Chapter 20 The Current Status of the Enemy (Mother and Younger Brother)
Dusk, like rust, slowly seeped into the leaden sky. The world outside the fortress, after days of melting snow, revealed a dirty face, repeatedly rubbed and carelessly discarded.
The snow was no longer pure white, but had turned into a murky, sticky mud mixed with sludge, garbage, and unidentified filth, which piled up in low-lying areas and emitted an indescribable stench of decay.
The snow above melted, revealing the frozen and ravaged city ruins below. The dark, broken walls and rubble pointed to the sky, like decaying bones exposed after the earth has rotted.
The temperature remained below minus ten degrees Celsius, and the damp chill was more biting than the dry cold, penetrating to the bone. The wind was light, but it carried a damp, unsettling chill, swirling with the distinctive stench of melting snow and the faint, indistinct smell of burning and decay emanating from afar.
Wen Yu sat at the control console, the light from the screen illuminating his expressionless face. Today, he wasn't conducting large-scale drone reconnaissance, but instead focusing his attention on the direction of the shantytown below the mountain, captured by the high-magnification, high-resolution telescopic cameras built into the fortress.
It was once a marginal area left over from urban expansion, where illegal buildings, shacks, abandoned factories and warehouses were mixed together, and the poorest people lived there.
Before the apocalypse, it was synonymous with filth and chaos; after the apocalypse, it became one of the first areas to be abandoned and the fastest to become a microcosm of hell.
Lacking sturdy buildings and decent supplies, yet with a high population density, it is a breeding ground for conflict, disease, and death.
Wen Yu adjusted the focus and angle, the camera moving through the snow, mud, and messy buildings, finally locking onto a shack area haphazardly built with corrugated steel sheets, broken wooden boards, and plastic sheets, half-buried in the dirty, half-melted snow.
Several crooked chimneys belched faint, acrid black smoke, fueled by any combustible garbage they could find. The narrow passageways between the shacks had become stinking ditches overflowing with mud, frozen with dubious solids. Some hunched figures moved slowly through the mud, or squatted at the entrances of the shacks, staring blankly outside, like soulless clay sculptures.
His camera moved slowly, finally stopping in front of a shack near the edge. The shack was more dilapidated than the ones next to it, with several large holes in the plastic sheeting on the roof, barely held together by more garbage and stones. The door was a crooked, drafty, broken wooden plank. On a small patch of slightly drier mud in front of the door, some junk of unknown purpose was scattered.
Wen Yu's fingers paused slightly on the control panel, then he pushed the focus to the maximum and activated the low-light and thermal imaging auxiliary modes.
The shack was dimly lit, but enough to see what was inside. The space was cramped, with tattered cotton wadding and rotten cardboard piled on the floor, so dirty they were unrecognizable. Two figures were huddled inside.
One was Wang Xiujuan, Wen Yu's mother. She looked at least twenty years older than before the apocalypse. Her hair was gray and dry, like a clump of weeds piled on her head. Her cheeks were deeply sunken, her cheekbones were high and prominent, and her complexion was an ominous sallow.
She was wrapped in several layers of thin, filthy old clothes, leaning against the cold, drafty shed wall, her body trembling and coughing uncontrollably. The sound of her coughing seemed to travel across a vast distance and a screen, conveying a heart-wrenching, agonizing pain.
She covered her mouth with a withered, bony hand, coughing until she curled up, her shoulders heaving violently, each cough seeming to drain all her strength. After she finished coughing, she opened her palm, revealing a small pool of dark red, sticky substance.
She was sick, very sick. It might be pneumonia, or something worse. In this cold, damp environment with little medical care, it was practically a death sentence.
The other was Wen Lei, Wen Yu's younger brother. He huddled in a corner further inside the shack, far away from his mother, seemingly trying to avoid the unsettling coughs and sickly aura. He was also emaciated, with sunken eyes, cloudy and shifty gaze, exuding a furtive and restless air. He wore an ill-fitting, dirty coat that he had somehow acquired, the sleeves too short, revealing wrists as thin as sticks. He was looking down, furtively fumbling for something in his clothes, occasionally glancing nervously at his coughing mother before quickly looking down again.
Wang Xiujuan coughed for a while, her breathing calming down slightly. In a hoarse, almost inaudible voice, she said to Wen Lei, "Xiao Lei... cough cough... medicine... is there any more medicine? Give Mom one... Mom really can't cough anymore..."
