The originally open and connected space was now partitioned by the door, sealing off the storage area from the rest of the garage into an independent, enclosed space.
Master Luo had long since become close with the engineering guys—they were all familiar with each other. Together, they stepped forward and turned the handwheel-style locking mechanism, which groaned and creaked until a series of clicks rang out, indicating the blast door was locked from the outside.
For extra safety, they added a chain lock to secure the handwheel.
Now, to open the blast door, you’d first have to undo the chain lock, then at least two men would be needed to easily turn the handwheel—one person alone would struggle considerably.
And you’d still need a key.
In short, once it was locked, there was no need for a dedicated guard.
Jiang Cheng and a few others went down to the garage, while the rest of the scavenger volunteers remained in the courtyard. Many people surrounded them, firing questions about what had happened at the supply drop point.
Su Yu was also circled by several girls—ones she’d grown close to recently, the ones who chatted frequently in the group.
They also asked Su Yu all sorts of questions. She told them about the situation at Wanzhuang Bridge: “Jiang Cheng talked to the neighbors next door beforehand, so we split up to avoid fighting among ourselves.”
“Our side looked organized and disciplined—no one dared to charge at us.”
“They fought among themselves.”
“It was pretty brutal.”
After she’d covered the main points, the girls dispersed, leaving only two closer ones to chat further. One of them was He Tian.
Su Yu looked around and asked them: “No one went down to the garage to help?”
Another girl said: “There are plenty of men for that. Why fight over the heavy labor?”
Su Yu paused, then said: “There are shopping carts…”
It was just a matter of pushing the supplies down with carts—downhill on the way down, and pushing empty carts back up on the way back. It wasn’t that tiring.
He Tian changed the subject: “What’s in those cardboard boxes anyway?”
Su Yu told them: “Mainly rice and flour.”
The contents of the “supplies” disappointed the girls. Because over the past week, although they’d had enough to eat, it was only “enough to get by.” The vegetables and meat stockpiled in their fridges had run out halfway through the week.
Everyone had been stuck in a “staples + pickled vegetables” routine, and they were almost sick of it.
Another girl complained: “How much longer do we have to eat like this?”
Su Yu was about to say something, but He Tian touched the back of her hand, and Su Yu held back.
After the other girl walked away, He Tian said: “You guys are really something—joining every operation.”
“You guys” referred to the girls who, like Su Yu, had joined the scavenger team. Out of the four buses, there were nine girls in total.
“Zhang Lesi and Xue Yiqing also applied to be scavenger volunteers, but their floor leaders said they had enough people and didn’t let them go,” He Tian said.
He Tian hadn’t applied at all.
Because her floor leader was Nie Kuizhang.
After Nie Kuizhang had harassed her, his punishment was only an apology and having half his medicine confiscated. He was still the floor leader of Building 3.
For any activity in Building 3, you had to sign up through him.
Last night, He Tian had privately messaged Su Yu on the messaging app: [I’m not signing up for any more activities unless I can sign up directly through Jiang Cheng.]
But for now, that didn’t seem possible. All operations were delegated to each building and organized by the floor leaders.
The only way He Tian could avoid Nie Kuizhang was to not participate in anything.
[So annoying,] He Tian said. [And I can’t even move out.]
That had been their private chat before bed last night.
Otherwise, He Tian would have joined the scavenger team today. The reason she and Su Yu had become friends so quickly was because they had similar personalities and shared the same values.
He Tian said: “I can’t exactly tell them they have to go do labor. Since I didn’t sign up myself, I have no standing. Someone would definitely call me out.”
The other girl’s attitude and words just now showed that she didn’t agree with Su Yu, and Su Yu had noticed.
He Tian comforted Su Yu: “Right now, we have more people than we need—labor is the last thing our neighborhood is short of.”
That wasn’t wrong.
But it didn’t make Su Yu feel any better.
He Tian knew what she was worried about. Her own experience had taught her that the interim committee really couldn’t function without a few women. All men really wouldn’t work.
After the Nie Kuizhang incident, Su Yu had relayed Jiang Cheng’s words to all the girls in the group. But clearly, everyone understood and accepted them differently—some even thought about things in entirely different directions.
