by Chu, Wesley
Jincai frowned. “How are you going to do that, shīfù?”
Zhu took a deep breath, and then stepped out of cover. He waved. “Raisin-Head!”
Several deep creases matching the scar appeared on Fang’s bald head. The rifle appeared in his hands and was pointing at Zhu an instant later. Zhu had made the right call not to charge.
“Wenzhu, is that you?” Fang squinted, temporarily lowering his guard before remembering that Zhu was a wanted fugitive. “Palms to the sky.”
Zhu did as he was ordered, keeping his pace slow and his voice even as he approached the barricade, circling wide to the opposite side. “Come on, Fang. It’s me. You know me. I let you cheat at mahjong.”
“I don’t cheat. You just suck. Don’t try to make a fool of me, Zhu. I’ll shoot you dead, and I’ll kill your jiāngshī too.”
Zhu kept his pace slow and his voice relaxed, deliberately keeping Fang’s attention. Fang kept the rifle’s muzzle trained on him. He did, however, slowly pivot his body until his back was turned away from Jincai. Zhu moved to the barricade and palmed the wooden walls. He could feel Fang’s presence as the man moved up behind him. Zhu’s machete hissed out of its scabbard and was tossed to the ground. The knife at the other side of his waist came next, followed by the one at his ankle.
Now, Jincai. Now! he thought.
Fang began to pat the rest of Zhu’s body. “I didn’t believe it when I first heard you were a deserter. That was a lousy thing to do to Bo.”
“What did I do to Bo?” Zhu began turning his head and was rewarded with a hard jab of metal to the ear. “Eyes to the wall.”
What is that boy waiting for?
The attack came a second later. There was a muffled cry and a curse. A high-pitched yelp and sounds of a scuffle followed. In the time it took Zhu to turn around, Jincai had jumped on Fang from behind, and the windrunner had flipped the boy onto the ground. Jincai was facedown and Fang had a boot planted on the back of his neck. The rifle had been tossed a few meters away.
There wasn’t time to reach for it, so Zhu lowered his shoulder and plowed into Fang, knocking him off the boy. They crashed into the dirt and skidded downhill along the loose gravel. They rolled several times, pawing at each other’s faces and necks. Fang was bigger and stronger than Zhu and ended up on top with a hand wrapped around his neck. Zhu tried to buck him off, but the larger man just leaned in and dropped an elbow on his nose. There was an explosion of red and Zhu’s eyes teared up. He choked and coughed as blood spilled into his throat.
He tried to turn away, but Fang continued to pound on him. Zhu was already half-blind, and each blow only made it worse. His consciousness was blinking away when the pounding abated, followed shortly by the crack of a gunshot very close to his ear. The heavy pressure from Fang sitting on top of his chest lightened as the bigger man slumped off to the side.
Zhu wiped his eyes and sat up. He looked over at Jincai holding the barrel of the rifle like a club. He must have hit Fang across the head with it, and he must have hit him hard because the stock of the rifle had cracked and broken off.
Jincai looked pale, and his hands shook. Zhu was immediately confused. How had the teenager shot Fang, but then clubbed him with the rifle like that? Then he saw the red stain expanding along on Jincai’s left arm and it all made sense. “Did you shoot yourself?”
The rifle slipped out of Jincai’s hand and he fell to one knee, clutching his wound. “It went off when I whacked him.” He hunched over, grimacing. “This really hurts.”
“It’s no fun getting shot,” Zhu agreed, not that he would know. He quickly scanned their surroundings to make sure they did not attract any jiāngshī or windrunners. Once he was sure they were relatively safe, he tended to the boy. He pulled out a rag and tied a makeshift tourniquet for Jincai. “Try not to move it too much. We’re going to have to get that bullet out later. Can you walk?”
Jincai nodded, wincing as he put weight on his injured leg. “Shīfù, please don’t let me turn into a jiāngshī.”
“Don’t worry. You’re going to be old and gray before you turn into one.”
“What about the vulture?”
