Magic Space: Struggling to Survive in the Apocalypse-Chapter 32: Torrential Rain, Mountain Flood

After a full day and night, the mountain flood began to subside. Evelyn Ford was in the bathroom, vomiting nonstop. She had already thrown up bile and streaks of blood, but her stomach was still churning violently.

The sounds of crying and shouting echoed from the floors above and below. Evelyn Ford squatted by the cat’s litter box, dry heaving uncontrollably.

The floodwaters had already submerged the seventh floor. The residents from the sixth and seventh floors had fled to the twelfth-floor hallway just to survive.

Evelyn Ford clutched the pocket watch hanging from her neck. She opened it to reveal the family photo inside. It had been taken when she was sixteen. With an innocent face and bobbed hair, she was beaming foolishly between her parents.

A tear fell onto the back of her hand. Taking a deep breath, Evelyn Ford closed the watch and slowly got to her feet.

A knock sounded at the door. Evelyn Ford, her face ashen, dragged her exhausted body over to open it.

"Are you okay?" Lauren Keller asked, looking at Evelyn Ford with concern.

"I’m fine. What about you?"

Lauren Keller shook her head. "I’m okay, too. It’s a good thing I went out a while back and found some wooden planks and sheets of iron to barricade the balcony."

The two had just breathed a sigh of relief when a commotion erupted from the eleventh floor. After listening for a few minutes, Evelyn Ford and Lauren Keller exchanged a look, both seeing the same exasperation in the other’s eyes.

In the eleventh-floor hallway, several people were kneeling on the ground, muttering incessantly.

"This is God’s punishment! This is God’s warning to us! Because humanity has destroyed nature, exploited its resources, and polluted the environment, God is using this disaster to warn us. We must sincerely repent to God, mend our ways, and become good people. Only then will God’s wrath be pacified and we be forgiven..."

"That’s Chapman from 1102," Lauren Keller said with a scoff. "Both of her daughters are overseas. She lived abroad for half a year, and I guess she found God. The followers kneeling behind her are survivors from the sixth floor. She’s taken them in."

"Impressive. She brainwashed them that fast," Evelyn Ford said, crossing her arms and watching with amusement.

"Oh, God, please forgive us ignorant humans."

"Forgive us! We were wrong! We don’t want to die!"

...

Evelyn Ford felt another wave of nausea. She waved goodbye to Lauren Keller, rushed back to her apartment, and burst into the bathroom, where she began retching VIOLENTLY in front of the litter box.

The repentance and prayer on the eleventh floor continued. Chapman proposed a three-day fast to prove their sincerity to God.

The residents on the eighth floor were now the most terrified. If the water level rose again, they would be finished.

Walter Owens from 801 went to Officer Graham’s apartment. He had to plan for the worst and make arrangements for his family.

It’s unclear what agreement the two families reached, but Officer Graham’s family agreed to take in the Owens family. However, they could only move in once the water rose to the eighth floor. For now, the people from the seventh floor were taking shelter in the hallways of the eleventh and twelfth floors.

The corpse of a black dog was wedged in the iron bars outside Evelyn Ford’s balcony window. The balcony was fully enclosed in glass with no openings, so Evelyn could only pray it would fall off on its own or get swept away by the current.

That afternoon, there was another knock on Evelyn’s door. When she opened it and saw Chapman from the eleventh floor, she had a sudden, bad premonition.

"Ford, God has guided me to you. He wants you to repent for your sins with me. Come out and join us."

Evelyn...

"Chapman, I don’t believe in God."

"Silence! Do not speak such nonsense and anger God! He will not be pleased! You still don’t even realize your own mistakes. What a foolish, pitiable human you are! Come out and kneel in repentance! If you just fast for three days and repent with a sincere heart, God will forgive you, and you will be allowed to live."

If the woman weren’t in her seventies, Evelyn would have slapped her across the face already.

’Is this some kind of pyramid scheme? The world’s already ended, and they’re still pulling this crap.’

"Is that so? Why don’t you have Him come out here? I’ll ask Him myself why I need to repent. What exactly do I have to repent for?"

"You... you... You’re incorrigible! Evelyn Ford, don’t say I didn’t warn you. If you refuse to repent, you’ll be the next one to die."

Evelyn Ford rolled her eyes. "I think that’ll be you."

SLAM! Evelyn slammed the door shut. Then she sprayed herself with disinfectant, as if afraid the woman’s idiocy was contagious.

Evelyn Ford didn’t know when the flash flood would stop. In her past life, it seemed to have lasted for two or three days, followed by endless flooding.

But with the arrival of the flood, the toads seemed to have vanished.

The flood swept down a lot of wood, and the braver residents started gathering it from the stairwell entrances. Sometimes they’d even find clothing, which they could wear after washing it in the torrential rain and drying it by a fire.

But people also got injured by debris that was suddenly swept in. The floodwater was so murky you couldn’t see a thing in it. Any cut had to be cleaned and disinfected immediately, or it would quickly become infected.

「The next day.」 The flood’s current slowed again, but the water level rose another meter. Everyone was fraught with worry, not knowing what disaster would strike next.

Evelyn Ford felt like she was living on medication. Fortunately, after two days of taking it, the nausea finally subsided. Chapman’s repentance brigade had grown by two: Officer Graham’s mother and their next-door neighbor, Jacobs.

They knelt in the stairwell, as frantic as if they were possessed. Evelyn didn’t give it much thought, but the others were severely tormented by the noise. After trying to reason with them countless times to no avail, Officer Graham gave up. That very night, Chapman, in her quest for repentance, went to meet God personally.

And so, all the people from the seventh floor moved into her apartment.

After that, the repentance brigade officially disbanded. The flash flood also stopped, but it had turned into a stagnant deluge.

Starting May 20th, the rainfall began to lessen. But with the toads gone, simply finding food and staying warm became a major problem.

While Officer Graham was salvaging wood, he was bitten by something. His right calf instantly swelled up like an elephant’s leg. By the time Evelyn Ford saw him, he had already fainted from the pain.

"Ford, Chester’s going to be all right, isn’t he?" Mrs. Graham asked. "Was he bitten by a leech?"

Evelyn Ford examined the wound. It was a red dot, the size of a pinprick. You could barely see it if you weren’t looking closely.

"It’s not clear yet. I might have to cut the wound open to take a look."

"Cut it open?" Mrs. Graham’s face went pale with fright. She looked incredibly haggard. Just a few days ago, her mother-in-law had joined the repentance group and had been brainwashing them daily about how humanity were sinners who must atone to God.

Her mother-in-law had only come to her senses after Chapman’s death. But now, her husband was hurt. Looking at her father-in-law, emaciated from rheumatism, her perpetually crying mother-in-law, and her young daughter, Mrs. Graham’s face was a mask of despair.

"Cut it open," she said. "I’ll help you hold him down."

Evelyn Ford had no time to comfort Mrs. Graham. She took out a scalpel, positioned it over the wound, and made an incision. The pain jolted Officer Graham awake, and he howled in agony.

Evelyn Ford pulled a small, white worm from the wound. ’This must be the culprit,’ she thought.

"What is that?" 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

"The worm that bit Officer Graham. It was about to burrow into his bloodstream."

It burrows into the skin immediately after biting, then enters the bloodstream. It could even make its way to the brain.

Evelyn Ford pressed her lips together. ’Looks like this is the next plague,’ she thought.