The Fog Disaster

The sky was gray and overcast, the sun hanging overhead like an old-fashioned 25-watt yellow light bulb.

The road was in disrepair, with the occasional car lying by the roadside.

Beyond the road lay barren land, its dark brown soil dotted here and there with flecks of green.

Farther away was a thin layer of fog. It wasn't dense, but it was as though a filter had been laid over the distant scenery.

It stretched from the ground to the sky.

Nothing could be seen clearly.

Chen Fan rode a little yellow bike, a black sports backpack on his back, pedaling with all his might.

Sweat soaked his hair, which he hadn't washed in a month, turning his bird's-nest hairdo into a greasy mess plastered against his scalp.

Two oily locks of bangs drooped down, partially blocking his view as he struggled onward.

Chen Fan kept his eyes fixed on the convoy ahead.

Several cars were moving slowly at the front.

Motorcycles and electric scooters followed behind the cars.

Farther back came the pedal-powered vehicles, ridden by people like him on tricycles and bicycles.

Behind them were the people taking the number eleven bus, moving their legs for all they were worth.

Several hundred people formed a winding line, numbly making their way along the road.

Three months into the apocalypse, everyone had learned one iron rule.

Never stay in one place.

If possible, it was best to find a group to travel with.

That way, when danger came, all you had to do was outrun the person in last place to have a chance of survival.

As the old saying went, you found someone to take the fall for you.

More scientifically speaking, it was the law of nature.

In the oceans before the apocalypse, sardines at the bottom of the food chain had used the same survival strategy.

They grouped together and swam in formation, creating enormous "living clouds" and taking turns bearing the risk of being eaten on the outside.

The difference was that they kept swimming, rather than leaving the same group of fish on the outside all the time.

They also surrounded their young in the center, protecting the fry so they could grow.

But people in the apocalypse...

Heh...

There were plenty of elderly people, children, and women in the convoy, and none of them were doing very well.

Most had fallen to the back of the line.

And some who pulled the "respect your elders" or "he's just a child" routine weren't very well liked.

Chen Fan, however, was rather fond of them.

I can't outrun those two tall, skinny guys with the six-foot-three legs on either side of me, but surely I can outrun you?

"Keep it up, everyone! Five more kilometers and the fog up ahead will thin out. There's a supply point too. Just hang on until we're through this stretch!"

The shout drifted over a loudspeaker from the front of the convoy.

Chen Fan groaned inwardly in resignation.

The convoy had been on the move for four hours straight, and his legs were practically smoking from pedaling.

But to avoid falling behind, he could only keep pushing his legs, which ached so badly they were on the verge of cramping.

Three months ago, a strange fog had enveloped the world overnight.

A vast number of terrifying monsters had emerged from the fog, and humanity across the globe had suffered devastating losses.

From what people had observed, most of these monsters had some connection to humanity's age-old horror legends.

Fog monsters, zombies, Ju-on curses, bridal dresses, painted skins...

Worse still, the fog and monsters were drawn to signs of life.

The more signs of life there were and the more vitality an area had, the longer the fog lingered, and the more monsters and strange entities emerged in droves.

At the start of the apocalypse, nearly all of the world's biggest first-tier cities, each home to ten million people, had been wiped out.

Once the initial wave of fog receded,

The survivors no longer dared linger in the big cities and set out on an endless flight through the apocalypse.

Even so, surviving the apocalypse remained incredibly difficult.

The fog hadn't vanished; it appeared at any time, like the tides.

In some areas, the fog would linger without dispersing.

The stretch of land Chen Fan and the others were passing through now was one such high-risk area.

A few hundred meters beyond either side of the road, fog lay everywhere.

If anything went wrong and the fog rolled over them, probably only a handful of the several hundred people in the convoy would make it out.

That was why the convoy kept moving without stopping.

As for why the cars at the front didn't hit the gas and race out of the area, it was because the convoy's leader could assess the risks.

After the apocalypse, the strange fog had descended, bringing monsters with it but also granting supernatural powers to some humans.

Although Chen Fan had never dealt with the supernatural being leading them,

He had seen people at the front use supernatural powers a few times.

Besides, in the three months since the apocalypse, this wasn't the first convoy he had joined. Almost every convoy needed a supernatural being at its core to come together.

Otherwise, a convoy made up entirely of ordinary people wouldn't survive.

On the other hand, the fog on both sides had been quiet all along the way, with hardly any movement.

In Chen Fan's experience over the past few months, there were many fixed patches of fog like this in the apocalypse, and they generally didn't pose much of a problem.

The truly dangerous ones were the patches of fog that were constantly on the move.

The two types were also known as "Dead Fog" and "Living Fog."

If the fog now weren't sitting motionless on either side of the road, but rolling forward right on their heels,

The cars at the front would surely have vanished from sight long ago.

Their drivers would probably have been wishing they could stomp the gas pedal right into the engine.

After traveling for a long while, they finally left the fog on either side behind.

Only occasional wisps of mist drifted across the fields by the road.

And up ahead of the convoy, houses had come into view.

The exhausted survivors all perked up.

"Great, houses!"

"We can finally restock!"

