When the biting cold wind blew through the building full of traces of fire, the burning smell that hit his face made Wei Ran, who had just climbed up to the first floor, subconsciously think of another building that was also destroyed by the Germans at almost the same time.

A "Gela", and friends who we met briefly in the fragments of history and will never forget them again.

He took a long breath and looked around. Perhaps because of the bombing, half of the three-story building had collapsed. Even in the remaining half, long holes appeared on the ceiling of the first floor.

crack.

Looking through this crack, he could even see bombers or fighter jets flying across the sky from time to time, as well as black smoke rising from nowhere.

Looking away, he glanced at a nearby room that had mostly collapsed and saw a wooden sledge truck over one meter long and half a meter wide, as well as a gray blanket hanging on the handlebars.

Ignoring the sledge truck, Wei Ran stepped on the rubble and climbed up to the almost open-air second floor. After a rough inspection, he climbed up along the rubble to the smaller remaining third floor.

There are only two or three well-preserved rooms on this floor, and these rooms are the same as those downstairs. All wooden furniture, floors, window frames, door frames and even doors, everything that can be used as fuel have been removed.

There was even a skinny, frozen zombie body that had been dead for who knows how long in one of the rooms.

Sighing secretly, Wei Ran looked around, bent down and picked up a tattered sheet that was leaking everywhere, and silently covered the body, barely helping him save the last shred of dignity.

Walking to the next room whose roof had also been torn off, Wei Ran sat down against the wall and took out everything in the metal book and checked it out.

What surprised and delighted him was that this time, whether it was the kerosene gas lamp, the pie stove, or the American oil stove in the kitchen utensil basket, all the fuel inside was full.

Not only that, the chocolate in the double-layered food box, the two cans of condensed milk he put in the backpack, and the raw materials of camellia oleifera in the backpack were also there! Also brought by him, a time smuggler, were also

Including the honey he put in his portable flask!

Even among the three oil barrels, except for one that was still full of kerosene, one of them even contained at least one-third of honey! The oil barrel that originally contained hot cocoa, on the other hand, was empty this time, with nothing at all.

No.

Fortunately, although the honey in the British P44 kettle was gone, it was replaced with hot cocoa from the USS Johnston.

But after the surprise, are these enough to eat and drink... Not enough, obviously not enough, far from enough!

Sighing secretly, Wei Ran finally took out the Nagant revolver and checked it. Seeing that the magazine was full of bullets, he took a deep breath, put away his only weapon and stood up, while taking out the warm flying leather.

After putting on his hat and flying gloves, he carried the rusty saw back to the first floor.

Wrapping the tattered blanket on the sledge truck around his body, he dragged the sledge truck out of the ruins of the building. In the shadow of the building, with the last rays of the setting sun, he looked for

holding anything that could be used as fuel for the fire.

But along the way, I didn't see many things to burn, but the pedestrians who were also wandering on the road pulling sledges were slower and thinner than the last ones.

"Plop!"

Just as he was looking at the strange Leningrad residents in a daze, a thin and out of shape man fell on his back on the road while walking. While Wei Ran was watching or waiting, this man

There was no struggle or attempt to get up at all!

After coming back to his senses, Wei Ran subconsciously ran over with his wooden sledge and helped the fallen man up.

However, before he could see the person's appearance or even his gender, just the light weight made his heart tremble.

Untying the other man's scarf, he was an old man with high cheekbones, sunken cheeks and eye sockets. He took off his gloves and tried his breathing. Wei Ran sighed secretly, wrapped his scarf tightly again, and wrapped him

Put it on the sledge that the opponent was originally pulling, and then use this sledge as a coffin,

With difficulty, he pushed forward into the shadow of the ruins of buildings on the roadside.

He didn't know if the thin, shapeless old man was looking for heating fuel like himself, let alone where his home was and whether there were people at home waiting for him to bring the fuel back.

Wei Ran, who has also experienced extreme and prolonged hunger, knows very clearly that compared to other ways of death, starvation is undoubtedly the cruelest and longest way to die.

But just now, he witnessed the last moment of this long death, and watched helplessly as the old man whose name he didn't even know starved to death in front of him - he was too late to save him even if he wanted to.

If there are other family members behind this old man...

Wei Ran reached out and touched the frozen building ruins and sighed again. With such low temperature, I'm afraid...

Look at the people around you who continue to wander the streets and alleys with numb faces like walking zombies, look at those who stop and take off their hats to attend this short funeral, look at those who also stop and stare at the ruins where the body is.

People who don’t know what they are thinking.

All he could do was to pull his sledge and leave, continuing under the setting sun, in the slightly choking smoke, with the roar of the plane overhead and the sound of explosions and gunfire all around.

, seriously looking for any fuel that can be used to burn and keep those children warm.

However, until the setting sun was completely swallowed by the horizon, except for a wooden chair with only two legs left in his sledge truck, he found nothing else to burn.

Along the way, except for the buildings where people came in and out, most of the doors and windows of other buildings had been removed. The ruins that had been blown down seemed to have been cleaned up, and no wood could be found at all.