“Leave him. And he’s a windrunner.” Leaving Fang alive was probably a mistake, but Zhu wasn’t ready to kill anyone in cold blood. Raisin-Head was still alive, unconscious with blood pouring from his ears. The smart thing to do would probably be to just cut his throat. The guy had threatened to kill him. Even so, Zhu didn’t have the heart to kill an unconscious person he still considered a friend. If he managed to wake up before a jiāngshī caught scent of the blood dripping from his shattered nose, he deserved to live and fight another day.
Zhu picked up and checked the rifle, or what was left of it, and threw it to the ground. A working gun would have been awfully useful in this situation. They continued past the barricade, hugging the right side of the pass into the valley proper. The ground gave way to wet slop, and they waded ankle-deep. The sounds of running water were everywhere. The terraced fields had turned into miniature waterfalls cascading down the mountains from all sides. It was a tough slog, in every sense, but Zhu tried to focus on the positives: at the very least, it masked their movements from would-be pursuers.
Zhu’s heart hammered in his chest; his worst fears were soon realized. A large wind team from the Beacon had somehow tracked the village down. Maybe he was followed, or they had tortured Bo. Zhu knew his friend wouldn’t have given that information up voluntarily or easily. It didn’t matter how the wind team found the village; they were here now. This was all his fault. Guilt and panic took hold, choking his breathing. He had doomed his village by coming back. Anyone killed, anyone enslaved, their blood would be on his hands. He had to do something!
A group of seven or eight windrunners were watching over what looked like seventy villagers sitting in a cluster on their knees. There were several dead bodies scattered about. Six by his count. He clenched his fist when two windrunners dragged Chima’s broken body onto a pile of corpses and tossed it on top as if he were trash. One of them leaned in and pushed a blade into his skull.
Upon closer inspection, he realized that most of his students and the village guards were in that group. Where was the rest of the village? Where was Meili? Hopefully they had gotten away deeper into the valley. It had plenty of nooks and crannies. The wind team would never find them unless they swept the entire area, which could take days.
A familiar voice speaking loudly sent chills up Zhu’s spine. “This is your last chance. Surrender the rest of your village. If you return peacefully with us to the Beacon of Light, your illegal actions will be forgiven.”
No one spoke.
“We’ve confiscated most of your supplies for the Living Revolution,” continued Hengyen. “Your people will starve if you abandon them here. Bringing them back to the Beacon is the only merciful choice. You have managed to survive out here so far because you have been lucky. It is commendable, but don’t forget who you are, what country you belong to. It is time to support the Living Revolution and bring together the shattered remnants of our great nation. Tell us where the rest of your village is.”
Zhu nudged Jincai, whispering, “We can’t take so many by ourselves, but if we find the others, we might have a chance. Do you know where they could be hiding?”
“There’s a grotto on the far side of the valley a quarter of the way up the hill,” said Jincai. “We keep most of our dry supplies there.”
“Let’s go.”
Just as they turned, Hengyen’s powerful voice boomed across the clearing. “Chen Wenzhu: we know he has contacted your village leaders. You will lead us to him now, or suffer the consequences.”
At the sound of his name, Zhu froze, heart thudding in his chest. His gaze met Jincai’s and the two shared a moment of panic. The Beacon was hunting him; the windmaster was hunting him. As if the journey to the Pillars wasn’t impossible enough.
Slowly, Zhu and Jincai backed away from the crowd and through the dense
foliage to the grotto, picking their way from bush to bush. They were about to pass his little tent when he saw a figure crumpled on the ground in front of the entrance. At first, he thought it to be a corpse of one of the kids, but then it moved, raising its head.
It was Meili! Zhu’s heart stopped. He stared for a few seconds. Zhu motioned to Jincai to wait, but the boy had already moved on and disappeared into the brush. Zhu decided he couldn’t leave her like this and peeled away toward her. As he got closer, he realized her wrists and ankles were bound as she huddled in a fetal position. Meili looked his way as he approached. Recognition filled her eyes and she opened her mouth. She was alive! He broke into a sprint.
