Picking up those two fingers, Chang gazed at them with an empty heart. He sobbed inaudibly, but tears never came out of his eyes.
Unlike girls, guys always had a hard time venting their pain.
Fortunately, Chang stayed optimistic; he didn’t believe that his parents were dead. He walked into the kitchen and put the fingers in the sink. He rinsed off the blood and put them into his pocket. Then, he turned away and walked into his bedroom. He turned on the computer to see whether the network was still connected.
Accompanied with the noise of his computer starting up, Chang clicked on the network connection – it was a success.
"So things still work, as long as they are connected with a direct line.” As he opened the browser, news was already all over the screen. Even the normal sidebar ads had all switched to broadcast urgent news. It was flooded with an endless amount of news about the "apocalypse".
After clicking on the news, there was an overwhelming amount of commentary and speculation in addition to the news.
Going through the three largest news sites, Chang quickly browsed all the news and commentary and subsequently summed up several important messages. First, the red fog had not only filled Kaifeng, the city he lived in, but rather the entire country and world at almost the same time. Second, the fog blocked communication signals, including those from satellites and radios. Third, there were bizarre animal and plant mutation events, and as time passed, the number of mutations steadily increased.
And finally, the world sunk into panic.
Officials had not come forward and explained anything, so all that was known was from the distressing news, along with the events that some people had experienced.
It seemed that animals and plants had become bloodthirsty, and every species was filled with aggression. More precisely speaking, every species was competing for living space as if they were living in terror of becoming extinct.
When Chang continued searching for other news, the internet went down. At the same time, he was aware of an indistinct noise coming from the floor----
Looking down, Chang didn’t know since when, but a massive amount of Rice hispa (an insect) covered the floor. They seemed to come from the smell of blood as they rushed to the living room and devoured the rat body and the pool of blood from Chang’s father. The ones that had a better sense of smell climbed towards Chang’s wound, causing him to stand up without a second thought.
“F**k!” he cursed. It was a natural reaction from being horrified. Chang shook his legs, and then he heavily stepped on the Rice hispa after they fell off his leg.
Crack!
Chang felt a sharp pain from the sole of his feet, as if he had stepped on rocks. Those beetle were only wounded from his vigorous stomps. No one could have imagined how sturdy their shiny black armour was. “If I were smaller, I’m afraid I wouldn’t even injure them,” Chang thought.
“The house isn’t safe anymore.”
With the beetles everywhere, it made him think of the aggressive scarabs from some science fiction novels. Although these insects currently looked far less aggressive than scarabs, under the red fog, it was impossible to tell how they would change.
Looking at the house, Liu Chang knew that he couldn’t wait for his parents to come home any longer.
As for the cable breaking, it was caused by these beetles.
Going back to his bedroom, Chang took a pen and a stack of paper—“Mom, Dad, I am going to school, find me there.”
He wrote on three pieces of paper. One was posted on the bedroom door, one in the living room, and then he walked out the house and posted the last one on the patio door.
The outside of the house was still surrounded by the smothering red fog.
Chang returned to the house after posting the last note.
Carefully picking up the blood-stained crowbar from the swarm, he shook off some Rice hispa on the bar and walked into the kitchen.
Chang rinsed off the blood on the bar and his wound. After he disinfected the wound and wrapped it with a bandage, Chang considered what to do next.
There was no doubt that the apocalypse had come.
However, unlike what was written in novels, there were no revolting zombies or wastelands from the aftermath of a nuclear war.
The world had sunk into bloody darkness, and except for humans, other species didn’t seem to have any problems surviving in the darkness. The situation was that human dominance on Earth had been challenged—as for food and shelter, they were still sufficient for now.
"Perhaps the end of the world didn’t happen overnight,” he thought. During the moment Chang was contemplating, the Rice hispa had doubled in size.
“Maybe the apocalypse is much worse than what is pictured in fiction. It is only a matter of time until everything wraps itself.”
Seeing these beetles filled with boundless vitality, Chang knew that he could not delay any longer. He pulled out a giant backpack that he purchased a few years ago and loaded it with food from the refrigerator, as well as a first aid kit and medicine. He also picked up a knife and put it in the side pocket of the backpack.
Soon, the backpack was stuffed and weighed more than 40 pounds. He couldn’t carry more or it would slow him down.
After finishing packing, he took a glimpse at some beetles that had climbed onto his feet, tracing the smell of blood. Chang shook off these beetles and realized, "The smell of blood might give me trouble."
Thinking about this, Liu Chang turned back to his parents’ bedroom, rummaged through the drawer and found a bottle of perfume. He sprayed it all over his body.
“I don’t know whether the fragrance can cover the smell of blood, but it should be unpleasant and pungent enough for other animals.” Chang in fact had no idea how well the fragrance would work, but that was the only thing he could do now.
Chang double checked to ensure he didn’t miss anything, then carried his backpack and crowbar in his right hand and left his home.
