Chapter 34: Anran Like Ah-Q
Chapter 34: Anran Like Ah-Q
Anran bites her lip and thinks for a long time. She has no experience surviving the apocalypse, so she takes the cash from her wallet, carefully folds it, and puts it into the pocket of her other coat..
After all, no one knows what the outside world is like. Perhaps far away, human society is still normal. If Anran starts collecting paper money now, she might become rich when she reaches a normal place in the future.
With this thought, Anran feels that her future life has some hope. Optimistically, this behavior could be seen as self-deception.
Anran, like Ah Q, returns to the blue light room with a pocket full of paper money. Looking at the little zombies lying in the blue light boxes, her briefly uplifted mood plummets back to the bottom. Anran sighs, feeling some reluctance, but still closes her eyes and deals with them one by one.
It is a disaster!
The sight of the tiny baby zombies makes Anran feel immensely distressed, but if she doesn’t deal with these baby zombies, they might evolve into creatures capable of crawling out of the blue light boxes, putting Doll and Chen Jiao’s son in danger while she goes out to kill zombies.
Sometimes, being soft-hearted can lead to great disaster, and Anran dares not take that gamble.
After about an hour, having cleared all the little zombies from the blue light boxes and collected the diamonds from their tiny heads, Anran is starving. During this time, Chen Jiao’s son wakes up once, and Anran feeds him some of the milk from the warmer. Doll also wakes up once, cries a few times, and Anran breastfeeds her. This time, both breasts are emptied, and if Anran doesn’t eat soon, the milk will dry up.
Feeling anxious, Anran supplements Doll with 30 milliliters of milk. The little one is full and goes back to sleep.
Not knowing how much time has passed, with her eyes not having closed even once, Anran decides that while the children are asleep, she should go outside the blue light room to find some food.
Standing by the metal sliding door, she sees a fruit basket lying at the feet of a zombie outside the doctor’s office. It is probably a gift for the doctor.
She plans to sneak out through the gap in the sliding door to get the fruit basket, which requires careful preparation. Both the retrieval of the fruit basket and the subsequent retreat need a thorough plan.
First, Anran gathers some coins from the dead bodies’ wallets and holds them in her hand. Then, to avoid being too rushed upon her return, she clears a few zombies wedged in the sliding door gap.
She pushes aside the top two zombies, leaving the remaining two in their wedged positions to prevent the metal door from closing completely, making it easier for her to retreat back into the blue light room.
She waits until she quietly reaches the door of the doctor’s office, takes a look at the zombie, then grabs the fruit basket and runs back. The plastic bag wrapping the fruit basket makes a continuous rustling noise, attracting several zombies along the way.
Seeing that zombies are blocking the path ahead, Anran decisively throws a handful of coins towards a distant wall. The wall is adorned with some metal-framed promotional posters. Several coins hit the wall, creating a noise like heavy rain, much louder than the rustling of the fruit basket’s wrapping paper.
TN Notes:
“Like Ah Q”
Ah Q is a character from Lu Xun's famous novella "The True Story of Ah Q," known for his delusional and overly content attitude even when things go wrong. So, this phrase is about having a kind of calm and contentment that’s a bit naive or self-delusional, like Ah Q’s.