Just when he didn't know whether to continue searching in the dark or return as soon as possible, a whistle sounded in the night sky that was already filled with gunpowder smoke and roaring artillery fire that made Wei Ran's heart palpitate!

Without thinking at all, the extreme fear and the sense of crisis that he had cultivated from so many battles on various battlefields made him subconsciously drop the sledge he had been dragging, and made a move that was definitely not good-looking.

I swooped over to a tram that had been out of service for who knows how long.

"boom!"

Just as he hugged his head and curled up, the second floor of a state-owned store, which was only 10 meters away from him, was hit by a shell fired from an unknown source and exploded in a flash of fire.

Covered the entire wall facing the street!

In a sudden splash of earth and rocks, several pedestrians who could not dodge were hit by fragments and broken bricks. Before they could even scream, they fell to the ground, slowly staining the ground full of footprints red.

Snow.

After patting a piece of rag with sparks that fell on his lap, Weiran waited for a moment and saw that no second shell was coming. Then he stood up and looked at the state-owned store across a tram carriage from him.

.

After a while, thick smoke billowed out of the originally closed store, and the floor on the second floor collapsed into the first floor.

"Crash!"

Just as passers-by subconsciously gathered around, the room next to the store was also affected and collapsed!

Subconsciously, as the crowd gathered around, there were no goods at all in this state-owned store that had been closed for who knows how long. But even so, the people around them still took off saws or crowbars from their respective sledges, or directly ignored the danger.

He climbed into the burning shop, picked up two wooden chairs, hobbled out, put them on his sledge and walked back.

Seeing this, Wei Ran immediately pulled his sledge over and tried to find something to burn.

However, before he could find his target, he found waves of feeble crying coming from the collapsed room next door. Stopping, Wei Ran turned around and looked at the only remaining window in the collapsed room next door.

He was sure that if there had not been this war, this window with a strong Tsarist Russian style decoration would have been particularly beautiful. But now, except for the anti-theft iron railings installed on the outside, there are no windows and window frames at all inside. Instead,

It's the bricks blocking the windows.

After looking around and seeing that no one was paying attention to him, Wei Ran put his hand into the gap in the anti-theft guardrail and pulled out two bricks from the brick wall that blocked the window, revealing a small hole only ten centimeters square. He didn't even wait for him to remove it.

When I brought my eyes and ears closer, the feeble crying became much clearer.

He took out his flashlight and poked it into the hole to briefly cast a dim yellow beam. Wei Ran was stunned when he saw the scene inside the collapsed room.

This not-so-large room has been mostly buried by the collapsed ceiling. In the only small space left, there is a thin and shapeless young woman, with one side of her withered breast leaning against it.

Beside the fireplace.

In the fireplace that she blocked with her body, there was a baby that looked to be no more than two years old. When the light shone on it, the baby had slipped from the woman's arms, and one of his feet seemed to have stepped on it.

On a tin bucket with burning embers in the fireplace.

And the woman was still struggling at this time, trying to reach out to the side of the little baby to keep him away from the dangerous but warm iron bucket.

However, she obviously couldn't do it. Dark red blood overflowed from the corners of her mouth, and a wooden beam collapsed from the ceiling on her back!

After coming back to his senses, Wei Ran immediately extinguished the flashlight and used the fastest method to

The speed changed to wire cutters, and after using all his strength to cut through the anti-theft railings that were as thick as a pinky finger, he roughly pushed down the brick wall blocking the window, and got in as quickly as possible.

"let me help you"

Before Wei Ran finished speaking, in the faint red light provided by the iron bucket with burning charcoal fire, he had already carried the tightly wrapped baby out of the fireplace that was extremely clean and covered with a small mattress.

come out.

Protecting the baby and the woman with a blanket, Wei Ran turned on the flashlight and checked. Fortunately, the woolen felt socks on the baby's feet were thick enough. She was only burned, but only the soles of her feet were red.

, and was not burned.

"He's fine"

As Wei Ran spoke, he helped the woman pull down the hem of her lifted shirt, then awkwardly picked up the baby and showed the woman his white and tender soles.

"She's a... girl"

The thin woman whose lumbar vertebrae had been broken by the collapsed beams and whose clothes were stained red with blood said feebly, "She... her name is Galina, Galina Valentin... Valentin

Novna Eitman. Her birthday... is... September 9, 1941... Her father... is... is... a horse-drawn sleigh

..Valentin Peter of the Convoy...Petnovitch Altman.”

"Her name is Galina Valentinovna Eitman. She was born on September 9, 1941. Her father is Valentin Petnovich Eitman of the horse-drawn sleigh transport team." Wei

Ran repeated while bringing the baby's tender hands to the young mother's mouth, giving her the opportunity to kiss her daughter one last time.

"Yep..."

The young mother, whose mouth was bleeding, gently kissed the baby's palm, leaving a blood-stained kiss on it. At the same time, tears fell on the baby's face, and flowed down the thin little face.

His face slid down, and finally it dripped on the collar, on the sickle and hammer logo sewn with fabric.
To be continued...