franphil Chapter 15 The Fire of the Future
Chapter 15 The Fire of the Future
22 hours of being trapped.
The sunlight shifted to the center of the platform, shining on the three men like a scorching blade. Zhang Xun held his jacket over his head; the fabric was quickly soaked with sweat, its color changing from gray to dark brown. The horde of corpses below had entered its slowest period of the day, their movements like a slowed-down videotape, but their numbers hadn't decreased—three more had wandered in from the east last night, bringing the total to seventeen within the platform's field of vision.
Bai Mo straightened her injured leg, letting the sunlight shine on the bandage to kill germs and warm it. Her fingers stopped tapping and instead spread out in her palms to receive the heat, but her fingertips were still trembling slightly—Bai Mo had a fever, and her body temperature regulation was starting to become disordered.
Qin Wei pulled out the last fever reducer from the first-aid kit; the edge of the foil pad was already deformed from being scratched by her fingernails. She handed it to Bai Mo, but the pill had been lying in her palm for a long time, and Bai Mo didn't take it.
"Keep it," she said, her voice hoarse, "you'll need it later."
"Now is the next step," Qin Wei said, her tone commanding like a doctor's, but her fingers tightened on the pills, her knuckles turning white. She looked at the bloodshot in Bai Mo's eyes and thought of the patients in the hospital who refused to waste medicine—they all died in the end, not because there wasn't enough medicine, but because their hope was extinguished first.
Zhang Xun looked at the two of them, the charcoal pencil twirling between his fingers, the tip worn down, the charcoal powder clinging to his fingertips, turning into a layer of black ash. His notebook, open in front of him, was filled with densely packed observation data on the three types of zombie hordes, but he couldn't write anymore—dehydration was causing flickering black spots to appear at the edges of his vision, a precursor to low blood sugar.
"What are we missing?" Qin Wei suddenly asked. She didn't look at anyone, her eyes fixed on the dust in the sunlight, watching the golden particles tumble in the heat, like something alive.
"Water," Bai Mo said.
"The medicine," Zhang Xun said. "There's still time."
"No," Qin Wei turned to look at him, "what we lack is a 'future'."
Zhang Xun stopped writing. Bai Mo also opened his eyes.
"Back in the hospital," Qin Wei's voice was flat, as if reciting a medical record, "I knew what I was going to do tomorrow. Ward rounds, surgery, on-call duty. Even if it was repetitive, it was all certain. Now," she pointed down, "our future is either to become one of them, or to starve to death here."
"No," Zhang Xun said.
"Why not?" Qin Wei asked. "What makes you so sure?"
Zhang Xun thought for a moment, then pointed to the infected person in the blue overalls downstairs: "Look at him. He might have been a worker in his past life, maybe he went to and from get off work on this road every day. He had habits, muscle memory, but he had no future. We are different."
"What's different?"
"We're discussing the future," Zhang Xun said. "That's the difference. They don't discuss it; they just... standby."
Bai Mo chuckled softly, his chapped lips twitching slightly: "Philosopher."
"Aren't journalists the same?" Zhang Xun retorted. "When you're doing an interview, aren't you also trying to find out about other people's futures?"
"What I want to know is the truth," Bai Mo said.
"The truth is the future," Zhang Xun said. "Only by knowing the truth can we choose which path to take."
The sunlight moved to the center of the platform, shining on the three people. Bai Mo straightened her injured leg, letting the sunlight shine on the bandages to kill germs and warm her. Her fingers stopped tapping and instead spread out in her palms to receive the warmth.
"Three years ago," Bai Mo suddenly said, "on that stormy night, when you carried me down the mountain, I also thought there was no future. The mountain was collapsing, the rain was pouring down, there was a landslide behind us, and a cliff in front of us."
"But you're still calculating," Zhang Xun said, "calculating time, calculating routes."
"That's a professional instinct," Bai Mo said.
"No," Zhang Xun shook his head, "that's hope. If you truly felt there was no future, you would give up calculating."
