"Okay, maybe I saw it wrong..."
Hearing what his father said, Zhang Ning blinked his scarlet eyes. After thinking for a moment to no avail, he got into the car and completely forgot about the incident.
The sun was high in the sky, and the brick-red pickup truck was driving on the deserted road. On the road just leaving Sunshine Community, Zhang Ning and others did not see even a shadow of a zombie, but after driving onto the main road, The number of sporadic zombies on both sides increased.
Fortunately, there was a giant dog mountain cannon on board, and those wandering secondary infected bodies did not dare to approach and block easily after smelling the scent of the mutant beasts. This made the pickup truck safe and unimpeded all the way.
"Honey, do we really want to go to Ah Si's house? I'm afraid that if they all become the kind of monsters on the street, then..."
In the cab, Zhang's mother wrung her hands together, her face full of worry and fear for the future.
"We still have to take a look. After all, she is your sister. If she is fine, then we will take her to the Siming Mountain shelter with us."
Zhang's father seemed to have recovered from his previous depression and was driving the pickup truck attentively. When faced with Zhang's mother's questions, he answered patiently.
"But I made calls when communication was restored before, and my mobile phones were turned off. Do you think something happened..."
After hearing her husband's reply, Zhang's mother seemed to feel a little calmer, but soon she remembered something again, and her face was filled with worry again.
"It's possible that the phone is out of battery. Think about it, the time from the city's power outage to the restoration of communications is either long or short. If Ah Si happens to have her phone out of battery, then we can't get through. Very reasonable."
"Ah Si lives alone, and now that such a big disaster has happened, we should all go and have a look."
"It's not that I don't want to go..."
Hearing what Zhang's father said, Zhang's mother wrung her hands tighter.
"I know you are afraid that your sister will become a zombie wandering on the street, but you still have to confirm with your own eyes whether a person is alive or dead..."
Father Zhang sighed softly, slowly turned the steering wheel in his hand, and the pickup truck drove out of the avenue and headed west of the city.
"Um……"
Mother Zhang nodded and turned to look at the rear window.
Both Ju Quan and Zhang Ning stayed well in the trunk. Only their backs could be seen from the cab, but Zhang's mother knew that both the mountain gun and her son should maintain a high degree of vigilance at this time.
…
"Pao'er, I'm taking you to see my little aunt this time. You have to behave better later. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Smile. I won't let you show your teeth. Just put them back! That's right. Well……"
In the back compartment of the pickup truck, Zhang Ning held Shan Pao's big face in his hands and kept rubbing it.
It's strange to say that when he first came out of Sunshine Community, Zhang Ning was looking around for nail clippers, thinking of cutting off the half-foot-long nails on his fingers so as not to affect his usual movements.
Not long after this idea swirled in Zhang Ning's head, something magical happened.
The nails that were originally as black and shiny as razors slowly became transparent and shriveled. Before the pickup truck drove onto the road, all the nails fell off on their own, and then some blackened normal nails appeared from the places where they fell off. Fingernails.
The whole process was painless, just like taking off your pants when going to the toilet, as if it was meant to be.
Seeing the long claw-like nails falling off, Zhang Ning also curiously observed them for a long time, but in the end he couldn't see anything.
What a trick, seeing that he didn't feel any pain, he put it aside and ignored it.
As for the abnormality on the back of his neck, since there was no strange feeling, and Zhang Ning's attention was attracted by the conversation of his parents in the cab, he simply forgot about it, without any thought of investigating.
The Ah Si mentioned by Zhang's father and Zhang's mother is naturally Zhang Ning's aunt.
Zhang Ning's aunt's full name is Tu Zhiying, and she is Zhang's mother's biological sister.
Zhang's mother is the eldest in the family, while Zhang Ning's aunt is the fourth and the youngest girl in the Tu family.
Since Zhang Ning can remember, he has never seen other relatives in his mother's family, including his grandparents and Zhang's mother's two younger brothers.
It seems that the only relative on my mother's side is a little aunt like Tu Zhiying.
When Zhang Ning was a child, he once curiously asked his mother why other children had grandparents, but he did not.
Whenever this happens, Zhang's mother always smiles and shakes her head, telling Zhang Ning that he actually has grandparents like everyone else, but his grandparents have some special jobs and cannot live an ordinary life like them.
When asked further, Mother Zhang remained silent, or simply said that she didn't know.
When Zhang Ning was a child, he could only see his grandparents and two uncles through an old photo.
The grandma in the photo is very young. Although she is in her early forties, she looks like she is only in her thirties. She has neat short hair, a pair of thick glasses on her face, and a baby girl in her arms.
She was dressed in the most common white coat. Although the clothes were very simple and even crude, Zhang Ning could tell from the eyes with thick lenses that his grandmother should be a person with an elite education.
The middle-aged man standing next to grandma is grandpa in his youth.
