After the disaster

The 200 of them were divided into several groups. The work of the electrician group should be relatively easy, and the number of people was relatively small, only a dozen or so.

Qiu Cheng carried the toolbox on his back, and together with several other team members, followed their electrician team leader to walk on the streets of Xinnan City.

In the five years since they left, the city hasn't changed too much. The infected people don't know how to use tools and weapons, and they can't do much damage to the steel and concrete with their bare hands. When the X virus just broke out, the new Nanshi was in chaos for a few days, and then the army quickly took control of the situation. Basically, all the damage afterwards was caused by the soldiers during the battle.

In the early days of the disaster, there were a large number of infected people. After the citizens evacuated out of the city, groups of infected people often attacked them.On the one hand, the military organized troops to wipe out the infected in the city, and on the other hand, the temporary base also built a city wall in full swing.

In the past five years, Qiu Cheng's deepest impression was the tents and air-raid shelters, as well as the medical staff who walked through the temporary base every day. Every team of medical staff was followed by soldiers.Day after day, these medical staff took the trouble to repeatedly check the health of the citizens of the temporary base. Once any abnormality was found, that person would be taken away by the soldiers immediately for isolation and further examination.

If someone is diagnosed with X virus infection, he will be eliminated immediately, and the body will be burned and buried underground. If anyone evades the medical examination for more than three days, he will be listed as a high-risk person by the temporary base. It is said that in this case, the soldiers directly There is no accountability for shooting him dead.

On the first day, Qiu Cheng and the others were repairing the power grid in a community near the city center. Several major cables in Xinnan City have been repaired by the military. They only need to be responsible for the repair work in the community, and some are on branch lines. output line.

When they were repairing the power grid, some young women wore uniforms and carried out registration and publicity work in the community. Their main content was to register how many households lived in the community, how many people were in each household, and then They conveyed some care and encouragement from the municipal government, and informed these residents that the power company is currently implementing a temporary management method, and each person can use five kilowatt-hours of electricity for free per month.

Five kilowatt-hours of electricity per person per month is basically enough for lighting. The reason for the power limit should be related to the current power supply capacity of Xinnan City, and the market economy has not yet recovered. In the past five years, various countries The devaluation of banknotes is a mess. For the power company, the current situation is that the more they sell, the more they lose.

It is not difficult to understand that it will be free. Now major cities across the country are engaged in post-disaster reconstruction. In the past five years, each city has lost nearly half of its population, or even more.The prosperity of a city depends on its population, and its population is its wealth. Now that militarized management is over, citizens can go wherever they like. If Xinnan City can’t provide good resettlement, they will be very popular in other cities. welcome.

Before the disaster struck, this community was already a very mature community with a high occupancy rate. Now five years have passed, and the number of residents in the community has dropped by half.

It is said that after the registration, the relevant departments will determine whether there is an owner or heir for the remaining vacant house based on the information of the housing management office and the household registration information. If it is confirmed that the owner has passed away and there is no heir, they will arrange For other citizens to live in, the first group of people to arrange is some citizens who originally lived in this area, and now their houses have been destroyed.

For two meals at noon and afternoon, Qiu Cheng ate two meals of corn tortillas against the tempting aroma of miscellaneous vegetables. He ate a total of about one and a half corn tortillas and drank two bowls of corn flour paste. This meal is already considered good. , is the day he has eaten the most since this period of time.

Probably because the disaster is over and it is spring again, the country will soon be able to start spring planting across the country, otherwise neither the city government nor the army would be so generous.

In the evening, when Qiu Cheng and the others got off work, those young women in uniform were still running up and down the corridors with their register books. It was not time for them to get off work. During the day, some people might go out to work or pick up waste or dig wild vegetables. , will come back at night.

Qiu Cheng thought about it, and before walking out of the community, he stopped a young woman who was coming out of the building in front and was about to go to the building below.

"What's the matter with you?" The other party stopped and took a step back slightly, with guard in his eyes.

"I'd like to exchange corn cakes for some jade. The quality doesn't have to be very good. Broken ones are fine. When you're registering, you can ask for me by the way. When the transaction is completed, I'll pay you an intermediary fee." Qiu Cheng didn't want to cause misunderstanding, so he directly stated his intentions.

"How much is the agency fee?" The woman asked for a clear figure, so that she would not have to work hard and be dismissed casually.

