Dong Qiangqiang's Story of Leaving Germany

Chapter 1109. Flood (Part 1109)

After leaving the bookstore, Dong Qiangqiang continued to move towards the central area. The rain became extremely unstable under the encouragement of the wind, and it came at Dong Qiangqiang from all directions like wild boar hair, steel needles, and slaps. Dong Qiangqiang was secretly glad that he had adopted Lao Bai's advice, otherwise he would still be waiting foolishly on the train.

In the pouring rain and surging waves, Dong Qiangqiang was depressed to find that the road to the central area was becoming increasingly difficult to walk after walking around several streets. Before, there were many people in front and behind him who were as brave as him to wade through the water, but when he looked back, there was no one there.

He felt caught in a dilemma because there was no way forward.

He stopped and looked around. The bus shelter not far away was mostly submerged in water, with only the colorful chair backs sticking out of the water. A bakery billboard that had come from nowhere was stuck in the gap between the bus shelter and the traffic sign next to it. The bottom of the billboard had been in close contact with the window of the bus shelter from time to time, and the glass on the window had long been shattered by the "kisses".

Some residents piled sandbags at their doorsteps, allowing the flood to enter effortlessly through the windows.

The underground passage across the street had long been filled with water, and sometimes he could even see fish jumping up and down from the pool of water at the entrance of the passage.

He needed an inflatable boat, and a sturdy one at that. He had seen at least five deflated wreckages of inflatable boats floating past him, otherwise he would definitely not be able to walk on the street.

The barbed wire fence surrounding a small community sports field had several holes torn in it. I don’t know if it had been broken before, but only a corner of the poster on the wire fence was still swaying tenaciously in the wind and rain.

A little further away, several cars with their lights on and sirens blaring were pushed by the flood as if they were rear-ended. Fortunately, there was no one in the cars. They did not come to a complete stop until they crashed into the outer wall of a nearby house. They kept making strange noises, as if calling for people to come and rescue them. The last car was somehow pushed away again by the flood water coming up from behind and continued to rush towards the next street corner. There was a green phone in front of the car floating in the yellow-brown water, as if it was desperately trying to avoid the cars chasing it. Against this bleak backdrop, it gave people an inexplicable sense of humor.

Dong Qiangqiang was not surprised to see the broken wine bottles floating in the flood after seeing the bookstore destroyed. Needless to say, it was most likely a wine merchant that was harmed by the flood. He felt cold the moment he saw the wine bottle. Although the jacket he was wearing was said to have excellent waterproof performance and a waterproof index of up to 10,000 mm, which effectively blocked water penetration, it was still inevitably soaked in such bad weather conditions. His feet were soaked in shoes, and his shoes were soaked in water. After a long time, his body felt even colder. The wind blowing over the water was very cold, which made him feel even more guilty for not eating some high-calorie food in Luxembourg. He couldn't help but imagine that it would be nice to have a sip of white wine at this time. Even if he couldn't find white wine, a sip of vodka or whiskey would be great. If that didn't work, wine would be fine. However, he searched in the water for a long time and couldn't find a bottle that was still intact. He could only give up the idea of ​​drinking and lamented that fate was playing tricks on him.

The water under his feet was increasing, and it would be troublesome if he was sucked into the sewer with the manhole cover washed away. Reality forced him to be more careful, but when he noticed that a collapsed electric pole was half submerged in the water, he immediately realized that even with a rubber boat, it was not safe, and he had to find another way.

He turned his gaze to the sloping hillside a few streets away. Through the uneven roofs, he suddenly found that many people were slowly moving up the hillside. The crowd was walking and stopping, and he couldn't tell whether these people were going to leave the city or go in. He was busy rushing on the road before, and didn't pay attention to the movements of others. Only then did he realize that he had taken the wrong road. He vaguely remembered that he could get to the central area by taking the mountain road, but he was not very sure. Now that he saw so many people walking in that direction, he thought he could make it. He quickly turned around and walked towards the hillside. As he walked, he was in doubt: the water level was still rising. Even if he could get to the central area, could the bus really drive out when the time came? Besides, he didn't see a single bus heading to the central area along the way. Could it be that those buses had been waiting in the central area for a long time?

Although he didn't see the bus, Dong Qiangqiang did see a lot of cars heading out of the city on the way.