Different from grandma’s white coat attire, grandpa wears a tight-fitting military green T-shirt on the upper body and a pair of sturdy black pants on the lower body. He has thick eyebrows, big eyes, and a tiger-like back and waist. Just by looking at the photo, you can tell what this person’s body looks like. The quality is quite good.
In front of the two people stood three children of different heights.
The girl on the far left with shoulder-length hair is Zhang Ning's mother, Tu Yunxiao.
The two boys on the right who look very similar are the two uncles Zhang Ning has never met, Tu Xunhua and Tu Chengrong.
Since the two brothers are twins and stand together at the same height, they look like they were copied and pasted. Without careful distinction, it is impossible to identify the specific identities of the two.
The infant baby is Zhang Ning's aunt - Tu Zhiying.
Among the four children, Zhang’s mother’s appearance is considered to be the most average, with half of her parents’ characteristics reflected in her. However, her younger brothers and sisters are obviously polarized. They either look like their father, or they are completely different. Like mother.
Tu Xunhua and Tu Chengrong are twins who look very similar to their father, they are almost carbon copies;
As the youngest child, Tu Zhiying is still in the infant stage and can't tell who she looks more similar to, but the flowing brilliance in her eyes is the closest to her mother.
I heard from Zhang’s mother that this photo was taken when she was sixteen years old. Zhang Ning’s grandfather and grandmother had to leave home for work reasons and took Tu Xunhua and Tu Chengrong with them.
Originally, Zhang's mother and Zhang Ning's aunt were also going to leave together, but because Zhang's mother's grandmother, Zhang Ning's great-grandmother, was still alive at that time, her weak body could not withstand it.
The family had to travel a long distance and needed help, so the eldest mother Zhang stayed and shouldered the responsibilities of the family on her sixteen-year-old shoulders.
She had to take care of the elderly with limited mobility and raise Tu Zhiying who was just born. Mother Zhang, who was supposed to be in the best years of her life, was burdened with a burden that she shouldn't have to bear at that age.
Perhaps knowing that Zhang's mother could not take care of the whole family on her own, Zhang Ning's grandparents specifically contacted a family to help Zhang's mother, and promised to come back to pick up Zhang's mother in three years and paid a certain amount of compensation.
And this family is Zhang's family.
Three years passed by in a flash, and Tu Zhiying, who could only cry in her infancy, was now able to run around, but Zhang Ning's grandparents seemed to have disappeared, and there was no news again.
Even when Zhang Ning's great-grandmother passed away, they didn't show up.
Zhang's mother, who should have been the most anxious, seemed very calm at the time, as if her parents' disappearance was expected.
Zhang's father and his family were kind-hearted. After they failed to wait for Zhang Ning's grandparents, they did not stop helping Zhang's mother and family. Instead, they kept in touch with each other more closely.
In Zhang's father's words, it was just a matter of having two more pairs of chopsticks, and Zhang Ning's grandparents also liked girls very much, so they simply regarded the two girls as their goddaughters.
Life was lived so plainly and happily. From then on, Zhang Ning's grandparents and two uncles seemed to disappear into the sea of people, and Zhang's mother never mentioned them again.
It wasn't until Zhang's father and Zhang's mother got married and had Zhang Ning that they dug out old photos and recalled them again.
According to Zhang Ning's reasoning, his grandparents had to drag the family away from their ancestral home due to work reasons. They must have participated in some national secret project.
But even if it is a national secret project, after so long, it is time to let him go. There is no reason to remain indifferent to his daughters.
Therefore, Zhang Ning believed that his grandparents were probably dead, and his two uncles who had never met before also encountered an accident and passed away.
Otherwise, why has it been so long and you haven’t even come back to visit your home?
But the strange thing is that whenever he raises this speculation to his mother, Zhang's mother always shakes her head expressionlessly, and the answer is always "not sure", with a vague attitude, neither affirmation nor denial. .
"If my little aunt hadn't been young at that time, I would have definitely been able to ask something from her..."
As he muttered the thoughts in his heart, Zhang Ning rubbed Shan Pao's dog's head over and over again, his eyes drifting into the distance, and he began to feel anxious unconsciously.
At the moment, Zhang Ning actually didn't really want to get any information about the mysterious grandparents from Tu Zhiying, but was sincerely worried about the safety of his little aunt.
It is said that the youngest daughter is like her mother. When Tu Zhiying grew up, she was very similar to her mother in appearance and temperament. In terms of intelligence, she seemed to have inherited her mother's advantages. She made rapid progress in her studies and became a doctor of medicine. .
But everything can't be perfect.
Although Zhang Ning's aunt has learned a lot, she has not made any progress in love. Now she is almost thirty-five years old, but she has never found a good person to spend the rest of her life with.
However, Tu Zhiying was not troubled by this, because her life was filled with all kinds of academic research, and love seemed to be just a dispensable embellishment for her.
"If my little aunt has someone to take care of her, then I guess my father and I won't be so worried. I hope nothing happens and we can pick her up smoothly, and then we can go to the Siming Mountain shelter together..."