"Twenty percent. But let's talk about it first. I can't afford too expensive jade. You can help me find some cheap ones. The ones with cracks or broken ones are fine." Anyway, they are used to set up formations. Yes, it doesn't matter if it looks good or not.

"How many tortillas do you have?" the other asked him directly.

"There are only two at present, but I can save one every day in the future." In order to cooperate smoothly, Qiu Cheng did not hide his purchasing power from her.

"Just these cornbreads, and you still want to buy jade?" The woman smiled, the X virus vaccine has been released, and now the world is peaceful, the price of jade antiques must rise accordingly.

"Are you pretending to be stupid or are you really stupid?" Seeing the sarcasm on the other side, Qiu Cheng was not polite to her: "It's only spring now, and if you want to fill your stomach, at least you have to wait for another crop of corn to mature When you are hungry, there is still plenty. Anyone with a little brain knows that if you have something, you have to sell it now. After a month or two, when people are about to starve to death, what will it be worth?"

"Let me help you ask." The woman's eyes narrowed slightly, she raised her chin, and did not continue to refute Qiu Cheng. She was naturally upset at being called stupid, but the man in front of her was obviously not a soft persimmon, nor A gentleman who will save face for a lady, if he confronts him, he will only suffer.

And what he said later does have some truth. If she copied it, maybe someone would be willing to sell the jade at a low price, and she herself would have [-]% of the intermediary fee to take.Her current life is not easy. Don't look at the glamorous uniform on her body. In fact, the treatment is not as good as that of Qiu Cheng and the others, and her working hours are much longer than his. This is because there is work to do right now. I don't know what will happen.

Seeing that the other party agreed, Qiu Cheng nodded, then turned and left. Some people are like this, they look like vulnerable groups, but once you let them see the weakness, you will be trampled under their feet immediately, and you don’t want to be bullied. You have to put on a posture at the first time to let people know that you are not easy to provoke.

On the way home, Qiu Cheng walked a little slower than when he came out in the morning, and carefully observed the current appearance of the city.

In just one day, the street has been dredged a lot, and the abandoned vehicles have disappeared. Some stores on both sides of the street have boarded up the broken doors and windows, and some are still wide open, and people can go in through these doors and windows. , the inside is already empty, there are no tables, chairs and benches left. I don't know if these things were moved to other places by their original owners, or were moved away by others.

The advertising cloth of an unknown store hangs down from above and is blown to and fro by the wind, leaving a few big holes in the empty streets.This time of day seems to make Xinnan City even more desolate.

Before returning home, Qiu Cheng carried a bag of soil from a nearby field and carried it back. When he passed the green area in front of their community, he saw that most of the wooden fence originally used for decoration had collapsed.

After carrying the soil back home, after a while, Qiu Cheng came out in the dark with a claw hammer, and under the cover of night, he dismantled the wooden fences and moved them back home.

Most of the time, Qiu Cheng is a very well-behaved person. He has a sense of morality and legal awareness. Most importantly, he knows that he is definitely not a stealthy material.

He is timid and afraid of causing trouble, and he doesn't like to team up with Laban.Like this day or yesterday afternoon when I just came out of the temporary base, there were so many shops on both sides of the street with their doors wide open, it’s not like no one went in to get things, but if someone like Qiu Cheng went in alone to get things, he would be bumped by the owner It's right, but there is absolutely no good fruit to eat.

If there were more people on the other side, he would inevitably be beaten up or sent to the police station.Besides, after these five years, I don't know how many groups of people have been arranged to collect supplies in the city from the temporary base. How many things are left in those shops now?

The return is too low, the risk is too high, and it is an illegal act of encroaching on other people's interests, so Qiu Cheng naturally refuses to do it.Most of the time, as long as he is not desperate, he is willing to live his peaceful life honestly.

But for things like moving some collapsed wooden fences from the community back, Qiu Cheng did it without any psychological burden. After a few trips, he piled up a lot of wood in his living room.Things like buckets and foam boxes are hard to come by these days. Qiu Cheng wanted to grow things on the terrace, so he had to nail wooden baskets by himself.

When Qiu Cheng climbed from the first floor to the fourteenth floor carrying the last bundle of wood, panted and took out the key from his pocket and was about to open the door, he suddenly felt something was wrong.

Qiu Cheng turned around and looked at the pitch-black space in front of him. A little starlight coming in from the window next to the corridor made him barely distinguish that the door opposite was closed now.

He clearly remembered that when he took the wood and books from this house and left last night, he didn't close the door, or was it blown shut by the wind?