Some drove luxury trucks and some drove SUVs. The water was so deep, but the speed did not decrease at all. After a while, a wave of water hit Dong Qiangqiang's umbrella. This road was still passable. Dong Qiangqiang waved his umbrella to block it for a while, but the umbrella cloth was broken after all. He was so angry that he cursed, "Did you drive so fast because you were afraid that the water would not enter the engine?" The anger was drowned in the wind and rain. What surprised him most was that there were people who drove tractors to escape. Dong Qiangqiang had only seen tractors busy with farm work outside the window when he was on the train before, but this was the first time he was so close. He sighed: the nearly four-meter-high tractor gave people a sense of pressure, and the flood only reached half of the big wheel. He thought: Is it worth running when there is such a safe mount?

The muddy mountain road was not easy to walk on, and what made Dong Qiangqiang even more irritated was that there was a foul and rotten smell similar to that of excrement all around. It felt like he was next to a biogas tank, which made him dizzy and dazed. From time to time, he had to endure hail the size of fingernails sweeping across him. Fortunately, the strong wind also knocked down many short trees. Dong Qiangqiang picked up a passable branch and barely used it as a crutch. He used his hands and feet to climb up the hillside crookedly.

As he was struggling to move up the mountain, he heard a muffled sound from behind him, like a car crashing into a wall, or something heavy falling into the water. He squatted down, grabbed a branch nearby, and looked back. When there was no more noise, he set off again. When he climbed up the muddy slope with concentration, the road became easier to walk on, and more people started to gather around him.

After asking, he found out that everyone was rushing to the central area, and Dong Qiangqiang finally breathed a sigh of relief.

He then turned his gaze downward, and as far as he could see, every street in the entire town was immersed in a sea of ​​the same color.

In this lifeless color, just a hundred meters away from him at the bottom of the hill, several fire trucks and ambulances with flashing red lights were scattered and parked next to a residential area. He saw firefighters wearing headlamps, fluorescent uniforms on the upper body, and rubber waterproof pants on the lower body pushing rubber boats slowly forward in the water. The adults on the boats were covered in blood, and the children were crying. In the water area, there were firefighters using loudspeakers to command the frightened people to come down from the roofs or trees, firefighters busy rescuing people trapped in houses and cars to the boats, and firefighters pumping water out with hoses. The other end of the hose was thrown into the basement, and it was estimated that there were still people trapped in the basement. Of course, not all the trapped people were at a loss and helpless. There was more than one person sitting on the roof of the car, smoking leisurely with an umbrella, waiting for rescue. At this time, the flood usually had not reached the bottom of the roof.

Suddenly, there were several hoarse screams coming from the bottom of the mountain. They didn't sound like they came from a human being. Not only Dong Qiangqiang, but everyone behind him heard it, and they all turned their heads to look for the source.

Everyone's attention was simultaneously drawn to a slender arm dangling on the water, but it only dangled for a second before disappearing.

Dong Qiangqiang didn't see the arm first like everyone else, but was immediately attracted by the white sheets covering the ground next to the ambulance. He didn't react at first, and even counted the number of white sheets, but he suddenly woke up halfway through the count, and could only hear a "buzzing" sound in his head.

This was the first time Dong Qiangqiang had experienced such a scene in his life. He felt that it was simply horrible, and then he felt uncontrollable nausea and discomfort.

He warned himself not to pay attention to the white cloths, but he couldn't help looking at them. He suddenly felt that any language was pale and powerless to describe the passing of life. The only thing that kept coming to his mind was the old saying in the Tao Te Ching: Heaven and earth have no benevolence, and treat all things as straw dogs.

He used to think that among all natural disasters, floods were not the most terrifying or exaggerated compared to earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. Today, he realized the bias in his cognition. A seemingly ordinary flood could so easily take the lives of so many people and create a shocking scene.

Everything else except life and death is trivial.

Seeing someone who looked like he was drowning, the fireboat rushed over like a cannonball. When the firefighter grabbed the railing of the boat with one hand and struggled to lift the arm out of the water with the other hand, everyone exclaimed again: it was just an arm of an inflatable doll that was so lifelike.

The scene became even more chaotic after the false alarm.

The water level in the street rose a few centimeters without anyone noticing.