doomsday lamb

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 highest temperature in the afternoon even soared 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, it was once known as the Garden City of Oceania.

The city has 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 hot on the road outside the Capitol. The tires of the vehicles parked on the roadside melted, and the paint on the cars continued to soften, and drops fell on the ground.

Under the sunlight, the asphalt on the ground also melted, gradually turning into a dark, sticky gel. The entire street gave off an unpleasant burnt smell, which made people feel as if they were in a sewage that has accumulated over the years.

scrap tire factory.

In the middle of the driveway, among the crowded car debris, several black corpses were wailing feebly. Their faces were withered, their eye sockets were sunken, the blood on their bodies had long been dried and blackened, and their clothes seemed to be stuck together with the rotten flesh.

It seemed that 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 them. The rubber soles melted and became soft, and they were deeply sunk among the asphalt particles.

There is no doubt that the afternoon sun will ruthlessly evaporate all the moisture on this street. No matter you are a dead or living thing, you will not be able to escape the fate of being dried out.

At a quarter past two, two figures draped in black raincoats hurried across the street. They walked 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. There was originally a Scribner Dam that claimed to be able to accurately control the water level. But as early as the night of Advent, the dam's centralized control room was destroyed by black corpses.

It was destroyed in the riots. The survivors clearly remembered that the flames caused by the explosion that night lit up the lakeshore, and the dark smoke rose straight into the sky, and it did not gradually dissipate until ten days later.

The 400,000 Australian residents living in Canberra at that time 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 hot summer sun dried up half of the lake in Burley Griffin that people realized in horror that -

—They will most likely die of thirst before the food runs out!

Driven by the desire to survive, thousands of survivors packed up their belongings and prepared to move to Lake Burley Griffin temporarily. But among the hundreds of thousands of black corpses in the central area of ​​the city, how could the black beast give them such a chance?

?They were like the African wildebeest 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 from this "battle royale" alive was

Eight hundred people, they were scattered in nearby hotels, post offices and several diplomatic residences. The two sneaky guys in front of them came from one of the small shelters.

Arriving at the shore of Griffin Lake, the water level in the lake after the disaster has dropped to the lowest point since its establishment. The remaining stagnant water has formed a large number of puddles dotted among the gullies at the bottom of the lake. The puddles are full of mosquitoes and blueberries.

Green algae and turbid water obviously contain a large amount of cyanobacteria toxins, which are no longer suitable for biological use.

But this stinking lake is a precious water source that 800 survivors in a dozen gathering places rely on for survival.

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 know, the latest message for help left by East Bank 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 tide 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.

activities and 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, one of their friends had a high fever since last night. If they did not drink water tonight,

He will die from dehydration and shock!

Although they didn't move often during the day, it was obviously not the first time for these two people. One of them was watching the wind, the other hurriedly leaned down to push away the algae, and filled two bottles of water without much effort. After that, the two of them

The group hurriedly returned to an underground garage shelter 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 came here to drink water. Suddenly, the leader of a mutated dog with red eyes moved his nose.

It led the other companions to circle frequently around the place where the two were fetching water, then 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 did not bring any precipitation. The wind gradually picked up in the afternoon, blowing up the dead grass and garbage into a tornado. A bolt of lightning first hit a towering tree at the edge of the forest, and the entire tree caught fire within a few seconds.

It disintegrated and the fragmented trunk fell to the ground, igniting a nearby bush.

The wind helped the fire, and the flames instantly swallowed up the long-dried vegetation. As time passed, the sea of ​​​​fire continued to cover several nearby villages, and gradually grew and grew. A clump of flames was spreading toward the city along the direction of the wind...

Not just in Canberra, but across the entire 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. In previous years, fires occurred alternately, which promoted the reproduction of native flora and the regeneration of new vegetation. The Tu'ao District Government can control it with conventional measures. This time people thought that

Or the usual wildfires that happen every year.

But they forgot that this year is different from previous years, and the fire this time is completely different from previous years.

First, there was drought, little rain and days of high temperatures. In the months after the disaster, there was only one rain in the entire Australian continent. In that spring rain, the southeast trade wind completed precipitation in the eastern mountains, and then moved westward through the vast flatland.

In the central continent, not a single drop of rain was left.

During the bushfire season, the Murray River is as shallow as a stream. Like the Darling River, many of its direct currents have dried up at the beginning of the dry season. Many vegetation has dried up to the point where it can explode if given a spark!

Then the disaster caused the government to lose the ability to organize professional firefighting teams in an emergency. There were no fire extinguishers, no firefighters, and no helicopters to rain. The wildfires spread unknowingly without supervision. Wild mutant animals escaped from the jungle constantly.

The attack on the human camp forced the survivors to fight against the beast tide, resulting in heavy casualties in a short period of time.

Just as 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 in South Australia, Queensland, Northern Territory, and Western Australia. The entire Australian continent turned red. Countless koalas sleeping in eucalyptus trees died, and snakes, rats, insect frogs in the forest suffocated to death.

, the mixed smell of smoke and meat attracts all kinds of birds within a hundred miles. There are even some mutated birds that will pick up fire and throw it around, as if they are hunting in groups with the help of wildfires.

In Gray Ridge, the Nullarbor Plain, the Darling Mountains, the Kimberley Plateau... red and black smoke obscured the sky, and the fire illuminated the night. The flames on the sparse grassland rose up to a hundred meters with the air current, and the fire wall moved with the wind, as if

There were huge "waves" on the land.

Even in some places, strange thunderstorms occurred from time to time. Strong winds and high-speed rotating air waves formed pyrocumulus clouds that shot straight into the sky. Many forestside gathering places were surrounded by seas of fire overnight. Countless people posted distress messages on the FS community, but they were unable to respond.

There was no response. Among the thousands of survivors in a gathering place, not a single person escaped alive!

According to the memories of a team of evolvers who narrowly escaped 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 animals that had escaped from the fire.

Black beast.

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 began to quickly cover the area.

Soon the sky turned red, and the smoke and strong wind brought sparks, igniting everything they encountered. Driven by strong winds of 150 kilometers per hour, the wildfire engulfed the place where they were before in less than a minute.

area.

During their escape, a heat wave overturned one of their trucks. Although they lost a truckload of prey, they managed to save a life...