November 5, 2275 AD, is the last month of the first year of the end of the world.
In the Southern Hemisphere, where the ocean covers a larger area, the Australian continent is currently experiencing the hottest summer in a century and the most severe drought season in history.
For a month in a row, the local average temperature exceeded 45 degrees Celsius. On some days, the maximum afternoon temperature even soars above 50 degrees Celsius.
At 149°07′ east longitude and 35°17′ south latitude, in an open valley in the eastern mountain range of Tuao, there is a star city in New South Wales - Canberra. Before the disaster, this place was once known as the Garden City of Oceania, with lush trees and flowers all year round. But now it is a desolate place overgrown with weeds and littered everywhere.
It was two o'clock in the afternoon, and the sky in the city center was cloudless. The sun was scorching on the road outside the Capitol, and the tires of the vehicles parked on the roadside melted, and the paint on the cars continued to soften, with drops falling to the ground.
Under the sunlight, the asphalt on the ground also melted, gradually turning into a dark, sticky gel. As a result, the entire street exudes an unpleasant burnt smell, which makes people feel like they are in a waste tire factory that has been built for many years.
In the middle of the carriageway, among the crowded car debris, several black corpses were wailing feebly. Their faces are withered, their eye sockets are sunken, the blood on their bodies has long been dried and blackened, and their clothes seem to be stuck together with rotten flesh.
It looked like they were just passing by, but unfortunately their feet were stuck to the asphalt. A few unpaired shoes were stuck to the line of footprints behind him. The rubber soles had melted and become limp, sinking deeply into the asphalt particles.
There is no doubt that the afternoon sun will ruthlessly evaporate all the moisture on this street, and no matter you are a dead thing or a living thing, you will not escape the fate of being dried out.
At a quarter past two, two figures draped in black raincoats hurried across the street. They walked all the way through the overgrown Sterling Park, crossed the spacious road around the lake, and came to a trestle built by the yacht club before the disaster.
The long and narrow trestle is supported by logs as piles and extends step by step into a dark blue lake.
This is the western waters of Lake Burley Griffin. It was excavated three hundred years ago and originally had a Scribner Dam that claimed to be able to accurately control water levels. But as early as the night of Advent, the dam's control room was destroyed in the riot caused by the black corpses. Survivors remember clearly - the flames caused by the explosion that night lit up the lake shore, and the dark smoke rose into the sky, which did not gradually dissipate until ten days later.
At that time, the 400,000 Australian and Australian residents living in Canberra obviously did not realize the seriousness of the problem. It was not until a month later that the running water was cut off and the scorching summer sun dried up half of the water in Burley Griffin that people realized in horror that they would most likely die of thirst before the food ran out!
Driven by the desire to survive, thousands of survivors packed up their belongings and prepared to move to Lake Burley Griffin for temporary residence. But how could the hundreds of thousands of black corpses and black beasts in Shizhong District give them such a chance? They were like the African wildebeests migrating across the Mara River. In the next month, they were slaughtered one after another by the "lions" and "crocodiles" who were waiting for their prey.
The only survivor who finally escaped this "Battle Royale" alive was
Eight hundred people, they were scattered among nearby restaurants, post offices and several diplomatic residences. The two sneaky guys in front of me came from one of the small shelters.
Arriving at the shore of Lake Griffin, the water level in the lake has dropped to its lowest point since its establishment after the disaster. The remaining stagnant water formed a large number of puddles scattered among the ravines at the bottom of the lake. The puddles were filled with mosquitoes and blue-green algae. The turbid water obviously contained a large amount of cyanobacteria toxins, and was no longer suitable for biological use.
But this stinking lake is a precious water source for the survival of 800 survivors in a dozen gathering places.
It's not that people don't want to drink cleaner water, but because the Morangelo River Basin in the east bay of the lake was a densely populated area before the disaster. It is conservatively estimated that there are 200,000 hungry black corpses entrenched in the city.
And as far as they knew, the latest message for help left by East Coast residents on the community network was half a month ago. It was about a sudden riot of corpses and a desperate cry for help. After that, there was no other news. As for whether the 100,000 residents there are alive or dead after the corpse wave passed through, people really don't dare to think about it.
After experiencing a battle of life and death, the vast majority of people chose the latter between desperate efforts and survival, and settled down on the west bank of Griffin. They usually hide in the shelter during the day and do nothing, and only come out at night to collect some necessary food and water.
If the shelter had not been without water and food for many days, the two people in front of them would not have ventured out to fetch water during the day without telling other people in the shelter. Moreover, they also have a friend who has had a high fever since last night. If he doesn't drink water, he will die of dehydration and shock tonight!
