It was a familiar voice; it probably came from someone Chang knew.
“Hey, we aren’t dangerous.” Chang entered the attack range of this person as he finally got to see the face of that person.
“Sir, it’s really you!” The person in front of Chang was indeed familiar. More precisely speaking, he’d met him this morning—it was the biology teacher, Qingshui Li.
"You are ... Liu Chang?" Seeing Chang’s face, Mr. Li lowered his guard and put the bar aside.
“Me too, I’m Tao.” Tao followed Chang, letting Mr. Li see his face.
“How did you guys get here?” Mr. Li moved away and said, “Come on in.”
The two nodded and entered the dusky store. The store was actually darker than the outside and filled with red fog. The electricity was cut off by the vines, making it hard to see each other’s faces.
But after their eyes adjusted to the darkness, Chang and Tao recognized more familiar faces in the room—they were all students from the school.
There were dozens of students and their parents, about 25 people in total. This small group was probably formed after the apocalypse, and then they found this store. The leader of the group was probably Mr. Li, the biology teacher.
It seemed like it wasn’t just them that wanted to find a convenience store as shelter.
Walking to the other side of the room, Chang found Pangzi and Glasses, as well as a bunch of his other classmates.
“Chang? Tao?” Pangzi stood out from the crowd, “How did you guys get here?”
“Stroke of luck,” Chang said with a grin on his face. “We were fortune enough to bump into Mr. Li while he on patrol.”
“Good to see you guys.” Glasses came over from his parents with guilt written all over over his face.
“It’s okay, we got lucky that nothing bad happened.” While Chang was speaking, he instinctively seized the gun tightly in his pocket.
"What a relief that nothing happened.” Glasses nodded, "This place is safe temporarily.”
“There’s no safe place on this planet now.” Mr. Li walked over and said. “The mutation rate of all organisms is too rapid; it’s even faster than that of the Cambrian explosion written in textbooks. With many species evolving at this rate, within three days, they will turn into predators…this strange red fog probably has the same property as the free oxygen in the Cambrian explosion. No wonder why biology was such a large aspect in the college entrance examination. Did they already know from the beginning……?”
Mr. Li became quieter as he spoke, and the last sentence could only be heard by Chang, who happened to stand beside him.
“What do we do?” Pangzi’s mother shouted. The teacher’s words caused panic.
"I don’t know what to do either. Let’s wait and see and try our best to survive.” Mr. Li sighed, then he sat beside the shelf.
Chang and Tao also sat on the floor after they talked to Pangzi and Glasses.
Time flew by and soon night came without surprise.
The world was in real darkness.
Even when the sun was shining, the red fog was dense enough to block more than 70% of the light. Not to mention, the soft moonlight and starlight were completely absorbed by the fog. In a store without electricity, their occupants learned what pure darkness was like.
Mr. Li had prepared for the darkness in advance, so he took out a lighter and carefully lit the two candles he had placed on the table before it became completely dark.
“We need to conserve these candles. If the light is too strong, we will become easy targets for other organisms.” The candlelight drove away some darkness and brought relief to this quiet room.
Under the candle light, Chang felt dizzy when he stared at the light source through the red fog. He noticed an unbearable itchy feeling slowly coming from his ankle.
He found an empty corner and then removed his shoes. Through the faint light, he loosened the bandage that was wrapped around his ankle, and a wave of flesh-life odor immediately filled the air.
“Oh god…” Chang almost got knocked out by the smell, but he forced himself to adapt to it. What he saw next was even worse than the smell.
The wound was festering and oozing; it was a frightful mess.
“Wound infection!” Mr. Li’s voice came from behind Chang. He stepped forward and held onto Chang, then he lightly pressed the skin around his wound.
“Does it hurt?”
“It’s itchy, but not really painful”.
“You wound is infected.” Mr. Li was attentively watching the festering wound. “Do you have any medicine?”