Qin Wei looked at the two of them, her eyes filled with complex emotions. She remembered that lakeside eight years ago, when Zhang Xun had said something similar. Back then, she said, "You deserve better," and he said, "I'll wait patiently." At that time, she also felt there was no future, but he kept calculating—calculating her work schedule, calculating what time she would get off work, calculating how to "go along the same route."
"If," Qin Wei began, her voice so soft it was almost carried away by the wind, "we really could get out, what would you want to do?"
Zhang Xun paused for a moment. He looked at the horde of corpses downstairs. The infected woman in the red dress was circling around, her pace quick, but her trajectory was a closed circle, like a rat trapped in a cage.
"I want to reinforce that vehicle," he said, "or find a new, sturdier one. Then head west to the air-raid shelter. There should be supplies there."
"And then?" Qin Wei asked.
"And then live," Zhang Xun said. "Not that kind of life, but... a planned way of living. Farming, storing water, building walls. Dividing each day into morning, noon, and evening, instead of 'standing still' and 'running'."
Bai Mo was silent for a moment, then said, "I want to dig out the hard drive. Those files, those names. Even if no one reads them, I want to... write them down. Just like you wrote down these infected people."
"I think," Qin Wei looked down at her hands, hands that once held scalpels but now could only hold outdoor knives, "I want to build a medical station. It doesn't need to be big, just big enough to treat wounds, deliver babies, and... allow people to die with dignity."
Her voice didn't tremble when she said the last few words. Zhang Xun reached out and placed his hand on the back of hers. Her hand was still cold, but she didn't pull away.
The horde of corpses below suddenly stirred. The powerful-type creature seemed to have regained its strength, letting out a roar and shoving aside a common-type one beside it. The common-type rolled twice, got up, and showed no anger or retaliation, simply continuing to wander. They lacked sociality and cooperation, existing only for instinctive competition.
Watching this scene, Zhang Xun wrote in his notebook: "No hatred, no memory, no social interaction. Competition is only for resources (shady spots), not driven by emotions."
Then he closed his notebook and looked at the sky. The sun was moving westward, its light turning golden. It was afternoon. They had been trapped here for thirty hours.
"Tonight," Zhang Xun said, "their activity will slow down. The temperature will drop, and their metabolism will slow. We can try again, climbing down from the north."
"The north side is open ground," Bai Mo said. "Without shelter, once we land, we can't outrun speedsters."
"So we need bait," Zhang Xun said. "To make noise and lure them away."
"What will you use to make the sound?" Qin Wei asked. "We're out of water bottles."
Zhang Xun reached for his waist and took out the walkie-talkie. The black device had a flashing red light. He looked at it, his finger hovering over the talk button.
"No," he said, "not now. Not with this."
He wanted to save this for the last moment, or for when he truly needed to call in reinforcements. But right now, he didn't want to admit defeat.
The sunlight finally moved away, and the temperature on the platform began to drop. Shadows crept in from the east, engulfing the three people like a tide. The infected downstairs moved even slower, almost motionless, like groups of lifeless statues waiting for night to fall in the twilight.
Zhang Xun leaned against the wall with his eyes closed, his knuckles white as he gripped the baseball bat, but his breathing remained steady. Qin Wei leaned lightly on his shoulder, while Bai Mo stood on the other side; the three of them huddled together, warming each other in the cold wind.
There was no sound except for distant roars and the whistling of the wind blowing through the railings.
---
40 hours of being trapped.
Bai Mo started talking nonsense.
She leaned against the wall, her head tilted to one side, her silver-rimmed glasses slipped down to the tip of her nose. Her lips moved, her voice very soft, like a dream: "...The stone is rolling...Zhang Xun, carry me...to the left..."
She was talking about what happened on a stormy night three years ago. A high fever had made her delirious, and she mistook the concrete wall of the platform for the rock face of Eagle's Beak Cliff.