"I'm tired and hungry. If I don't find something to eat soon, I'm really going to die."

Chen Fan was delighted to see the houses too, and his legs didn't feel quite so sore anymore.

The supplies in his backpack were almost gone. If he didn't find any today, he would probably have to travel hungry tomorrow after another two meals.

In the three months since the apocalypse, Chen Fan had experienced that situation several times.

The feeling was just wonderful.

He'd been starving, yet still forced to travel at a grueling pace.

Several times, he had felt as though he could see his great-grandmother beckoning to him on the road.

If he had a choice, he would never let that happen again.

"There's a village ahead. You have two and a half hours to scavenge. Same rules as always: after scavenging, each person must hand over one portion of food in exchange for the convoy's protection. Anyone unwilling to hand it over won't be allowed to scavenge. Get out of the convoy. We don't want useless people. If you break the rules, don't blame us for showing no mercy."

The announcement came over the loudspeaker at the front of the convoy. Then the cars in front promptly sped up and raced toward the houses.

The people behind them all began cursing.

Chen Fan cursed under his breath too and could only pedal faster.

With resources scarce in the apocalypse, whoever got a head start at a place worth scavenging was bound to have the advantage.

Those sly old bastards up front had been taking their sweet time just moments ago, but the instant they saw houses, they darted forward like mice catching a scent.

Chen Fan, riding on two wheels, couldn't catch up with them no matter how hard he tried. In the end, he'd surely be left picking up scraps.

But what could he do? Once the people in front sped up, everyone else had to speed up too.

Even if he couldn't outrun the cars ahead, he still had to move faster than the people beside and behind him.

He couldn't very well let people on foot behind him snatch the meat while he was on a bicycle.

By the time Chen Fan arrived on his bicycle, the cars ahead had already driven into the village.

They parked one after another in front of supermarkets, butcher shops, vegetable shops, and stores selling rice, flour, grain, and oil.

They had gotten to all the better places first.

Chen Fan couldn't worry about that. He rode his little yellow bike straight into the village.

He didn't even look at the area where the cars had parked, heading deeper into the village instead.

In the apocalypse, entering villages and other places where people had once gathered was very risky.

That was because the lingering traces of vitality left by those gatherings could still attract strange monsters to settle there.

So the best approach was to let someone else scout the way first.

Today was different. The front of the convoy had already entered the village, and if he didn't hurry, running out of supplies would be even worse.

Entering the village only meant he might run into danger, but without supplies, he really would starve to death.

After riding a short way in, Chen Fan passed a small shop selling cigarettes, liquor, and groceries and rushed inside.

His face darkened.

It was empty. There was nothing there.

It was too clean.

He gave up on the supermarkets and the like. Surely he could find a few odds and ends in the houses nearby.

He dashed out toward a house and pushed its big red iron gate open.

Chen Fan thought, This is bad.

He rushed inside and found everything in a mess, drawers and cupboards ransacked. It had clearly been searched already.

There was no time to waste. He hurried to the next house.

But three houses in a row turned up empty.

Some cupboards had been left open, and a layer of dust had settled inside.

Something wasn't right!

Could it be that another group had already scavenged this village?

He should have been somewhere in the middle of the people entering the village. Apart from those burning gas or electricity, he should have been among the faster ones.

There was nobody else in the direction he had taken, so he shouldn't have been finding every place empty.

Chen Fan was at a loss.

Fortunately, when he reached the fifth house, he finally found something.

And quite a lot at that.

The house was well built, and Chen Fan found a concealed cellar in the courtyard.

Inside, he found a whole cured pork leg and several well-preserved bottles of Maotai.

These were valuable finds.

After the apocalypse, fresh meat was hard to come by, and cured meat was relatively scarce too. A whole pork leg was a real treasure.

Chen Fan's grin nearly split his face.

Not to mention the Maotai. Cigarettes and liquor were even scarcer and more valuable after the apocalypse.

They could almost be used as currency.

Maotai had already been expensive before the apocalypse, and it was even more valuable afterward.

Chen Fan packed everything into his sports backpack, filling it right up.

Part of the pork leg bone still stuck out.

Chen Fan eagerly moved on to the next house.

But perhaps his luck had run out.

He searched several more houses in a row and found nothing.

Focused on scavenging, Chen Fan failed to notice that, along the road he had taken behind him,

Two figures had followed him.

A frail, fair-skinned young man said in a thin, delicate voice to the massive woman beside him, who was built like a small mountain, "Sister Liangzi, I saw it with my own eyes just now. That guy found a whole pork leg and several bottles of good liquor."

As he spoke, he deliberately lowered his voice.

"And that young fellow is pretty handsome too, even a bit more handsome than me."

Beside him, when Sister Liangzi, who weighed several hundred pounds, heard "pork leg" and "handsome guy,"

Her little eyes couldn't help gleaming.

She couldn't stop herself from licking her lips.

"Good work, kid. Come on, let's follow him and take a look."

Up ahead, Chen Fan searched another seven or eight houses and found nothing at all.

In frustration, he looked at a shop on the other side.

The sign above it read "Funeral Encyclopedia."

"Damn it, I refuse to believe this. I'll go to the coffin shop and turn my luck around."