Typhoon Page 9

  Elena’s face had tightened even more, which was all he needed to know about what she thought of his offer. The two windrunners were close, too close. They should have been separated and put on different teams, but it hadn’t been a problem yet, and there was already enough sadness and distress going around that Hengyen wasn’t in a hurry to add to it. Still, it was probably for the best.

  “No problem at all,” she said carefully. “I’m sure Wenzhu will be honored.”

  Hengyen stood up. “Please let him know that I would like to speak with him.”

  “Wait,” Elena reached out and grabbed his wrist. Just as quickly, she let go. “I need to beg a favor.”

  There was something about her tone. “I’m listening.”

  “I know we just returned from a scavenge yesterday, but I’d like to go back out tomorrow.”

  “Three days minimum between scavenges,” replied Hengyen. “That’s the rule. While I commend your diligence, team exhaustion is a real danger. Every wind team we lose deprives the Beacon of an important resource.”

  She looked apprehensive. “Actually, I would also need to be exempt from quota for this trip.”

  Hengyen sat back down. “What’s wrong?”

  Elena told him about her team’s last scavenge. She claimed not to know why Zhu had chosen that particular village. Two days’ journey was the absolute limit for most teams. Three led to diminishing returns. Hengyen came to a conclusion as soon as she told him about the empty truck in the rice field.

  “I’m sorry,” he said gently. “I don’t need to tell you how dangerous the field is. If Zhu hasn’t returned by now, he’s likely passed. He could have died anywhere.”

  “I just want to go back and search the village,” she said. “Just a few days. I know the exact flag path he would take. I want to check out some of the surrounding sanctuaries. If we don’t find him after a few days, then I’ll accept that he’s gone.”

  Hengyen considered her request. He respected her desire to search for her missing teammate, even if it was for the wrong reasons. He could also tell Elena wasn’t one to let things go. However, allowing a wind team to return without meeting quota set a bad precedent. “This village where Zhu disappeared is the same as where you found the ninety-two points?”

  “Yes, dàgē.”

  Hengyen drummed the table with his fingers. “Did you clean out the scavenge site or is there more?”

  “Much more, but we attracted several jiāngshī on our way out.”

  “Can you clear it?”

  Elena hesitated. “Yes.”

  “Very well. Here’s my offer: I’ll allow you to leave whenever you are ready and instruct Ming to give you a week’s worth of supplies. You can go to the village and search for Wenzhu. If you don’t find him, return with another ninety-two points worth of scavenge. Agreed?”

  “Thank you, dàgē.”

  “I hope to see Wenzhu safe and well. Now if you’ll excuse me…” Hengyen stood up to leave. “Good luck, Elena Anderson.”

  Hengyen left the tent and headed to the capitol building. He had a lot of work to do. He thought he had solved one of his problems today, but he was pretty sure Wenzhu was no longer an option for his team. It was highly unlikely that Elena was going to find one man out in a wilderness full of jiāngshī, but against his better judgment, he was giving her this opportunity for closure. Her best-case scenario would be to find him as a jiāngshī and put him out of his misery. The not-knowing ate some people up inside.

  The problem of replenishing his wind team could wait for now. Hengyen had to deal with something much more pressing. The lives of everyone at the Beacon, possibly the entire Living Revolution in this region, were at stake.

  8 HOMECOMING

  Zhu spent the rest of the night trussed up in the animal pens along with the oxen and pigs. The elders had conceded his identity, but it was too far past their bedtime for them to make any other decisions, including about his accommodations. When Zhu had been a boy in the village, he had thought that farms smelled fresh and clean, while the big city was full of fumes and garbage. How quickly had urban life changed him.

  The pen smelled as one would expect, given the pens were full of liquid manure and rotting plants. His bed for the night was a pile of damp hay mixed with mud. At least, he hoped it was mud. It was still a marked improvement over where he had woken up. He spent the dark hours huddled next to a sleeping cow, which provided some much needed warmth. Meili was kind enough to stop by with a thin blanket that he ended up using as insulation against the wet and itchy hay.

  By morning, Zhu woke up caked in muck and submerged in several centimeters of water. It had rained, and the cow had pushed him off the blanket. Zhu tried to stand up, only to be reminded that one of his wrists was bound to a wooden post.

  Meili returned shortly after he awoke with a pot of tea and a change of clothing. She untied him and poured him a hot cup to warm his chilled bones. His morning bath involved a ladle and a bucket of icy rain water. The clothes were too generous around the shoulders and waist and too short at the legs, but they were clean.

  When he was presentable, Meili brought him to the heart of the village, if one could call it that. By his count there were probably two hundred or so souls living in the assorted tents and cabins. The majority were middle-aged or very young. There were surprisingly few people his age. Everywhere they went, the people met Meili with a smile and greeted Zhu with suspicion. Their eyes followed him. Whenever she introduced him as someone she had grown up with, they would interrogate him about his childhood as if trying to catch him in a lie.

