sunk into the earth

Chapter 19 Running away from home 1

Zhang Chen has always had great distrust and blunt resentment towards the world, and turning out of the bedroom is the only way he can escape.

When Zhang Chen ran out, he felt a faint stabbing pain in his eardrum, as if something in the distance pierced in with the wind.He didn't care, and he had no destination, just wandering the streets like this.

Zhang Chen likes to observe people when he is sad. The book talks about people in different forms, but he searched his life, only to find that there are only two types of people—Yuncheng people and Cheng Sheng.

Of course he is also from Yuncheng himself, but before that, Zhang Chen believed that people all over the world should work hard for ordinary life. Even the Chinese teacher who was full of doctrine from Beijing back then had to worry about the salary of 800 yuan.But Cheng Sheng's arrogance pierced through him, and Zhang Chen couldn't help but accept that there are really people in the world who only do things according to their preferences, and are even willing to go retrograde in life.

He walked on the street with his schoolbag on his shoulders, fixed his eyes on the few passers-by, observed them carefully, and found that they looked exactly the same, and even walked with the same sloppy footsteps.

It started to rain, so small that no one even had an umbrella.Zhang Chen was walking in the rain, walking slowly in the cyst-like city, looking at these identical people, he couldn't wait to do bad things and spend all the money in his bag.

Zhang Chen walked past a small shop. The owner of the small shop was holding a bowl for lunch. There was a color TV in front of him, but instead of watching TV, he chatted with his wife next to him, "There is a mine in the suburbs this morning." It collapsed, and I don’t know if there are any dead people.”

A figure suddenly flashed in Zhang Chen's mind. He stopped, turned his head and approached the window sill of the canteen, and asked the boss who was eating inside for a bottle of iced orange soda.

The boss immediately put down the bowl and ran over, took out a bottle from the refrigerator and handed it to him.Zhang Chen paid the deposit, leaned against the window of the canteen and drank soda, during which he casually asked the boss: "Which mine collapsed?"

"Isn't there just a mine in the east?" The boss glanced at him and asked, "Do you recognize Jianjun? It turned out that the mine contracted by Jianjun was sold to a southerner, and that mine collapsed this morning. I will go to the front in the morning. Buying goods in the eastern suburbs, when I heard a bang, my ears and a box of soda were almost shattered!"

Zhang Chen's hands shook violently, he left the bottle on the window sill of the small shop and ran away.

The boss was taken aback by his sudden movement, and when he recovered, he shouted anxiously from behind: "Your deposit! Your deposit!"

Zhang Chen turned around and came back to take the deposit, and hurried to the main road. He didn't care about money at this time. He hailed a taxi for the first time since the summer vacation. Stop ahead."

The taxi driver was an old fritter with ear tubes all over the place. He glanced at Zhang Shen in the rearview mirror and asked him, "Where are you going now? It's full of police and search and rescue teams now."

The car started, but Zhang Chen didn't answer.

The driver didn't mind his indifference, and asked again: "Are relatives and friends in the mine?"

Zhang Chen raised his head, and his eyes collided with the driver in the rearview mirror directly in front of him. The unfamiliar looking gaze made him uncomfortable. He pinched the blood scab on his palm, "My friend works there."

The car was completely silent now, they both shut up at the same time, and neither of them said a word.

As the rain intensified, the driver threw him several hundred meters away from the mine and refused to go any further. Zhang Chen had to pay to get out of the car, and walked slowly towards the mine alone.

A cordon was drawn around the mine, and frames of muddy people were transported out of the ground. Zhang Chen saw one more corpse when he took a step forward.Surrounded by men, women and children crying and crying, probably family members, this is the first time Zhang Chen saw so many police forces, a group of people in uniform shouted "Don't disturb the search and rescue" and pushed the crowd away.

Among them was a reporter with glasses, about 25, who held a black camera in the rain, with an excited expression, and shouted while filming: "Now I am at the Ping'an Coal Mine in the eastern suburbs of Yuncheng. At six o'clock this morning There was a collapse accident at 25 minutes." He ran, transferred the black camera in his hand to the rows of corpses dripping with coal ash water and black mud on the other side, and continued: "So far, 15 people have died. The exact reason is still under investigation..."

Before he finished speaking, a man who looked like a security guard rushed up, knocked down his camera, and cursed: "No filming! Get out!"

