medical resources for their own residents. At best, they could help cremate the bodies of the capital.

In addition to collecting bodies, the Guard also delivered some daily necessities, but the logistics were extremely unprofessional and perfunctory. Each truck arrived with only one item.

The day before yesterday it was cabbage, yesterday it was potatoes, and today it is lettuce. If residents want to eat something else, they have to go to the next block to exchange it.

The soldiers simply blocked the main roads between communities, erecting barbed wire and roadblocks. As for the movement of thousands of people within the communities, they were too lazy to manage it, nor could they manage it.

Zhou Qingfeng took a cart and spent half an hour replacing all the cream bread baked by Lucy - the army also distributed flour, but there were not many people who knew how to bake bread.

Staple foods are in high demand in the market.

The cart was now filled with all sorts of things: a tub of half-melted ice cream, a large bloody steak, a basket of fruit, two large packs of toilet paper, and the sanitary napkins that Lucy had specifically requested.

As he lowered his head to examine his spoils, a rapid shout suddenly came from behind him: "Victor! Victor!"

Zhou Qingfeng turned around suddenly and saw a familiar figure running towards him through the crowd - it was the neighbor named Jack from across the street.

He was wearing a black down jacket stained with mud, his mask was askew, and behind his goggles were a pair of anxious, bloodshot eyes.

Jack ran over and looked around first, as if to make sure no one was paying attention, then he grabbed Zhou Qingfeng's arm and whispered, "Follow me."

The two of them walked quickly to the corner of the market and stood behind a pile of discarded cardboard boxes. Jack took a few breaths and asked in a low voice, "Victor, do you want to escape?" "How can you get through the barbed wire set up by the National Guard under the infrared camera of the drone?" If escape was possible, Zhou Qingfeng would have run away long ago.

Jack looked around and whispered, "Why escape from the ground? Washington, D.C. is the capital of the United States.

A dense underground transportation network has been under construction here for over a hundred years. Some of it is still in use, while others are abandoned. Perhaps some of it is poorly maintained.

Zhou Qingfeng was very interested in this and asked, "Do you know about the underground transportation network in Washington, D.C.?"

Jack was silent for a moment, then shook his head and said, "No, I don't understand, but someone must understand. The White House doesn't care about our lives at all.

The virus is so virulent right now that the lockdown seems like a joke. People are dying in the neighborhood every day. If we don't escape, we'll die too.

I'm organizing a team, and we're all trying to find a way to escape. You're quite skilled, so if you'd like to join us, come to my house at 7 p.m.

The reason why Zhou Qingfeng was said to be "good at fighting" was because he had an argument with someone in the market two days ago.

One official, known for his aggressive behavior, tried to trade dollars for bread, but when Zhou Qingfeng refused, he flew into a rage. He knocked his opponent down with a single punch, appearing quite formidable.

After Jack finished speaking, he patted Zhou Qingfeng on the shoulder, turned around and left, as if he was going to contact other people to join.

Zhou Qingfeng came back with daily necessities and told Lucy and Hammer about the idea of ​​"leaving the underground".

Lucy scoffed at this. "The neighbor across the street must still be in the conceptualization stage, trying to attract investors everywhere, just like a scammer who just draws a PowerPoint and tries to attract investors everywhere."

Hammer, who was groggy, suddenly spoke up, "Someone at the Tree of Justice is familiar with Washington, D.C.'s underground transportation network.

That guy is in charge of urban planning, so he should be in good health. And he happens to live near Arlington."

Zhou Qingfeng couldn't help but complain, "'Tree of Justice' is really full of talented people."

Lucy glanced at him meaningfully, "Indeed."
-
As night fell, Lucy was washing the last few dishes in the kitchen while old man Hammer dozed on the sofa.

The neighbor across the street came to invite Zhou Qingfeng again, hoping that he would join the so-called "escape association", saying that more than a dozen households in the adjacent street wanted to exchange ideas with each other.

But Zhou Qingfeng declined. He took out the traffic map he bought before the lockdown, followed the address provided by old man Hammer, put on a hoodie, a mask and goggles, pushed open the back door, and disappeared into the night.