Meili shook her head weakly. “No, Zhu.”
It was too late.
A figure stepped out from the shadows, and then the nerves in Zhu’s face exploded in pain once more. The world flashed bright and turned sideways. He splashed headfirst into the shallow water, the shock of it prickling his flesh. The world faded black for an instant, followed by the feeling of drowning.
Gasping, Zhu pulled his head up just in time to see a grim, familiar face approaching him with a short spear in hand. “Elena, wait,” he sputtered.
She swung her spear with both hands, striking his broken nose. Fresh waves of agony raked his body as he flipped up and crashed back into the water. His head lolled to the side just in time to see Fang appear with his hands wrapped around Jincai’s throat.
“Hit me from behind will you, you little mutt,” the windrunner growled, picking Jincai up by the neck and slamming him into the ground. He held the teenager’s head under the water as Jincai flailed his arms and legs.
“Please, Fang, don’t.” Zhu’s voice was such a weak whisper he barely even heard himself.
A shadow passed over him. Elena towered over his slumped body and pressed the sharp tip of her spear into his neck. There was hatred in her voice. “I wish I had never met you, Chen Wenzhu.”
23 PARADISE LOST
The wind team set off on its return trek to the Beacon of Light as soon as they had the captured villagers organized into a column. Hengyen had no intention of wasting hours, possibly days, scouring the valley for the remaining survivors. Not with only fifteen windrunners, hands already full with sixty-two prisoners and all the supplies they had confiscated, which had to be carried on each person’s back. There was simply no way to travel east with anything on wheels.
After the wind team returned with the minimum number of prisoners that Wangfa demanded, Hengyen planned to speed back to the settlement so he could join the defense against the impending typhoon.
Secretary Guo, he mused, would be most excited about the capture of Chen Wenzhu, and not the labor or supplies. Zhu’s actions reflected poorly on the Living Revolution, and for someone who had escaped so visibly not to be brought to justice, well, Hengyen understood the need for punishment. But was it worth sending able-bodied troops on a mission so close to the crucible?
Meanwhile, the former windrunner had kept quiet, keeping his head down and not making eye contact with anyone. A few of the other windrunners had taunted and cuffed him around pretty violently, but Zhu made no move to defend himself. He took the brunt of their punishment until Hengyen personally stepped in. In a way, it was the proper reaction to his transgression. It was the right mixture of humility, shame, and quiet dignity. Hengyen could almost respect him for that. Almost. Hengyen had little sympathy for traitors and deserters, and he had hoped for more out of the man, personally. Zhu’s betrayal stung the windmaster more than the latter cared to admit.
Elena, however, was content to shoot figurative daggers at him at every opportunity, glaring with an intensity that eventually made even Hengyen nervous. There were moments where he thought she was going to start a fight. He had to move her to the front of the column in order to keep her gaze focused outward for jiāngshī as they made their way through forests, swamps, and fields of tall grass.
This wasn’t just reserved to the jilted woman and her lover either. Most of the windrunners and guards had subscribed to Guo’s assessment that all vultures who were not supporting the Living Revolution were actively working against it. That every person who refused to throw their full support behind the revolution was adding additional burden to the true patriots who were. That had changed the tone of the relationship between those residing in the Beacon and those outside. Hengyen had to stop his windrunners several times from abusing these people.
In any case, Hengyen didn’t have time for domestic squabbles and casual cruelty. They had a besieged settlement to defend. An hour didn’t pass when he didn’t wonder if they were returning to a ruin overrun by an ocean of the dead.
The windmaster’s heart beat heavily as they followed the last flag path up the hill to the cable transport. They had been gone now for just under a week. It had taken a day to get there, a day to capture the village, and to his chagrin and extreme irritation, nearly five days to return with the prisoners.
When the advanced scout returned to report his findings, his face was pale and his eyes wide. Hengyen couldn’t wait five more minutes to reach the top of the hill. “Well, how do things look?”
The scout’s lengthy pause was not reassuring. “The Beacon of Light still shines.”
