by Chu, Wesley
Hengyen finished up the meeting, wished Wangfa and Qingwei luck, and then sent word to his team about the change of plans. He pulled them from their current tasks and ordered them to catch a few hours of rest. They would head out shortly after midnight.
* * *
The sky was pitch-black when Hengyen’s team boarded one of the small fishing boats and drifted downstream toward their target, a small bridge near Wuqiangxizhen village. He had only four others on his team: Weizhen, Haihong, and two engineers, Lankui and this other young man whose name Hengyen kept forgetting. Something about the boy’s voice grated on his nerves and made his mind blank. Besides, fresh kids like him rarely survived their first mission, so why bother?
The team huddled beneath the cloth canopy as Lankui steered the rudder. They had just navigated around a sharp bend when their fishing boat nearly crashed into a crop of rocks. This part of the river was choppy and the small group were jostled around as if they were riding a roller coaster. Water sprayed into the boat as they narrowly avoided a capsized sailboat, cartwheeling away from the hull and spinning into an eddy wall. They nearly capsized themselves as Lankui struggled to regain control. Hengyen saved the young engineer from going overboard when he lost his balance and nearly tumbled over the side. He got dunked into the water headfirst before Hengyen managed to grab a fistful of his shirt and pull him back in. Hengyen couldn’t help but break into a grin as he watched the young engineer sputter and screech like a wet cat. It had been a long time since he’d had “fun,” if he could call it that. This was as close to fun as he’d gotten since the beginning of the outbreak.
Lankui finally got the boat under control and they drifted past another stranded boat, this time a water taxi. More than a dozen jiāngshī screeched from inside the passenger area of the boat as they passed. No sooner had the wind team managed to get around it than they encountered another obstacle, this time a capsized tugboat.
They passed more and more boats, forcing them to weave carefully as through a maze, one that changed constantly, opening new paths and closing others as the currents pushed the boats around. The sounds of jiāngshī groaning and teeth chattering joined with the rhythmic thunks of the boats clunking against one another and the waves lapping against the hulls. It was inevitable that they would eventually hit a dead end.
They found the source of the congestion shortly before dawn. A great big barge had crashed into one of the bridge’s foundations and capsized, creating a blockade beneath the bridge preventing anything bigger than a canoe from passing. There were now a hundred or so meters of ships between them and the bridge they intended to blow up.
“What’s the plan, dàgē?” Haihong asked.
Hengyen scanned the banks. Both sides were teeming with jiāngshī. “Pack our gear. We go the rest of the way on foot.”
“On foot? But, dàgē, we are far from shore,” said the other engineer. Hengyen clenched his teeth. That high-pitched whiny voice…
Without a word, Hengyen stepped up on the rim of the small craft and hopped to the next, an upturned rowboat. He landed with a loud bang, thin metal flexing and groaning beneath his feet. Several jiāngshī on the shore turned their crooked, ruined heads in his direction. Hengyen stabilized himself against the moving platform, took two great steps, and hopped to the next boat.
Whiny’s eyes widened as he stared at the row of gently moving platforms. “There has to be another way, dàgē,” he pleaded. He was a young man who had made a brave show of volunteering for the job when the call first went out. It seemed it was easier to be brave in front of a crowd of his peers than in front of the dead.
Hengyen turned around halfway, glancing at Whiny. “Follow my orders, stay close, and nothing will happen to you. The Living Revolution depends on us.” Hengyen turned to Haihong. “Look after the fragile engineers. Make sure nothing happens to them.” He leaned in as he passed on his way to the front of the boat. “Watch that one carefully. He looks ready to panic and run.”
He must have not spoken softly enough. The other engineer, Lankui, who had run with the wind teams until the secretary learned about his engineering degree, grinned. “Fragile, eh? Don’t worry, dàgē. I’ll keep him in line. Hey! Dummy! Don’t you know you should be more afraid of the windmaster than the dead?” Whiny blanched.