Wen Lei paused, looked up, a hint of impatience and obvious panic flashing across his face, his voice dry: "What medicine is left! You took it all long ago! Just cough a couple of times and bear it! How annoying!"
"I…I think I saw you yesterday…take a small bottle from that black leather bag…" Wang Xiujuan gasped for breath, her eyes fixed on Wen Lei's arms. Her gaze was no longer that of a mother looking at her son with loving eyes, but rather that of a dying person clutching at a straw, a mixture of pleading and despair.
"You're mistaken! There's no bottle!" Wen Lei recoiled like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, instinctively clutching the object in his arms tighter, a flash of malice crossing his face. "That's mine! Don't even think about taking it! You old bastard, all you do is drag me down!"
"You... what did you say?!" Wang Xiujuan seemed to be provoked by the word "old geezer," an unnatural flush rising on her sallow face. She struggled to sit up, her finger trembling as she pointed at Wen Lei. "I'm your mother! I gave birth to you and raised you... and this is how you treat me?! Your heartless brother doesn't care about me, and you... you too... cough cough cough..." The intense emotions triggered an even more violent coughing fit. She coughed up more blood and foam, her body trembling like a withered leaf in the wind.
Seeing her coughing up blood, Wen Lei felt no pity whatsoever; instead, a flicker of disgust and fear crossed his eyes, as if he were afraid of being infected, or perhaps afraid she would actually die there. He shifted his body, moving further away, muttering, "Give birth to me, raise me? If you hadn't been so stupid and gotten scammed out of the house, would we be in this state? You still have the nerve to mention my brother? He's probably long gone! Relying on anyone is useless! We have to rely on ourselves!"
As he spoke, seemingly having made up his mind, he quickly pulled out the small glass bottle he had been clutching tightly from his pocket—it appeared to contain a few white pills. Without even glancing at his mother, who was coughing so hard she was almost breathless, he scrambled towards the dilapidated "door" of the shack like a thief, peeked out cautiously, and then slipped away, his figure quickly disappearing into the shadows of the muddy shack alleyway.
Wang Xiujuan coughed so hard she almost passed out, and it took her a while to recover. She looked up at the direction her son had disappeared in, then at the empty, cold, and dilapidated shack. The last glimmer of light in her dry eyes seemed to have been extinguished. All that remained was boundless pain, the torment of illness, and the bone-chilling despair of being abandoned by her loved ones one after another. She collapsed helplessly onto the dirty cotton quilt, her body twitching slightly from the cold and pain, only the occasional labored, bellows-like gasps escaping her throat.
Wen Yu's gaze, piercing through the cold screen, took in everything. He saw his mother's terminal illness, his brother's selfishness and coldness, the stolen bottle of medicine, likely intended to be exchanged for some kind of "enjoyment" (like cigarettes, or something worse), and this nauseating short drama unfolding in the mud and despair.
There was no sound. Only a silent performance on a high-definition screen. But it was precisely because of the silence that every detail in the scene—the trembling of the mother's body as she coughed up blood, the disgust and greed flashing in the younger brother's eyes, the bottle of medicine that was tightly clutched and then secretly taken away—carried a chilling cruelty magnified many times over.
Wen Yu's hand rested on the control panel, his knuckles slightly white. His face remained expressionless, his lips pressed into a cold, hard line, his jawline taut. But in his deep, pool-like eyes, something extremely dark seemed to flicker across the depths of his pupils before returning to stillness.
Do you hate it?
Perhaps there was such a thing. Hate their greed, hate their insatiable demands, hate their betrayal and exploitation in the apocalypse. But now, watching those two bodies struggling in the mud and pain, resenting each other, slowly heading towards destruction on the screen, Wen Yu felt no burning hatred, only a bottomless, cold weariness, and an almost numb... confirmation.
Look, this is what "family" connected by blood looks like. Faced with dire straits, kinship is as fragile as a cicada's wing, and the ugliness of human nature is fully revealed. His mother uses filial piety to blackmail him, his younger brother sees him as an ATM, and in the end, they tear each other apart, heading towards the fate he had already foreseen.
He thought he would feel pleasure, or at least a cold calm. But somewhere in his chest, a faint, almost imperceptible, dull pain, like the aftermath of a blunt instrument, throbbed. It wasn't intense, but it was real. Perhaps it wasn't the lingering affection he had for his mother and brother, but rather the final, most complete disillusionment with the concept of "blood ties," a chilling confirmation of the darkest side of humanity.
