"Not long ago this family traded my apples for one thousand jin of wheat (roughly 500 kilograms). They definitely have extra grain!" a woman's voice shrieked from the crowd, high and accusatory.
"They clearly have plenty to eat but refuse to share with people on the brink of starvation. Everyone, stick together. If they won't hand it over, smash the gate and seize the grain!" a man bellowed, shaking a rusty pipe.
"Seize the grain! Seize the grain!" The chant rose, raw and hungry.
There were men and women in the crowd, perhaps twenty in total. In the 43°C heat, the air shimmering, most wore barely any clothes, just tattered shorts or stained wraps.
They had smeared themselves in thick, cracking layers of dried mud to block the heat, giving them a ghostly, earthy appearance. Some crouched by the gate, fingers probing the base. Some stood on wobbly rocks to peer over the newly raised high wall. Others hurled fist-sized stones into the courtyard, the impacts thudding against walls or shattering on the concrete.
The energy car honked twice, a sharp blast, and the headlights washed over their tattered figures, catching wide, startled eyes. Covered in grime from head to toe, they showed snarling faces and raised clubs and knives in their hands, the metal glinting.
They began edging toward the car, a slow, predatory creep.
Grandma Jing grabbed Jing Shu's hand in fright, her grip tight and cold.
Jing Shu murmured reassurance, a low sound, stepped out of the air conditioned car, and was immediately hit by a wall of heat, the dry air searing her lungs. She slammed the door and fired a single shot into the dark sky. Bang. The sound cracked the night. The mob froze, their chanting cut off, staring at Jing Shu in terror as they backed away, a collective shuffle.
"I'll give you three seconds," she announced, her voice flat and carrying. "If you don't leave, I'll fire. There are twelve rounds left in this magazine. You're welcome to test whether any of them will hit you."
"She has only one gun. What are you afraid of? Take it," someone from the back tried to urge the crowd forward, a voice laced with desperate bravado.
Bang.
Before he finished the sentence, the bullet punched into his abdomen. His scream cut through the night, sharp and agonized. The rest scattered at once, a panicked scramble into the surrounding darkness. Only one man remained on the ground, curled and howling, his hands clutching his stomach.
The gate cracked open and a flashlight beam swept out, cutting a white path through the dust. A burly man called uncertainly, "Jing Shu? Mom? How did you get here? Dad? Brother in law? You're 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, his movements quick and decisive. He pulled open the heavy double iron doors, the metal groaning, and motioned for Jing An to drive in, waving an arm.
Just then, two figures sprang from the darkness beside the wall, shadows detaching themselves, shouting as they ran, "Mom, Brother in law, it's me! So many people were surrounding the gate we didn't dare come out."
Jing Shu narrowed her eyes, adjusting to the flashlight's glare. 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, pulling her hair and stealing her snacks.
Second Aunt Jing Zhao had dropped from a former 180 jin to 150 jin (from about 90 kg to 75 kg). She wore a dark gray top soaked through with sweat, plastered to her skin, lips cracked and bleeding, loose colorless trousers, and a head of tangled, greasy hair, scarcely better than a beggar.
Cousin Li Yun wore only faded beach shorts, his face ashy and lips peeling in strips. His athlete's foot reeked from meters away, a sour, fungal smell. Jing Shu quietly edged farther from him, turning her head slightly.
"Why did you come? Why aren't you staying safely in the city? Outside's chaos," Grandma Jing scolded, her worry twisting into anger.
Second Aunt Jing Zhao lowered her head, unable to meet her mother's eyes. 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." The words tumbled out, a confession.
Grandma Jing was shaken, her hand flying to her chest. "Prison? How did I not know?"
Everyone had been hiding it from her, keeping the shame and worry at bay.
First Uncle Wei Chang smoothly took Grandma Jing's arm, his touch firm, and changed the subject. "Mom, Dad, you came a long way. Come inside and rest first. Jing Pan's been thinking of you. It's too dangerous out here." He guided her forward, his body a shield between her and the dark yard.
They hurried through the gate, the heavy doors swinging shut behind them with a final, solid clang. Worried for the eldest daughter, the family crossed the wide, concrete paved courtyard and went into the lit house, the rectangle of yellow light a welcome beacon.