Hengyen nodded. “Thank you, Lankui. How does it feel being back out in the field? I heard about you fighting jiāngshī in the Charred Fields last week. Staying sharp?”
Lankui saluted lazily. “Yes, dàgē. I volunteered to maintain the wall’s eastern fortification. We’ve gotten into several good scraps.”
From what Hengyen heard, Lankui was underselling it by calling the action a “scrap.” One thing was for sure, the encounters were becoming more common. He slapped Lankui’s shoulder. “I’ll leave the young man to you, then.”
Lankui distributed the packs laden with C-4. He made a face when Weizhen shied away. The old engineer slapped the bag several times, causing the windrunner to jump. “These things won’t blow up if you drop or shake them. They need detonators to have any fun, so relax.”
Hengyen scanned an adjacent barge, then a small ferry on the other side of the boat. He decided to take his chance on the barge, believing there would be fewer jiāngshī there than on a ferry. He maneuvered his current fishing boat next to a ladder on the side of the barge and grabbed the first rung. No sooner had he planted his feet on the deck than he saw broken tents on the main deck area and realized he had chosen poorly.
It might have been the angle of the moonlight, but the closest jiāngshī looked almost surprised. Had it raised an eyebrow at him? Its graying skin hung off its bones like swamp moss. A broken tibia jutted from a blackened slit in its leg. The thing managed to shuffle a step forward before Hengyen buried a dagger in its skull through the soft mentum of the chin. Past the falling corpse, several more jiāngshī appeared and began to crowd him. Hengyen had no choice but to stand his ground. He dispatched two before the rest of his team got onto the deck.
Hengyen helped Lankui up and then urged his team on. “We need to move.”
They ran to the bow of the barge, which was jammed up over a small yacht. Haihong swung over the side and dropped to the lower deck, then helped the engineers while Weizhen stood guard. The jiāngshī on the deck crowded closer. Weizhen lodged his spear in the gut of one, somehow getting the point stuck in the bone. He yanked back, throwing the jiāngshī around, but was unable to free his weapon. Another jiāngshī came from his side and tried to take a bite out of Weizhen’s arm. Hengyen’s dagger sliced through the air and severed its limb at the elbow. He pulled his man back and pushed him toward the edge.
“Go.” Hengyen jumped over the side as soon as his windrunner disappeared, landing heavily on the yacht’s deck. The impact rattled his bones, but he was on his feet an instant later, looking up at the barge to make sure none of the jiāngshī had followed them down. Fortunately, the barge’s rails prevented that. He turned his attention to the rest of his team just in time to see Haihong kill a skinny bikini-clad jiāngshī.
“Boat’s clear,” she replied, yanking her short sword loose.
Weizhen was holding and studying his forearm.
“Are you all right?” Hengyen asked.
“It bit me, but…” He paused, concern all over his face. “I don’t think it’s deep. I think I got lucky.”
The scratches looked light; they had barely broken the skin, but there were still traces of red. Hengyen had seen similar seemingly minor wounds end up killing a person and turning them. Still, he was not ready to amputate one of his best windrunners on the basis of scratches. “Watch it carefully,” he instructed. “If it’s not better by evening, you know what we have to do.”
Weizhen’s already worried and pale face grew even whiter. He nodded. “Yes, dàgē.”
Hengyen turned to leave but then noticed Weizhen still standing there, staring at his minor injury. There were times when Hengyen had to be a cold, calculating comma
nder to his reports. There were other times when he had to act like the big brother everyone called him. This was one of those times. He shook the young windrunner’s shoulders. “Listen, son, worry is a poor companion. We have enough problems coming for us. Don’t invent more. There’s nothing we can do about it right now, so focus and hope for the best, understand?”
Weizhen nodded. “I just don’t want to be a burden on the revolution.”
He was barely older than a kid, but a good man. Hengyen stole a glance at Whiny. If only he had ten Weizhens instead of a hundred Whinys at the Beacon.
