On the eve of a heavy rain that flooded Enshi, Lin Wanqiu crawled back from the apocalypse, covered in blood and a stocking list.
There were cephalosporins hidden in the jars of pickled peppers, generators buried in the piles of bacon, and even the cracks in the stairs of the stilted building were stuffed with sulfur powder - she knew that in three days the Qingjiang River would flood back, and the water corpses would eat every door that was not closed tightly.
When the villagers laughed at her for being crazy, only Xiaoya, a herb-gathering girl, and Wang Lei, a silly young cousin who was rescued by her, followed her to beat back the grain robbers with acid jars and dig bamboo thorn traps in Qiyue Mountain.
But the most terrifying thing in the last days is never the water corpse.
When her brother bared his fangs for half a box of cans, and when her former neighbor rushed towards the pile of bacon with a machete, Lin Wanqiu stood by the fire pit of the stilted building with her machete in hand - what she was hoarding was not supplies, but to protect the group of people behind her and hold on to the last bit of fireworks in this cannibalistic world.
"Either we live together, or no one wants to live at all." She added a handful of firewood to the fire and watched the sparks splash on the pickle jar, reflecting the shadows of people all over the wall.
...
