It was that elderly couple, the ones who had come by a few days ago hoping for a ride to buy water.
By seven or eight in the evening, the sky was an absolute pitch black. Not a single star or even the faintest hint of a moon could be seen. The temperature had plummeted to a damp six degrees Celsius. Suddenly, the sharp, electronic wail of police sirens cut through the heavy silence. Jing Shu's family had just finished dinner. Hearing the alarms so close by, they wordlessly put on their outerwear, zipped up their windproof jackets, secured their masks, and pulled on hats before heading out into the gloom to see what had happened.
The insects swarming under the streetlights seemed to have grown in both variety and number, their collective buzzing a constant, unsettling drone. When Jing Shu and her parents arrived at the small, detached house, five or six community security guards were already there, along with six or seven nearby residents who had also come to look, two uniformed police officers, and a somber forensic team in disposable coveralls.
The elderly woman and her husband, the ones who had sought a ride, were lying still in their bed, wrapped in thick winter blankets. Their bodies had already begun decomposing in the heat, swarming with pale maggots, while fat, black flies crawled over them, still laying eggs. Some of the maggots had already hatched and were writhing in a grotesque mass. The entire house reeked of the sweet, cloying, and unmistakable stench of death.
Su Lanzhi, seeing the scene through the open door, was instantly frightened. She hid her face in Jing An's embrace with a small gasp. Jing An instinctively lifted a hand to cover her eyes, turning her away. Only then did they both seem to remember they had a daughter standing right beside them, perhaps they had always truly loved each other first and foremost, and Jing Shu was, in some ways, just a happy accident.
Jing Shu, however, looked at the bodies with a detached, almost clinical calm, even feeling a flicker of grim scientific curiosity. A neighbor woman, her own face pale, whispered an explanation to the newcomers: "For two whole days, the stench was unbearable. I finally told the security guards, and they traced the smell to this house. When they pried the door open with a crowbar, this… this is what they found."
The forensic examiner, wearing nitrile gloves, inspected the scene carefully and pointed a pen-light at a wall-mounted air conditioner unit that was visibly unused, its remote control dusty on a side table. "The temperature swings from day to night are extreme now. At night, it drops below zero here. They may have wanted to save on electricity, so they didn't turn on the AC, just covered themselves with blankets and kept the windows shut tight. Then, by six or seven in the morning, the temperature in this sealed room would have soared to 40 degrees Celsius or higher. High heat, probable dehydration, and no ventilation caused acute heatstroke and suffocation. It would have been very fast."
"Just set a constant temperature air conditioner," the forensic examiner said matter-of-factly, as if stating the obvious. "There have already been a dozen similar deaths reported in the city proper."
The woman had been scrimping on ride shares and air conditioning, trying to save her money, but she had never, ever expected it would lead to this.
The forensic team took several stark, flash-lit photos. The police then carefully wrapped the two bodies in black body bags and carried them out on stretchers, leaving two workers in protective gear behind to spray disinfectant and handle the grim aftermath.
"Hello, you must be new neighbors, right? I'm Wang Qiqi from Building 13." A sun-darkened man in his thirties approached Jing Shu and her father with an earnest, energetic air. "I've made a neighborhood chat group, see, with over sixty members already. Want to join? It's easier to discuss things and share information together here."
Jing Shu and Jing An, seeing the practical sense in it, took out their phones and joined the group. Part of Jing Shu, the part that remembered odd fragments from before, wanted to ask at once: "Do you have a brother named Wang Baba?" But she bit back the irrelevant question.
"Which building are you all in?" Wang Qiqi asked, thumbs already flying over his screen. "For convenience, everyone should tag their name with their building number. No need to specify the unit or floor, just the building is fine."
"We're in the villa district," Jing An replied.
Wang Qiqi looked the family over with brief surprise, the villa area was known for being more secluded and expensive, and quickly tagged Jing Shu and Jing An in the chat. "Not many people live in the villa area full-time. It's more remote. If anything happens, just speak up in the group. We'll help if we can."
"Thank you," Jing An said. "That's very helpful."
"No problem at all. We're all neighbors now, must stick together. You can check the group notices, I've posted contacts for delivery services, water suppliers, ride shares, and supermarket managers who are still operating. If you have anything to add, just let me know."
Wang Qiqi then went to speak with the elderly woman who had found the bodies and a few other onlookers, even adding the patrolling security guards to the group with clear notes about their roles.
Soon, Wang Qiqi tagged everyone in the group and recounted the tragic deaths of the elderly couple in concise, sober terms. He reminded everyone not to skimp on electricity for the sake of a few yuan, to set their air conditioners to a constant temperature mode, and if they didn't have one, to buy one immediately.
[Young Master, Building 13]: "Holy crap, that scared me straight. I better go turn my AC on right now."
[Wang Xuemei, Building 2]: "Who in the group sells air conditioners or has a supplier contact? Send it fast, please!"
