#187 - Chapter 187 Tracking

December 7th.

It has been exactly one week since the official establishment of the Green Source Base.

Morning.

Daylight continues to arrive later than before.

Today, the outside temperature has dropped to -17 degrees Celsius!

Keep in mind that this is the South!

The humidity here is unimaginable to people from the North. At this temperature, being outdoors is like being in an icy hell!

Almost all buildings are covered with thick ice and snow, and the roads are covered with more than 20 centimeters of snow, presenting a unique sense of beauty.

The cold wind that blows carries away body heat even more effectively than in the North, and skin exposed to the air for more than 10 minutes is easily frostbitten.

Now, survivors in the South who dare to walk outside every day are warriors.

Similarly, the temperature in the North has now reached -38 degrees Celsius!

At this temperature, the zombies in the North are finally affected. Even if they are stimulated at night, they will basically not actively chase prey. They seem to have entered some kind of hibernation.

But even so, very few survivors in the North dare to go out.

Even if the few brave survivors discover that the zombies have entered hibernation, they still have to face the terrible cold.

Now, it's different from the peaceful times of the past. In the past, the North had heating, and people shoveled snow from the roads. Before winter, every household would stock up on various foods.

But now, after the apocalypse, everyone has basically consumed most of their food in the first two months, and it is unknown how long the remaining food can last.

The only way to keep warm is to wear more clothes and burn everything that can be lit.

Whether in the South or the North, starting in December, any item that can be burned has become an important resource.

At this time, a total of one hundred and eighty-odd survivors have come to the three residential areas outside the Green Source Base. Most of them have braved the cold to go out to find supplies and trade with Green Source once.

At least they won't starve to death in the short term.

Like Brother Li and his group, they have completed several transactions, and the food they have on hand is enough for them to last for a considerable period.

Don't use the standards of peacetime to measure the apocalypse.

In this era, being able to eat half a bowl of white porridge in one meal can already be called a luxury.

100 grams, which is 2 taels of rice, boiled into a pot of thin porridge is already the amount for Brother Li and his nine people in one meal!

Of course, they usually pay attention to other places where they can obtain food.

Like the green belts, grass, ditches, ponds, trees, and fields along the roads, they can occasionally find some plant roots, or some small fish, shrimps, earthworms, and other insect creatures with tenacious vitality.

These things will become the survivors' "dishes".

Overall, as long as these survivors near Green Source are willing to work hard, although they can't eat their fill, they generally won't risk starving to death.

At least they are better off than the survivors in more distant places. Here, they have trading opportunities and relatively safe housing.

The combat department of the base basically no longer goes out to perform missions to find supplies in the distance. The weather is freezing, and even helicopters have difficulty adapting to this kind of weather.

They have changed to patrolling and hunting zombies within 20 kilometers around the base at irregular times every day, while maintaining order in this area.

At least they can't let these survivors who come here mess around.

*****

Fenghe County.

A place about 30 kilometers away from the Green Source Base.

A dilapidated heavy truck is driving on a road covered with snow.

The roof of the heavy truck is covered with a lot of snow. One of the windows on the left is broken and sealed with a steel plate found from somewhere. There are visible traces of severe scratches on the body. The front of the car is also badly damaged, and the two headlights have completely disappeared, exposing many wires and parts inside.

But it can still be seen that this used to be a military heavy truck.

Inside the car, two men with their heads wrapped in clothes and wearing thick clothes. One of the older men is holding the steering wheel, carefully controlling the direction of the car, avoiding places that look easy to slip and get stuck.

The middle-aged man driving the vehicle is Chen Ge, who fled back from Guan City!

"Old Chen, you used to live in Fenghe County. How far do you think it is from that Green Source Base?"

The man next to him, a few years younger and equally unkempt, said.

"Not far, I used to live in this area next to it. It's probably twenty or thirty kilometers past here to Mentang Town."

Chen Gang, also known as Brother Chen, picked up one hand and wiped the fog on the front windshield, while carefully driving and answering his companion next to him.

This companion next to him is also a survivor of the Night Defense Team who rushed out of the base to survive on the night of the Corpse Mist.

When Guan City Base was breached, he was lucky enough to retreat to the rear early and got on a vehicle of high-level base personnel who were preparing to escape.

It didn't go smoothly afterwards. After opening the back door, there were too many crazy zombies outside, and the base vehicles that wanted to rush out were immediately submerged.

The few high-level base personnel in the front driving position of the heavy truck that Chen Gang was riding in were torn to pieces by the violent zombies before long.

The entire base was in chaos, with rampaging zombies and crying humans everywhere.

Seeing that the vehicle had stopped, Chen Gang ignored his fatigue and forcibly got up and walked to the driver's seat that had been cleared of zombies. On the way, he met this companion from the Night Defense Team and ran into the driver's cab together.

He stepped on the accelerator and rushed towards the relatively empty back door.

The process is better left unsaid, it was absolutely a narrow escape from death.

Relying on the reliable performance of this vehicle, they narrowly rushed out of the pile of corpses, and did not dare to stop along the way. After finding a remote building in the night, they hid in it and barely survived the Corpse Mist.

Then they picked up the leaflet distributed by the Green Source Base, and after discussing it, they decided to join it.

After nearly a week of tossing, with bumps along the way, and the heavy snow on the road making driving difficult, they finally returned to Fenghe County and were about to arrive near that base.

They have tasted the feeling of being betrayed by a large base, but the trading cooperation information written on the flyer is what they need.

They don't need to join it, they just need a place where they can exchange materials, which is very good for them.

"If we are lucky, we should be able to reach the remaining distance today!"

"Let's step on it!"

The last sentence was addressed to the heavy truck.

Chen Gang patted the old buddy under his butt who had saved his life.

For him, an old driver with many years of vehicle maintenance experience, this heavy truck, although the appearance is "slightly" dilapidated and the mileage has reached nearly 100,000 kilometers, is still a steel beast that has just passed the break-in period.

The two concentrated again and carefully looked at the road. It's always better to find a safe place to settle down as soon as possible than to stay in the car every night or have to find a place to live.

They are relying on the little bit of rice and food that Chen Gang had saved the earliest and rushed back to the dormitory to grab on the night of the Corpse Mist, and they are about to run out.

I hope they can get there as soon as possible.

The heavy truck creaked and drove through the thick snow, which was unusually unique in the daytime when no one dared to go out.

Not long after they passed, a tall figure appeared on the edge of the tire tracks left by the car!

Even in this freezing and abnormally cold weather, he is still bare-chested, wearing only a torn cloth strip for pants!

He sniffed the tire tracks on the ground, looked in the direction Chen Gang and the others had driven away, roared lowly, and strode towards them to track them!