Reborn in the end of the world, I scavenged in the empty city and bought for free

The red-eyed mice appeared in the third year of the end of the previous life. At that time, the entire blue planet had experienced three years of extreme heat, earthquakes, extreme cold and countless rainstorms. The planet was already riddled with holes and devastated.

The mutations of animals were accompanied by extreme weather, and even triggered several large-scale "beast tides" in the fourth year of the apocalypse.

The so-called "beast tide" refers to a disaster caused by the excessive reproduction of one or more animals. Those large-scale beast tides seemed to have a causal relationship with the impending natural disasters.

At that time, the scale of the beast tide was large enough to easily destroy a small city. From afar, endless black fog gradually spread from the horizon, and tens of thousands of mutated animals rushed towards the city. If it were not for the fact that countries on Blue Star began to build large bases in the second year of the apocalypse, and the towering walls outside the bases blocked wave after wave of beast tides, I am afraid that humans would not be able to survive the successive destruction.

When the mutant rats first appeared in the corridor, they did not cause panic, because the size of the mutant rats was not much different from the rats that often wreaked havoc in the community trash cans before the end of the world. It was not until a homeowner felt ear pain in the morning and touched his ear when he woke up that he found that his tentacles were bloody and it turned out that half of his ear had been bitten off by some animal. (This was something that someone around the author experienced when he was a child. In the countryside, rats really bite people)

Although most people returned to their floors after the water level dropped, some residents living below the tenth floor still did not want to share a room with others. Therefore, there were still about a dozen owners who stayed in the corridor. Although the heat was unbearable in the morning, after adapting for a few days, they were able to grit their teeth and endure it.

In fact, they themselves did not know that after experiencing power outages and water shortages during heavy rains and being forced to drink unfiltered sewage during floods, everyone's physical fitness should have gradually adapted to such an environment. At least in the few months that Gu Tongwan had lived in the Zijing Community, except for the few corpses floating on the water, no one had died in Building A1.

The injured owner did not notice when his ear was bitten off, but some people started to find black excrement the size of soybeans in the corridor, and judging from the smell, it should be from a rat.

After the first rat bite incident, another owner who was sleeping in the corridor was bitten on the arm the next night.

In the apocalypse, there is no condition to inject tetanus passive immunization system and hemorrhagic fever vaccine. The bitten owners can only use the only disinfectant in the house to disinfect and take some anti-inflammatory drugs to avoid further infection of the wound. There is no other way.

Although there was already a second victim, the "culprit" behind the incident could not be caught because rats are too cunning. In addition, there is no lighting at night, so most people can only choose to go to bed early. The relatively open corridors are the most vulnerable places to attack.

It was not until the third day that mutant rats began to invade houses, especially those floors that had been soaked by floods and had poor sanitary conditions. An owner on the 13th floor was woken up by the heat at 5:30 in the morning to go to the toilet. He actually saw a rat the size of a kitten in his kitchen. In its hands were several bags of expired bread that he had just searched outside a few days ago, and it was chewing on them with relish.

The man was startled at once, and the mouse suddenly turned its head, revealing a pair of bright red eyes that made people's scalp numb.

"Squeak!" Not only was the mouse not afraid of people, it even showed its sharp teeth and made a protesting sound towards the man in a somewhat clamorous manner.

After the man came to his senses, he suppressed his panic, immediately picked up a pair of tongs in the kitchen, and hit the mouse on the head.

The mouse originally wanted to hide, but it had eaten too much before, and its feet slipped when it turned around, and it hit the chopping board in front of it, and it immediately felt dizzy.

The man moved quickly. He missed the mouse the first time, but when he saw the mouse knock itself down the second time, he hit it hard a second time, causing the mouse to let out a sharp cry.

The family members in the bedroom and other owners living in the next room heard the noise and rushed out to check what was going on. They saw the man tying the mouse's feet to the door with a fishing line while the mouse was unconscious.

After knowing that the people on the 13th floor had caught a red-eyed rat, other curious people came over after hearing the news, even Liu Feng and other property management staff came.

The rat was about 2-3 jin in size. Its tail was different from the rats before the apocalypse, being several dozen centimeters long. Its head was also slightly larger than that of common rats. For some reason, its eyes were red as if dripping blood, and it had a ferocious temper. It shook its body several times and tried to pounce on the crowd.

"Is this a rat? It looks like a spirit. From the look in its eyes, it looks like it wants to eat us alive."

"Fuck, stop talking. My arm still hurts. If I hadn't woken up quickly that day, that beast would have bitten me to death!"

"But this rat is so fat, and it looks like it has a lot of meat. I wonder if it's edible." Someone stared at the rat's fat body and spoke subconsciously.

This sentence made the crowd, who were originally terrified and angry about rats, have all kinds of thoughts in their minds. Someone whispered, "Aren't rats full of bacteria? How dare you eat them?"

