Years ago in July, Wen Qian rode her bicycle, planning to go to Mangge City.
The round trip would take over a week, just for the time spent on the road.
This was the only relatively large city nearby, with a population of several tens of thousands back then, though it's unknown how many people remain there now.
In fact, this city had already been abandoned, but Wen Qian didn't know since she had no sources of information.
Now, radio reception was limited to the vicinity of a few bases, just like the campus broadcasts at the school in the past, with very limited coverage and little fresh news.
Wen Qian gathered her belongings from home and took one last look around, at her own vegetable garden which she had fenced off with railings and netting dismantled from the ranch many days ago.
This was the best she could do for protection while she was away.
Wen Qian began heading towards the ranch. Her motorcycle was still usable, but she wouldn't use it for the entire journey to conserve fuel.
So she would alternate between bicycle and motorcycle, fortunately having more than one bicycle and many spare tires.
From her home to the ranch, there was no road, but starting from the ranch entrance, there was a concrete road leading to the wide highway.
The concrete road was still passable, though after years of weathering, it had developed many cracks, likely due to freezing and thawing over the winters.
After many years away, she set foot on the national highway again, which no longer showed any traces of vehicles and had weeds growing through the cracks. However, the lower temperatures here kept the grass from growing too tall, allowing Wen Qian to pass through.
When night fell during her journey, she would set up her mobile home by the roadside, the same one from years ago with the bed and stove still inside.
As always, she would secure the perimeter before spending the night, and the few nights passed relatively peacefully.
However, she did not encounter any people along the way. At one hill, Wen Qian stood at the top and used her binoculars to survey the city.
The basic structures were still standing, though they appeared quite dilapidated on the outside.
This was the city she had last reached, and when she left by bicycle back then, she looked back for a long time.
Because she knew there would be no more dense clusters of buildings along her journey ahead, and perhaps many years would pass before she returned to a city again.
In the year before the volcanic eruption, after she left this place and until today, a span of ten years had passed.
The season when she first came to Mangge City was August, a full nine years from now.
One year later in August, the Yellowstone volcano erupted, and after that, development here must have ceased.
Subsequently, with the advent of the super virus and volcanic winter, the population here gradually dwindled, with the last wave of people leaving Mangge City likely being those who only left after two consecutive years of disasters.
In fact, when the super virus struck, this city had already become isolated from the world. The initial virus had already overwhelmed the local healthcare system, as Mangge City was simply too far from the major hospital in Xia City.
After many years, Wen Qian figured there should no longer be anything virus-related here, but she still took precautions, wearing a mask and gloves, and carrying an alcohol spray on her back.
At the outskirts of the city along the road, Wen Qian saw various makeshift barriers of varying degrees, resembling long-abandoned checkpoints.
Perhaps due to the passage of time, the plastic ones had degraded into dust, while the iron barriers were rusted beyond recognition.
Some barriers had been moved to the sides, widening the drivable space, possibly by people leaving the city by vehicle at some later point.
The mobile homes used for guard duty had collapsed, leaning to one side, with accumulated dust indicating no human presence for a long time.
There were no human footprints on the ground, but traces of other animals, mostly birds.
This abandoned city was quiet yet eerie, the only thing breaking the silence being the various bird species that had taken up residence within the human structures.
They had built nests in various buildings, at least offering more shelter from the elements than their natural habitats.
In some places, there were signs of people having lit fires indoors, while the signs on former shops had fallen off, only faintly hinting at their past purposes.
Essentially, all the ground-floor doors and windows had been opened. Wen Qian observed the scene, reconstructing the events that had unfolded.
Gripping an iron rod, she walked the streets, having already surveyed that there were no signs of human activity or large wild animals.
This city was not large, resembling the scale of her hometown in An Province despite being designated as a city.
She even spotted a grave in a roadside flower bed, with a stone inscribed with words in front and faded plastic flowers inserted.
Wen Qian's main objectives here were to check for any people, and since she found none, her second goal was to gather supplies before leaving.
Wen Qian walked along the streets outside until she reached the town square, her sights set on the various paving materials on the ground.
The typical square bricks used for city sidewalks, as well as the perforated bricks for grassy parking lots with spaces for growth.
So Wen Qian began prying up the bricks and stone slabs, collecting the elongated curb stones, her small hands gathering everything in her path.
After that, she relied on her memory to locate the building materials street.
There must not have been any business here since the onset of the disasters, and during the subsequent food shortages, the ground-floor doors had been broken into, leaving the materials exposed.
Years of weathering had taken their toll.
Wen Qian found a tile store with a stockyard in the back and used a ladder to climb over, collecting the tiles stored there.
At the end of the street, the bricks and tiles that had been exposed long-term had turned black from the elements.
Wen Qian was delighted to find red roof tiles, their outer layers faded by wind and rain but still of good quality. The gaps between the tiles had accumulated dirt and sprouted various weeds from the rain.
She knocked on the tiles to test them and began collecting them in sections.
Wen Qian did not want to enter the residential buildings, having surveyed the chaotic interiors of various malls through her binoculars as well.
The floors were covered in dark stains that Wen Qian suspected were bloodstains, and there were likely corpses inside, so she avoided going in.
Apart from the intact structures, it seemed that everything else had already been ransacked, so there was no point looking for food.
Therefore, Wen Qian's sole target was building materials.
