As the three of them were chatting, Officer Graham came out carrying a large dish of cheese-baked rice.
Behind Officer Graham were Ethan Dawson and Taylor Vance.
"So you three were hiding in here chatting. Come on, try my cheese-baked rice."
"Where is everyone else?"
Officer Graham pointed inside. "I made two big dishes. The others are in the living room watching TV. I left the other dish for them. This one’s for you."
"This is delicious! Mr. Graham, your cooking is on par with a five-star hotel chef." Quincy was the first to take a bite. Before the apocalypse, he’d had cheese-baked rice a few times, but none of it had been as good as Officer Graham’s.
"If I hadn’t become a police officer, I might have become a chef," Officer Graham joked, a rare occurrence.
Evelyn Ford and Ronan Kendrick also ate a good amount of the baked rice. Paired with the tea and several oranges they’d had earlier, Evelyn was starting to feel a bit stuffed.
"No bodies have floated down from upstream these past two days. The water source should be safe from contamination now."
Evelyn Ford nodded. "Things should be stable for a while. After all, the patrol team is still searching for those people. But the situation in the refugee camp is complicated. Besides those spoiled rich kids, there are plenty of scumbags inside the camp itself. When Ronan and I first arrived, we ran into a few lowlifes dragging two girls into a shack, clearly up to no good."
"A place like that is terrifying. The women and children living in the refugee camp must be on edge every single day."
"Why do they still live in the refugee camp, though? Couldn’t they just find a spot in the mountains to live?"
Evelyn Ford gave a helpless smile. "It’s not that easy. We’re in a polar night right now. Without the sun, it’s very difficult for crops to survive. In the refugee camp, the officials give each person three catties of relief grain. But if you move to the mountains, there’s no light. A person’s eyesight will rapidly deteriorate if they live in darkness for a long time."
"But with firelight, they should be able to maintain their eyesight, right?"
Evelyn Ford shook her head. "Firelight is too faint. Even with it, people are still essentially in darkness. The people in the camp are malnourished and don’t have enough food or warm clothes. It’s easy for them to contract all sorts of diseases. I expect a large number of them will die before the polar night even ends."
"The dead refugees... they wouldn’t just be thrown into the river to wash away, would they?" After Quincy said this, everyone fell silent.
"They probably wouldn’t. The administrators in Flumen should know the dangers."
"Perhaps throwing them in the river is the quickest method. At a time like this, who’s still thinking about protecting the environment? Or the water source?" Ethan Dawson’s tone was flat.
"It’s hard to say what’s more detestable—the natural disasters or the people," Taylor Vance sighed as well.
Evelyn Ford gestured for everyone to calm down. "Alright, let’s not sit here sighing. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. If something like that really happens, we either go to Flumen and deal with the do-nothing management, or we move."
"The heavens gave me the heart of a world-saver but not the ability to match," Quincy said, shaking his head with a theatrical air.
"Save the world? How about you save yourself first." Ethan Dawson clapped Quincy on the shoulder. "You just lost three games of cards to me. Starting tomorrow, you’re covering my patrol duty for three days."
Quincy wailed, "Ethan Dawson, you must have cheated! How else could my luck be so bad?"
Ethan Dawson replied with a straight face, "Have you ever considered the possibility that you’re just not that smart?"
Quincy... Another critical hit, straight to the heart.
「 」
Evelyn Ford and Ronan Kendrick entered the space again to plant rice. Water had already been channeled into the paddies; all they had to do was transplant the seedlings.
With no automatic rice transplanter, the two of them could only buckle down and work.
Since the farming and husbandry spaces now had a day-night cycle, they could only come in to work during the "day." The space’s cycle ran parallel to the outside world’s. So even though it was still the polar night outside, as soon as they entered the space, they could tell whether it was day or night in the outside world without even looking at a clock.
Several clumps of bamboo shoots had been planted next to the well. The two little pigs they brought back from The Second Base were in high spirits. Evelyn fed them vegetable leaves and coarse grains, and they had gained several catties in less than a week.
The husbandry area had practically become a zoo. The saplings they’d planted had all grown into mature trees, and water from the well had been diverted into the area, forming a small stream.
But the animals didn’t exactly coexist peacefully. The argali and takins were the most prone to fighting. The Mammoths, on the other hand, were rather lazy. They preferred lying in a corner and eating grass, never getting involved in the other animals’ disputes.
The two White Wolves had been corrupted by the wolfhounds. They no longer acted like vicious wolves and would just follow the wolfhounds around, yelping, "AWOO, AWOO."
"Ronan, I feel like both the husbandry and farming areas have expanded a lot. But during this time, aside from that one gold chain, we haven’t put any other gold jewelry in."
"Could it be a bonus from the space itself? After all, we haven’t let the black soil go idle, and we’re raising more and more livestock in the husbandry area, so maybe the space expanded automatically."
Ronan Kendrick nodded. "That’s possible. That one gold chain couldn’t have had that much energy. I’m more inclined to believe it’s a reward from the space."
Good fortune lifts the spirits. Not only did the space now have a day-night cycle, but it had also expanded by more than ten mu. With a wave of her hand, Evelyn decided to prepare an extra-special meal for everyone.
Everyone was stunned, staring at the wooden basin filled to the brim with king crabs.
"Let’s eat these tonight. Quincy, Miles Vaughn, you two handle them."
"No problem, leave it to us." Quincy rolled up his sleeves, looking eager to get started.
"Evelyn, this king crab has a lot of roe inside. What should we do with it?"
"The roe is probably dead." The space couldn’t store living things before. The king crabs had been caught at sea, and to get them into the space, all living creatures had to be processed first.
Taylor Vance and Zion Lowell came over. "Try putting the roe in water. Maybe they can still survive."
Evelyn Ford wasn’t hopeful. After all, if the roe had been alive, she wouldn’t have been able to get the king crabs into the space in the first place.
Once Quincy and Miles Vaughn finished preparing the large basin of king crabs, it was Officer Graham’s time to shine.
Evelyn Ford took a stroll outside. A patrol car drove down the road from time to time, a loudspeaker on its roof repeating the names of those four people on a loop.
Back in the living room, Ronan Kendrick and Taylor Vance were playing chess. Evelyn watched from the side, while Wyatt Vaughn and Joelle Finch went to the kitchen to help.
The game ended with Ronan Kendrick winning. Taylor Vance, not expecting Ronan to be a chess master, pestered him for another round. When that game ended, he still hadn’t had his fill.
"Ronan, you little rascal, you’ve been hiding your skills! Let’s play another game."
Ronan Kendrick... ’I knew I shouldn’t have won in the first place.’
Evelyn Ford, snickering from the sidelines, quickly came to Ronan’s rescue. "Mr. Vance, let’s stop here for today. Dinner will be ready soon. If you want to play chess, you can play with me. I know a thing or two as well."
Taylor Vance laughed heartily. "Alright, I’ll challenge you to a game tomorrow."
"Mr. Vance, my chess skills are just average. You’ll have to go easy on me then."
Taylor Vance raised an eyebrow. "Ronan also just said his skills were average. You two really are a pair, both so modest."