He reached out and turned off the split-screen view. Only the snowy landscape surrounding the fortress, the energy curve, and other irrelevant data streams remained on the screen. The control room was silent except for the low, constant hum of the server fans.
He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. The cold light from the screen faded from his face, leaving deeper shadows. He sat there, motionless, like a cold statue devoid of all emotion.
After an unknown amount of time, a very faint sound of footsteps, almost drowned out by the noise of the system running, stopped at the door. Then, there was an even fainter sound, the rustling of fabric.
Wen Yu did not open his eyes.
A moment later, a crisp, slightly bitter aroma, mixed with a hint of warmth, approached him. A warm, delicate porcelain cup was gently placed on the empty space on the control panel beside him. Inside the cup was a clear, golden liquid, with two slices of lemon settling in, and a faint, honey-like sweetness.
It's lemon black tea. The temperature is just right.
Su Ran didn't speak, didn't ask "What's wrong?", and didn't try to look at the closed screen. He just stood there quietly, two steps away from Wen Yu, his figure outlined as a slender and quiet silhouette in the dim light of the control room. Today he was wearing a light gray turtleneck sweater, which accentuated his long neck and delicate chin. His eyes were slightly lowered, his thick eyelashes casting a soft shadow beneath them, his hands quietly clasped in front of him, like a plant quietly growing in a silent corner, not disturbing, just existing.
He left without offering the tea, nor did he approach. He simply stood there, accompanying the sudden, heavy silence, with his silent presence and the warm, fragrant tea.
Time flowed by in silence. The only sounds in the control room were the faint hum of the instruments and the two people's soft breathing.
Wen Yu finally opened his eyes slowly. He didn't look at the cup of tea, nor at Su Ran. His gaze fell on the dark, now-off surveillance screen in front of him, as if he could see through the screen and once again see that muddy shantytown and the struggling figures within it.
After a long while, he reached out and picked up the cup of tea. The warmth of the porcelain cup traveled through his palm, carrying just the right amount of warmth that dispelled the chill from his fingertips. He brought the cup to his lips and took a sip.
The tea was at the perfect temperature, the slight tartness of the lemon blended perfectly with the mellow sweetness of the black tea, and the touch of honey just right neutralized the bitterness. As it slid down my throat, it brought a comforting warmth that slowly spread to my chest, seemingly easing the slight stuffiness there.
He still didn't speak. But his tense back relaxed almost imperceptibly.
Su Ran remained standing quietly, but after he picked up his teacup and took a sip, his clasped fingers, which had been gripping tightly until his knuckles turned white, quietly loosened slightly.
Outside the fortress lies mud, disease, betrayal, and slow death. Inside the fortress, there is constant warmth, clean air, ample food, and... a perfectly served cup of hot tea, delivered in silence, and a silent companion.
Wen Yu took a few more sips of tea, then gently placed the cup back in its original position. He sat up straight again, his gaze sweeping over the other normally functioning monitoring screens. He tapped a few times on the control panel, bringing up the latest data from the snow melting model, and began his analysis.
He didn't say "thank you" to Su Ran, nor did he explain his earlier silence. Su Ran didn't ask either.
But some things quietly changed amidst this silent companionship and the warmth of a cup of hot tea. The hard, cold barrier that enveloped Wenyu seemed to have a tiny, insignificant crack melted away by that silent warmth.
After confirming that Wen Yu seemed to have refocused on his work, Su Ran stood quietly for a moment before turning around and leaving the control room with lighter steps than when she came in, gently closing the door behind her.
The sound of the door closing was barely audible.
In the control room, only Wen Yu remained, surrounded by flickering screens on the walls. But the warm aroma of lemon black tea seemed to still linger in the air.
Wen Yu's gaze fell on the data stream, focused and calm.
The past is gone, completely gone. The fate of those trapped in the mud was already sealed; there was no need for him to cast any further glances at them.
What he should be concerned about is this fortress, the upcoming challenges that may be even more severe after the snow melts, and... how to continue to survive in this long apocalypse.
As for that last bit of cold, dull pain in my heart caused by the disillusionment of blood ties, perhaps it will slowly dissipate with time and the warmth of the "present" that gradually accumulates in this fortress, eventually sinking into the coldest bottom of my memory and no longer causing any ripples.