“There.” Chang pulled his bag over and took out some over-the-counter medications.
“Do you have any antibiotics?” Mr. Li looked through the different medicine Chang had in his bag.
"No."
“Then take some anti-inflammatory pills.” Mr. Li once again looked at the horrible wound, then frowned, “your injury looks a bit scarier than usual. It’s completely different from a normal festering wound!! It seems like it wasn’t only animals and plants that evolved, but rather bacteria too.”
Chang took out the anti-inflammatory pills. The instruction on the bag told him to have one pill at a time, so he poured another on his palm and took twice the recommended dosage.
“Take some more, it might not be very effective.” There was still discontent on Mr. Li’s his face.
“Okay.” Chang poured another two pills and swallowed them with bottled water from the convenience store.
“Does anyone have rubbing alcohol?” Mr. Li shouted to the people in the dim room.
His cry garnered no response.
"I don’t think it’s that serious; it’s merely a wound infection, like the ones I would get when I injured myself as a kid.”
“You also ran into rats and dogs when you were a kid; you clearly know they’re different now. You need to understand that the simpler an organisms is, the easier it is for them to have significant mutations. Bacterial mutations are already pretty common even without the surrounding of red fog.”
“Is it that serious?” Chang’s heart sank upon hearing the bad news. If the tamest of animals could turn into the most bloodthirsty beings, then these pathogens could be much worse.
“I don’t know, we’ll see.” Qingshui sighed and fell silent. The room became quiet again.
Chang put his foot on a stool and left it unwrapped. Probably because the smell from the wound was overwhelming, no one came around. Even Qingshui went somewhere else, so Chang tried to move a little further to the corner to make the smell less noticeable.
It felt as if time had come to a halt in this eerie silence.
Chang was sitting in the corner by himself, and his head got dizzier and he began to feel colder and colder.
He felt a fever coming.
____________________________________________________________________________
Qing Shui Li - Qing Shui is his first name although it was often typed separately, it means clear and pure water. The name resembles how resilient, calm and unperturbed Qing Shui is.
It was common knowledge that wound infections often led to fevers. In fact, most organisms died of diseases regardless of whether they were human or animal. Even carnivores who lived in the jungle—unless they were starving—seldom picked aggressive animals as their prey, even if they were much weaker than them. This was because they feared being injured. An injury meant a high chance of a wound becoming infected, and the infection could take their life. Hence, having a wound was basically equivalent to death, since they didn’t have antibiotics to fight off bacteria and microbes.
This was what Chang was facing.
Although he took anti-inflammatory pills, it seemed to be ineffective in controlling the mutated bacteria. He felt himself getting colder, and his headache became worse; everything in the room became blurry.
Another hour passed, and the people in the room started to look for food for themselves. Chang gritted his teeth and scrambled up to a shelf to take some canned beef, forcing himself to eat it.
Chang knew that no one in this world would be willing to take care of him. If he wanted to survive, he had to eat something, even if he had no appetite at all.
Chang curled himself up against the wall after he finished the canned food, but he still felt coldness surrounding him.
“Bro, are you okay?” Seeing Chang crouched in a corner, Pang Zi and the others hunched over.
“Ah! Your foot stinks!” Tao also came over with his nose covered.
"Hey, you know people rarely die from diseases in the apocalypse, right?” Glasses-man said jokingly, hoping that his joke would ease the tension.
“Come on…most people die of diseases regardless of what circumstance is.” Chang leaned against the wall and sighed.
"You have a fever?" They finally noticed Chang’s pale complexion when they sat right beside him.
"Don’t worry."
“Have some Advil.” Pang Zi took out the pills from his backpack and handed them to Chang.
Gurgle.
Chang took the bitter pills along with some bottled water, then he frailly nodded to show his appreciation to his friends.
Just as Chang was about to rest, a sudden shriek came from the direction of the washroom. The person’s scream sounded like she was in anguish, as if her vocal cords was torn and she was choking on viscous blood.
