Flowers Blooming in the Wasteland

"There are no harvesters anymore, and more importantly, there is no city wall." Cedric sighed and said, "If we farm outside the city wall, the workers may be attacked by zombies or bandits at any time, and the crops will also grow in immature At that time, they were robbed of everything. Now only part of the land inside and near the fence can be cultivated, and barbed wire is fenced around it, and electricity is connected to prevent it from being stolen and robbed.”

Celeste asked: "Can't we expand the wall? If the enclosure is larger, there will be more land to grow."

"It's hard." Cedric sighed, "There is no steel bar, no cement, no building materials, and no mechanical equipment. Even if we spend a lot of manpower to build the wall, it cannot be as strong as the original city wall. In those days, gangsters could get some explosives to blow up a gap. And now, after all, it is not the same as in the past, the soil is full of pollution, the water is not clean, especially the lack of sunlight, the crops can’t grow well at all, even if we have more Even the land can’t grow much food.”

Speaking of Cedric, he looked up at the sun above his head. Nowadays, people use "whether they can see the outline of the sun" as the criterion to distinguish between sunny and cloudy days. In the past, the light of the sun could not be seen directly at all.

He was feeling sentimental on his side, but Celeste noticed that there seemed to be two figures staggering towards this direction in the distance.

Celeste tugged at the corner of Fu Yunlan's clothes, signaling that Fu Yunlan had something over there.

Fu Yunlan took a look through the binoculars, then turned on the wireless earphones: "Cowboy, it's your job."

Mole grumbled in the earphones: "Can't we have some fun?"

"The zombies will scare the workers if they get too close." Fu Yunlan said, "Besides, you talk too much nonsense."

The cowboy got down on the roof of the car, stared slowly for a long time, and hit a zombie on the shoulder with a single shot, causing the surrounding mercenaries to boo.

"Cowboy, you can't do it anymore. You used to be shot in the head."

"I put too much effort on the girl last night, so I'm dizzy now!"

The cowboy said angrily: "You can go ahead, if you can't, don't force it."

Mole slapped his thigh: "Give me the gun, let me do it!"

"Go away, if you dare to touch my gun, I will dare to kill you!" The cowboy kicked the mole out of the car, took aim for a while, and then fired a second shot. This time he successfully exploded another zombie. nod.

The zombie who was shot in the shoulder had a big hole in the shoulder blade torn by the bullet, and there was only a little skin left on the arm, which was still connected to the body. It seemed that he couldn't stand up anymore, but he was still crawling towards the place where there were people. Well, the cowboy didn't plan to take care of it anymore. Anyway, with such a serious injury, he would die within a short distance.

Although in many people's rumors, zombies are monsters that come back from the dead and walking corpses, but those who have actually dealt with zombies know that the so-called zombies are actually just a group of patients infected with a mutant rabies virus , what kind of injury a person suffers will die, and they will die with the same injury.

The skin of these patients is festered, their metabolism is slow, and their nerve centers are also severely damaged. After being injured, they will not lose their mobility due to pain like normal people. They look like legendary undead creatures, but some early studies have shown that zombies are still They need to eat and breathe. Although their brains are corrupted by virus infection, they still instinctively search for food and water, and sometimes even eat carrion and garbage. Viruses make their bodies extremely adaptable. The zombies didn't respond to vomiting and diarrhea.

In addition to daring to put everything in their mouths, zombies seem to be more adaptable to high-pollution or even high-radiation environments than humans. After being infected by viruses, they can survive in the ruins and sewers of cities for many years. They eat food when they have food, and there is no food. Just eat each other.There are also some zombies that wander around in the wilderness. The instinct of the spread of the virus prompts them to bite other living things. However, except for patients who have just started to attack after being infected, zombies are actually no more difficult to deal with than a rabid dog. , especially the zombies who have been infected with the virus for a long time. They are weak, slow, and staggering. The whole person is already a living virus bank, and the air they exhale is poisonous.

