tall and rhubarb

At 06:30 in the evening, it was almost dark. Gao Chang and the others packed up their things and planned to go back to the village. The humidity in the wind was getting stronger and stronger, and it was going to rain soon. By then, the road would be dark You can't even light a torch, so it's dangerous.

Everyone’s harvest was pretty good that day. Although there were a lot of bugs on this hillside, people from the village seldom came to this place to pick wild vegetables, so they accumulated some.Bracken can be pickled with salt and stored in jars. It can be eaten for more than half a year. Bitter vegetables can be dried and stored. It is very convenient to soak in water when you want to eat.They also dug up a lot of wild shallots. Everyone has had enough clear soup and little water.

The harvest is good, everyone is in a good mood, and they are brisk on their feet. They can't wait to go back to the yard, share the gains of the day with the people inside, take a good shower, and let the women wash the vegetables. Chen Yuzhen's craftsmanship Well, we can definitely make some good dishes.

When walking halfway, the heavy rain poured down, and the men were drenched all over their heads and faces, and trotted back.But the closer they got to their yard, the more Gao Chang felt that something was wrong. It was time to get up and move around every day. Usually, the children in the village would make a big fuss at this time, but today they were surprisingly quiet.

Gao Chang took a look at Rhubarb, saw that it squinted its eyes slightly, and its expression was a little dignified, so he knew that something was wrong. Rhubarb's nose is good. If something really happened, it probably already smelled it by now. .Seeing that they were almost home, and there were many people around, Gao Chang didn't ask, anyway, no matter what happened, they would know when they returned to the yard.

When they got to the back door of their yard, almost everyone felt that something was wrong. Usually, when it rains, the people in the yard are very happy. The men go out to find food, and they can keep half of the things they find. Women Every time a child returns to the yard, he can see a group of people waiting by the back door, staring at the bags in the hands of the men, waiting to see what delicious food they bring back.

But right now, the only one who came out to set the ladder was Zheng Guohong who stayed behind to guard the yard, and none of the others showed their faces.

"Guohong, what's going on?" The men's bodies were dripping with water, and their hearts sank.

"Let's talk first."

Zheng Guohong put down the ladder, and then refused to say a word. The men climbed over the ladder carrying the wild vegetables they had managed to get back, and they lined up behind them. The smell of blood coming out was already very obvious to Gao Chang, but it was washed away by the rain, and others couldn't smell it very much.

There were a few door panels in the hall, on which lay a row of large and small corpses, all of them were bitten to a bloody mess, most of them were children, a little bit taller, a total of [-] people, seven of them One is a child, the other four are women, and three are old people.

Zheng Guohong said that not long after these people left this afternoon, many mice sprang out of the yard. At that time, many children were still sleeping at home, and they started crying after a while. Come out and concentrate in the yard.But these rats are extremely vicious, they can bite a piece of flesh off a person when they jump up, even men can't do anything to them, especially the elderly and children.

The hateful thing is that they like to stare at and bite the children. There are many children in the yard, and there are also many mice. Gao Chang's kitten named Meowzai can help a little, but there are too many mice.A few men couldn't protect them, so they had to hide everything these children could hide, in the water tank, in the barn, in the wardrobe.At that time, there was a lot of noise in the yard, and all the children were crying, and they couldn't stop. When they beat the mice away, they found that several children had...

The men who lost their families were deeply saddened, especially Zheng Fangyi, who not only lost his only son, but also his wife. Now there are only two daughters left in the family.He wanted to settle the score with his brother Zheng Cungang, because on this day his brother Zheng Cungang got a long lottery and stayed to guard the yard, but no one in their family died.

As long as there are men in the family, the situation is usually better. It is said that they are assigned tasks to let them stay and guard the yard, but when they are in danger, everyone knows that they must save their own family first, and self-sacrifice does not often happen.But it can't be said that they didn't do anything. These men also had bite wounds to varying degrees. If it weren't for their protection, the casualties in the yard would have been even more serious.

Old Ninth Uncle is disinfecting everyone's wounds, washing the wounds that are about to bleed from rats with light salt water, and then spreading pot ashes on them. Nowadays, incense burner ashes are hard to come by, and there is no place to buy incense, so naturally No more censer ashes.There is pot ash. The large pots in the yard need to be scraped every few days. Turn the pot upside down and cover it on the ground with a hoe to scrape it. Few people in the village can't scrape the pot.

Zheng Fangyi and his elder brother Zheng Cungang were about to quarrel, and no one went to talk to them. Those who lost their loved ones were suffering, and no one was in the mood to be a peacemaker at the moment.Those who didn't have any accidents at home were still a little bit worried, hugged their wives and children and nested in a pile, and didn't want to intervene in other people's affairs.

