Surviving the Apocalypse with the Young Miss - Chapter 51

Chapter 51: The Base

Song Ge noticed that the people Nana had brought out were mostly elderly and children. Ordinarily, during a monster outbreak, these two groups would be the most vulnerable and the least likely to survive. Unless these people were only a small portion of the group. But if there were already so many non-productive elderly and children, it was hard to imagine how many others there were.

While speculating, Song Ge memorized the path and direction they were taking.

After many twists and turns, Song Ge faintly heard the sound of human voices. Soon, they arrived outside a residential compound. The compound’s outer wall appeared to have been refortified with red brick and cement, topped with a dense tangle of barbed wire. The only entrance was a gate large enough for trucks, with a massive loudspeaker fixed above it.

The gate slowly opened.

Song Ge looked over and saw two strong young men opening it.

“Leader!” they shouted respectfully toward the man called Zeus.

Zeus: “Mhm.”

With a wave of Nana’s hand, the two men waited for everyone to enter before immediately closing the gate and sliding a heavy, sturdy bolt into place.

Leader?

Song Ge felt a bad premonition but didn’t show it. She silently followed them into the compound. Before her eyes was a long-awaited scene of normalcy—rows of five- or six-story self-built houses, countless men, women, and children, and a general air of prosperity.

The concrete ground in front of each house had been pried up and turned into farmland, and plenty of vegetables were already growing in the soil. As the people in the compound saw Zeus’s group, they would call out “Leader” with a mix of respect and warmth.

At this point, Tong Xiangyu also voiced her confusion. “Leader?”

“Look over there,” Nana pointed.

Tong Xiangyu looked. There was a flagpole in the compound flying a yellow flag. As the flag fluttered in the wind, she could clearly see a pattern of a fist clutching a knife, with blood stained on the blade.

Nana explained, “Because the number of survivors we took in grew, we formed an organization called the ‘Morning Sun Self-Defense’ to follow everyone’s wishes. Also, because there are so many people, we had to carefully divide the labor. It’s too difficult for just Zeus and me to look after everyone. We choose reliable, trustworthy people and assign them tasks, such as shift sentry duty, going out to collect supplies, rescuing stranded survivors, expanding the base, distributing supplies, and managing the medical and R&D teams. We give extra rewards to those who provide labor.”

Tong Xiangyu was shocked by what she heard. “Are there really this many people here?”

“Of course. Did you think it was just those twenty or thirty people from before?” Nana laughed, kind and enthusiastic. “You’ve seen no fewer than a hundred people just on the way in. In fact, almost all survivors in Taiyun are gathered here. Currently, there are 6,321 people registered. This compound has twenty buildings, each with ten households and six floors. A single building can accommodate at least six or seven hundred people, or even as many as a thousand.”

The more Tong Xiangyu heard, the more reliable it felt. “I heard there’s an R&D team. What are they researching? How to deal with those monsters?”

“Monsters?” Nana said. “Oh, you mean the zombies.”

“Do you call those infected people ‘zombies’ directly?”

“Those aren’t ‘infected’—those are corpses that have lost all human reason, consciousness, and even life, possessing only the ability to move,” Nana said. “Just like in the movies. It’s nothing more than a sign of the apocalypse.”

“The apocalypse…” Tong Xiangyu disagreed. “There must be other countermeasures. It’s impossible for the entire country to have fallen as soon as it broke out.”

“Perhaps it hasn’t fallen,” Nana said. “But the state and the government have already abandoned us—people without power, wealth, or background.”

Tong Xiangyu was stunned. “How is that possible?!”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Nana said. “Since the zombie riots began, the government kept emphasizing that everyone should stay calm, stay indoors, don’t go out, and wait for rescue. They listed all sorts of defensive measures. Do you know what happened? We were in a beauty salon at the time, dozens of us together. Hearing about this, the boss immediately shut the doors and blocked the back exit. But the next day, the zombie virus broke out from the inside. Out of dozens of people, only Bei Bei and I escaped alive.”

Tong Xiangyu was dazed.

Nana’s eyes turned red. “The state abandoned us. When the whole city was in chaos, planes and helicopters were flying back and forth, all transporting high-ranking government officials away from danger, leaving us to fend for ourselves. You don’t know how terrifying it is to watch someone be torn apart and eaten by a group of zombies. You don’t know how many people starved to death after locking themselves in their homes for half a month. And you certainly don’t know how many countless people chose to jump to their deaths because they couldn’t handle the despair.”

Zeus looked at Nana with empathy and comforted her, “Nana.”