But this is nothing to be afraid of. People nowadays are accustomed to the zombie virus, just like people in the Middle Ages were to the Black Death.

Many years ago, the zombie virus, which was almost suppressed by humans, suddenly evolved the ability to spread through the air. The virus spread rapidly around the world, but no virus can infect everyone, and there are still quite a few Humans are immune to the zombie virus in the air, and some will not even be infected if they are bitten. It can be said that every survivor who has lived until now and has not turned into a zombie has considerable resistance to the zombie virus.

The catastrophe that happened in Merced also made many people wonder whether the virus had mutated for the third time, but Fu Yunlan, who entered the city from outside the city and brought Celeste all the way out of the city, did not. Don't think so - he saw that the newly infected people had a lot of bite marks on their bodies, and Hummingbird Town later received some refugees who were bitten but still not infected, which is enough to show that the virus's infectivity is similar to before.

On the contrary, some of the zombies they encountered at that time had obviously been infected for many years. After the nuclear explosion, there were fewer zombies wandering in the wild. This shows that the zombie virus did not suddenly erupt from within Merced, but It was captured by zombies that were wandering in the wild.

Why mindless zombies suddenly attacked a city in an organized manner is another puzzling mystery.

There are always so many things that people don't understand the cause and effect, which makes Fu Yunlan feel very bad.

---

The first light snow has just fallen, but the temperature has already dropped to more than ten degrees below zero. People's lives have become more and more difficult. All the survivors are struggling to survive this severe winter, and they have no strength to attack each other. The mercenary group also put all their energies on the defense of the town, lest some forces that had a hard time come to attack Hummingbird Town.

The hydropower station has entered a dry season, and the price of electricity has risen to four or five times that of summer. The poor and homeless who cannot afford electricity have all brought their bedrolls and moved to the shelters converted from old air-raid shelters. Heating, after all, population is also a very important resource, and no one wants too many people to freeze to death this winter.

But it is limited to not freezing to death. Although Fu Yunlan forced the Crimson Bar to take out a part of the stored food as relief, it is still unable to ensure that everyone has food. The relief food distributed twice a day by the shelter is used Cheap compressed cakes with no nutritional value added a lot of boiled paste. According to this level of relief, it can only barely last until the beginning of spring. It's out of their control.

People who have no food can only lie in bed and suffer from hunger every day. Hunger also forces some scavengers to go out to try their luck in the severe cold, hoping that the cold will make zombies and bandits unable to shrink back, and the wilderness will be a little safer. Maybe go away If you're lucky, you'll find something to eat, even if it's a mouse that freezes to death.

On this day, Li Jiesi told Fu Yunlan that a scavenger found several zombies wandering around a motel.

In the wild, zombies exist like wild dogs. If zombies can survive in this place, it means that there must be something to eat nearby, at least something that zombies can eat.

Hunger drove the scavenger to venture around the zombies and climb up the water pipe to the second floor of the motel, where he found a way to the basement and found a large amount of supplies in the basement, all of which were like Canned food, salt, candles and other things that can be stored for a long time are probably because some businessmen hoarded some supplies to make a small fortune after the outbreak of the zombie virus or at the beginning of the war. Later, I don’t know what happened. The materials inside were all left intact.

But there are several zombies in the basement besides the food. If it wasn't for the cold weather, the scavenger was almost killed on the spot. He escaped with several bite marks and is now in Coulson's clinic. He was suffering from a high fever and probably couldn't make it through. Coulson had already ordered someone to tie him up firmly, and he would be dragged out to deal with him when he was confirmed to be infected by the zombie virus.

The food in the basement should have expired a long time ago, even if it was still edible, it would have been ruined by zombies, but if other materials such as salt and white wine can be obtained, it will be a fortune.

If we wait until next spring to go, there will be too many variables, so Fu Yunlan took the mercenary group out in the severe cold of minus ten degrees. This should be the last mission of the mercenary group this winter.