“Anyway, just make sure you stay on the interim committee,” He Tian said. “As long as you’re there, I feel secure.”
She turned the Nie Kuizhang incident around to comfort Su Yu: “Even though we’re not exactly satisfied, it’s not like he got off scot-free. Either way, at the end of the day, this is still a society ruled by law… well, basically… sort of.”
“I think it’s awesome that you can consider the possibility of us women, as a minority group, losing power. But don’t worry too much.”
“You seem way too tense.”
But that wasn’t something Su Yu had thought of herself—it was something Jiang Cheng had first brought up to remind her.
At that moment, Su Yu felt that the only person who could truly understand her anxiety was probably Jiang Cheng.
But the Jiang Cheng now seemed different from the one on Sunday night who’d warned her not to lose power or get marginalized.
Still, no one would believe her if she said that out loud.
Dong Ge from Biduoduo showed up with his people.
Dong Ge and his crew hadn’t gone to the Fifth Ring Road. One reason was that they still had supplies hidden in their dormitory and weren’t that desperate yet. Another was that they had no cars.
Without a car, walking from the development zone to the Fifth Ring—how many zombies would they have to kill along the way? Whether they’d even make it back alive was a question.
Not having a car was a huge disadvantage.
Dong Ge had cursed when he saw the news. He immediately thought that residents from Jixiang Jiayuan, the youth apartment, and surrounding neighborhoods would definitely drive there. But what were those without cars supposed to do?
Then he got a call from Jiang Cheng, asking for shelves.
He hadn’t expected shelves to become a tradeable item. But he immediately understood what Jiang Cheng needed them for.
He was envious, but there was nothing he could do. At least through the shelf trade, he could still get something in exchange from Jiang Cheng.
By now, he didn’t dare go home either—every bit he could stockpile helped.
Jiang Cheng gave Dong Ge two cardboard boxes and one burlap sack.
Li Jiangbing made a point of warning them: “Only eat a little bit of the compressed biscuits at a time. That stuff swells up like crazy when it hits water in your stomach—bloats you right up.”
Dong Ge smiled: “I know. My younger brother served in the military—he gave me some before.”
He untied the sack and looked inside—all basic survival supplies. He sighed: “When will this ever end?”
The joy of getting more supplies was silenced by that one sentence.
Dong Ge and his crew loaded the stuff onto shopping carts. Before leaving, they looked at the four buses parked in the neighborhood, utterly impressed: “How come I never thought of that.”
There were plenty of cars on the streets—some of them even had their doors open and keys in the ignition.
It was just that people’s minds were still bound by the law.
Law-abiding citizens were like that.
As for the issue of “how residents without cars can get supplies,” the authorities weren’t unaware.
Mayor Zheng had exhausted all his energy just to assemble these supplies, spending the whole night coordinating vehicles and personnel. Since the supply convoy departed on Sunday, he hadn’t left the monitoring hall.
His eyes were bloodshot.
Seeing the bloody fights and stampedes as people fought over supplies, he closed his eyes in pain.
Society had been peaceful for so long, people had lived in prosperity—who would have thought that one day they’d see such scenes over sacks of rice and flour?
But Mayor Zheng had truly done everything he could.
The fact that many households didn’t have private cars had been considered from the start, but there was no solution.
They could only get the supplies into residents’ hands first, then hope for redistribution and circulation among the people. As for how that “distribution and circulation” would happen and at what cost—no one could control that.
Mayor Zheng was in agony.
But he couldn’t look away. He was in this position and could only face it head-on.
His eyes swept across screen after screen, then suddenly moved back.
On one screen, a group of people was clearly acting in an organized, disciplined manner. There were multiple such cases—several neighborhoods showed obvious signs of organization.
But this particular group had formed a human wall to block others, monopolizing the supplies on one stretch of road. What caught Mayor Zheng’s attention was the girl standing behind the human wall, arms crossed.
In front of her was the human wall; behind her, her companions were busy as worker bees hauling supplies.
She stood there, clearly in control.
A girl commanding a group—it was rare, but not unheard of.
And precisely because he’d seen it before, Mayor Zheng remembered.
“Zoom in on that,” he said.
When they zoomed in, even the secretary recognized her: “Oh, it’s that girl from the youth apartment.”
