Ninety Days Before The Apocalypse

The Value Of A life

"I found biscuits," Lin Feng rasped, clutching his bruised ribs with one hand. "Dry biscuits. They were buried under a fallen display case in the old pharmacy."

He kicked open the frozen wooden door of the temporary shelter, his breath rising in thick white plumes. He reached into his coat to pull out the small pouch, expecting a warm fire or a cup of boiled water.

Instead, Su Yan, Mother Su, and Su Ming stood silently in the center of the dim room. Behind them stood three tall men wearing heavy fur-lined coats, holding iron bars and hunting knives.

"Put the bag on the table, Lin Feng," Mother Su said quietly, avoiding his eyes.

"Who are these people?" Lin Feng stumbled forward, his boots crunching on the frost-covered floorboards. "Su Yan? What is going on?"

Su Yan stared down at her shoes. "Just sit down, Lin Feng. You look tired."

"I am tired," Lin Feng said. He tried to take another step toward her, but his knees suddenly gave out. He slammed hard onto the wooden floor. His legs felt heavy and numb, as if filled with wet sand. "What is wrong with my legs? Why can I not move?"

The lead scavenger, a man with a jagged scar stretching across his cheek, let out a rough laugh. He picked up a wooden crate from the corner. "He is quick to notice, isn't he?"

"Did you bring the water?" Mother Su asked the scarred man, ignoring Lin Feng completely.

"Five liters of clean well water," the scavenger replied, tapping a blue plastic container near the doorway. "Plus six cans of stewed beef. Exactly what we agreed upon."

Lin Feng hit the floorboards with his palms, trying to pull his useless lower body forward. "Yan... what is he talking about? What beef?"

"It was the rat poison," Su Yan said. Her voice was flat and calm, as if she were reading a grocery list. "I mixed three drops into your morning tea. Mother said if we tried to tie you up while you were fully awake, you would fight back and break the remaining furniture."

"Rat poison?" Lin Feng whispered, spittle and dark blood dripping from his pale lips. "I spent two days in the storm getting those biscuits for you, Yan. I fought off three wild dogs with an iron pipe."

"And you brought back half a bag of stale crackers," Su Ming sneered from the corner, his cheeks pink and warm compared to Lin Feng's ash-grey face. "We cannot survive on crackers, brother-in-law. Boss Scar gave us real food. Canned meat."

"You traded me?" Lin Feng gasped, his heart hammering against his ribs in frantic, irregular thuds. "You sold my life for six cans of meat?"

"Do not make it sound so dramatic," Mother Su snapped, pulling her woolen shawl tighter around her shoulders. "You are broken, Lin Feng. You cough up blood every night. You cannot hunt like you used to. Trading your labor to Boss Scar keeps our family alive for another month. You should be glad you can still be useful to us."

"Family?" Lin Feng choked out.

Boss Scar stepped forward, grabbing Lin Feng by his filthy jacket collar and dragging him toward the door like a sack of trash. "Let us move, boy. The ice quarry needs hands today."

"Wait!" Su Yan called out from the threshold.

Lin Feng raised his heavy eyelids with great effort, a tiny, desperate ember of hope flaring in his chest. "Yan..."

"Are you going to leave his boots on?" Su Yan asked Boss Scar, pointing at Lin Feng's thick leather footwear. "If he is just going to work in the quarry, my brother can use those boots."

"Take them off him after he collapses," Scar grunted. He hauled Lin Feng down the stone steps and threw his paralyzed body into a deep snowbank beside the street. "Stay there until the cart arrives, trash."

Lin Feng lay face down in the snow, unable to lift his chin. The cold seeped into his lungs, but the poison burned inside his veins like liquid fire. His vision narrowed into dark purple spots. He remembered the nights he gave Su Yan his only slice of bread. He remembered risking his life to find blood pressure medication for Mother Su. He remembered shielding Su Ming from street thugs.

All of it meant nothing. He was worth six cans of meat and a pair of second-hand boots.

As the freezing wind buried his chest in white powder and his heart gave its final, agonizing shudder, every drop of love inside Lin Feng burned away, leaving behind a black, endless hatred.

If I ever open my eyes again, he swore in the silence of his dying mind, I will make every single one of you bleed.

His world went completely dark.

Lin Feng sat up with a violent gasp, his lungs expanding as he gulped in warm air.

He clutched his chest, waiting for the burning poison and the biting frost, but there was no pain. Sunlight poured through clean glass windows, painting yellow squares across a wooden floor. The air smelled of clean linen and pine floor polish.

He raised his hands to his face. They were smooth, warm, and entirely free of frostbite scabs.

He reached frantically for the nightstand, grabbing a white smartphone. The screen lit up under his thumb.

June 14.

"June fourteen," Lin Feng muttered, his voice trembling.

It was three months before the white fog arrived. Three months before the temperature dropped eighty degrees in a single afternoon.

A sharp, sudden throb struck the back of his head. Lin Feng squeezed his eyes shut. Inside his consciousness, a massive grey void unfolded like an empty, limitless warehouse where time stood still. He opened his eyes, reached out his right hand, and touched the metal base of his bedside lamp.

The lamp vanished instantly.

Lin Feng checked his mind. The lamp was floating safely in the center of the grey space, perfectly intact. He touched the nightstand again, focusing his thought, and the lamp reappeared on the wooden surface without a sound.

Before he could process the realization, his phone began to vibrate violently in his hand.

The caller tag read: Su Yan.

Lin Feng stared at the screen for three long seconds. He swiped the icon and placed the phone against his ear, remaining completely silent.

"Why did you take so long to pick up?" Su Yan's sharp voice blasted through the speaker. "Are you still sleeping? Do you know what time it is?"

"It is eight in the morning," Lin Feng said, his tone low and steady.

"It is eight-five!" Su Yan corrected him impatiently. "Xiao Ming has been waiting at the auto mall since seven. He found the red sports sedan he wanted, but the salesman says another customer is putting down a deposit right now."

Lin Feng listened to the rhythm of her breath over the line. It was the exact same voice that had asked the scavenger for his boots while he froze in the snow.

"And?" Lin Feng asked.

"And what?" Su Yan sounded exasperated. "Transfer fifty thousand yuan to Xiao Ming's card right now so he can secure the car. Use your savings account."

"No," Lin Feng said.

There was a sudden pause on the other end.

"What did you just say?" Su Yan asked, her voice dropping into a dangerous whisper.

"I said no," Lin Feng repeated calmly. "I am not sending him any money."

"Lin Feng, have you lost your mind?" Su Yan shouted into the receiver. "It is fifty thousand yuan! He is my brother! Do you want his friends to make fun of him because he drives an old car?"

"He can get a job and buy his own car," Lin Feng said.

"How dare you speak about Xiao Ming like that!" Su Yan screamed. "After everything my family has done for you! If that money is not in his account in ten minutes, do not bother coming back to this apartment tonight. I will lock you out!"

Lin Feng stood up from the bed, grabbed his backpack from the closet, and stuffed his property deed, passport, and ID cards inside.

"Keep the locks," Lin Feng said, his voice entirely devoid of emotion. "Keep the apartment. I