Qin Wei pressed the back of her hand against Bai Mo's forehead; it was alarmingly hot. She opened Bai Mo's eyelids; her pupils reacted sluggishly to light. "Dehydration and high fever," Qin Wei said in a low voice, "If the fever doesn't break, it will cause organ damage."
She looked at Zhang Xun, and her eyes changed. The resolute "Don't call" was gone; it was now a heavy, weighty permission.
Zhang Xun didn't say anything, but his hand was already reaching for the walkie-talkie.
Just then, a loud bang came from below.
bang-
The sound of metal snapping. Zhang Xun rushed to the railing and saw the horde of corpses stacked on top of each other. Three ordinary-sized ones were kneeling on the ground, a fourth was stepping on their backs, and a fifth was climbing upwards—not in cooperation, but trampling. Those behind pushed those in front, and those in front fell and were used as stepping stones, building a slowly rising "corpse ladder" with corpses and living bodies.
At the very top, a speed climber (possibly a rock climber in life, with unusually long arms) had already gripped the middle of the lamppost, only two meters from the edge of the platform. Its claws scraped against the rust, making a teeth-grinding sharp sound.
Worse still, on the east side of the street, more infected people, drawn by the sounds from the platform, were slowly gathering. The number wasn't twenty-three, but forty, fifty, like a black tide flooding the national highway.
The platform railings groaned under the strain, and the welds were cracking.
Zhang Xun pressed the walkie-talkie. His fingers were trembling, a consequence of low blood sugar and dehydration. He held the walkie-talkie tightly to his lips, speaking in a very soft, breathy voice, his fingers ready to hang up at any moment.
"Su Nian," he said into the microphone, his voice hoarse, "I am Zhang Xun. Trapped on a high platform on the national highway, surrounded by hordes of corpses, Bai Mo is dying."
He paused, looking down at the horde of corpses surging towards them like a tide: "We're on the north side of the elevated highway. Don't get close. Light fires on the perimeter. Lure them away."
---
In fact, Su Nian was not in the shop.
At 2:15 AM, after running the simulation for the sixth time, she realized that Zhang Xun had been missing for over 40 hours, and the national highway was the only possible route back. She decided to stop holding out. She told Lin Xiaotang, "I'll go check the outer perimeter. If he's not back before dawn, lock the door and go to the air-raid shelter."
Then she hopped out of the shop on one leg.
Five kilometers. It was torture for her severely injured knee. It took her nearly two hours—hopping on one leg, crawling, and moving while holding onto walls, stopping to catch her breath every thirty meters, her knee feeling as if it were being ripped out. Blood seeped from the bandages, dark red dripping down her calves onto the ground like a series of broken footprints. When she had moved less than a kilometer to go, she hid behind an abandoned repair shop beside the national highway, leaning against a broken wall.
All she had with her was a composite bow, ten carbon arrows, and half a bottle of gasoline she had picked up from the roadside.
---
3:12 AM. An abandoned auto repair shop beside the national highway.
Su Nian leaned against the broken wall, her left leg straight and her right leg bent, the bandage on her knee gleaming grayish-white in the moonlight. It was bandaged by Lin Xiaotang before they set off, wrapped in four layers, compressed to the point of numbness, and only now was it beginning to ache faintly, as if someone had inserted a red-hot wire into her ligaments.
The quiver leaned against the wall, the ten carbon arrows resembling a row of black bones.
She pulled the fruit candy from her pocket; it was wrapped in glass paper, pink, and strawberry flavored. Lin Xiaotang had given it to her, saying it was the last one in the store, "Keep it in your mouth for good luck." The candy wrapper was already warm from her body heat. She clutched it tightly, tucked it back into her breast pocket, and placed it against her heartbeat.
The walkie-talkie suddenly rang.
Sizzle—Sizzle—
"...Searching...trapped...on the national highway...on a high platform...surrounded by hordes of corpses...Bai Mo is dying..."
It was Zhang Xun's voice, broken and intermittent, with muffled metallic clanging and the roars of a horde of corpses in the background.
Su Nian pressed the call button: "Location confirmed. Hold on for four minutes."
