On the third day after deciding to build this shelter to help everyone survive the long winter night, everyone, under the command of Kantan, tried their best to drag the crucial main beam with a rope to where it should go.
Location.
With a muffled sound of "clang", the two ends of the main beam were pushed into the depression cut out in the center of the two short side stone walls of the foundation.
After stepping hard to make sure it wouldn't shake, Wei Ran and Kantan each called Gale and Dorian at the edge of the opposite wall, and together they easily lifted a sub-beam that was only a quarter of the size of a log.
The two auxiliary beams were placed in one breath, and everyone did not rest. Instead, they continued to place the thick wooden boards, which were more than four meters long, one by one on the three main beams and the long side walls at both ends of the foundation. In the end, only the
There was a gap only for them to enter and exit.
"The next step is to dismantle the tent and lay it on top." Kantan looked at Gale, "I remember you found a lot of nails in the oil drum yesterday?"
"It's in the tent," Gale responded as he walked towards the tent.
"When the time comes, nail the tent cloth to the wooden boards," Kantan said with great anticipation, "Just leave this job to me. You go down there and dig out the accumulated soil and charcoal."
"At least lay out the tent cloth together first." As Wei Ran spoke, he had already taken out the Mauser bayonet in the metal book under the cover of the Soviet cloak he was wearing.
Roughly, he cut off the canvas on two sides of the tent with a knife, and everyone worked together to spread it on the wooden board. Then they used nails and some large and small stones to hold it down, and finally covered it with the layer that they had originally cleaned.
Bedding material from dead branches taken from the brown bear's den.
After all the work was finished, everyone picked up a bundle of dead branches or firewood and eagerly crawled in through the reserved gap.
"It's really short inside," Dorian bent down and commented, "and it's darker than outside."
Indeed, just as he complained, after adding wooden beams and planks overhead, the basement that still contains a large amount of soil and charcoal now leaves only less than one and a half meters of space for them to move around.
As for the area, it's not much wider than the original bear cave. But fortunately, they don't have to worry about being buried alive in the snow.
"As long as we clean up the rubbish, this place will soon be spacious."
While Gale was speaking, he had already thrown the dead branches in his hand into the oil drum found yesterday. As for the things found in the oil drum, naturally they had been cleaned out and placed in the sled bucket outside.
"I remember that there were several bottles of wine in the metal box in the tow truck."
Wei Ran suggested while Gale was lighting the bonfire, "And we also have a chef, so how about opening a bottle of wine to celebrate?"
Kantan, who was also unable to stand up straight, touched the wooden beam above his head and said, "This is indeed a moment worth celebrating."
"give it to me!"
Gale, who had already lit the bonfire, threw some thicker firewood into the barrel, "When the soil around this oil barrel melts, we will move it to the corner and get you some delicious food."
"Before that, we must at least clear out a place where we can stand up straight."
Before Kantan finished speaking, he had already picked up a pickaxe and struck it hard on the frozen soil.
"I'm here to help you too." Dorian immediately picked up the second pickaxe and pounded the soil in another area hard.
"Is this the third day?" Gale asked abruptly.
Kantan paused, swung the pickaxe again, and answered vaguely, "The fourth day."
"I don't know if Quentin escaped or not..." Gale sighed and picked up a pickaxe.
Seeing this, Wei Ran sighed, but in the end he didn't say anything. He just picked up the pickaxe as well.
Amidst the clanking sound, large and small pieces of frozen soil and charcoal were dug out. When the accumulation was almost complete, they were all carried outside with canvas bags, covering the top of the head with the canvas and dead branches that had been laid not long ago.
.
After working for almost an hour, Gale had pulled the oil drum out of the frozen soil and moved it to the corner. Dorian also turned into a cook and brought in all the food and drink he had seized.
Weiran and Kangtan, on the other hand, were still hammering away at the frozen soil, trying to clear as much space as possible.
"I seem to have dug it to the bottom."
As Wei Ran spoke, he pulled away the frozen soil, revealing the charred wooden floor covered with ice at the bottom.
Dorian stretched his neck and took a look, "I am becoming more and more curious about what happened here."
"Some people will be curious about what happened here in the future." Wei Ran muttered to himself, changed his position and continued to swing the pickaxe.
At the same time, Gale had placed a large piece of bear fat on a scrap wooden board, chopped it into small pieces, mixed it with a small piece of snow, and threw it into the lunch box rack and placed it on the red-hot oil drum lid.
superior.
"I think we need to get a chimney," Gale said with a frown, "otherwise it will be too choked."
"After we clean up the garbage, we can build a fireplace at the entrance and exit."
Dorian, who was cutting potatoes on another board, said, "You can leave this kind of thing to me. When I was in the country, I often went to the city to help those rich people clean their fireplaces."