“Mom!” Pang Zi’s face immediately turned pale as he heard the cry. His round body bounced up from the ground as agile as an elk and he rushed to the washroom.
Some other people followed Pang Zi out of curiosity.
Chang managed to stand up with some effort, and following the others, he staggered towards the washroom.
Someone had lit a candle in the corridor already.
Under the candlelight, Chang smelled a strong odor of blood as soon as he stepped into the washroom corridor. Some people in the front started to throw up against the wall; the smell of gastric juices and digested food filled the air in the corridor immediately.
Through the gaps between the onlookers, Chang saw something extremely unpleasant that made him nauseous.
A broken body.
The torso and limbs were severely damaged while the head remained intact. She died lying on her stomach, and an adult fist-sized hole on her lower back indicated a brutal penetration. Her organs flowed out from the hole and coated the floor of the washroom. Despite this opening, there was another smaller one on the chest, but not as wide as the previous one.
Perhaps it was because Pang Zi’s mother was too obese, but it was even more disgusting since there was a large amount of fat mixed with the flesh. Anyone who saw this mixture of yellow fat, blood and organs would seriously feel unwell.
Fortunately, Chang was too weak and his senses had dulled, so he somehow managed to suppress the nauseating feeling.
Chang turned his head away to avoid seeing the bloody scene, and then his gaze drifted onto Pang Zi’s face–distraught and hideously angry.
He knew that any comforting words at this moment would be useless.
Therefore, he took a few steps back and leaned back against the wall.
"Whew!" Chang sighed heavily and slowly slid onto the ground.
However, at this time, no one cared enough to pay attention to him. Their attention was attracted to the bloodier scene; except for Pang Zi, everyone was in serious fear and trepidation.
“WHAT attacked her?” Someone in the crowd whispered.
However, there was no response to that person’s question. The only person who might’ve seen the attacker was Pang Zi, but obviously, he wasn’t going to talk to anyone about it right now.
Even so, people still paid attention to that question. When someone in the crowd asked, people in the room began to pay attention to everything around them.
However, the surrounding was too dark, and under the flickers of the candle flame they could only hazily observe their surroundings. If the corridor wasn’t dim enough, there’d probably be even more people vomiting right now.
They carefully moved back to the store; no one wanted to die tragically in the corridor. Some smarter individuals had already pulled their families away and quietly left the place. They were afraid that the smell of blood would attract more strange organisms.
For a while, the situation was growing increasingly tenser.
It seemed like no one would ever notice Chang huddled in the corner.
Chang felt his body temperature continuously rising and he was gradually losing consciousness. He went into a semi-comatose state.
The situation continued until someone found him at midnight–he was once again discovered by the biology teacher, Li Qing Shui.
He saw Chang crouched against the wall, then he touched Chang’s forehead.
“It must be more than 40 degrees Celsius!” Qing Shui lightly exclaimed.
He put a thermometer that he found somewhere into Chang’s mouth.
Five minutes later, Qing Shui removed the thermometer, placed it in front of the candlelight and carefully read the temperature. The highest temperature that the thermometer could detect was 42 degrees Celsius, which was exactly Chang’s reading.
"How hasn’t he died already?" To be honest, there were almost no thermometers that read temperatures above 42 degrees Celsius. This was because humans could easily die from heart failure if their body temperature ever reached 42 degrees Celsius.
And obviously, Chang’s body temperature might’ve exceeded this number already.
“How is he?” Chang vaguely heard another voice approach; it was probably Tao.
“I don’t know, he should be dead, but he’s still alive for now.” He once again heard Qing Shui’s voice.
“Is there any chance that we can save him?”
“If his fever continues, he’ll be dead for sure. The infection caused the severe fever, so if we can’t subdue the festering wound, even if he’s in a relatively stable stage, he will still die from this fever.”
“What can we do?”
“If we can find antibiotics, then there’s hope!”
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