Her voice was calm, like a scalpel, but sweat was already rolling down her forehead and hitting the concrete floor.
She tried to stand up, bracing herself against the wall with her left hand and pushing off with her right leg. The moment her left leg touched the ground, a sharp pain exploded deep within her joint, her knee buckled, and she fell forward, her shoulder slamming into the broken wall, causing pieces of plaster to crumble away.
"Ugh—" she managed to squeeze out through clenched teeth. She grabbed the wall with her right hand and pulled herself up. Her left leg dangled in the air, too afraid to touch the ground.
She hopped on one leg and grabbed the compound bow. Sixty meters away, the platform railing gleamed coldly in the moonlight, and the horde of corpses was piled on top of each other. A speed climber had already leaped into the air, its claws only half a meter away from the edge of the platform.
There is no time.
Su Nian leaned against the window frame, using her teeth to tear open the strip of cloth wrapped around the arrow shaft—a tattered cloth soaked in machine oil, with a modified Phillips head arrowhead. She lit a match.
Flames lit up. She stood on one leg, drew her bowstring taut, and aimed at the gasoline sump twenty meters to the east of the platform—there lay an overturned bread truck with its fuel tank ruptured.
Sixty meters. One leg. Her knee was trembling violently, but her elbow was locked at a ninety-degree angle, and her hand holding the string was as steady as a rock.
Whoosh.
The fiery arrow pierced the air like a shooting star. It embedded itself in the oil puddle, sparks flying—boom!
An orange-red fireball instantly shot up, billowing black smoke from burning rubber, like a black pillar piercing the sky. The horde of corpses exploded, turning towards the sea of fire.
The pressure on the platform suddenly eased.
The speed climber was momentarily thrown off balance by the flash of light, and turned its head in mid-air—
Whoosh.
Su Nian didn't lower her bow. The instant the first arrow left the string, she nocked a second carbon fiber arrow, standing on one leg, her knee trembling, her hand drawing the string as steady as ever. Sixty meters away, the arrow pierced the back of the speedster's head, exiting between his eyebrows. The corpse tumbled backward, crashing down half of the ladder leading to it.
Su Nian stood on one leg, maintaining the posture of drawing a bow, until she confirmed that the target had fallen.
She lowered her bow, her left leg giving way beneath her, and she collapsed to her knees, her hands bracing herself on the ground, cold sweat dripping from her chin. She reached for her quiver—eight quivers remaining.
The shockwave from the explosion caused the platform to tremble slightly.
Zhang Xun lunged towards the railing. Sixty meters away, behind the broken wall of the repair shop, the firelight cast the silhouette of Su Nian kneeling on one knee.
"Rope." Zhang Xun pulled out a climbing rope, tied one end to the base of the railing, and threw the other end off the platform.
He carried Bai Mo on his back. The bandage on Bai Mo's left foot was now soaked through, and blood flowed down her inner calf to Zhang Xun's wrist, warm and sticky. "Hold on tight," Zhang Xun whispered, grabbing the rope with both hands and leaping off the platform.
The body felt weightless in the air, knees bending to cushion the impact. The instant it landed, a speedster in a red dress burst from the shadows, knees bent, about to pounce—
Whoosh.
The third arrow pierced the air, striking her knee joint, with bone fragments emerging from the other side. The woman in the red dress collapsed, scratching at the ground.
Su Nian hopped over on one leg, her face twitching with each step. She stepped on the shoulder of the woman in the red dress, gripped the arrow shaft, and pulled it out sharply. A stream of dark red liquid spurted from the blood groove. The arrow was then retrieved and wiped clean on the corpse's clothes. Before it could rise again, she drew a three-edged dagger from her waist and plunged it into its temple from the side, piercing its brain.
"Go!" Zhang Xun swung his baseball bat at another ordinary type that was lunging from the side, the dull thud of its skull collapsing like the smashing of a watermelon. Bai Mo struggled to raise his crossbow on Zhang Xun's back and fired an arrow. The sharpened steel bar pierced the throat of an infected person, pinning it to the wall.
