novelraw Chapter 137: Abandoned
Chapter 137: Abandoned
The acid rain had stopped, but the black slime on the ground hadn’t dried yet. It was still emitting steam and thick fog, and would sometimes spontaneously combust. No one dared to go downstairs. People stepped out of their homes and looked at the smoke-shrouded base and the dark, hazy sky. Some cried, while others, having survived the ordeal, laughed in relief.
A day later, people tentatively started going downstairs. Although the black slime made their shoes sticky, it was now possible to walk. Everyone poured out of the apartment buildings, rushing toward the base’s shopping mall, the Undercity, and the administration building.
Officer Graham and his group were going to the base’s shopping mall to see if there was any food, so Evelyn Ford and Ronan Kendrick went with them.
The residents broke down the shopping mall’s main doors and the doors of the marketplace villas. The moment they saw food, they stuffed it into their mouths. Others brought burlap sacks and bedsheets, packing things up to take away.
Residents also broke into the Undercity to start looting, but the base’s security personnel arrived quickly. They were holding electric batons and guns, and soon the residents and security guards were fighting.
Officer Graham’s group also managed to scavenge a good number of things. Evelyn Ford and Ronan Kendrick were mainly assessing the extent of the damage the acid rain had caused to the base. But just ten-odd minutes after going out, the acrid smell in the air was making people dizzy.
Young children and frail women, in particular, quickly began to experience all sorts of adverse effects.
Some people collapsed to the ground and started foaming at the mouth. Others started getting nosebleeds and convulsing.
Evelyn Ford pulled Ronan Kendrick out of the crowd. Another round of survival of the fittest was beginning. Only those who could withstand the toxic fog from the acid rain would survive. Those who couldn’t would become the latest sacrifices to this disaster.
The vegetables in the Undercity were being mobbed and looted by the residents. It was useless even when security personnel fired warning shots with their guns. People pulled vegetables from the ground and ate them on the spot. Even if they were knocked down, they clutched the food in their hands protectively.
The base’s power was out. Some people dismantled wooden shelves from the mall to take back for firewood. While scavenging, Evelyn Ford and Ronan Kendrick saw Jill Lynch. She was with a group of people, fighting over a single packet of instant noodles. Evelyn picked up a head of cabbage from the ground that had been stepped on and looked away.
Having just survived the acid rain crisis, everyone had pent-up frustration. Some vented it while looting supplies, shoving people down and trampling over them. Someone would finally manage to grab something, only to have it snatched away by someone else a moment later.
The base was in utter chaos, completely unmanageable.
"Professor Rhodes, are you saying that after the acid rain, all the water sources have been contaminated and are no longer drinkable?"
"It’s not just the water sources. It’s the soil, too. All the land eroded by the acid rain has become wasteland, completely useless for cultivation. Secretary Hawthorne, there are still hundreds of thousands of people in the base, right? If they want to live, I’m afraid the only option is to leave the base and find a new place to settle."
Professor Rhodes was the expert who had developed the three-month-harvest wheat strain. He was previously a professor at Corinth University and a botanist with considerable knowledge of geology and climate. Secretary Hawthorne had complete faith in his words.
"Professor Rhodes, do you think we can still find a suitable place to live? In just over a year, we’ve turned this base from a small town into a settlement that can hold a million people. Are we supposed to just give it up?"
Professor Rhodes sighed. "Secretary Hawthorne, if you don’t believe me, you can have someone dig ten meters, twenty, even thirty meters down, and they won’t find any good soil. Of course, I can’t say for sure about fifty or a hundred meters."
Secretary Hawthorne had no choice but to give the order. The base still had functioning excavators, so they began to dig, checking the water and soil quality.
But just as Professor Rhodes had said, even after digging more than thirty meters down, they still hadn’t found any untainted soil.
"The acid rain’s corrosion is fast and deep. A single drop can ruin an entire vat of water—and it rained like that for ten days."
"Then where can we even go? The signal towers and power lines have been destroyed again. None of us are fortune-tellers, so how are we supposed to find a habitable place?" Director Lowell said, running a hand through his hair in frustration.
"Perhaps you could head to the Northwest. The black slime on the surface has completely dried now, so leaving won’t be too difficult." After saying this, Professor Rhodes prepared to leave, but Secretary Hawthorne quickly stopped him.
"Are you leaving?"
Professor Rhodes shook his head. "I’m old. I can’t make a journey like that anymore. I’ll just stay here."
"If you’re staying, how can we possibly leave? The base seems to have a lot of people right now, but there’s no one we can rely on. Everyone has suffered blows and trauma, big and small. I’m not sure if the survivors are even willing to leave. And if we get to the Northwest and there’s still no good land or clean water, what will we do then?"
Professor Rhodes looked at Secretary Hawthorne, his expression calm. "If you can find the person who warned everyone about the acid rain in the middle of the night, perhaps you’ll find a solution."
Secretary Hawthorne and Director Lowell looked at each other and fell silent.
Finding one person was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
It would be incredibly difficult.
The chaos in the base was endless. Officer Graham and his group dug up some soil to bring back, planning to grow vegetables indoors. When other residents saw them digging up soil, they copied them. Now, people weren’t just fighting over supplies; they were fighting over soil too.
But the most severe problem was still the water supply.
The base’s management had reserve water, but they were unwilling to share it. The residents didn’t know where the water was hidden, and the security personnel were all armed. They no longer issued verbal warnings; anyone who got too close was shot on sight.
"I saw some people digging on the east side of the base. They’ve been at it for days and haven’t found a single handful of good soil. They’ve dug dozens of meters and haven’t hit water either. We’re really done for this time."
Officer Graham shot Quincy a glare. "Stop saying we’re done for at every turn. It’s not over that easily. Heaven never seals off all paths."
Quincy shook his head. He had been wandering around the base for the past two days gathering information, and he had actually seen helicopters leaving and returning several times.
’The management is probably getting ready to bolt, leaving hundreds of thousands of survivors to fend for themselves.’
Three more days passed. At midnight, hundreds of trucks suddenly left the base and never returned. When residents went to check the administration building, they found it had been completely emptied. The villa complex, the high-end apartment buildings, the shopping mall, the Undercity—everything was gone. All the management and security personnel had left.
The glass from the windows, the doors, the tables and chairs, the lightbulbs, even the electrical wiring—almost everything had been taken, with nothing left behind.
Hundreds of thousands of survivors were abandoned in the base. Some packed their things and followed the trucks’ tire tracks.
Unable to bear the blow of being abandoned, and tormented by the lack of food and water and by the toxic fog, some chose to end their own lives.
Arson, murder, and robbery became rampant. Every survivor in the base feared for their life, and people began to flee in droves under the cover of night.
"Before the trucks left, all the helicopters had already flown away. The base has no food or water now. They didn’t even leave behind a single hoe or a single bag of seeds. All the wheat from the dozens of acres of farmland—they took it all."
Even Evelyn Ford hadn’t expected the management to leave so suddenly, much less to leave nothing behind.
They took all the high-level technical personnel, all the supplies and food, and left behind all the old, weak, sick, and disabled, along with an abandoned base.