Nothing changed outside the house, but the bloody darkness had not dissipated. It grew even denser. Chang looked down, cautiously distinguishing a trace of the sidewalk. Familiar landmarks had become even more concealed, and the walls and houses on the roadside were covered with crazily growing vines. The ground was broken apart by the healthy and vigorous grass and the visibility was even less than three meters now.
It seemed that no matter what the circumstances were, the growth of plants was much faster than that of animals.
The speed of growth of the Rice hispa had astonished Chang, but in comparison to these plants, the bugs were definitely less surprising.
Chapter 5: Back to School
The tarmac had become soft; Chang couldn’t imagine the vitality of the seemingly weak grass for it to be able to penetrate the pavement. However, there wasn’t any room for him to think too much about it. Walking along the eroded sidewalk step by step, Chang hoped that he wouldn't run into any danger.
He walked for about 10 minutes and noticed that there were less people on the street. He didn’t know where they had hid. As he was thinking about this, a distant noise attracted his attention.
Despite the sound coming from far away, Chang knew that the red fog could greatly reduce noises and sounds. Hence, despite seeming to come from far away, it was probably much closer than he thought.
Chang anxiously looked around, but the bloody fog blocked his vision. Within three meters of himself, his eyes couldn’t really collect much information about the scene. The first thing Chang did as an onlooker of this fight was to determine if they were humans or primates.
However, Chang felt like he should stay away from the scene. According to societal logic, being involved in the situation wouldn’t be beneficial at all for him.
Hence, he slowly moved away from the source of the sound. Unfortunately, things almost never happened like one wanted to in this world—the sound of fighting rapidly approached him, and finally, “pong”, a man fell out of the deep fog in front of C
hang. It was a policeman who was covered in bruises and severely wounded.
Looking at this man, Chang ducked and carried his crowbar as he moved aside. Thankfully, the fog was dense enough, so the policeman’s figure became blurry again despite only being two steps away.
Chang hid himself behind a car that was parked beside the road. He was extremely alert and carefully watched the situation over there. Just as Chang hid himself, on the other side of the fog, three shadows approached—there were three stray dogs. What was even worse was that Chang ran into one of them before when he found the crowbar.
However, when looking at its eyes, the dog had already lost its previous fear towards humans. Drooling through its teeth, it stared at the crawling policeman with crimson eyes.
The policeman struggled to stand up and carefully pulled out his gun.
The policeman seemed like an animal expert; although he was injured, he didn’t panic or shoot aimlessly to scare off these dogs. Because the policeman knew how to deal with animals, he tried to avoid any intense body movements that could provoke an attack from them.
He kept his eyes on the dogs without any sign of relaxation as his hands slowly moved to his waist, gently opening the holster. With his right hand, he unlocked the safety and raised his arm, then steadily pointed his gun at one of the stray dogs.
The moment the gun was pointed these dogs, their bestial instincts made them realize that the black hole they saw could threaten their lives. They launched a fierce attack without a second thought.
Bang!
Woof Woof!
The gun fired almost at the same time these beasts leaped. Among the three dogs, one got shot, but the other two jumped over two meters and pounced on the policeman.
What followed were sounds of chomping, struggling and “whining.” Chang heard desperate gunfire.
That wounded dog soon joined the group after the gunfire—the bullet didn’t put it down.
Though it was dim, Chang saw blood ooze from its neck. Normally, if a dog was shot on the neck, it would be considered lethal even if it didn’t hit the head or heart. The stray dog was still able to stand up and tear apart its prey. It was needless to say that the vitality of these stray dogs was no longer on the same level as Chang had known.
Realizing this, Chang stopped himself just as he was about to go and help the policeman—he couldn’t even handle one of these dogs, and there were currently three. The policeman couldn’t save himself even with a gun, so with only a broken knife and a crowbar, Chang was doomed to die if he tried to help.
Hence, for the second time in his life, he saw a living person get gnawed by animals—the first time was San’er, the daring student. Under the attack of the three stray dogs, the policeman soon stopped crawling. Then, there was a nauseating sound of flesh being ripped off. It sounded pretty much like when a piece of fabric was being torn, but much worse.
The dogs started chewing on the policeman’s bones. Chang was familiar with that noise as he used to have a pet dog too, but at this moment, he felt sick.
Chang was so afraid that he couldn’t move. Luckily, he knew how sensitive a dog’s ears were, so he suppressed his breathing as much as he could.
However, Chang had still underestimated those dogs’ sensitivity. After they were sated, they immediately turned towards the location Chang was hiding in.
It turned out that they discovered Chang’s presence from the very beginning.
Tightly clenching the crowbar, his palm became sweaty from intimidation. It was hot already in summer, and at this moment, he was soaked in a cold sweat.
He wanted to run as far away as he could, but his sanity told him to stay—whether it was a stray or pet dog, they all had the instinct to chase moving objects.
