Chapter 93: Base Integration (8)

The top commanders of the forces in the Mentougou and Huairou mountain bases were so sickened by the implication of the parade announcement that they could no longer bring themselves to mention their original ideas. They simply washed their hands of the matter and handed their troops over to General Liu. “Old Commander, you take command of them. The two of us will go teach at the military academy.”

After the parade units passed through the city gate tower, they all headed off to their respective battlefields. General Liu wasted no time in dispatching the armored vehicles from both bases to the front as well.

At the same time, the Special Committee hosted a banquet in the Great Hall of the People for the leaders of the two surviving bases.

At the banquet, the military leaders of the two bases were assigned to teach at the military academy, while everyone else was reinforced into the Provisional First Army Group to serve as officers. The Provisional First Army Group had ample weapons and equipment after the cleanup of several militia armories, but no one knew how to use them, and most of the instructors were only second-rate at best. This time, that problem was solved all at once.

Government officials requested assignments to the National People’s Congress, or, failing that, the Political Consultative Conference would do. They said they were still willing to serve the people and hoped to be given a chance to keep working.

The owners of surviving companies asked to be allowed to continue running their businesses. “I’ve noticed all your personnel and work are organized along military lines,” said the owner, a man named Sun Manfei. Before the apocalypse, his assets were worth no less than five billion, and his main business was real estate and pharmaceuticals. Now he was not foolish enough to keep doing real estate.

“This is an emergency in the apocalypse; that’s understandable. But this kind of allocation of resources isn’t very efficient. I could set up a company to handle cleanup work and pharmaceutical work. I wouldn’t just avoid asking the government for relief; I could even pay taxes.”

Xu Zibiao was overjoyed. One parade speech had stripped these lords of their military power. Since ancient times, who had ever pulled off such an outrageous feat? If not for concerns about the impact, he would have proclaimed himself a hero of post-apocalyptic humanity and spread the word far and wide.

He had already decided to record this astonishing achievement in his will. Future generations, reading the family genealogy, would know the glorious deeds of their ancestor. He was intoxicated by the thought, as though he could already smell the incense that his descendants would one day burn for him.

Raising his wine cup, Li Fengyi smiled on behalf of the Special Committee and agreed to their requests, wishing them success in their new posts, happiness in life, and good health.

When he got home that night, Li Fengyi was smiling so broadly it seemed his teeth were all he could show. Wang Shujuan asked him, “What happened? Why are you so happy?”

Li Fengyi only smiled and said nothing.

Liu, the army commander, shook his head beside him. The young man was quick on the uptake, but his mind was still not deep enough.

The two highest-ranking military leaders from the mountain bases went to the military academy to become teachers, while the government personnel joined the Political Consultative Conference and the National People’s Congress. The Special Committee had put a great deal of thought into it, since both institutions were rather unfamiliar.

In fact, in the years before the apocalypse, the role of the National People’s Congress had gradually become more prominent. Liu explained that in earlier times it had indeed been a place to settle disgraced officials, so it had not really been able to exercise much in the way of oversight. After all, what could one reasonably expect from the defeated to the victor except a few half-hearted objections?

As time passed and the founding generation gradually departed, systems of retirement, rotation, and term limits were refined, and only then did the National People’s Congress slowly begin to function normally. This method was also a measure for maintaining stability.

If everyone were simply driven out into society, many people might not accomplish anything, but they would still be perfectly capable of causing trouble. That would only create chaos. In that sense, it was the wisdom of experienced statecraft, though it had given the public a poor impression of the National People’s Congress and made it a frequent target of criticism.

It seemed the Special Committee’s National People’s Congress would also spend some time in a state of hand-raising approval. Under the current tense circumstances, Li Fengyi thought there was nothing particularly wrong with that. Before the apocalypse, this system had also been gradually explored and improved. He did not expect to create a structure that surpassed anything from before the apocalypse.

That was not realistic. Everyone was smart. Everyone knew how to act according to actual conditions.

After the area between the defensive line and the northern mountains of Beijing was cleared of the massed zombies, Sun Manfei’s cleanup company would take over the work. The Special Committee decided to establish a Ministry of Commerce, one of whose responsibilities would be to manage the various new companies.

Their cleanup method differed from that of the Civil Affairs Department. The Civil Affairs Department went in fully equipped in chain-mail gear; apart from not carrying weapons, they were no different from the army. Transport was handled by heavily armed units, and everything ran on a supply system, with three meals a day without interruption. Aside from not being soldiers, they were essentially the same.

Companies, by contrast, would first send in personnel in chain-mail gear to inspect and mark any dangers. If there was danger, armed teams would then be dispatched to sweep the area. Everything else would be done by unarmed survivors in ordinary clothing, saving a great deal on equipment consumption.

Part of it was the difference in organizational structure, and part of it was the difference in equipment.

Take temperature tolerance, for example. Military-grade equipment had to function from minus forty degrees to plus one hundred and twenty degrees. Industrial-grade equipment had to function from minus forty degrees to plus eighty degrees. Civilian-grade equipment went straight from zero degrees to seventy degrees.

To meet such standards, military-grade equipment cost far more than industrial-grade, and industrial-grade cost far more than civilian-grade. The difference in cost was often measured in multiples.

The companies also devised a wide variety of incentive systems. If they did a poor job, they would not starve after all; there were too few people left in the apocalypse. The Special Committee was an organization that drew on experience from before the apocalypse, and it had strict labor protection regulations.

Still, doing poorly meant receiving far less material reward than others. There were also all manner of performance contests and the like. Even though everyone had come from an era before the apocalypse, one marked by advanced education and abundant information, none of them could help being drawn into the system.

The Special Committee’s minimum guarantee lasted only three months. It did not support idlers, and the current situation did not permit idlers to exist. Anyone who had not yet joined a company or found employment would be sent to the basic labor battalions organized by the Civil Affairs Department to perform dangerous work.

In general, except in matters of life and death, the company system was fairly efficient. After all, a company was meant to create value, not to be a place where people fought to the death. This was especially true when it came to developing new demand. The desire for profit kept them constantly thinking about how to better serve the currency.

At present, the Special Committee’s leadership structure was rather chaotic, with national institutions and government institutions mixed together. Although it had been set up according to the organizational model of the pre-apocalypse government, this was still the apocalypse, and they could only patch the head when it hurt and the foot when it hurt. After all, they still had not rescued those members of the standing leadership, so they could not act in the name of the state.

The mountain base reported that on the day the apocalypse began, the national leaders had been on inspection tours in different places for various reasons and had all lost contact. The few in Beijing had not been rescued, and together with the army, they perished on the road. The Special Committee very much hoped to rescue at least a few of them, because that would make all kinds of matters much easier to handle.

The three bases had fully merged. With no more snoring beside the bed, the Ministry of Armed Forces began drawing up new plans. The population of the northeastern provinces alone numbered more than one hundred and ten million, while the south was China’s heartland, home to more than a billion people. For now, however, they were nothing but a dozen or so zombies.