Chapter 20 (1/2)

Chapter 20 Confrontation

“In fact, the growth rate of both animals and plants is fast. There should be an abundant food source,” Qing shui said as he looking at the city. “Without preservatives or other forms of storage like vacuum sealing and fridges, most foods will perish extremely quickly. Therefore, we need to go out every day to look for food.”

“That’s too dangerous!” Chang shook his head, “Even if Jing is helping, it’s still not a guarantee that we’ll be able to avoid danger.”

“But there’s no other way around it… Perhaps vacuum sealing could make food last a little longer, but it wouldn’t stop the growth of mold and bacteria. Speaking of which, we don’t even have the necessary equipment to vacuum seal food,” Qing shui rubbed his temple.

“Wasn’t there a chemical that stops bacterial growth?” Lin hadn’t spoke at all the entire time, but what she suggested had shocked everyone in the group. “Formalin… the chemical used to preserve corpses. Doesn’t it prevent the growth of microbes? Wouldn’t that solve the issue of spoiling and rotting food?”

“Formaldehyde?” Pangzi exclaimed, “Are you crazy? We’ll get poisoned!”

“It won’t be that bad as long as we dilute it to certain extent,” Qing shui surprisingly made no objections after he heard what Lin said. “Although it’s bad for your health, we can still try it. At least it’s a good preservative that can help us store food for a few days without rotting.”

“We’ll talk about it later.” Chang added, “It’s a bit too early to think of a way to preserve food without even having any food in hand. We’ll see how the military arranges us first.”

The group sunk into a brief silence as Chang spoke, and then they looked at each other and waited quietly where they stood.

After about three hours, the military finally informed all the residents in front of the base – it required great effort just to make a single announcement to more than 50,000 people in a world without radio transmissions and electricity.

The crowd was separated into two huge groups based on those who had chosen to stay and those who had chosen to go to Zhengzhou. Those who wished to stay were slowly brought into the base.

The base was huge and there were two or three empty hangars. Even though there were a large number of civilians staying here, there was still enough s.p.a.ce for all of them to live there. Everyone walked orderly as if they were afraid of being left behind.

Soldiers on both sides of the thick line were fully armed. In the military, there were no signs of mutated animals of any kind, likely because they had already been eliminated immediately; the base looked safe.

After the long wait until sunset, all the civilians were placed into different zones.

For those who staying in the hangars, some moved to tents, some received clothes and some obtained blankets. Chang and his company were arranged in the soldier’s barracks in a small room with 4 bunk beds. The layout of the room looked like the student dormitory, but it was cleaner and simpler.

The arrangement wasn’t gender specific; people were placed in the base in families and parties like Chang’s. Therefore, the five of them stayed together. After all, in this environment no one wanted to be separated from loved ones and friends. In survival situations like this, gender became a negligible issue.

This room could normally fit 8 people, but there were currently 12 people in this room – except for Chang’s party, there were a family of three and a family of four.