But most importantly, humans were generally unable to run faster than dogs. Therefore, trying to escape would result in his imminent death. Though confronting them would almost always guarantee his death as well, Chang still chose to stay there.
The three dogs converged and stopped a meter away from Chang with pairs of scarlet eyes.
Chang stood there as if he was a statue, suppressing himself in order to not reveal any frightened expressions on his face. His heart had never pounded so heavily when he saw blood dripping from their teeth.
Perhaps the stray dogs were full or something, but they appeared less aggressive and stared at Chang feebly. The leader dog sniffed and then sneezed; it was that pungent perfume. The leader immediately lost interest in Chang and left the scene with its tail wagging.
Seeing their leader withdraw, the other two dogs also disappeared into the fog.
“Oh my god...”
Chang heavily breathed as the danger left. He stretched his stiff body, then walked towards the corpse of the policeman.
Chapter 6: The Food Chain
The body was gnawed to the point of being unrecognizable, and his face was completely gone. There was a big hole on the policeman’s torso and his organs were missing. Looking at this nauseating scene, Chang tried his best to not vomit as he picked up the pistol by the side of the corpse.
Like most of the students, this was the first time that Chang had ever touched a pistol. Since the configuration of a pistol wasn’t too complicated, he fumbled over the pistol for a minute or two to figure out the structure of the safety and the magazine. He then attempted a shot — he wanted to make sure he knew how to fire before running into danger.
After the shot, Chang checked the clip; there were only two bullets left.
Pistols used by police were different from those used by military personnel — the service pistol was generally less powerful and had smaller ammunition capacity. The pistol only carried six to seven bullets, and after that battle between the policeman and stray dogs, in addition to Chang’s test shot, two bullets were all he had now.
Rummaging through the humanoid body, Chang did not harvest anything new.
However, he didn’t expect much, since there were not many Chinese officers that could carry guns. Chang was lucky enough to obtain a firearm from this dead man.
Although the service pistol couldn’t really cope with unpredictable and dangerous situations in this would, Chang took the pistol for precaution only. Even if he had a submachine gun, with this miserable changing circumstance, in addition to his poor firearm skills, it wouldn’t help him that much.
After roughly wiping off the blood on the pistol and locking the safety, he put the pistol into his pocket, covering the smell of blood with the perfume. Chang then walked back to the school.
The instinct of social animals was that they always liked to gather together when they encountered peril that could not be overcome by oneself.
Chang was no exception.
After fumbling for about 15 minutes, he finally reached the gate of the school.
In the school, soccer field.
It was crowded with a lot of people — most of them were mid-aged men and women; they were likely parents that rushed here after the appearance of the red fog.
Xingzhi was a small boarding school for students who planned to repeat high school only, so there weren't many students and almost all of them were local. The crowd almost filled the entire campus.
Though the visibility was only about three meters, from the rustling and talking sound in the air, the density of the crowd was high.
Chang even saw some old people in the crowd — they were probably some students’ grandparents.
Holding a glimmer of hope, he squished into the crowd and tried find that two familiar figures. But after all the time he spent searching, he didn’t see any sign of his parents.
Arriving back to his classroom, he found that it was still rowdy here.
“Hey Glasses-man.” In the classroom, Chang found one of his roommates, “Have you seen my mom?”
“What does your mother look like?” It had just been a few days in school, so Chang and Glasses-man were barely acquaintances. He had not had a chance to meet Chang’s mothe
r.
“Oh well, never mind.” Chang stomped his feet, and then an itching pain came from his ankle wound. “Did anyone come to find me while I left?”
“Nope.” Glasses-man shook his head, “In the past hour, almost all the students’ parents flooded over here. Some teachers tried using the broadcasting system to organize the parents to meet their kids, but somehow the broadcast malfunctioned, so the teachers couldn’t even finish the announcement.”
“It might’ve been destroyed by those bugs… the world is in chaos now.” Chang sighed when he thought of the dangers he encountered on his way home and to school.
“Should we store some food?” Glasses-man read a lot of apocalyptic fiction novels, so he knew that food was always a scarce resource during the apocalypse.
“We definitely need food, but they won’t last long.” While Chang was talking, he turned to look outside the window. “It seems like food is sufficient. I saw a lot of plants growing outside on my way back, and most of them are edible.”
“Things might have changed.” As Chang and Glasses-man were discussing, the “good student” Tao joined their conversation. He stared at the red fog and said, “Although these plants look the same as they were before the red fog, they’re growing much faster. How long has it been since the red fog first began? Less than 2 hours! Who knows whether these plants are going to mutate tomorrow or the day after, not to mention we have no idea how long the red fog is going to last. It’s never too early to prepare food.”
“You have a point,” Chang nodded unconsciously.
Although the situation was unpredictable, Chang hadn’t planned yet, as his mind was occupied by other things. The safety of his family always came first in times of danger. Though they were overprotective and constantly nagging him, at this moment, all he could think of was his parents.
The apocalypse was never one person’s matter.
Global Evolution Page 3
