"Not long ago this family traded my apples for one thousand jin of wheat (500 kg). They definitely have extra grain!"
"They clearly have plenty to eat but refuse to share with people on the brink of starvation. Everyone, stick together. If they will not hand it over, smash the gate and seize the grain!"
"Seize the grain! Seize the grain!"
There were men and women in the crowd. In the 43°C heat, most wore barely any clothes.
They had smeared themselves in thick layers of mud to block the heat. Some crouched by the gate. Some stood on rocks to climb the newly raised high wall. Others hurled stones into the courtyard.
The energy car honked twice, and the headlights washed over their tattered figures. Covered in grime from head to toe, they showed snarling faces and clubs and knives in their hands.
They began edging toward the car.
Grandma Jing grabbed Jing Shu's hand in fright.
Jing Shu murmured reassurance, stepped out of the air-conditioned car, and was hit by a wave of heat. She slammed the door and fired a shot into the sky. Bang. The mob froze, staring at Jing Shu in terror as they backed away.
"I will give you three seconds. If you do not leave, I will fire. There are twelve rounds left in this magazine. You are welcome to test whether any of them will hit you."
"She has only one gun. What are you afraid of? Take it," someone tried to urge the crowd forward.
Bang.
Before he finished the sentence, the bullet punched into his abdomen. His scream cut through the night. The rest scattered at once. Only one man remained on the ground, howling.
The gate cracked open and a flashlight beam swept out. A burly man called uncertainly, "Jing Shu? Mom? How did you get here? Dad? Brother-in-law? You are all here? Come in, come in. Drive the car inside and talk."
The burly man was First Aunt Jing Pan's husband, First Uncle Wei Chang. Compared to First Aunt Jing Pan's honest nature, First Uncle Wei Chang handled people and matters with far more savvy. He pulled open the heavy double iron doors and motioned for Jing An to drive in.
Just then, two figures sprang from the darkness, shouting as they ran, "Mom, Brother-in-law, it's me!. So many people were surrounding the gate we did not dare come out."
Jing Shu narrowed her eyes. After more than ten years apart, this was Second Aunt Jing Zhao. Beside her was her son, Jing Shu's cousin Li Yun, twenty-six this year, the boy who had bullied Jing Shu whenever they met as children.
Second Aunt Jing Zhao had dropped from a former 180 jin to 150 jin (90 kg to 75 kg). She wore a dark gray top soaked with sweat, lips cracked and bleeding, loose colorless trousers, and a head of tangled hair, scarcely better than a beggar.
Cousin Li Yun wore only beach shorts, face ashy and lips peeling. His athlete's foot reeked from meters away. Jing Shu quietly edged farther from him.
"Why did you come? Why are you not staying safely in the city? Outside is chaos," Grandma Jing scolded.
Second Aunt Jing Zhao lowered her head. Cousin Li Yun said, "Grandma, my parents were sent to prison. My mom was released a few days ago. My dad still has to serve. We had nothing left to eat, so we came to First Aunt's to borrow some food."
Grandma Jing was shaken. "Prison? How did I not know?"
Everyone had been hiding it from her.
First Uncle Wei Chang smoothly took Grandma Jing's arm and changed the subject. "Mom, Dad, you came a long way. Come inside and rest first. Jing Pan has been thinking of you. It is too dangerous out here."
They hurried through the gate and swung the heavy doors shut. Worried for the eldest daughter, the family crossed the courtyard and went into the house.
First Aunt Jing Pan's home sat in a small town where land was cheap. The square courtyard was more than two hundred square meters. The pit latrine was in the upper right. The door to the apple orchard was upper left. The vegetable patch lay in the middle. The cellar was lower right, the front gate lower left. Along the far right ran a row of rooms, for a total plot of about five hundred square meters.
In Jing Shu's previous life the place had been earthen houses. Six or seven years ago, after new policies, the state subsidized building materials for rural and urban homes. Families put up neat red-brick, green-tile houses, tiled and painted, courtyards paved with concrete, almost like the city, all for under one hundred thousand yuan.
Before the apocalypse, the finished house and land together were worth perhaps two hundred thousand. The orchard behind and a few more fields belonged to the state.
The nearest neighbor was three hundred meters away.
Jing Shu looked up. The two-meter wall had been rebuilt in concrete to over five meters, with nails and wire mesh bristling along the top.
Larvae of carrion scavengers lay in heaps by the gate, proof there had been corpses there, though eaten clean. First Uncle Wei Chang ignored the man still screaming outside, a sign he was used to it.
It seemed First Aunt's home was not as helpless as Grandma Jing feared. Grandma Jing always worried that First Aunt Jing Pan was too honest and would be bullied.
Inside, First Aunt Jing Pan lay weakly on the kang. Grandma Jing rushed over, scolded her first, then checked the wound. It was not deep, just a long cleaver cut. Before the apocalypse it would have needed about twenty stitches.
They had only dabbed it with alcohol and wrapped it with cloth to stop the bleeding. Now, before it had closed, the wound was inflamed and oozing, the surrounding flesh infected and rotten.
"You had to go and cause trouble. Where am I supposed to find medicine now?" Grandma Jing tapped her daughter's head. Silent until now, Grandpa Jing finally said, "Enough. Leave the child some dignity."
Jing Shu set down the medical box. "Grandma, let me through. I brought medicine."
The family crowded around, flinching at the sight of the wound, watching Jing Shu calmly handle the pus. Even the person holding the flashlight had trembling hands.
Jing Shu cut away the cloth, scraped off the pus, and excised the rotten flesh. Her hands did not shake, her motions quick, as if that were not human flesh but a pig's trotter. Then Jing Shu applied antibiotics and a Yunnan hemostatic spray, dripped one drop of No. 3 Spirit Spring directly onto the wound, and bandaged it. She left only three days of antibiotics.
Jing Shu had stockpiled medicine, but it was all for emergencies. In ten years of apocalypse, drugs would only grow more precious.
Dripping Spirit Spring straight onto a wound was a new idea. Jing Shu had winced at spending a drop on Wang Dazhao last time. Later it struck her that direct application might work better.
So she caught No. 1, Xiao Dou and a regular chicken for tests. Xiao Dou's skin was so tough it took ages to make a small slit. After multiple trials on both, she found that No. 3 Spirit Spring had a marked effect on external injuries, and that those who drank Spirit Spring regularly responded even better.
The discovery thrilled Jing Shu. Another survival skill gained. When time allowed, she had to study the Cube Space's extra functions more carefully. Lately, Xiao Dou had been sulking and avoiding Jing Shu, but whenever she called dinner, Xiao Dou came scampering, tail high. So much for sulking.
"It is not serious. Three days and it will be fine," Jing Shu said lightly as she packed the box. Without the Spirit Spring, it might have been a different story.
The entire family finally exhaled, the weight lifting from their hearts.