Qin Wei landed, holding the outdoor knife in her hand with the tip pointing forward. Her hand was trembling, but she managed to stand firm.
The four moved towards the white car. Zhang Xun, carrying Bai Mo on his back, repeatedly smashed his right baseball bat against the oncoming head. Su Nian hopped on one leg, supported by Qin Wei, who bore most of the weight, while Outdoor Knife dealt with enemies coming from the side.
Behind them, the horde of corpses bypassed the wall of fire. Four ordinary-type corpses charged through the embers, charred black, and let out excited roars.
"Cover!" Su Nian broke free from Qin Wei, stood firm on one leg, and drew the fourth arrow from her quiver.
Whoosh. The brainstem of the lead, ordinary type, was pierced, and the corpse fell backward to the ground.
The fourth arrow, the second one came from the side, she spun around, the arrow pierced her eye socket and came out through the back of her head.
The fifth arrow, the third one was only five meters away. She drew the string, but her knees suddenly buckled, and the arrow flew high, grazing the infected person's scalp and embedding itself in the tree trunk behind.
The third one had already pounced on her. Su Nian abandoned her bow, drew her triangular dagger, gripped it tightly, and plunged it into the infected's jaw the instant it fell, piercing its brain. Dark red liquid sprayed onto her face.
The fourth one grabbed her left arm from the side. Su Nian didn't back down; she slammed her forehead into the infected man's nose, the sound of bones cracking crisply, and then the triangular dagger pierced her temple from the side.
She pulled out the thorn, and blood dripped down her wrist. Behind her, the burning powerhouse finally collapsed, burning into a pile of charred embers on the asphalt road.
"Walk!"
Zhang Xun carried Bai Mo on his back, protecting Qin Wei and Su Nian, fighting and retreating simultaneously.
They rushed to the white SUV. The car was covered in scratches and parked in the weeds at the edge of the national highway.
Zhang Xun took out his phone and unlocked it.
"Beep".
The electronic lock popped open, and the car lights flashed.
Zhang Xun opened the car door, shoved Su Nian into the back seat, and made her lie flat with her left leg straight. Qin Wei helped Bai Mo into the passenger seat, then squeezed into the back seat herself and held Su Nian's knees in place.
Zhang Xun lunged into the driver's seat, started the engine, and the tires ran over shards of glass and corpses as they sped onto the national highway.
In the rearview mirror, the wall of fire gradually weakened, and the horde of corpses surged forward, stepping over the charred remains of their own kind, but they could no longer keep up with the car's speed.
Su Nian lay on the back seat, her left leg stretched out, her knee swollen like a purple bun, its temperature frighteningly high. She tried to bend her knee, but the joint felt like it was made of cement, completely immovable, and the excruciating pain made her see stars.
Qin Wei rushed over to check, her fingers lightly touching the sides of Su Nian's knees. Su Nian's body jerked up suddenly, letting out a suppressed roar.
"The ligament tear has worsened," Qin Wei's voice trembled, her fingers pausing at the edge of the bandage. "Hemostasis in the joint cavity, meniscus injury. Rest is necessary for at least six weeks. No more stress, or it will cause permanent damage."
Su Nian lay back in her seat, her chest heaving, her eyes fixed on the car ceiling. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a strawberry candy; the wrapper was warm from her body heat and slightly soft. She clenched it tightly, her knuckles turning white.
"Arrows," she said hoarsely, "ten. Five were used, one was wasted, one was recycled, and six are left."
Qin Wei picked up an arrow from under his seat. It had a black shaft, red fletching, and was stained with blood. He placed it in Su Nian's hand.
She held it, pressed it to her chest, and closed her eyes.
Outside the car window, the sky finally began to lighten. In the rearview mirror, the distant flames gradually died down, leaving only a wisp of black smoke, like a crooked finger pointing towards the gray sky.
[End of Chapter Fifteen]