"Have you ever done this kind of job?" Gale asked curiously.
"I've been doing this kind of work since I was 10 years old"
Dorian said with some pride, "In our place, the work of cleaning the fireplace chimney is usually done by children, because their bodies are small enough and will not get stuck in the chimney, and they don't have to worry about the weight being too heavy to damage the chimney.
bad."
"It sounds like a lot of hard work," Gale said with a frown. He didn't mean he was disgusted, he was just choked.
“It’s really hard work, but you can actually discover a lot of interesting things.”
Dorian said with an experienced look, "Those rich people always put some inconspicuous but valuable little things around the fireplace. I stole two silver wine glasses and a broken pocket watch, oh.
, and there seems to be a silver table knife. In addition, bird eggs and birds are often found in the chimney, and those things can also be sold."
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! "Have you ever stolen anything?" Gale asked in surprise.
"We only steal things that are dirty and have obviously been forgotten by their owners." Dorian spread his hands, "We have to leave a way for the poor to survive, right?"
"It would be nice if those Germans thought the same way," murmured Kantan, who had been digging hard.
"In their eyes, we probably don't even count as human beings. I really can't understand why Quentin suddenly became like this when he had so many German chef friends before."
While Gale was speaking, he also began to use a spoon to turn over the bear fat particles in the lunch box, patiently boiling out the fat. When the entire basement illuminated by the fire was filled with an alluring aroma, he threw in a handful of green
pine needles. But the other three people in the underground shelter could not give a reasonable explanation for his previous doubts.
In the silence of everyone, the permeating aroma was filled with the fragrance of pine trees. Gale carefully poured the hot bear fat from the lunch box into a tin can box that had been scrubbed clean with snow, and then put a can full of oil into it.
Thin branches of pine needles, "I boiled some bear fat, and after it cooled down, everyone used it to smear the frostbite on their bodies. As long as you stick to it for a week, it will get better soon. We used to do this a lot in winter."
.”
"You should have gotten some of these things earlier," Dorian said, blowing his nose.
"We were outside before, so even if we applied it, it would be useless."
While Gale was speaking, he had already placed several other lunch boxes on the red-hot barrel lid. "When we clean this place up and it gets warm, I can make some bread with the flour, God testifies."
, my mouth is watering just thinking about the smell of baking bread.”
"If we could always eat bread here, I think we wouldn't even have to go to the Soviet Union." Dorian swallowed his saliva and expressed his inner thoughts, "Of course, the premise is that the Germans will not find this place."
"We don't have much flour..." Gale muttered and threw the chopped onions into the lunch box.
"What do you think?" Kantan asked Wei Ran, who had been silent.
"I don't have any ideas." Wei Ran didn't stop what he was doing. "As long as we don't get caught by the Germans or Finns."
Kantan shook his head imperceptibly, but didn't say anything else. Obviously he also had his own thoughts. After getting along with each other for the past few days, Wei Ran gradually saw the differences between the three people.
Dorian is the youngest here, but at sixteen or seventeen years old, he has no opinions and no worries. It seems that as long as he has food to eat and clothes to wear, he will always look cheerful.
Kantan, who is nearly half a century old, is obviously more stable and independent, but perhaps it is the maturity and a little sense of responsibility that comes from being a middle-aged man that makes him regard the survival of the remaining people as his main and only goal.
.
As for Gale, this young man in his mid-twenties has the heaviest burden on his heart. Quentin, who lured away the enemy, and the lying half-track, these guilts that he should not have to bear have always made him feel guilty.
There was a deep sense of guilt hidden in my heart.
It was precisely because of that guilt that he couldn't settle down at all. He just wanted to do as much as possible. Whenever he had some free time, he would debate whether to get Quentin back.
As a bystander, Wei Ran could clearly feel these emotions and thoughts. But he also knew that these three people would eventually stay in this basement forever.
Will they leave here if I tell them the truth?
Wei Ran was startled by the idea that popped into his head, but then he shook his head secretly. Not to mention whether the three of them would believe it, but where could they go even if they left here?
In this polar night that they don’t know how long it will last, they are lucky enough to find such an abandoned basement that can provide warmth and the brown bear that can feed them for a long time. If they really leave these, maybe they won’t even be able to survive this short period of time.
The warmth and comfort will disappear with the cold wind howling outside.
Wei Ran sighed silently and dismissed the thoughts that had just emerged from his mind. So many experiences of wandering around the battlefields of World War II had already made him clearly understand that he was only a bystander of historical events after all, no matter what he did.
, and there is no way to change the history that has happened. All he can do is to record as much as possible, but this small shelter and dim brightness made him do it even if he took a photo.