On the streets, soldiers in charge of the blockade leaned against the roadblocks in twos and threes, their figures under the protective suits looked lazy and tired.

They held rifles in their hands, but had little intention of patrolling. Most of the time, they looked up at the drones buzzing in the sky.

Those cold machines are the real eyes, hovering in the night sky, with infrared lenses scanning the ground, monitoring the movements inside and outside the barbed wire.

According to the calculations of the "White House" and the powerful people on Capitol Hill, the lockdown of Washington, DC is to create a "pure land" to keep the virus outside the barbed wire.

Some civil servants in the SAR have been vaccinated, while others have contracted the disease. As long as they can get through it, herd immunity can be achieved and the core bureaucratic system can be restarted.

As for the current shortage of supplies and inconveniences in life, in their eyes it is nothing more than the "low quality" of the lower class people not understanding the painstaking efforts of the higher-ups.

The elderly and children who died in this process were nothing more than a "necessary evil" in the grand narrative.

But Zhou Qingfeng didn't see anyone truly accept this argument.

Each block is divided into small pieces, and the barbed wire fence is like a hideous scar across the street, with cameras hanging on it. The red indicator lights are like the eyes of wild beasts, staring coldly at the surroundings.

Temporary watchtowers were set up in some places, and the beams of searchlights swept across the ground from time to time, making the shadows of the trees sway, like ghosts dancing.

The neighborhood is not quiet at night.

Soldiers in protective suits drove jeeps back and forth, and the car radio warned in a monotonous mechanical voice: "Please do not move around casually to avoid the spread of the virus!"

But these words drifted away in the night wind, and few people took them seriously.

Different blocks receive different supplies, and market transactions continue even through barbed wire.

Some people held a bundle of cabbage, some took out their own medicine, and some even resold it between different blocks. The bargaining voices were low and low, as if they were performing a secret ritual.

Groups of residents gathered in the dim street corners, wrapped in thick clothes, cursing in low voices the "White House" bureaucrats who were bringing disaster to the country and the people.

Some people waved flashlights, some shouted, and some simply hit the trash cans on the roadside with sticks to vent their anger that had nowhere to go.

The barbed wire fences between the blocks were relatively low, and the soldiers who were in charge of the blockade were also lax in their control.

Zhou Qingfeng avoided the noisy lights and figures, and always relied on his good physical fitness to ignore the obstacles along the way and follow the route on the map towards the Leon Park district a few kilometers away.

Leon Park is a historic residential area with rows of bungalows and colonial-style houses on both sides of the street. The roofs are covered with ivy, and the shade of the trees casts mottled shadows in the moonlight.

Zhou Qingfeng checked the address given by old man Hammer, jumped lightly over several bushes and hedges, avoided the scanning of cameras and searchlights, and stopped in front of a house with a closed door.

The house was small, with dark gray exterior walls. A worn wicker chair sat on the porch, alongside a rusty flowerpot with only a few withered stems left.

A faint light shone through the window, as if someone had lit a candle, flickering.

Zhou Qingfeng confirmed the street sign and house number, took a few steps forward, and knocked on the door gently.

The wooden door made a low, "dong dong" sound, which was particularly clear in the silent night. He waited for a few seconds, but there was no movement from inside.

I knocked twice more, a little harder this time, but the lights behind the doors and windows continued to flicker, and still no one responded.

Zhou Qingfeng took a step back and squinted his eyes to survey the house. A faint light shone through the crack in the door, and the curtains were drawn tightly, not even a shadow could be seen.

He no longer hesitated, walked around the main gate, and walked quietly towards the backyard.

The moonlight was cool, casting a cold silver glow on the ground. The backyard fence was neatly trimmed and the lawn was clean.

Just as he reached the back door of the yard, Zhou Qingfeng suddenly stopped - there was a hanged body hanging under the beam of the back door.

The rope was deeply tied into the neck, and the broken neck was crooked in the moonlight, and the white-haired head looked particularly hideous.

The night wind blew, causing the body to sway slightly, and the ropes made a soft scraping sound against the beams. A chill ran from the soles of my feet to the top of my head, making my heartbeat become unusually loud in the silence.

(End of this chapter)