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 mother.
“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.
“What do we do now?” Glasses-man turned to Tao and said, “Where are your parents?”
“My parents work in Beijing; they can’t come.” Tao shook his head and glanced at Glasses-man’s parents who were standing behind Glasses-man the whole time.
“The only thing we can do now is wait.” Pang Zi squeezed over. A middle-aged woman who was even chubbier than him had been with Pang Zi the whole time; she was probably his mother.
“We don’t know when and whether the fog is going to dissipate.” Tao was still looking at the fog as he asked, “Chang, how was it out there?”
“It’s very dangerous ……” Chang summarized his trip in a few sentences. “Almost all the plants and animals I met had incredible mutations, and they continue to evolve at a steady pace.”
“We saw the same when we came.” Glasses’ father interrupted, “I guess we have to wait for the army to rescue us.”
“Will the army even come?” Chang looked at his three roommates as he asked this question, and the responses he got were three pairs of eyes filled with uncertainty.
In every apocalypse film or novel, the army had never been helpful in saving civilians. At the end of the day, whoever wanted to survive would have to rely on themselves.
Moreover, visibility in this red fog was less than three meters, so the utility of firearms and tanks would be minimized—since targets could barely be identified by the human eye, sitting in a tank would make vision even less clear. The red fog basically masked any scoping abilities of weapons.
As for aircrafts? Was it even possible to take off in an aircraft in the fog?
That wasn’t even the worst part of this disaster; the most distressing thing was the unpredictability. No one would be able to anticipate how the world was going to change and who the enemy was.
Zombies? Zerg?
None of these creatures had existed on Earth prior to this fog, and Earth was still the same as before. However, all living creatures were undergoing rapid evolvement and it seemed like they were trying to challenge humans—the predators who had been at the top of the food chain for more than 50000 years.
What humans needed to do was defend their dominance. However, what Chang thought he needed to do was to survive.
“We might as well just go and occupy a convenience store.” Just as Chang frowned and pondered his next step, Tao suddenly whispered, “There should be enough food reserves, and it’s easier for us to guard a small shop. It’s too rowdy in school now, and sooner or later something will go wrong.”
“Mom, what do you think of this idea?” After listening to Tao, Pang Zi turned and asked his mother.
“I still feel like going home,” his mother said in disagreement.
“We agreed to go to the convenience store,” Glasses-man’s father asserted before his son tried to say something. “It’ll be chaotic if there are too many people, but we won’t be capable of defending ourselves either if there aren’t enough of us.”
“We agree,” Glasses-man and his mother nodded.
“We also want to go with you!” Seeing that most people agreed to this decision, Pang Zi’s mother hastily shouted.
“Chang, how about you?” Pang Zi and the others turned to Chang.
“I will wait for my parents,” Chang said calmly with his eyes closed.