Early the next morning, Ning Zhe rose early and made his way through the alley, now scattered with brick and rubble from the earthquake, hurrying toward the general store.
The general store in the settlement carried a chaotic mix of goods: everyday items like clothing and matches, along with things barely worth calling food, like edible clay, root fibers, and tree bark, plus small amounts of sugar and salt for seasoning. These seasonings were not only scarce but frequently out of stock entirely, so anyone hoping to buy some had to get in line early.
"Rumble!"
The moment Ning Zhe reached the settlement's main street, the roar of engines reached him, and a column of guard vehicles came tearing past, packed with soldiers wearing looks of grim purpose. They were probably heading out again to hunt down more of those "Mutant Seeds" Su Fei had mentioned.
The homemade saltwater solution offered only limited disinfecting power to begin with, and since refugees drank nothing but unfiltered groundwater, and the salt itself was unrefined mineral salt, even after Ning Zhe spent a small fortune buying coarse salt and clean water to clean the chubby young man's wound, the infection had only worsened.
On Zhao Yi's kang, the chubby young man's face had gone sallow with the beginnings of a fever. "Brother Zhe, am I going to die?"
"Don't talk nonsense. You're built solid enough that a kick to the ass would make your whole face shake. Dying's not that easy for you. Your wound isn't that serious. Just rest and heal properly, you'll be fine." Hearing this question, a weight settled over Ning Zhe. He'd promised Li Dongbao he'd take care of his brother, but for refugees living hand to mouth like this, keeping that promise was proving far harder than he'd expected.
"Brother Zhe, don't lie to me. Back when I lived in the refugee village, my neighbor died from an infection after just scraping his arm in a fall. I might be a coward, but I'm not afraid of dying." The chubby young man gave Ning Zhe a small smile. "I've saved up a bit over thirty yuan lately, it's hidden in the kang hole in my room. If I die, remember to take it out and use it to keep living. And please, don't tell my brother I'm gone. I don't want him losing focus working out at the mine."
"Enough of that! You're getting more ridiculous by the second! Rest and heal, stop overthinking things! I'm here. You're not going to die." Ning Zhe offered him what comfort he could, then turned and left, crouching down against the outer wall.
Infection meant death, that was an iron law of the refugee zone. And the settlement outside Stronghold 87 was small enough that buying antibiotics meant only one place: the Trapper Gang's territory. But the black market had already run dry of medicine, and Ning Zhe genuinely couldn't picture how he was going to keep the chubby young man alive.
Just as he sat there, weighing his options, Zhao Yi came walking up carrying a bag and looked at him. "I just went to the herb shop and bought some medicine for Dongfa. It might not do much, but it's better than nothing. Also, I know where you can find antibiotics."
"Swish!"
Hearing this, Ning Zhe's head snapped up. "Where?!"
"Word is, over by the West Gate industrial district, some of the enforcement squad have been secretly selling antibiotics. The price is steep though, a thousand yuan a pill." Zhao Yi pressed her lips together.
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"That's already twenty times what it used to cost!"
Ning Zhe thought this over for a moment, then asked seriously, "Are you sure about this?"
"The information's solid. I know what you're thinking too, but it won't work." Zhao Yi let out a sigh and tried to talk him down. "Those enforcement squad men are all hardened soldiers, and they carry firearms. They almost never leave the stronghold. Trying to steal that medicine off them would be completely unrealistic. Just on my way back, I saw the city sending more troops out again, and someone dragged back a wrecked Hedgehog car along with two mercenary bodies. Word is, the gates in and out of the outer city are going under lockdown tonight."
Hearing this, the light in Ning Zhe's eyes dimmed once more. Refugees almost never took medicine to begin with, so they had no drug resistance to speak of, and the effects worked far better on them than on city people. But antibiotics still needed three to five days of dosing to take full effect, and right now he couldn't even afford a single pill. Still, Zhao Yi was right, trying to steal from the enforcement squad really was unrealistic.
"I've got some savings put aside, about three hundred yuan. You can take it for now, in case of emergency." Zhao Yi added.
"I appreciate the thought, but that money won't be enough to change anything. I'll figure out another way." Ning Zhe shook his head slightly, turning down her offer. He knew every yuan Zhao Yi had earned came at a steep cost, and taking it from her now would only make surviving this winter that much harder for her.
"A life's at stake here. Getting through today matters more than anything else. Do you really have to keep such a strict line between us?" Rejected, a flicker of disappointment crossed Zhao Yi's eyes. She'd always believed Ning Zhe kept his distance from her because he thought she was dirty, her money included.
"Don't misunderstand. If I really felt that way about you, I wouldn't be staying in your house right now. It's just that this money genuinely won't solve the problem. I'll go hunting tonight. If I still come up empty, I'll come back and ask for your help then." After turning it over, Ning Zhe realized the fastest way to raise the money he needed was to take the risk and go hunting. His kills weren't worth much in the refugee zone, but if he could get them into the city, wild game was a rare delicacy there, and furs especially fetched a fine price. Plenty of connected merchants in the settlement were always willing to buy what he brought in.
Behind the stronghold's towering walls, everyone believed refugees themselves were a contaminated population, and yet no one ever thought to question whether the wild game outside was contaminated too. Ironic, and yet, entirely in keeping with how things worked.
On a stretch of hills north of the settlement.
"Crack!"
A thunderous, muffled boom rolled out across the wasteland.
Xiao Qi held the crudely modified powder gun in his hands, its barrel fashioned from steel piping and its trigger cobbled together from wire, watching a chunk of weathered rock five meters away shatter to pieces, his eyes bright with excitement. "So this is what a firearm can do?"
Since metal goods were such a scarce resource throughout the settlement, Xiao Qi had called in every connection he had just to scrape together five of these crude homemade guns.
"These are just makeshift firearms, the power's pretty limited. Accurate range is only about seven or eight meters. A proper factory-made one would hit a lot harder. I've seen the guard troops carry a kind of shotgun called a Remington, one shot can punch straight through a steel plate, and the ideal spread distance for the shot goes up to thirty meters." As he spoke, Li Bin picked up another steel-piping barrel and, demonstrating as he explained, told the others, "Loading this kind of gun is simple enough. Red phosphorus scraped off matchsticks goes in at the very bottom. Once the powder's packed in, you pour sand on top, then plug the barrel with cotton or animal dung. When the trigger ignites the phosphorus, it fires. But these guns misfire pretty often, and they're prone to bursting too, so everyone needs to handle them with real care."
"All right, then. Pick a few men and start training them today. Tonight, we go looking for this Ning Zhe again." Xiao Qi breathed in the sharp scent of burnt sulfur and saltpeter still hanging in the air, his eyes gleaming with malice.