Chapter 212: Chapter 212: The Law of the Jungle

By the time Officer Tristan Tanner returned to the emergency response office, Officer Sean Pierce had already finished most of the questioning regarding the matter.

With the evidence laid out before him, Lance Schultz knew he couldn’t escape death, so he confessed everything in detail.

Lance Schultz and his wife had been colleagues, both working well-paid jobs at a major corporation, and they lived a very comfortable life.

But after the heatwave began last year, their company started laying people off, and they both lost their jobs one after another.

With no source of income, and with prices skyrocketing after the natural disaster, their savings were soon not enough to cover daily expenses.

By the last month of the heatwave, their savings were completely gone, and they had no choice but to start eating sand vine cakes.

Lance Schultz couldn’t accept this kind of life. He had been pampered since childhood and couldn’t stomach the gooey substance, often going so hungry his stomach ached.

Later, the volcano erupted and Terra was plunged into darkness. One day, he was jolted awake from a dream by hunger. As he stared out the window into the pitch-black world, a plan quietly began to form in his mind...

Finally, one night three days later, while his wife was sound asleep, he smothered her with a pillow.

In her struggle, his wife knocked over and broke a decoration on the bedside table, waking their child in the next room. The child ran over and pounded on the door, only to burst in on the horrific scene of their father murdering their mother.

Seeing this, Lance Schultz, fearing exposure, gritted his teeth and strangled his own child.

After confirming his wife and child were both dead, he dragged the two bodies into the bathroom.

He covered the floor and walls with plastic wrap, leaving a hole over the squat toilet, and began to bleed the two bodies.

After they were bled, he gutted them, then found the salt he had hoarded. He coated the bodies in salt and hung them from the outdoor air conditioning unit.

He lived high up on the 28th floor, and the floors above him were vacant.

Moreover, the apartments on either side of his were also empty.

Thus, no one discovered that in the pitch-black nights, two bodies were hanging from the exterior wall of Building 12, brazenly displayed for months on end...

As for the internal organs, Lance Schultz wrapped them in layer after layer of plastic wrap, hid them in a suitcase, and buried them on the hill behind the residential complex under the cover of darkness.

As Lance Schultz spoke, he suddenly burst out laughing. "Take a look! The weather’s so dry now, it’s perfect for making air-dried cured meat. Whenever I get hungry, I just open the window, take a piece, and cook it. So convenient!"

Because his immediate neighbors had all moved out, and he was very careful to block his doors and windows when he cooked the meat, basically no one noticed the meaty aroma coming from his apartment.

The faces of everyone present grew darker the more they heard. Winnie Summers pulled Melody Summers into her arms and covered her ears, not wanting her to hear any more of it.

Officer Tristan Tanner felt his stomach churn again. Suppressing the wave of nausea, he slammed his hand on the table in fury. "That was your wife and child! How could you do it?!"

But Lance Schultz just sneered. "I could barely survive myself, so why the hell should I care about them? Back in ancient times, when a general was short on rations, he would kill his own concubine and cook her for his soldiers to eat!"

"And it was praised as a noble story! Everyone lauded the general for his righteousness! So what’s wrong with me eating my own wife and child? If I had shared them with the neighbors, I’d deserve to be called righteous too!"

Officer Sean Pierce’s face was ashen. He said in a low, stern voice, "Stop your twisted logic. This is the twenty-first century. You’ve brutally taken two human lives. Don’t you feel any cruelty in that?"

Hearing this, Lance Schultz just yelled, "Don’t you try that guilt-tripping bullshit on me! So what if it’s the twenty-first century? This world has always been about the strong preying on the weak! It’s been that way since the dawn of time! Anyone weaker than me deserves to be my food!"

Lance Schultz even said, as if boasting, "I’ll tell you the truth. I was killing all the stray cats and dogs in the neighborhood back when I was in elementary school!"

"I’d skin them and tear them apart, one by one, while they were still alive! You have no idea how interesting it was, watching them run around as nothing but a bloody pulp! If you can kill animals, why not people?!"

Watching Lance Schultz’s crazed state, everyone in the room frowned, finding him completely beyond reason.

In the end, he was dragged away by three police officers who had arrived from the station.

After Lance Schultz was hauled away, Officer Tristan Tanner pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed wearily. Looking at the confession in his hand, he said, "If the other residents in the complex find out about this, it could cause a panic..."

Everyone nodded, unanimously deciding to keep the matter under wraps.

If the other residents found out that two gutted corpses had been hanging from one of the buildings for months—that they might have been walking right underneath them every time they entered or exited the building—many people probably wouldn’t be able to handle it...

******

After the matter was dealt with and the door-to-door survey was successfully concluded, Melody and Winnie Summers left the emergency response office and went to the adjacent Crystal Mart.

The supermarket was mostly empty, with only Crystal Lynch sitting at the cash register, playing on her phone.

Crystal Lynch was wearing an orange-red woolen coat. Her skin was already fair, and the coat complemented her so well that from a distance, she looked like a sweet little persimmon.

When Crystal Lynch saw Melody and Winnie Summers walk in, she quickly stood up to greet them.

She pulled Melody aside and said, "Melody, you reminded me to stock up on cold-weather supplies in advance. While my dad and brother were helping the factory haul materials, they took the opportunity to buy some cotton quilts and down jackets. Let me bring a few quilts over for you tonight!"

Melody Summers smiled and shook her head. "You should keep them. I’ve bought plenty for my house too. It’s going to get colder and colder in the coming days. Besides quilts and down jackets, you should also stock up on things like electric heaters, coal stoves, and personal space heaters."

"And if you can still get your hands on fuel, don’t hesitate. Whether it’s gasoline, diesel, coal, bamboo charcoal, or solid alcohol—buy it all and hoard it!"

’You can never have too many supplies for staying warm. The coming snow will last for months. The whole world will enter a frozen age, and many people will freeze to death.’

’Melody remembered the period of extreme cold and blizzards from her past life. The global death toll had soared exponentially, several times higher than the total deaths from the year and a half of high temperatures and the volcanic eruption combined!’

Crystal Lynch nodded. "Okay, I’ll remember that!"

******

It was dinnertime by the time Winnie and Melody Summers returned to their villa. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

As soon as they stepped into the living room, they smelled stewed ribs.

Normally, Melody Summers would have cheered. She loved her grandma’s stewed ribs and could eat a huge bowl of them all by themselves!

But after what happened in apartment 2804 today... the smell hit Melody Summers, and she instinctively began to dry heave—

"RETCH—"

It wasn’t just Melody; Winnie Summers also looked pale. She rubbed Melody’s back to soothe her, frowning slightly as she covered her own mouth.

Seeing this, Miss Lowell hurried over, asking anxiously, "What’s wrong with you two? Are you feeling unwell somewhere?"

Their grandma came over as well, asking with concern, "Why are you suddenly dry-heaving? What did you eat for lunch? Did you eat something that upset your stomachs?"

Hearing this, Melody Summers quickly covered her mouth and shook her head.

Seeing their reactions, their grandma and Miss Lowell grew very worried and kept asking what was wrong, but both of them looked hesitant to speak.

Under the two elderly women’s repeated questioning, Melody and Winnie Summers had no choice but to briefly tell them what had happened in apartment 2804.

Afraid of frightening the two women, they omitted the details, only saying that a monster who ate his own wife and child lived in 2804.

They had expected their grandma and Miss Lowell to be shocked, but to Melody and Winnie Summers’ surprise, the two older women were remarkably calm after hearing the story.