“As long as you fight by my side, you will never be.” Hengyen then shrugged. “Besides, we may all be dead by tomorrow, so why go looking for trouble?”
They continued to the other end of the boat, stepping onto a junk and then a large catamaran, putting down what looked like an extended family. Hengyen experienced an unusual moment of hesitation before he buried a dagger in the face of what had once been a little girl, cleaving her face in two, spilling her brain onto the floor. He was usually far past the point of caring who these people had been in their previous lives. The Living Revolution needed steel and resolve.
Children, however, still gave him pause every now and then. For some reason, children that had turned into jiāngshī still carried their innocence. Not even the curse of these monstrosities could wipe that away. Hengyen had never had any children of his own, but his thoughts sometimes wandered back to his family in Beijing: his parents, brother and sister, his many nieces and nephews. All were dead. Every child’s face reminded him of that loss. Some would call it a weakness, but Hengyen considered it a small reminder that through all this horror, he hadn’t lost all his humanity. He was going to need that one day when this was all over.
The team continued jumping from boat to boat. They passed through a clutter of fishing boats lashed together, fought their way across a tour boat, and even managed to cross a submarine. Hengyen wouldn’t let himself imagine the horrors below deck.
They reached the barge that had run aground on the bridge’s foundation in the middle of the river by early afternoon. He called for a break, and the tired team collapsed onto the pitched deck. They had been on the move and fighting for over seven hours. Whiny was dead on his feet, and both windrunners were unsteady. Even Hengyen was feeling the effects of the long trek. Surprisingly, only Lankui seemed fresh, even eager to continue.
Hengyen and Lankui jumped down off the barge onto the gravel shore to inspect the foundation supporting the bridge. “Will it work? Can you blow it?” he asked.
Lankui shrugged. “Does it really matter? I’m not a demolitions expert. I’ll do my best to blow it up and not blow us up at the same time. That’s all I can promise.”
“That’s not exactly comforting, but that’s good enough for me.” There wasn’t much more Hengyen could ask for. These days, everyone had to work with what they had. They went over the logistics of what the engineers needed to get the job done, then they headed back to the tugboat to make final preparations.
“Give us two hours, possibly three,” declared Lankui. “Keep food in our bellies and the dead off our backs, and I guarantee something will explode. Preferably not us.” Hengyen couldn’t help but grin. There was something refreshing about dealing with another person who didn’t fear death.
“Actually, there might be a problem with that.” Lankui held up a small metal box. “This is a short-wave detonator with a range of fifty meters.”
Hengyen didn’t need any more explanation. The original plan had just been to plant the explosives and head back. They had anticipated that the shores would be filled with jiāngshī and unusable, but they hadn’t anticipated all the boats and debris cluttering the bridge on their return.
“We don’t know what will happen once the bridge blows,” continued the engineer. “The resulting explosion could sink half this fleet, or it could uncork the bottleneck and sweep everything downstream. To say nothing of how large the radius of the debris field could be.”
“Now you’re sounding like an engineer. But neither sound like great options,” muttered Hengyen.
Lankui hesitated. “There’s a third way that is probably best. Once we prep the explosives, everyone starts heading back upstream save one person. That guy stays to push the button once the others clear the area.”
Everyone spoke at once.
Hengyen shook his head. “The Beacon can’t afford to lose good engineers.”
Lankui smiled. “We can afford to lose our dàgē even less.”
Weizhen raised his scratched arm. “I’ll stay, Windmaster. I’m done for anyway.”
“I can think of no greater honor than to lay down my life for the Living Revolution,” said Haihong.
“I’m not doing it.” Whiny was really living up to his nickname again. “I don’t want to die.”
“I’m not sacrificing anyone,” Hengyen finally snapped. “How far away do we need to be to be safe from the explosion?”
The old engineer furrowed his brow. “As far away as possible. Maybe a hundred meters?”
Weizhen frowned. “But you said the range of the detonator is only fifty.”
Lankui shrugged. “Nobody said life was fair.”
“Can we even survive at fifty meters?” asked Haihong.