Although they don't move often during the day, it's obviously not the first time for these two people. I saw one of them watching the wind, and the other hurriedly bent down to push away the algae, and filled two pots of water without much effort. Afterwards, the two hurried back to an underground garage shelter together and never came out again.
Not long after, there was a buzzing sound of insects near the trestle. Hundreds of fist-sized mutated mosquitoes formed a cloud of gray mist and slowly flew to the location where the two people had just appeared. They lingered for a while and then left, returning to the center of the lake again. Resting on the water.
In the evening, when the sun went down and the temperature dropped, a dozen mutated dogs as big as calves also came here to drink water. Suddenly, a mutated dog leader with red eyes moved his nose.
It led the other companions to circle around the place where the two were fetching water. Then it suddenly turned its head and pointed its gaze directly in the direction the two left...
The next day, a thick black cloud gradually accumulated over the countryside where the winery was operating on the outskirts of the city.
Thunder and lightning flashed among the dark clouds, but no precipitation came. A strong wind gradually picked up in the afternoon, blowing dry grass and garbage into a tornado. A bolt of lightning first hit a towering tree at the edge of the forest. The entire tree caught fire and disintegrated within a few seconds. The broken trunk fell to the ground, igniting the fire. A bush nearby.
The wind helped the fire, and the flames instantly engulfed the long-dried vegetation. As time passed, the sea of fire continued to cover several nearby villages and gradually grew and grew. A bunch of flames are spreading towards the city in the direction of the wind...
Not just in Canberra, but across the east of New South Wales and Victoria
In this mountainous area, many spot fires have occurred one after another this month.
Every year in spring and summer, Tu'ao will usher in a wildfire season. The alternation of fires in previous years has promoted the reproduction of native flora and the regeneration of new vegetation, which the Tu'ao District Government can control with conventional measures. This time people thought it was just an ordinary wildfire that happens every year.
But they forgot that this year is different from previous years, and the fire this time is completely different from previous years.
The first is drought, lack of rain and continuous high temperatures. In the months after the disaster, the entire Australian continent experienced only one rain event. During that spring rain, the southeast trade wind completed precipitation in the eastern mountains, and then moved westward through the vast and flat central continent without leaving a single drop of rain.
By the time of the bushfire season, the Murray River was as shallow as a stream, and many of its tributaries, like the Darling River, had dried up at the beginning of the dry season. Many plants and trees have dried up to the point where they can burst into flames if given a spark!
Then there were the disasters that caused the government to lose the ability to organize professional firefighting teams on an emergency basis. There were no fire extinguishers, no firefighters, and no helicopters to send rain. The wildfires spread unknowingly without supervision. Wild mutated animals that escaped from the jungle continued to attack human camps, forcing the survivors to fight against the beast tide, causing heavy casualties in a short period of time.
Just when people were praying to God and expecting a thunderstorm to extinguish the fires, continuous wildfires moved north along the coastline and spread across the Great Dividing Range to the Midwest.
Within half a month, wildfires ignited one after another in South Australia, Queensland, Northern Territory, and Western Australia. The entire Australian continent turned red, countless koalas sleeping in eucalyptus trees died, snakes, rats, insect frogs in the forest suffocated to death, and the mixed smell of smoke and meat attracted various birds within a hundred miles. There are even some mutated birds that pick up fire and throw it around, as if they are hunting in groups with the help of wildfires.
In the Gray Ridge, Nullarbor Plain, Darling Mountains, Kimberley Plateau...red and black smoke obscured the sky, and firelight illuminated the night. The flames on the sparse grassland rose up to 100 meters with the air current, and the wall of fire moved with the wind, as if there were huge "waves" on the land.
Even in some places, strange thunderstorms occur from time to time. Strong winds and high-speed rotating air waves form pyrocumulus clouds that shoot straight into the sky. Many forestside gathering places were surrounded by flames overnight. Countless people posted distress messages in the FS community, but received no response. Among the thousands of survivors in one gathering place, not a single person escaped alive!
According to the memories of a team of evolvers who escaped from death, they were out of the base and hunting on the edge of the jungle. Moreover, they were upwind, still dozens of kilometers away from the center of the flames. They could have easily hunted the black beasts that escaped from the fire.
But suddenly, someone in their team noticed that the wind direction began to reverse, and the captain quickly realized that they were in a dangerous area. When they immediately boarded the car to prepare to evacuate, thick smoke quickly began to cover the area.
Soon the sky turned red, and the smoke and wind carried sparks, igniting everything they encountered. Driven by strong winds of 150 kilometers per hour, the wildfire engulfed the area where they were in less than a minute.
During their escape, a heat wave overturned one of their vans. Although they lost a carload of prey, they managed to save a life...
