Chapter 21 Chapter Nineteen: The Weird Smile

As I mentioned, so far, I have faced life and death three times, and I almost drowned twice. I have already said that there is one more time, I almost died of freezing.The place was when the seawall was built on the coast of the Yellow Sea. The time was the middle of November in the lunar calendar. I can't remember the exact date. That day, the whole morning was sunny and sunny, and the temperature was about sixty-seven degrees Celsius. When I was working, I was sweating in a single shirt. After lunch, I received a task. I and another colleague took eighteen people to collect food. The total amount of food was two thousand catties, and the round trip was thirty miles.It's a very comfortable job, it can be completed in about four hours, and you can be lazy along the way. After setting off, you don't rush. When you arrive at the food station and collect the food, you feel that something is wrong when you go back. After walking for two or three miles, you will be full. The sky was dark and the north wind was howling. It became colder and colder as we walked, and it was unbelievably cold.

All twenty people were considered to have cotton jackets on their bodies, and their living conditions were poor. Most of them wore hollow cotton jackets, that is, inside the jackets, without any other shirts.And the padded jackets were old too, the cotton was hard and hollow, some parts had long since disappeared, so it was not enough to keep out the cold, and at this time, everyone felt the severe cold. But the sky is getting darker and darker, it looks like the afternoon is the same as the dusk, on the wasteland, only our group is walking, except for the howling north wind, no one makes a sound, and no one stops, the world is vast, at this time it is really Feel the insignificance of man compared to nature.

What was more serious was the excruciatingly painful cold. His face was already numb, and his hands and feet also lost feeling. The cold wind blowing on his body was like being stabbed by a knife. That colleague and I were empty-handed, and it was natural. We started to jump and run in order not to be frozen, while the eighteen people, each carrying hundreds of catties of grain, couldn't jump, and still walked step by step. . There are no houses around to shelter from the cold, and the distance to go forward and back is about the same, so we have to bite the bullet and rush forward. Suddenly, two people fell down. As soon as the two people fell, the person in charge of the team naturally wanted to go and see, only to see the two people fell on the ground, curled up.But there was a weird and inexplicable smile on his face.The situation was so bad at this time, the two people were still laughing, and they really couldn't help but get angry. At the time, they shouted hoarsely: "Get up, fuck, you're still laughing, what's so funny!"

Those two people didn't respond to the scolding at all. They stretched out their hands to push one of them, and the tentacles were cold and stiff. At that moment, I realized that these two people had frozen to death, and sent them out together. With that scream, I immediately decided: give up the food, run forward, and find a place to escape!Another colleague thought it was impossible to throw away food, and the crime was very serious. At that time, he cursed a series of swear words, and ran forward in desperation. Everyone naturally ran forward together. Down. All the fallen people, without exception, had that weird, sinister smile on their faces that seemed to be mocking something.At the beginning, some fell down, so I went to have a look. Later, the instinct of survival drove me, and I didn’t know anything about the outside world except running forward desperately. I only knew to run desperately, in the biting cold wind.

I was the first to crash into a room, and my colleague also ran into it, frightening the villagers in the room, but immediately, they knew what happened. A middle-aged man hugged Hay, stuffed into the stove, beckoning us to sit near the fire. After the two of them sat down, their bodies shook like wine chaff. They looked at each other, their faces were blue and their lips were black. Of course, their own appearance was not much better. There was only one thing in their mind: don't laugh, don't laugh, just smile. so cold! A middle-aged woman just couldn't make a sound. When the stove was on fire, she scooped water into the pot and gave us a small bowl of water to drink. From the cold water at the entrance to the frozen water that entered the heart and lungs, we drank it slowly until it was warm. Water, when he drank almost boiling water at the end, he took a long breath, which was regarded as his life.

I hid in the villagers' homes until the afternoon of the second day before the rescue team brought cotton-padded clothes and trousers. When they left, they gave the villagers 20 catties of food coupons without repaying them.The villagers didn't say anything from the beginning to the end, only when asked why the dead still laugh, the middle-aged man replied: Anyway, it's better to laugh than to cry when you're dead.Unexpectedly worthy of aftertaste. Afterwards, I learned that on that day, the temperature dropped to minus fourteen degrees Celsius, and none of the eighteen people were spared.Of course, the eighteen people were not the only ones who froze to death on the entire construction site. No one knew the exact number. Even if they were not on the road, how could the shack be enough to keep out the severe cold?For those who froze to death in the hair pit alone, there were three people in the team. Two or three people from huts squeezed into a hut, and then used all the things that could keep out the cold, and some people still died of freezing in the crowd.

The strange thing is that the cold snap has passed in two days, and the temperature has reached above zero again. People are dying, and no one complains.I was spared that time, firstly because I was young, I was able to rush into the houses of the villagers at the last moment, and secondly, because the villagers knew how to save lives, drink cold water first, and gradually warm it to hot water, otherwise, even if I don’t die, there will be It's really hard to say what the consequences will be. As for that weird smile, I have been asking people. Experienced people say that people who freeze to death must be like this, and they can't tell why.

A doctor said that it was mostly due to the abnormal stiffness of the muscles of the people who died of freezing, so the muscles on the face were deformed, and it looked like a smile! That smile, eh!