“I don’t know. Look, I’m actually a software engineer, and there are no computers at the Beacon. The only reason I’m an engineer at all is because my uncle taught at a technical college and got me in.” Lankui shook his head. “You young people keep asking the wrong questions. It doesn’t matter if we can survive at fifty meters, because to actually blow this bridge up, fifty is the farthest we can go.”
“He’s right,” Hengyen crossed his arms with finality. “It doesn’t matter. Blow it. We’ll figure the rest out later. The Beacon’s survival depends on our success.”
It took the engineers two hours to plan out the best ways to cause the most damage to the bridge. They came to the conclusion that the foundation itself was too thick and sturdy for their limited supply of explosives and decided that the best way would be to focus on some of the bridge’s more vulnerable joints.
The rest of the wind team kept watch over them. No jiāngshī came. The thunderous buzzing overhead continued, but the roving dead were completely unaware of the living working below. The dozens of other jiāngshī trapped on the boats were foiled by each boat’s railing. The few that managed to find an opening or tip over the side fell into the waters and were quickly swept downstream. The watch was calm, even boring.
That left one problem for Hengyen to solve: how to escape the blast without sacrificing anyone.
The solution came to him just as the engineers were finishing up. He was sitting on the gravel edge of the water watching the small bits of wood and random debris float by when he shot to his feet and hurried back to the team.
“We’ll blow it downstream,” he announced. “We’ll loosen one of the smaller boats, and then float downstream. Once we’re fifty meters away, we blow it.”
The younger engineer raised his hand. “What if we die from the blast?”
“Then we’re dead. Next stupid question,” snapped Lankui.
“Not all of us are old farts like you. Some of us would actually like to make it back to the Beacon!”
“I swear I’m going to kill you myself.”
“Dàgē,” said Haihong. “This cuts us off from the island and takes us directly away from the Beacon. How will we get back?”
“We find a good landing point and then we walk.”
“That’s a long way away,” Whiny huffed. “We’ll never make it.”
Hengyen waved off any further discussion. This plan wasn’t up for debate, and it wasn’t like they had an alternative anyway. He sent his two windrunners to find a boat while the engineers finished their work. Their escape craft ended up being the life raft of a pleasure boat. It was meant for only four occupants, but it served.
It was early evening by
the time the raft and the explosives were ready. Smart money may have been on waiting until next morning, but Hengyen was impatient. He did not intend to lose an entire day waiting for more sun. The team jumped in and began to drift away from the bridge. Lankui clutched the detonator tightly in his hands while Whiny and Haihong paddled.
“Are you ready?” he asked when he estimated that they were roughly fifty meters away. Truth was, it didn’t seem far enough at all, but he couldn’t risk it. If they drifted too far from the bridge, they might not be able to fight against the current hard enough to get back within range.
“I’ve been waiting to blow something up my entire life,” replied Lankui.
“Now is your chance. Make it count!”
Lankui grinned like a schoolboy and pressed the button on the unit.
A burst of fire rolled sideways from under the bridge, sending a plume of dust into the air. The water under the raft roiled as the concussive blast sent shock waves across the river. Debris rained down upon them, sending sharp fragments of rock and wood into the water nearby. Haihong suffered a nasty cut from a sharp sliver of wood, while a chunk of concrete the size of a fist glanced across Weizhen’s face, nearly toppling him over the side. Only Hengyen’s quick reaction prevented him from falling into the water.
Then the waves came, first tipping the raft to one side and then hard to the other. The five occupants of the craft sized for four slid and bounced, and then the craft capsized. Hengyen didn’t have time to suck in a breath before he found himself underwater. His lungs burned, but he forced himself to stay calm as the currents batted him around. He glanced at the river floor and caught a few rotting jiāngshī with weights tied around their waists staring up at him, arms raised and hands grasping. He would be deathly curious how those jianghis got there if it weren’t for the fact he was close to death himself. His body was just beginning to convulse when his head finally broke the surface.