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 corner, a small brick hut. The door to the apple orchard was upper left, a wooden gate. The vegetable patch, now bare and dry, lay in the middle. The cellar entrance was lower right, a heavy trapdoor. The front gate was 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, mud and straw. 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 white inside, courtyards paved with smooth 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, leased long term.
The nearest neighbor was three hundred meters away, a dark shape in the night.
Jing Shu looked up as she walked. The original two meter wall had been rebuilt in concrete to over five meters, towering and sheer, with nails and coils of sharp wire mesh bristling along the top, a formidable barrier.
Larvae of carrion scavengers, pale and squirming, lay in small heaps by the gate, proof there had been corpses there recently, though now eaten clean. First Uncle Wei Chang ignored the man still screaming weakly outside the gate, a sign he was used to it, the sounds of suffering just another part of the night.
It seemed First Aunt's home wasn't as helpless as Grandma Jing feared. She always worried that First Aunt Jing Pan was too honest and would be bullied, but the defenses told another story.
Inside, the main room was simply furnished. First Aunt Jing Pan lay weakly on the kang, the heated brick bed, her face pale. Grandma Jing rushed over, scolded her first in a torrent of anxious words, then gently checked the wound. It wasn't deep, just a long, clean cleaver cut along the calf. Before the apocalypse it would've needed about twenty stitches.
They'd only dabbed it with alcohol, the bottle now empty on a side table, and wrapped it with strips of torn cloth to stop the bleeding. Now, before it had closed, the wound was inflamed and oozing a yellowish fluid, the surrounding flesh puffy, red, and rotten at the edges.
"You had to go and cause trouble. Where am I supposed to find medicine now?" Grandma Jing tapped her daughter's head, her voice thick. Silent until now, Grandpa Jing finally said from the doorway, "Enough. Leave the child some dignity." His voice was low but firm.
Jing Shu set down the small plastic medical box with a soft thud. "Grandma, let me through. I've brought medicine."
The family crowded around, flinching at the sight of the wound in the lantern light, watching Jing Shu calmly handle the pus, her expression focused. Even the person holding the flashlight had trembling hands, making the light jitter.
Jing Shu cut away the soiled cloth with scissors, scraped off the pus with the flat of a blade, and excised the rotten flesh in quick, precise cuts. Her hands didn't shake, her motions quick and efficient, as if that wasn't human flesh but a pig's trotter being prepared for cooking. Then she applied a dusting of powdered antibiotics and a spray of Yunnan hemostatic powder, the red mist settling. She dripped one single, precious drop of No. 3 Spirit Spring directly onto the cleansed wound from a tiny dropper, the liquid clear and shimmering, and then bandaged it tightly with clean gauze. She left only three days of antibiotic pills in a small packet.
She had stockpiled medicine, but it was all for emergencies, each item accounted for. In ten years of apocalypse, drugs would only grow more precious, irreplaceable.
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, a more efficient use.
So she had caught No. 1, Xiao Dou the mutated chicken, and a regular chicken for tests. Xiao Dou's skin was so tough it took ages to make a small slit with a clean knife. After multiple trials on both animals, she found that No. 3 Spirit Spring had a marked effect on external injuries, speeding closure, and that those who drank Spirit Spring regularly responded even better, the healing accelerated.
The discovery had thrilled Jing Shu. Another survival skill gained, another secret advantage. When time allowed, she had to study the Cube Space's extra functions more carefully. Lately, Xiao Dou had been sulking and avoiding her after the tests, but whenever she called dinner, Xiao Dou came scampering, tail held high in a ridiculous flag. So much for sulking.
"It's not serious. Three days and it'll be fine," Jing Shu said lightly as she snapped the medical box shut. Without the Spirit Spring, it might've been a different story, a slow decline into sepsis.
The entire family finally exhaled, a collective release of breath, the weight lifting from their hearts. The immediate crisis had passed.
===
A kang is a traditional raised brick or earthen platform found in northern Chinese homes. It's built with a hollow interior that can be heated from below, usually by channeling the warmth from a stove or fire through flues inside the structure.
People use it as a bed, seating area, and warm living space during cold seasons. Since winters in northern China can be brutally cold, a heated kang becomes the warmest place in the house, so the sick, the elderly, or guests are often placed there to rest.