  Zhu thought he saw a few familiar faces, but he couldn’t be sure. It had been a lifetime since he had been a sixteen-year-old setting off to the big city for secondary school. He had tested well enough in the national exams to attend a third-rank senior middle school. His parents had sacrificed much for him to get a better education, but things didn’t work out as planned. Being one of the brightest in his village didn’t carry over to a better school. Failing to score well enough to attend university, Zhu went to work at a factory right after he graduated to pay his parents back. The rest was history.

  As Zhu walked through the small crowds, he was struck once again by how relaxed everyone was. There was a wooden watchtower near the center of the village, but other than that, he saw no security. Children ran through the soggy grass and older people sat around a fire and gossiped, as if the world hadn’t completely fallen apart. Their destination was a large tent that was home to Meili and five other women. They sat down at a small circular table in the center of the tent, and she watched as he slurped down several bowls of congee.

  “This place is strange. It feels like…” He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. “… like the outbreak never happened. How is that possible?” Zhu barely managed to get any words out as he inhaled the food. He was already on his third bowl, which would have cost him dearly to purchase at the Beacon.

  For the first time in as far back as he could remember, he could feel himself letting his guard down. He hadn’t felt like this since before the dead began to rise. Even back at the Beacon, people had to stay alert. Zhu never realized how exhausting that was until now, when he felt like he could finally stop looking over his shoulder.

  She nodded. “We’ve been blessed, at least up until now. The elders plan to move us soon.”

  Zhu surveyed the open field and grove of trees surrounding their tent. It had been a long time since he had seen an area this large without dozens of jiāngshī nearby. “Why would you move? This place looks like paradise. Where are we? How are you keeping the jiāngshī out?”

  “Remember that valley south of our village? The one that’s almost completely enclosed by the rice fields terraced up the mountains?”

  He nodded, now recognizing some of the hills he saw on the horizon. It was an unused field nestled between rice terraces on all sides. There was only one winding path cutting over a tall hill to reach the land depression, and it wa
s easily defensible. In many ways, it was the perfect place to isolate the village from the rest of the world.

  Something about it joggled his memory, however. There had always been a good reason it was unused, why it was forbidden for children to play here. He walked to the edge of the tent and felt the wet grass squishing under his feet. He counted the layered terraces that rose like the steps of a ziggurat all the way to the top of the hill. Small streams from the night’s rain trickled off each level to the one below it like a cascade of thousands of tiny waterfalls. It was beautiful.

  He craned his head back toward her. “The rainy season. That’s why you’re leaving.”

  Meili nodded. “By this time next month, this entire field will become a lake.”

  “Where will you go?”

  She looked pensive for some reason. “We’re not sure yet. We’ve sent teams in every direction. We’ve heard back from only a few. It’s almost the same anywhere else. There’s jiāngshī everywhere. Xupin, one of our scouts, returned from the north with promising news. The Precipitous Pillars in Zhangjiajie are mostly free of the dead.”

  That made sense. The breathtaking national park was home to some of the most majestic peaks and rock formations in the world. The ground level was thick with vegetation and trees while giant, almost alien pillars of rock that seemed to defy gravity rose as high as mountains into the sky. “Chopsticks for giants” was what he called it when his family had taken him to Zhangjiajie as a child. Save for the tourist areas, the terrain at the park was tremendously difficult to traverse, making it easily defensible against the clumsy jiāngshī. Even a storm of jiāngshī would not be able to penetrate deep into the park. Outside of the small towns surrounding the park, nobody lived there, so there wouldn’t be too many dead. It would make a good home for the village.

  “Only one scout returned?” he asked. “What happened to the rest of the team?”

  “They stayed north to look for a place to settle.” Meili hesitated and then leaned in. “Wenzhu, Ahui is with the north team.”

  Zhu stared at her dumbly at first, and then his hands began to tremble. His mouth opened; nothing came out. Her words hit him so hard his mind was having difficulty deciphering their meaning.

  He hadn’t dared think about his family, at least not since the early days, when he had frantically tried to reach them every way he knew how and had received no response. When he learned that the village had been wiped out, he had mourned for a few hours and then pushed the thoughts out of his mind. It was all he could do the few months after the outbreak to keep himself and Elena alive, running from horror to horror, fighting off vultures and jiāngshī alike. It wasn’t until they found a home in the Beacon that they had managed to start living again.

  In a way, believing they were dead had freed him to survive. There simply wasn’t enough room in his head to worry about his family and surviving in this new world. Now that freedom twisted into crushing guilt.

  “She’s alive?” was all he managed to utter. His eyes watered. “I thought…” He couldn’t finish the sentence. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

  “I wanted to tell you when we were alone, after you got some rest and food,” she said.

  “How… how is she? What about the rest of my family?”

  Meili shook her head and put a hand over his. “I’m sorry. When the village fell, Ahui and your mother were the only ones to flee with the survivors. And—”

  He jumped to his feet. “Is my mā here?”

  She bowed her head. “She caught pneumonia shortly after we arrived. I’m sorry. Ahui told me your father was bitten getting her and your mother out of the neighborhood. She said your năinai was too old and refused to leave. They tried—”

  Zhu buried his head in his hands. “What about my cousins?”

  Meili pursed her lips. “They were in the neighborhood where the outbreak first breached the perimeter. No one from there survived. We only managed to escape because we were next to the river and fled into the boats.”