The reporter in black glasses fell to the ground, turned around on the ground, and happened to be in front of Zhang Chen. He hugged the camera in his arms tightly, his body was drenched, and he was in a mess.

Zhang Chen looked at the reporter in front of him who was soaked and embarrassed, thought of someone in a trance, and subconsciously stretched out his hand to pull him up.

There was a layer of mud rolling on the black glasses reporter's glasses frame, he was not particular about it, after being pulled up by Zhang Chen, he rubbed it on his clothes casually a few times before putting it back on.

He said "thank you" to Zhang Chen, looked up and saw a young man who looked like a student, he was a little surprised, and asked again: "Are you a family member?"

Zhang Chen repeated what he said to the taxi driver at that time, "My friend works here, I have to find him." After speaking, he pushed the reporter's hand away, trying to rush in to find someone alone.

"Hey! Wait!" Seeing that he was about to run towards the cordon of piled corpses, the reporter hurriedly stopped him, "You can't make it through, the family members will go to admit them when the statistics of the dead and injured are finished."

Zhang Chen stopped in his tracks, frowned, turned around and said, "His parents and sister have gone to work in Shenzhen, and he is the only one at home."

"Then we have to wait for the police to notify his parents to come back, and friends will definitely not be able to claim them." The reporter pushed back the rain-wet hair on his forehead, and said behind him: "You go outside to see if there are any friends of yours. Report to the Public Security Bureau tomorrow."

Zhang Chen swept the rows of corpses in the cordon line away from him. Those people had just been carried out from the bottom of the mine, and they had already been blown up badly. Legs, or I don't know which part of the torso.A layer of black mud mixed with blood was stuck to their bodies and faces, and the rain from the sky could not disperse them.

Zhang Chen looked at the heads of these corpses one by one, and each one was blurred. He then looked at the arms, legs and feet of these corpses, and suddenly found a lonely arm in the middle, with a familiar watch hanging on his wrist.

Zhang Chen took a staggered step and almost fell into the mud next to him.

It was something Yang Mingming had shown off in front of him before, saying that he had saved his wages for several months and bought a pair of identical watches for himself and Haiyan, and he was waiting for the opportunity to give it to her.When they said this, they were about to watch DVDs together. Yang Mingming also told Zhang Chen that his contract had only one year left. After this year, he would go to Shenzhen to find his parents and sister, and come back to Haiyan after earning enough money. .

A hand next to Zhang Chen helped Zhang Chen. He looked to the side and found that the reporter who had just fallen to the ground was pulling him out forcefully. His expression was anxious, and his mouth opened and closed like a factory gate: "Hurry up, let's go!" Look at the attitude of chasing people in front, there is nothing to shoot today, come back tomorrow."

Zhang Chen's face was still indifferent as usual, but his legs and feet were trembling uncontrollably.

The reporter put the camera in the bag and took a full look at his trembling arms and legs, but he didn't know how to comfort him, so he took a few symbolic shots of his heavy shoulders and sighed heavily.

The two of them braved the rain and went back to the hotel where the reporter with glasses lived. On the way, the reporter with black glasses told Zhang Chen that he was a reporter from New View, named Zhang Ning, who had just graduated from university for two years.

Zhang Chen listened dumbly, and said after a long time: "My surname is also Zhang, and my name is Zhang Chen."

The rain was getting heavier and heavier, and they were talking in the rain, and the rain kept falling on their lips and being sucked in, it was salty and fishy.Zhang Chen tasted the salty smell of rainwater. The familiar taste reminded him of the dark closet in the bedroom during the last rainstorm, and his stiff body relaxed a little.

Zhang Ning asked Zhang Chen's age, and when he heard that he was only seventeen, he glanced sideways in surprise, "They are both adults, and they are not relatives. You can't claim your friend if you run out alone."

The rain ran down Zhang Chen's cheeks, and several streams of water flowed into his eyes. Zhang Chen wiped his face, "What should I do?"

"Hurry up and inform his family, do you have his family's phone number?"

"His parents and sister both work in Shenzhen. They don't have mobile phones, and I don't know their phone numbers. They only come back once a year during the Chinese New Year."

Speaking of this, Zhang Chen suddenly grabbed the reporter's wet sleeve, his lips trembling, "Aren't you a reporter? Can you help him get into the newspaper?"