“I’m fine.” Nana sniffled and smiled back, then looked at Tong Xiangyu. “It was indeed very hard at first. The hardship wasn’t having to face countless terrifying zombies, but the suffocating despair of realizing that the state, which always claimed to be our solid backing, didn’t hesitate to abandon us the moment danger struck. Luckily, we’ve pulled through now… See, we’ve taken in many survivors, and with many people come many talents in various fields. For example, though the power is out outside, we have electricity here. There’s solar power on the balconies. We’ve also established a small base station, so people can use mobile phones within a certain range of the base, which reduces a lot of inconvenience.”

Tong Xiangyu couldn’t help but exclaim, “Wow…!”

Nana glanced at Song Ge and Yue Yao, then asked Tong Xiangyu, “Are there only three of you in your group?”

“Yes.”

Nana was surprised. “Then how did you escape from Kecheng, surrounded by hordes of zombies? As far as I know, Kecheng fell even earlier than Taiyun.”

“Good luck, I guess,” Tong Xiangyu said. “Mainly because Song Ge is very capable. We also encountered heavy rain on the way, though it seems it didn’t rain here.”

Nana: “It didn’t rain.” She then asked, “How long did it take you on the road?”

“Nearly a month.” Tong Xiangyu briefly told Nana about the things they encountered from the outbreak to the journey, including taking Yue Yao along and finding the courier truck when they were at their wit’s end.

“Then you really were lucky,” Nana remarked. She added, “After the people of Taiyun realized the government had completely abandoned us, many terrible things broke out. Rape, looting, burning, and killing—humanity was completely lost for a bite to eat. Even now, there are still quite a few people doing evil outside.”

Tong Xiangyu’s eyes widened in disbelief!

“But don’t worry, that definitely won’t happen here,” Nana promised. “We have sufficient stockpiles of supplies, reasonable distribution, and strict order. It’s absolutely safe.”

Tong Xiangyu nodded and looked up at Song Ge. She saw that while Song Ge’s expression was calm, her lips were slightly pursed, clearly not relaxing in the slightest.

Midway, Zeus sent the two men and the woman away, then took Song Ge and the other two with Nana to a house in the first row of the first building of the compound.

A cute young woman was sitting inside reading a book; based on the environment, it looked like an office. As soon as the girl saw people coming, she immediately put down her book and stood up, calling out obediently, “Leader. Sister Nana.”

“Register them,” Zeus said. “They’re from Kecheng.”

“Alright. Three people in total, right?” The girl took out three forms from a notebook on the side. “Please come over here to fill them out.”

Tong Xiangyu walked over first. As she walked, she saw that there was indeed electricity in the office. A desktop computer screen was lit up, the desktop full of shortcuts to various files, and lyrics were scrolling across the screen.

The girl invited Tong Xiangyu to sit down and handed her a form and a pen. “Fill this out: name, age, occupation, birthplace, ID number, and your parents’ information here.”

Tong Xiangyu asked, “Do I have to fill in parents too?”

The girl: “Yes, this helps us help you find your parents. If they have unfortunately died in this terrible disaster, please accept our condolences—just fill in ‘deceased’.”

Tong Xiangyu gave a soft “Mhm” and was about to start writing, but just as the first stroke of the character “Tong” was placed, the pen was pulled away.

Tong Xiangyu looked up and saw Song Ge.

Song Ge looked at the man called Zeus. “We don’t plan to stay here. Didn’t you only invite us to rest for one night?”

Zeus was taken aback, but he soon smiled and said, “Yes, yes. How about this: I’ll have Nana give you a brief tour of our base.” He glanced at his watch and said, “I have things to attend to. I’ll see you later.”

After saying that, Zeus instructed Nana, “These are my honored guests. Be sure to treat them well. They will have dinner at my table.”

Nana became respectful: “Yes.”

Song Ge placed the pen firmly back on the table.

After Zeus left, Nana took Song Ge, Tong Xiangyu, and Yue Yao to the warehouse specifically used for stockpiling supplies. It was also a residential building, but an entire separate building, the entrance locked with iron chains and surrounded by barbed wire.

She unlocked it and went in. Inside the rooms, bags of rice, flour, noodles, and cooking oil were stacked high like mountains against the walls, along with crates of canned food, dried meat products, bottled water, pre-packaged meals, and seasonings.

At a glance, there were more supplies here than in most supermarkets.

After the group finished looking, Nana led them upstairs while introducing, “In addition to this, we have various fast-growing seeds, pesticides, fertilizers, and farming tools. Three fish ponds have been developed behind the compound, maintained by professional fishermen. Whether it’s vegetables or meat, we are completely self-sufficient and sustainable.”

The second floor held seeds. The third floor was the medical warehouse, with boxes of common medicines arranged in crates: cold medicine, fever reducers, antibiotics, allergy medication, blood pressure medicine, nitroglycerin, as well as alcohol, hemostatic cotton, gauze, masks, and syringes—everything was there.

“We have many professional doctors and professional basic infrastructure and medical equipment here,” Nana said with a smile. “If you feel unwell anywhere, you can see a doctor at any time.”