  She caught Zhu up on the years he had spent away from his home. He dug through his memories and asked about all the people he had grown up with. Most people his age had moved away to the larger cities long before the jiāngshī appeared. Those who had stayed had been taken by the army to work on the Beacon of Light. That left no one else for him to remember.

  “They say you’re from the Beacon,” she finally said quietly. Her words sounded less an accusation and more a disappointment. “Is that true?”

  He nodded. “It’s the seat of government in Hunan. We’re doing everything we can to save the people and this country.”

  “That’s not how the village sees it,” she replied. “When the dead first woke, Fongyuan was prepared. The elders ordered a fence built. They enacted a strict curfew and ordered no one to travel in groups of less than three. For a while, the village was safe. We didn’t have any incidents. When Changsha fell, the army came one day and drafted young people to help build what you call the Beacon of Light. More soldiers returned a few weeks later to take a few more. We never heard from any of them.”

  Zhu knew what had happened, but he dared not say. He had heard stories about the fate that had befallen the workers, although he hadn’t been there to witness it. He and Elena had arrived at the Beacon well after construction was complete. The previous governor had ordered a military base built as a backup in case Changsha fell. Most of the army had been busy losing ground trying to stem the tide of the jiāngshī, so laborers were gathered from the surrounding villages. It was supposed to be temporary, but an outbreak erupted in the camp. The army had to clean up the mess and complete the construction.

  “This is a hard time for everyone. There was much confusion,” he said, lamely. “The Beacon is doing its best. If there is no one in control, then we’ve truly lost our country to the jiāngshī.”

  “Well,” she continued, visibly upset by his response, “when we lost all our strong and able-bodied people, we could no longer protect the village. The jiāngshī overran the village a few weeks later.”

  “There is no way to fight the tide of the dead except through the concerted and organized effort of everyone involved,” replied Zhu. “I’ve seen thousands of them all in one place sweeping across the land.”

  Meili shook her head. “Perhaps, but we were never given a chance to try. Eventually, all the survivors packed what we could and fled here, where it’s safe.”

  “How did you escape mandatory enlistment?”

  “Is that what you call it?” she asked bitterly. “Such a nice word for slavery. Your family hid Ahui and me when the army came looking for workers.” The anger in her voice was palpable. “Huangyi and Huangmang hid in the forest. They took my uncle and cousins.”

  Zhu was conflicted and uncomfortable with her animosity toward the Beacon. Talking about this also obviously evoked deep anger in her. He decided to change the topic. “Do jiāngshī ever wander in here by accident?”

  Meili seemed relieved to talk about something else as well. “A few, but the village is ready to deal with them. Come, I’ll give you a tour. You’re our guest now.”

  “Does that mean I don’t have to sleep in the animal pen tonight?”

  She gave him a playful smile.

  Meili took him around the valley, showing him how the villagers had turned it into a self-sufficient community. Zhu was surprised by how many seniors were here until Meili explained how the village had prepared for the jiāngshī. The elders, having anticipated this need when the outbreak was first spreading across the coast, had made plans to use this valley as a safe haven. The cabins and furniture were built hastily. Supplies were stockpiled: dried, smoked, and fermented meats and vegetables, dozens of bags of rice, hand-wrapped dumplings, banana-leaf food bundles, even hundreds of packages of instant noodles. All were stored here in advance, which likely saved many lives early on.

  That, of course, created other problems. How would a village with over half of its population too ol
d or too young to survive the journey travel through jiāngshī-infested lands? Meili assured him they had it handled. She brought him to Wu Chima, who was the head of security for the village. He had also been Zhu’s ping-pong coach. Chima proudly showed him the barricade and wooden gate at the end of a winding path, as well as the three watchtowers dotting the valley. The village was protected by a team of twenty guards, and the watchtowers were manned by children.

  “In the months since we came here,” Chima proclaimed proudly, “we’ve only had half a dozen jiāngshī and only one casualty. Our security tackles all problems before they happen.”

  “How are you preparing for the move?” asked Zhu.

  “We’ll be ready,” Chima replied, as if speaking it aloud made it a fact. “We have six rifles and we’re going to train more guards until we double our number.”

  Zhu nodded and shook hands with several of the guards. Most, like nearly everyone else in the village, were slightly too young or slightly too old. They all reminded him of new wind-team recruits with the way they held on to their weapons. It was just a slight awkwardness and unfamiliarity in the way they carried them. Windmaster Hengyen often said that he could always determine a person’s skill just by the way they stood at attention.

  Just as they were about to head back to the village, the young man standing watch on top of the barricade barked out an alarm. Chima and the two guards with him hustled to the gate. Zhu and Meili joined them soon after and peered through the gaps in the barricade. Two jiāngshī were slowly ambling up the slope. They must have been attracted by the conversation and smoke from the fires.

  “Jincai, Li, you two with me,” Chima piped, hefting a fishing spear over his shoulder.

  “Do you need help?” asked Zhu.

  The former ping-pong coach waved him off. “It’s all right, young Zhu. We have it well in hand.”