“Still shines” did little to ease Hengyen’s concerns. “Have the jiāngshī breached the walls? Are our people still fighting and standing firm?”
He nodded. “The wall appears intact. I can see people manning the parapets, but…”
Relief surged through Hengyen. That news was good enough for now. He patted the scout on the shoulder and jogged the rest of the way up the hill to get a look for himself. He heard the noise before he reached the crest; it sounded like a swarm of a locusts. What he saw with his own eyes would haunt him for the rest of his life, though at this point he was not so certain how long that would be.
The western side of the Charred Fields should have been the side with the smallest number of jiāngshī, but that did not seem to matter. Thousands of dead were crammed in the narrow stretch of land in between the cable transport and home. It was a literal sea of bodies in ragged clothing, outstretched arms that exposed bone and rotting flesh, the sound of hissing and moans amplified a millionfold, like a swarm of locusts that blotted out the land. Only a few patches of earth were visible here and there.
What made it even more terrifying was the way they moved in unison. When a noise or light or movement caught the attention of one jiāngshī, those around it also reacted. The slightest change in one of the dead caused a ripple through the surface of waving arms and heads, like an ocean wave from hell. The jiāngshī were intently focused on the settlement, their roiling masses surging and breaking against the walls with uniform momentum like ocean waves against a cliff.
It was even more frightening on the south, if that was possible. From his vantage, it was just one massive uninterrupted sea of dead. That meant all the fortifications they had erected over the past month had fallen in less than a week. If it had slowed the dead at all, Hengyen could not tell; it seemed as if the jiāngshī had simply washed over it all.
Nature could not be fought and defeated. It could not be tamed or calmed. Nature could only be admired, respected, and avoided. And when all else failed, surrendered to.
Hengyen scanned the top of the parapet. The walls on the west side appeared intact. A few gaps between containers patched with wooden fencing appeared to be holding under the pressure. Suddenly, an explosion and a plume of fire in the southwest corner lit the otherwise gray sky. Wangfa had already rolled out the explosives.
“Too early,” muttered Hengyen. Or perhaps it was too late now.
That was when Hengyen noticed the column of smoke. It was coming from inside the settlement. He had been so focused on the Charred Fields that he hadn’t noticed that the haze lingering in the air around them was the product of several roiling stacks of smoke rising like giant serpents into the skies.
He turned to t
he scout. “Get me over there immediately with the first group. Ferry the rest across in as few trips as possible. Once they get into the settlement, house our new comrades in the cells until we can sort out their roles. See that they’re fed and cared for.” He looked back at the main body still making its way up the hill. “Move Wenzhu into a jail.”
“Yes, Windmaster.”
The cable-car door slid open with a high-pitched shriek. Hengyen climbed inside with Fang and eight of the villagers. He patted the windrunner’s shoulders. “How are you holding up, son?”
“Ready to fight for the revolution, dàgē!” Fang was all bravado, but the man badly needed medical attention. He was obviously not well. He had a massive lump from the blow to the back of the head from that villager boy he had killed. He had been complaining about light sensitivity ever since they left the settlement, and he had been having trouble with his vision. His eyes were now just thin slits on his face.
“Get yourself checked out right away,” Hengyen instructed. “Do not stop by your pod. Do not get cleaned up. The next person you talk to is the doctor, understand?”
Fang nodded and continued to avert his eyes from the sun.
The gas-powered cable transport sputtered and kicked alive, squealing as it lifted off the platform. The violent vibrations under his feet sent shivers up Hengyen’s spine. He eyed the loose bolts rattling the main hoist near the ceiling, clanging loudly against the iron frame of the car.
Several of the villagers gasped and cried out as the wooden platform below them gave way to a grisly and terrifying hellscape of thousands of jiāngshī reaching for them amid great clouds of dust. For once, Hengyen wished the loud banging of the cable transport were enough to drown out the guttural cries from the jiāngshī below.
Several villagers broke down sobbing, begging for them to reverse course. A few held each other tightly as if it were the end of the world, while others hammered their fists at the metal grating, demanding to be let out.