The situation revealed a cruel geographical irony, in the north, air conditioners had always been somewhat scarce, in the south, there was no widespread central heating for the cold nights. Now everyone was scrambling for the opposite of what they were built for.
With searing daytime temperatures and sharply cooling nights, coupled with tap water contaminated with soil, three items sold out across the nation virtually overnight: air conditioners, refrigerators, and water purifiers. Even second-hand fans in thrift stores and repair shops were gone. Online orders from major retailers were queued for delivery in two months or more, while scalpers on local forums offered "guaranteed delivery in three days" at astronomically high prices.
The true, grinding chaos of the early apocalypse had begun.
Dustfall had now continued for more than a week. In cities and towns where they could, municipal vehicles with plow blades attached cleared the main streets, elsewhere, people swept the ever-accumulating silt manually. Primary schools and kindergartens remained closed indefinitely. Middle and high school students, as well as employees of various state units, were assigned specific outdoor dust-cleaning areas as a form of civic duty. A single day without cleaning would allow a thick, compacted layer to form, and even a light wind would send the dust swirling up in choking clouds everywhere.
Hospitals were inundated with two main types of patients, those suffering from severe heatstroke and those developing early symptoms of pneumoconiosis from breathing the fine particulate. The internet was flooded with exhausted, bitter complaints:
"This is really messing with me. I escaped the north after a decade of snow-shoveling every winter, went south to work for a better life, and now I have to sweep dust daily. Can't catch a break."
"Dust sweeping is tolerable. Eating dust is unbearable. Everything, food left on the counter, a glass of water, your clothes, is covered in a fine grey film. Even my bathwater has soil settled at the bottom."
"You think you've got it bad? You're lucky. Our local reservoir got filled in with soil, completely blocked the intake. Water supply's cut off. We rely on water trucks coming in once a day now."
"Our rivers are just… dried-up channels full of soil now. We queue for three hours daily to buy rationed bottled water. I'd take muddy tap water at this point. Something is better than nothing."
Nationwide, the alternating extreme heat and cold caused massive electrical overloads as air conditioners and heaters ran 24 hours a day, leading to rolling blackouts and burned-out circuit boards in residential blocks. Some rivers and reservoirs were literally blocked by solidified mud and silt. Coupled with daytime heat accelerating evaporation, localized droughts ensued with frightening speed.
Many lakes and reservoirs were reported to be dropping by centimeters each day, prompting urgent national broadcasts about remedial measures and water discipline.
Daily online news clips showed reservoirs that had turned into plains of cracked mud and reports of halted mineral water production lines, which only worsened the panic-buying of any remaining bottled water. Prices skyrocketed to ten yuan per bottle for plain water, soft drinks and juices were even more expensive.
Supermarkets still had enough dry and canned food, but water and drinks were always the first to vanish from the shelves, an outcome most conventional preppers had not fully anticipated. National water plants worked 24-hour shifts to filter and process what water they could access, while areas with blocked reservoirs depended entirely on trucks distributing government-supplied water.
Authorities urged citizens in endless loops to conserve every drop. "Use whatever comes from the tap after settling and boiling, having continuous flow is already a blessing. Don't be picky."
But it was one crisis piled upon another. The dustfall and water shortages were still unresolved when another wave hit. Some areas, particularly inland basins, reached nearly 50 degrees Celsius during the day. Then came reports, initially scattered then growing more frequent, of outbreaks of strange, fast-acting diseases killing chickens, pigs, and cows in their pens.
Heatstroke death tolls, once counted in the hundreds, quietly accumulated into the tens of thousands nationwide. Northern fatalities, perhaps due to a lack of acclimatization and older housing stock, were the highest. Surprisingly, the hottest southern regions, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Sichuan, had comparatively fewer reported deaths, perhaps due to a population more adapted to heat and better-equipped housing.
A patchwork of closures settled over the country. Schools and many non-essential workplaces in the north were half-closed. In southern cities, a stubborn semblance of normalcy persisted, and "business as usual" was the weary order of the day.
Police, doctors, power grid workers, and government staff had no choice but to keep working. Su Lanzhi, in her previous life, had been one of those who continued working relentlessly, a sense of duty overriding sense, which had ultimately caused her critical heatstroke.
"Mom, the chilled mung bean soup is in the thermos, the cucumber salad and shredded poached chicken are in the insulated containers, and don't forget the herbal jelly in the smaller tub." Jing Shu handed over the carefully packed lunch box, her voice leaving no room for argument.
In this life, Su Lanzhi would still insist on going to work. That much was unchanged. But now, with a steady supply of Spirit Spring water in her bottle and her system, the likelihood of her collapsing from heatstroke was far, far lower.
"Eat less chicken, duck, and pork for a while. Try to stick to fish or the vegetables we have. The news said the south is experiencing a major animal plague outbreak. It's spreading fast."
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七七 (Qīqī) is 77, and 八八 (Bābā) is 88