Suzy’s mind was made up—she had to make a trip to P City.
Once P City was locked into the navigation system, Suzy looked back out at the heavy rainfall outside.
The downpour was still beating down with intense fury.
Guess I’ll wait a little longer.
Just a bit longer.
What Suzy didn’t expect, however, was that this wait would stretch straight into the evening.
The rain showed zero sign of letting up. Outside, the sky remained cast in a gloomy, dark haze while raindrops slammed against the roof and windows of her vehicle in a dense, muffled rhythm.
Giving up on leaving anytime soon, Suzy stepped out of the driver’s seat and headed to the back of the RV. She switched on a warm reading light, then turned on the overhead TV mounted on the wall.
Since there was no way to get moving right now, she might as well kick back and enjoy a well-deserved rest.
Her stomach let out a low rumble.
Reaching into her spatial domain, Suzy fetched a warm set meal packed before the end of the world, along with a cup of milk tea. Leaning back to the peaceful white noise of the rain outside, she began watching a movie.
It was impossibly cozy.
Once she finished her meal and the movie came to an end, Suzy tidied up her trash and curled up on the bed.
Sleeping inside an RV during a torrential storm was an absolute luxury. The gentle tap-tap of raindrops drumming against the roof acted as the ultimate sleep aid. Knowing she was parked safely within an official base compound with all her doors and windows bolted shut, Suzy drifted off into a deep sleep before she even realized it.
When she reopened her eyes, darkness had fully settled outside.
Suzy rolled over, wrestled with herself for a moment, and sat upright in bed.
Reaching out, she drew back the window curtain and peered outside.
The base had turned on its streetlights along the perimeter; though dim, they were certainly better than nothing.
Suzy noticed that the parking lot was far more crowded than it had been in the afternoon. Several unfamiliar vehicles were now parked around her, some with mud splattered high across their chassis—looking as though they had just rushed in from the outside world.
Near the lot’s main entrance, she caught sight of a few figures walking at a slow pace, having just stepped out of their cars and making their way toward the supply station.
A few men stood near their vehicles smoking cigarettes while others spoke in hushed tones, their voices swallowed up by the rain.
The grim, heavy expressions on their faces sparked Suzy’s curiosity regarding what they were discussing.
Carefully, she cracked open her window just a sliver. A chilly drizzle drifted inside, dampening the back of her hand with a refreshing coolness.
At the same time, the faint murmur of their conversation filtered in over the sound of the rain.
One of the men was speaking to his companion, his tone dripping with lingering fear and relief:
"...Several cars got buried completely. We were only a couple of minutes behind that stretch of road—if we had set off just a tiny bit earlier, we would be the ones buried alive right now."
"A landslide?" the other man asked.
"Yeah. The entire mud hillside along the road caved in, blocking most of the route. A few cars happened to be passing right through that exact spot when it hit..."
The speaker shook his head, leaving the rest unspoken, though his meaning was painfully clear.
While his voice remained low and somewhat muffled against the storm, Suzy caught every single key detail.
A massive landslide... several vehicles buried... right along the route she was supposed to take.
A cold chill settled in Suzy’s chest.
Driving through a torrential downpour like this was indeed playing with fire—especially with the ongoing threat of seismic activity.
Suzy listened a bit longer while feeling the drizzle cool against her skin. The rain had softened considerably compared to the daytime, but traveling through the dark was far too risky.
Safety came first.
After waiting out another full night inside Black Mist Base, Suzy woke up the next morning to find that the rain had completely stopped.
The storm had broken sometime in the middle of the night, though its wet traces lingered across the muddy grounds.
Black Mist Base’s management was surprisingly humane, as they hadn’t kicked anyone out during the storm. Because of this, the entire temporary parking lot was crammed to full capacity.
Now that the skies had cleared, everyone trapped in the transit area was eager to leave at once. The massive bottleneck wasted a significant chunk of time.
Suzy spent an hour and a half waiting in line before her beat-up minivan finally rolled out through the gates of Black Mist Base.
Settling back into the driver’s seat, she pressed forward along the navigation route.
The post-rain roads were treacherous and caked in thick mud, making every mile a grueling struggle.
After driving for roughly half an hour, Suzy spotted a familiar figure up ahead along the muddy road.
Now that the rain had ceased, more and more figures began appearing along the muddy thoroughfare.
People were setting out on the move once more.
Spotting passing vehicles, quite a few individuals raised their hands to signal, hoping to hitch a ride.
Yet this was the apocalypse.
Vehicles willing to pull over... were practically nonexistent.
Even Suzy’s beat-up minivan drew several waving arms from hopeful passersby, but she remained completely unmoved. She was nowhere near naïve enough to fall for that.
With the slick, slippery road condition making driving precarious, Suzy maintained a steady, cautious speed as she pressed forward.
Up ahead stood another tunnel. However, because last night’s heavy downpour had triggered a massive landslide, she had no choice but to follow the other vehicles in taking a long detour.
This alternate route forced her to make a massive loop.
As she drove, Suzy kept feeling an odd sense of familiarity with the surrounding scenery, though she couldn’t quite place where she had seen it before. Sneaking a glance at the navigation screen, it almost looked like a path she had already traveled!
It wasn’t until she passed a road sign that she realized in sheer disbelief—isn’t this the exact same road leading back to the base?!
She had just driven out of the base, only to loop right back toward it?!
Was this some kind of sick joke?!
Suzy’s mood plummeted like a rollercoaster, and she hurriedly recalibrated her GPS navigation.
Upon closer inspection, she breathed a slight sigh of relief—she hadn’t gotten lost after all. It turned out the bypass route simply required backtracking along this specific stretch.
However, after driving further down the road, she noticed the crowd of pedestrians growing visibly denser.
Last night’s torrential downpour had triggered a cascade of secondary disasters, causing structural collapses in numerous nearby areas. Many households that could have managed to scrape by at home had seen their remaining shelters completely wiped out by the sudden storm.
Now, all of them were trekking toward Black Mist Base.
When several more people attempted to jump out and block her minivan, Suzy ignored them completely, slamming the gas pedal straight to the floor and scaring the mob into scattering out of her way.
As she forged further ahead, the crowd gradually thinned out, but the terrain grew exponentially harder to navigate—covered in a thick, slick coat of heavy yellow mud that clung to the road.