"I've drunk the flood that soaked the corpses, and I've eaten the carp that bit the corpses. What else is there to be afraid of?" The man staring at the rat turned to look at the owner of the fourteenth floor, "What are you going to do with this rat?"

The owner of the fourteenth floor frowned and said, "Just throw it away after you kill it."

"No, why don't you give it to me?" The man tried to negotiate.

The owner of the fourteenth floor stared at the mouse, then looked at the man's face, and said with disgust: "Then take it yourself, but if anything happens to you after eating it, it has nothing to do with me." He was afraid that the man would blame him if something happened.

The man laughed and said, "Why should I blame you? This mouse is not yours. It's my fault that it died. It's better than not having enough food to eat."

As a result, the man beat the mouse to death with a wooden stick and then returned to the aisle carrying the heavy mouse, which immediately scared many people back away.

By noon, several families in the corridor were making fires and cooking, still ordinary porridge or millet porridge. The weather was hot, and drinking porridge was the most convenient and refreshing food. However, it was not filling and one would get hungry quickly.

The man who took the mouse was called Jiang Chao. Before the apocalypse, he had just bought a second-hand house in Zijing Community with his wife who had just remarried. He was a supplier to several butcher shops. Before the apocalypse, half of the dozens of kilograms of meat in his refrigerator were wasted after the power and water were cut off. The remaining half was made into smoked meat, but it had been eaten up in the past two months.

Jiang Chao was born in the countryside and later found a wife from the city. They had no children after eight years of marriage. As a result, when Jiang Chao was busy starting a business and making money, his wife filed for divorce because she had an affair and was pregnant with someone else's child.

The cuckolded man named Jiang Chao was caught by surprise, but after the divorce, his business was doing well. When his business was at its best, he had orders from more than a dozen butcher shops and made a lot of money during that time. His current wife was someone he met at work. She is not pretty but hardworking. They have been married for three years and their relationship is harmonious even though they don't have children.

"Is this edible? I don't want to eat it. I'll just drink porridge." Jiang Chao's wife said with disgust.

"It's already this late. What can't you eat?" Jiang Chao said unhappily.

Jiang Chao had killed pigs when he was young, so he was very familiar with decomposing a mouse carcass. In less than ten minutes, the mouse was depilated and gutted. After a simple marinade, it was grilled over a fire. While brushing it with oil, it was sprinkled with simple salt and a little cumin powder. As it was grilling, the fat on the mouse made a "sizzling" sound.

However, it was too hot to barbecue in such weather. Jiang Chao's wife was so hot that she had to hide in a corner away from the fire, and Jiang Chao himself could hardly bear it.

However, soon the aroma of meat accompanied by cumin came from the corridor, which made several families nearby couldn't help but look sideways.

When the meat was almost done, Jiang Chao tore off some meat from the hind leg and handed it to his wife. His wife just kept shaking her head, "I don't want it."

"Tsk, it's nothing, it's just a mouse, I often eat this stuff in my hometown."

"In the countryside they're called field mice, but they're much cleaner and more sanitary than here." His wife muttered as she took a sip of rice porridge.

Jiang Chao was unwilling to leave his wife in front of him, so he took a bite of the greasy rat meat and ate it with great relish. His wife, who was standing beside him, saw that he was eating without stopping and began to doubt in her heart whether the rat meat was really that delicious.

Perhaps sensing his wife's gaze, Jiang Chao tore off another piece of meat and handed it over, frowning and saying, "Try it, it's really okay, just treat it as beef."

Can it be compared with beef?

Her wife complained in her heart, but the aroma of meat she smelled kept stimulating her taste buds, so she mustered up the courage to try a small bite. In addition to the aroma of cumin, there was also some fishy smell from the meat itself. The texture of the meat was similar to that of chicken, which was not unacceptable.

Maybe they don't eat meat, so they couldn't stop eating it. As a result, the couple ate with gusto. Someone nearby couldn't help asking, "Lao Jiang, is this rat meat really edible?"

"Of course, it's all meat," Jiang Chao replied without even raising his head.

The man seemed unconvinced and asked again: "What does it taste like?"

Jiang Chao spat out the bone, thought for a moment, and then said, "I can't explain it anyway. For me, as long as I can fill my stomach, that's enough."

After Jiang Chao's attempt, many people in the corridor began to have ideas about the rats. That night, some owners were seen staying up all night, waiting in the corner for the red-eyed rats to move in the dark.

***

As for Gu Tongwan, she had just come out of the shower when she saw a huge red-eyed rat under Aoao's claws. The rat struggled and made sharp cries, but Aoao ignored it and swallowed the whole rat in one gulp, making a "crunching" sound as if bones were being chewed.

Gu Tongwan then decided not to let Aoao and Tutu enter the room for the time being...

****

On the 103rd day of the apocalypse, after red-eyed rats, people discovered groups of large black-shelled cockroaches in the corridors or houses.