NOVPUB59: Chapter 47: The Disappeared Corpse
59 -47: The Disappeared Corpse
After New Year’s passed, time flew by rapidly.
At first, people had been hopeful that the arrival of spring would bring its usual warmth and blossoming flowers after the New Year.
However, even as June approached, the weather outside remained bitterly cold, and the ice showed no signs of melting.
That day, Uncle Zhang suddenly went up to the 18th floor to find Gu Yanzhi and Song Zhao.
Before heading to work that morning, Uncle Zhang made a point to knock on the door on the 18th floor, and Gu Yanzhi and Song Zhao had just gotten up, conveniently hearing Uncle Zhang’s knocking.
“The Gu Family really knows how to enjoy life; all three of you have skills,” Uncle Zhang remarked as Song Zhao opened the door to welcome him inside, feeling the warmth inside the apartment contrast with the cold outside.
These days, no one dared to set their living room temperature to pre-apocalyptic winter levels.
The little heating supplies they had at home needed to be used not only for warmth but also for cooking.
In this kind of weather, the steamed buns were frozen so hard they could kill a person if thrown hard enough.
Sitting on the sofa, Uncle Zhang took a sip of hot water that Gu Yanzhi passed to him, warming up before he spoke, “Xiao Song, Xiao Gu, have you noticed that there seem to be fewer and fewer people outside lately?”
The extreme cold had been persisting for nearly a year now, and government supplies had been growing increasingly scarce.
The relief supplies were dwindling, barely enough to keep people from starving at first; now, they were not even enough for a half meal.
More and more people were venturing outside to look for supplies and fend for themselves.
But over the past month, Uncle Zhang noticed while going to and from work that there were fewer people outside, with the elderly population shrinking the most.
He had also observed something else—the bodies frozen on the streets seemed to have disappeared in large numbers.
Hearing Uncle Zhang’s statement, Gu Yanzhi and Song Zhao exchanged a rapid glance.
“We haven’t gone out recently, so we really didn’t notice.
We’ll pay attention to it these next few days,” Song Zhao found an excuse to send Uncle Zhang on his way.
It was true they hadn’t gone out, but it was false that they were unaware of what was happening.
Gu Yanzhi had a looming suspicion, having seen such events unfold much earlier in his previous life.
He had thought that in this life, with earlier and better prepared government aid, such things wouldn’t happen again.
Yet, although it occurred a few months later, the unthinkable had still happened.
No sooner had Uncle Zhang left than Gu Yanzhi and Song Zhao had a chance to exchange a few words when Gu Yanlin hurried in from outside.
“Sister,”
“Brother-in-law,”
“Shh,”
“Shh,”
“Shh,”
“What’s the matter?
Take it slow,” Gu Yanlin was panting heavily, and Song Zhao helped him sit down on the sofa and handed him a glass of water to help him catch his breath.
“Outside, it seems like people are eating human flesh,” Gu Yanlin said with indescribable shock.
These past few days, their squad was on patrol duty in City C.
Last night, as they passed by a building, they saw several men rushing out of it.
Fearing they might cause trouble, Gu Yanlin and Zhao Rui followed them quietly, witnessing a scene that would shock them for the rest of their lives.
The group of men walked while picking up several bodies before returning.
Finding a concealed spot, they dismembered the bodies.
Combining this with the scent of rotten fragrance that wafted from the corridor when they returned home, what more was there for Gu Yanlin not to understand?
In the middle of the night, bodies, and that smell combined—it was hard not to jump to conclusions, and both Gu Yanlin and Zhao Rui did exactly that.
Unable to just break into someone’s home, Gu Yanlin had Zhao Rui report to Chu Guodong, while he stayed watch outside the building.
He stayed on guard until the next morning, when people finally started leaving the building.
At dawn, several people wrapped up tightly in work clothes, carrying tools like axes and ropes, hurried off.
They looked like they were in a rush to get to work.
It wasn’t until the sun was fully up that other residents of the building slowly started to emerge.
Song Zhao had also noticed that the people in a rush to work didn’t include the group of men he had encountered last night, who seemed to be eating corpses.
The people who came out of the building were divided into two groups: one group appeared to be in good spirits, their bodies well-nourished, moving about leisurely.
The other group, due to a lack of clothing and food, was emaciated and haggard.
Their faces were etched with exhaustion and resignation.
This group either hurried along desperately seeking food or drifted around like ghosts, as if they had lost all hope in life.
What was even more noticeable were the rosy-cheeked children ganging up on a starving child, who was all skin and bones, with muffled phrases like “That’s what you get for your dad not listening to mine,” “You deserve it, your dad is Zhuang Qinggao, so you should pay off his debts,” among others.
Some of these comments were blurted out thoughtlessly, while others clearly showed they had been often repeated by their parents at home.
All signs unequivocally pointed to their suspicions being true.
After reporting some of his findings to Chu Guodong, Gu Yanlin was told to take a day off with Zhao Rui to gather their thoughts, while Chu Guodong rushed off to the teacher’s department.
He too had to report these findings to the higher-ups in order to decide the next steps to take.
“By the way, what was Uncle Zhang doing here?” After explaining all that had happened and the sequence of events, Song Zhao fell silent for a while before he remembered that he had bumped into Uncle Zhang in his rush upstairs.
His mind was a bit hazy then, and he hadn’t even responded to Uncle Zhang’s greeting.
“Same thing as you,”
“Uncle Zhang noticed there were fewer and fewer old people and corpses outside and started to have his suspicions,”
Song Zhao admired Uncle Zhang internally—worthy of his experience and acumen, sharp to notice even the slightest clue.
At lunch, Gu Yanzhi prepared their favorite braised pork.
Just as Gu Yanlin was about to take a bite, he couldn’t help feeling nauseous, his stomach churning.
Although he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, the mere thought of that scene made him want to vomit uncontrollably.
Gu Yanzhi quickly removed the braised pork and replaced it with stir-fried pork, but the smell of the meat still sent Gu Yanlin rushing to the bathroom to throw up.
It seemed Gu Yanlin wouldn’t be able to touch meat dishes for a long time.
Gu Yanzhi removed the stir-fried pork as well, replacing it with two vegetarian dishes, and only then was Gu Yanlin able to finish his meal without any more trouble.
By evening, the workers from building 10 had all gradually returned.
Gu Yanzhi took Xiao Song and Gu Yanlin to Uncle Zhang’s home for the first community meeting since the dissolution of building 10’s ice-breaking team.
They had gotten together during the New Year for a laugh and a chat, but that didn’t count as a meeting.
“You said what?”
No sooner had Gu Yanzhi dropped that bombshell than the voices of shock from the twenty-somethings inside building 10 nearly lifted the floorboards.
After their initial chorus of disbelief, each person began to mutter to themselves, unwilling to accept the news.
“Holy shit,”
“I must be hallucinating,” 𝓷ℴ𝓋𝓅𝓊𝒷.𝒸𝓸𝓶
“It must be my imagination, there’s something wrong with my ears,”
The older residents’ expressions seemed fine, but their dazed looks gave them away.