Zhang Ning was embarrassed by these words, but seeing the stubborn look of the boy next to him, he sighed again, and compromised: "I'll think of a way, I can't do this alone. You come back with me, we I will interview you with a few questions, don’t worry, it will be anonymous and will not disclose any information about the interviewee. If it is worth digging, I will find a way to mix your friend’s information in it and help him get published in the newspaper.”

Zhang Chen nodded and said "OK".

The hotel was not far from the suburbs. After returning home, the two of them took a shower one by one, and washed the clothes covered with dust and mud by the way. After washing, they came out in wet clothes, and the cloth was all wet and stuck to their bodies.

Zhang Ning found a cowhide notebook from his schoolbag, and asked a few questions in a regular manner, such as "How many years has this mine been in operation" and "Who is the boss?" These are questions that Zhang Chen basically can't answer.

The more the reporter asked, the more confused he was. He put down his notebook and pen, and the two things made a "snap". He said, "Tell me about your friend. Why didn't he go after the whole family left?"

Zhang Chen lowered his head, held the hot water poured for him by the reporter, and sipped it, "His contract is five years, and now there is one year left, so he can't leave."

The pen that had been put down was picked up again, and the reporter wrote a few sentences in the notebook, and then asked Zhang Chen: "Just now the people in the mine got into a quarrel with their family members, saying that the contract they signed was a salary of 30 yuan a day, life and death. Conceited, the mine is not responsible for the accident, has your friend told you?"

Zhang Chen held the paper cup, his fingers trembling, "I said so."

The reporter took a few more notes and asked inexplicably, "Is this kind of contract still signed? Isn't this life in exchange for money?"

"Here we either enter the factory workshop or go to the mine. If you have connections and a diploma, you go to the factory. If you have no connections, you go to the mine without a diploma."

The reporter kept memorizing what he said. Halfway through memorizing, he looked up at Zhang Shen's face and asked him, "What about you? You look like a student, neither like a factory worker nor a mine worker."

"High school students, the college entrance examination is coming soon." Zhang Chen looked at the black camera set up by the reporter to hang on the table, and asked, "What about you, are all college students who can be reporters?"

"It depends on the situation and ability." The reporter put away the pen, took a sip of the hot water on the table, and continued: "Other agencies may not be the same. The hard threshold for our agency is to graduate from a bachelor's degree, preferably a journalism department, a Chinese department." And sociology too."

Zhang Chen nodded and didn't ask any more questions.

It was very dark that night. Zhang Chen lay on a bed as hard as a brick in a strange hotel without closing his eyes for a long time. The whole city will be dyed pure black.

Three completely different people, Mingming, mother and Cheng Sheng, appeared in Zhang Chen's mind at the same time.The arm covered in black mud was continuously enlarged, and Zhang Chen seemed to be able to see the last second of the explosion in the coal mine. The searchlight shot out a narrow light path, and the ray of light disintegrated in an instant accompanied by a few loud explosions, and there were also people disintegrated at the same time. His body exploded with a bang, like rolling into the black popcorn machine at the gate of the family courtyard.

Today Zhang Chen understands that the body of ordinary people is so worthless, and God will take it away if he wants to, not talking about karma, and there is no reason.He had no desire to cry, and even the sadness lasted only a little while in the evening.Zhang Chen just had a huge confusion about this world. The old man said that everyone has his own life, and good and evil have their fruits. If this is true, why some people's lives are so high above the clouds that they can't even call themselves injured. The little wounds of the little ones also make people feel cold and warm, and some people are born with the word "Atonement" engraved on their foreheads, and they can't even find their family members after death.

Zhang Chen thought of his parents, himself, and the big chimney in the steel factory that was emitting endless black smoke.Zhang Chen thought, they must all be born with sins, they are the people God hates the most, and they have to spend a lifetime of atonement to pray for a little bit of blessing.He thought of Cheng Sheng, and the old Cheng and the professor's mother he talked about. Their family must be favored by the heavens. They were born with a halo, talked about hundreds of times more advanced than them, and they were so rich that they were desperate for ideals. Flow, they are so barren that they lose face for living.

The reporter on the other bed was already snoring loudly, and Zhang Chen was still thinking about something with his eyes open in the dark.He decided on two things that night - he must find the whole body and his family for Mingming, and he also has to bleed for things other than life.