Mayor Zheng nodded: “It is indeed the youth apartment.”
Mayor Zheng couldn’t quite say whether he wished there were more people like Jiang Cheng or fewer.
If there were more people like her, organizing everyone, the odds of residents facing zombies alone and dying would be lower. The youth apartment and Jixiang Jiayuan joining forces and sealing off the road to create a contiguous safe zone was a classic positive example.
But when the threat shifts from “zombies” to “other people,” the situation changes.
Those unorganized individuals suddenly seemed especially vulnerable in the face of organized groups.
And people’s hearts tend to sympathize with the weaker side.
Sure enough, the secretary frowned: “According to our surveillance, the youth apartment has already emptied the nearby Biduoduo supermarket. They shouldn’t be short of supplies…”
With the future uncertain and everyone in the dark, it was only human nature to want a bit more, to grab a bit extra.
But that clearly ran counter to the leadership’s hope that supplies would spread as widely as possible to more people.
Mayor Zheng stared at the girl on the screen, his emotions equally complicated.
Jiang Cheng had no idea she was being watched from afar. She’d activated the PA system and was addressing all the residents of the neighborhood:
[This batch of supplies is collectively owned.]
[But don’t let this acquisition make you relax your guard. On the contrary—the fact that our expected rescue has turned into having to scavenge supplies is further proof that the situation is worse than everyone thinks.]
[Wasting food is strictly prohibited. I’m sure you’ve noticed over the past few days that when there’s a shortage of side dishes, staple foods get consumed faster than we expect. In other words, the food each of you has on hand isn’t actually going to last as long as you think.]
[The collective supplies are for emergency use only. Under normal circumstances, private exchange of supplies between individuals is encouraged.]
[Do not open the storage unless absolutely necessary.]
The evening news broadcast had become mandatory daily viewing for everyone in City S.
Sunday night’s broadcast showed footage of people collecting supplies—basically just the first few minutes after the supplies hit the ground.
What came after wasn’t aired. Anyone who’d been on the scavenger team knew that things had turned violent and ugly soon after.
But at least what was broadcast was still somewhat uplifting, conveying the message that “supplies have reached the people.”
For those trapped inside the Fourth, Third, Second, and First Ring Roads, it added fuel to a dying flame of hope.
The latest news was that the supply convoy would push through to the Fourth Ring on Monday, delivering supplies there just as they had today.
Everyone knew that the Fourth Ring was still manageable, but from the Third Ring onward, things would get exponentially harder.
The Fourth and Fifth Rings were built later—fully enclosed roads with open spaces. Both sides of the Fifth Ring had some wild areas, and near Wanzhuang Bridge, there were companies and factories. The Fourth Ring had many office buildings and towers. At the time of the outbreak on Saturday night, most of these places were closed, so population density was relatively low—and fewer zombies had emerged.
But starting from the Third Ring, things were different. These were older roads built earlier, with buildings closer to the roadside, plus many residential and commercial areas. On some sections of the Third Ring, there would even be traffic jams at nine or ten o’clock on a weekend night.
The Second Ring was similar.
The First Ring was another case entirely—inside it lay the old city district. The so-called First Ring Road was simply the road that circled the ancient city walls.
The youth apartment, in the tech development zone, was even beyond the Fifth Ring and required further driving. And even there, the zombie situation was already this severe.
One could hardly imagine what it was like inside the Third Ring.
[This is an unprecedented time of hardship. The nation and its people are enduring this heavy trial together.]
[The first batch of relief supplies has reached only some of our compatriots. To those who didn’t get any, who are hiding at home enduring hunger—we feel your anxiety and your hopes.]
[Faced with the reality that human power has its limits, I sincerely ask and call upon you: In this darkest hour, let the ancient virtue of mutual aid that has sustained our nation and people become the faint light that pierces the darkness. If your household has extra food, please extend a helping hand to those in need around you.]
[One act of sharing, one moment of selflessness—these can gather into powerful strength.]
[Your kindness is the most precious relief of all right now—the backbone that upholds life and hope.]
Jiang Cheng stood with her arms crossed, listening to Deputy Mayor Zheng’s speech on the television.
But that morning, at the supply grab, people had been beating each other bloody.
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