The courtyard was filled with silence and weeping. There was no shortage of women who could cry in mourning in the village, but at this moment, no one was able to cry as loudly as before.What happened today made everyone more aware of the cruel world they were facing.

"How did these mice get in?" Gao Chang asked Zheng Guohong.

House mice can dig holes, but they are not very good at digging holes. Their holes are generally no longer than three meters. Even if they are mutated after being exposed to blue sunlight, Gao Chang can hardly believe that these mice came from around their yard. The one who dug a hole from the bottom of the pig trench "I dug a hole and came up from the hall. I had someone pour a lot of boiling water into it, and blocked the hole with stones. I shouldn't be able to come up for a while." Zheng Guohong stayed behind today Well, watching so many people just disappear, and being pushed and shoved by a man who has no wife just now, his face is also very ugly at the moment.

"Dug out of a ditch?"

"The boiling water flowed into the pig trench with steam, and it seems that it was dug up from the cracks in the rocks."

"Then you have to block all the cracks in the stone, otherwise..." Gao Chang was not happy when something like this happened. A few days ago, these children were still squatting by the side of his brazier, trying to eat a piece of snake meat. After a while, they lay down in a row in the living room, people's hearts are full of flesh, although Gao Chang doesn't like children very much, but seeing such a scene makes him feel uncomfortable.

"Look at them." Zheng Guohong raised his chin and signaled Gao Chang to look at the men in the yard. They either hugged their heads and cried, or sat beside the family's corpse with a dull face, or hugged their wives and children into a ball. Zheng Fangyi He and Zheng Cungang are still in an inseparable fight, and neither of them seems to be able to go out to work.

"Those who can move, let's move first."

At this time, there was nothing to worry about. Gao Chang walked into the yard and yelled a few times, and then a meow came from a firewood pile in the yard, as if he was a little impatient, Gao Chang walked over When I saw it, I saw it guarding a bunch of mice and eating well.

Looking at the pile of dead rats, some of them still had chubby stomachs, Gao Chang believed without doubt that the undigested stuff in their stomachs was actually human flesh.Thinking that those human flesh will eventually enter Miaozai's stomach, Gao Chang still feels a little nervous, but he has no reason to stop it from eating these mice. It is natural for cats to eat mice. In the face of harsh nature, human beings once had Those cleanliness and fastidiousness are of no help to survival.

It was still raining heavily outside, and there were a few muffled thunders from time to time, which made the atmosphere in the yard even more desperate and sad, but the work that should be done still had to be done.Gao Chang and Zheng Guohong's father and son walked out of the hall first. Zheng Guohong's son is Zheng Yanqing, who usually doesn't talk much. Seeing that his father was going out to repair the hole in the wall today, he followed him.

Gao Chang first picked up a lot of large and small stones from the bamboo forest, hung them around his waist with a cloth bag, and then went down the pig trench with a small hammer, and put down his own ladder by the way, and went down together. There is rhubarb.

Gao Chang and Zheng Guofeng mainly started to repair the lower corners, Zheng Yanqing stepped on the ladder to repair those higher places, and Da Huang was in charge of letting the wind out to prevent the wild boars from attacking suddenly.However, the wild boars were quite quiet these days. At the bottom of the pit, they saw a few pieces of unchewed rat meat. It seemed that they had eaten a lot that day, and they were relatively less aggressive.

At first there were only the three of them, and then more and more people came out to help, and a few women threw stones at them from above. It seemed that they also walked out of the yard. There were not many people outside on rainy nights. Dangerous, whether it is snakes or insects, they all went to find places to shelter from the rain.

Gao Chang vaguely seemed to hear someone crying while working, but the rain was getting heavier and heavier, and the thunder and lightning were almost uninterrupted, so he might have heard it wrong.In the middle of the night, some people gradually began to lose their energy, and went back to the yard in twos and threes. The day before, they got up from the bed in the middle of sleep and went out to collect food. After returning, they were stimulated by that kind of stimulation, and then drenched in the rain in the middle of the night. , even though all the men in the village are physically strong, they are a bit too much.

When dawn came, the torrential rain that had lasted all night gradually subsided. Gao Chang stood on the ladder to repair the last small piece of wall, and hammered stones of suitable size into the small holes on the stone wall, so that the mice could There are no gaps to drill.

Rhubarb was lying on the top of the wall, looking down at the energetic wild boars at the bottom of the pit with drooping ears. The hair on its body was still wet from the rain, sticking together in small groups.When the first ray of blue sunlight passed through the bamboo forest, Gao Chang finished his work, looked up at the listless dog's head above him, and couldn't help grinning.