In H Country, rouge waves as tall as two-story houses crashed on the shore.
The weather had been bad since day 4th and all the businesses except for the hotels near the beach had stopped operating.
The tourists who wanted to spend their vacation in the sea were stuck in their hotels complaining about the weather.
One of them was Tamila and her family whom Nanzhi met at the airport.
Because of Nanzhi's words, Tamila pestered her parents that she wanted to stay at the 20th floor to see the sunrise and sunset.
Her parents didn't agree at first since it will be a hassle and dangerous for their family who had children to rent the higher floors.
What they booked beforehand was the first floor but they were unable to resist their daughter's cry, they reluctantly agreed and this decision undoubtedly saved their lives because on the 10th day, a tsunami occurred.
Several islands near the H Country had landslides simultaneously.
When the landslide entered the water, tens of thousands tons of water was displaced. Coupled with the fierce winds, it created a twenty-meter tsunami-like wave as it reached the H Country's coastal areas.
At 3 in afternoon, a loud rumbling sound roared from the south side of the terrace of Tamila's room.
Everyone of Tamily's family ran out and saw what happening.
In the distance, at the end of sight, between the buildings, a gray water line was encroaching little by little.
The noises in their ears became louder, the sound of surging waves, the sound of buildings being crashed and shattered, the roar of cars, people's terrified and desperate screams for help.
Tamila's parents saw the low-rise buildings being washes down and thing high-rise buildings being shaken to the point of crumbling.
"Mom! Mom!" Tamila cried out, afraid of what she was currently seeing.
Her parents hugged her close and their faces displayed the same expression.
If they had rented the first floor, they would be among those people being knocked and washed away.
Just the thought of it made them shuddered.
...
One could hear arguments in almost all floors. It was because of the smell coming from the walkways.
Due to the flood, the sewage system was disrupted and sewer waters began to back flow and the residents from 8th to the 10th floors found their toilets emitting foul smells.
The covered their nose and locked the toilets' doors with furniture but the awful smell still penetrated through the gaps of the doors.
Everyone living in these areas pinched their noses and was filled with the urge to gag. It was hard to swallow the food with the disgusting smell hang in the air.
Now that the toilet cannot be access, the residents knocked on the doors of those upper floor tenants and those who cannot hold on any longer settled their business nearby.
Thus, these sparked arguments and the people involved ended up fighting.
Someone from the HOA intervened on time and threatened the residents to be excluded from the supplies distribution.
Not only that, those rodents like rats, mice, cockroaches, and small frogs began to infiltrate the houses through the sewer pipes and small crack or openings while others could be seen running and jumping around.
The building was filled with shouts and curses of the residents. The ones who were not careful in storing their things were very angry after finding out that remaining of their food stash had holes and bites marks.
Because of the desperate circumstances, the people had no other choice but to still eat them and thus incurred fever and started vomiting.
Nanzhi had long expected this to happen. Her apartment in the past was also infested with rodents.
To deal with it, she searched the small openings or cracks these rodents could enter, sealed them and set small traps like using petroleum jelly and sticky pads.
At night she hardly sleeps to hunt them while keeping watch of the robbers that pick the locks of the door at the same time.
On the 10th day, she sealed the siphon jet of the toilet, drains in the bathroom, and the kitchen sink with the cement and gravel.
The water used from bathing and washing was stored in her inventory.
For the temporary toilet, Nanzhi mixed the gravels she obtained from Lu Chenyu and cat litter made of wet papers rolled onto small balls the size of a pebble, to which she got from that small district.
One of them was an office and the drawers inside the desks contained a lot of papers.
The alarm sounded in Nanzhi's unit.
In the past few days, the alarm had been ringing every day, and new scratch marks and dirty fingerprints would appear on the number lock of the latch door.
Nanzhi pushed the cover of the peephole a little. The visitor was apparently the Mother from 2101.
Nanzhi didn't open it immediately. She turned off the generator, dragged it in her bedroom, arranged the furniture and appliances in a messy manner, threw the garbage like fruit and vegetable peels and Styrofoam boxes in her inventory and lastly take out a 'sewer perfume', mimicking the condition of her past apartment.
If her unit was clean and there was no smell, then people would wonder there was wrong.
Nanzhi didn't trust the woman truly and thus in order to prevent the latter from creating trouble, Nanzhi had to make this 'sacrifice'.
Auntie Yang seemed to be in a desperate situation as she didn't leave even when Nanzhi took her time.
Nanzhi finally opened the door. The first she noticed was the Mother's face was haggard and her current expression showed anxiousness.
Once Auntie Yang saw Nanzhi, her face lightened up a little, "I'm sorry again for disturbing you but can I ask for a favor?"
"What kind of help?"
Auntie Yang's voice cracked a little as she told Nanzhi about her son, "My son, Dan Dan, he had a fever, rashes on his feet and had been vomiting for almost two days. I tried lowering his temperature by wiping him with warm water but it was not working. I was wondering if you have cold medicine. I will not take it for free. I'll trade it for a bottle of water and some packet of noodles."