Chapter 43

From Congyang City to Yang City, if you take the Expressway it's just over 400 kilometers and would normally take a little more than five hours. But now the expressway was out of the question, it's packed with vehicles, choked solid.
Using the army's incoming routes, the satellite maps Jiang Xiaotian had accessed, and the imagery fed back by several drones, they could plan the most suitable route, though they didn't know how many long detours they'd have to take.
This was expected to be a long migration, lasting ten days to half a month.
January 21st, the third day on the road. The weather was still bitterly cold. To save fuel, no vehicles ran the heater; Lin Tantan wrapped herself in a thick down coat and lay on the passenger seat, gently rocked by the car's motion.
Then the vehicle gave a slight jolt and came to a stop.
Lin Tantan opened her eyes, glanced at the rear bumper of the car ahead, picked up the radio and asked, "What's happening?"
Jiang Zhongyi answered in his loud voice, "Traffic's backed up again. This one'll take an hour or two."
This was common, sometimes the road would clog up. If it was just ordinary vehicles it was inconvenient but manageable; if a bridge had collapsed, the road had caved in, or a landslide had occurred, things got much more difficult.
But with drones feeding back images in advance, crews usually went ahead of the main force to handle issues; if passage was impossible they rerouted the convoy beforehand.
Yesterday they had bypassed an unstable river bridge. A few people with bridge-construction backgrounds ran the calculations and concluded the bridge couldn't bear so many vehicles crossing at once. Cheng Qinan, half a prophet, also felt it was unwise to go over it, so they took a detour.
Lin Tantan checked the time, it was nearly noon, and told Jiang, "Consider this a lunch break: those who need to rest, rest; those who need to eat, eat."
"Okay." Jiang Xiaotian switched channels to pass the order to the squad leader. Lin Tantan told Qian Kai in the driver's seat to cut the engine and rest, then called to the two in the back, "Hey, break time, get out and stretch."
She climbed down first, after sitting so long her butt felt stranger than her own.
People from other cars also began to get out and move around, and to deal with the morning's accumulated trash. The men just found spots to take care of themselves; the women were more particular, finding a place, setting up a cloth screen, and taking turns inside.
Since fields ran along both sides of the road, they picked a spot well away from the convoy and dug a hole in the ground.
Lin Tantan took a sip of water, cradled the bottle in her left arm, twisted the cap closed with her right hand, and hauled a crate down from the pickup behind them.
Qian Kai hurried over to help.
"No, I got it." Lin lugged the crate with one hand to the roadside and opened it. Inside were rows of sausages. She squatted down; a rustle in the grass and a plump, light-gray rat popped out, squeaking insistently as if urging her to feed it.
Lin Tantan sighed and handed it two sausages. "You're a big rat, how come you still need people to feed you three meals a day? Can't you hunt for yourself?"
"Squeak, squeak!" the big gray rat cried out as it hurried along; it didn't have time to hunt.
Then several more mice rustled out, white ones, golden ones... Lin Tantan handed each of them a sausage, and the whole crate was soon emptied.
These little things sure could eat. Fortunately only about ten had followed the big gray rat with her, otherwise she probably couldn't have fed them all.
But since they'd stood guard for her the last two nights, a little pay was only fair.
She looked at them, filthy one by one, and said to the big gray rat, "Why don't you hop into my vehicle? Wouldn't that be easier than having to run all the way?"
The rat slowed its chewing, its black-bean eyes flicking to Lin Tantan, then it squeaked once and led a dozen or so of its youngsters back into the grass.
"Wait." Lin Tantan called after it and handed it a golden crystal core.
The big gray rat took it without ceremony, turned, and climbed away.
That one was pretty aloof.
Suddenly someone else appeared beside her; Lin Tantan looked up and saw an unexpected face, Zhou Li.
She stood, and Zhou Li said, "So you really do keep a group of mutated rats."
"Only a handful, not a group," Lin Tantan replied coolly; it wasn't exactly a secret that she kept rats.
Zhou Li asked, "Is there a trick to keeping these mutated animals? I ran into a mutated dog before, it was extremely aggressive, impossible to communicate with."
Lin Tantan thought: if mutated animals were so easy to tame, wouldn't humans be unbeatable?
"No secret. Just lucky, I met a few mice with easygoing temperaments."
Easygoing? The corner of Zhou Li's mouth twitched; that description sounded odd.
He suddenly said, "May I be blunt, do you have some kind of prejudice against me?" He felt Lin Tantan treated most people well, yet whenever he tried to talk to her she was lukewarm. "We met on the first day of the end times; that's a rare bond. Shouldn't we be friends?"
Lin Tantan paused. "No prejudice. I'm just very busy, I probably don't have much time for making friends."
Inside she snorted, be friends with you? Is this really supposed to be pleasant conversation?
"I'm heading back. Mr. Zhou, you oversee a whole squad, you must have a lot on your plate, right?"
Because of a shortage of hands, Zhou Li also ran a squad, the Seventh, with another squad between his and the Fifth. But it wasn't the first time Lin Tantan had seen him at the Fifth.
Muttering to herself, Lin Tantan returned to the convoy. Mei Baisheng sat on the ground, drained, leaning against a vehicle and lifted his chin. "That guy again? Why does he keep showing up?"
"Who knows?"
"Every time he comes he seems to be looking for you. Is he trying to poach you?" he muttered, wondering whether he should report it.
"Attention, attention: a flock of birds is approaching from the northwest. All personnel, board the vehicles. Close doors and windows, pull the curtains, maintain silence. Repeat: all personnel, board now..."
At that moment Bai Cheng's voice came over the radio on Lin Tantan's belt. She looked up instinctively, northwest? Which way was northwest?
Never mind, she didn't need to figure it out, because she could already see a dark, oppressive mass on the horizon.
She picked up the radio but before she could speak, Jiang Zhongyi was shouting frantically: "All YS05 squads, yes? Captains, get your people on the vehicles now! One minute to complete!"
Quickly the squad leaders began urgently directing everyone onto the vehicles.
"You over there, come back, now!"
"We're missing a few people, doors are closing!"
"Quiet! Everyone who's boarded, sit down and stay quiet! Parents, cover your children's mouths!"
"Grab the bags, get the bags on!"
People panicked for a moment, but because they'd drilled the procedure the last two days the overall efficiency held up. The poor fellow who'd been using the latrine farther off had to yank up his trousers and sprint back screaming, leaving Lin Tantan staring in disbelief.
She strode along the convoy checking everyone boarding: the big trucks had their later-welded iron gates shut; on the buses, once people were aboard the curtains were pulled and matching covers were hurriedly drawn across the windshields and doors. For the cars with covers, people jumped in while others outside helped pull the covers on.
The covers were modified so someone inside could reach out and peel them back; they wouldn't interfere with driving in an emergency.
"YS0503 squad, all personnel on board!"
"YS0510 squad, all aboard!"
Seeing most people aboard and that "black cloud" closing in, Lin Tantan hurried back into her vehicle, shut the door, drew the curtains, and the interior fell into dimness.
She went to Jiang Xiaotian. "Can you see what's outside?"
"Here, look." Jiang Xiaotian turned the display toward her, a feed from a drone. A dark, overwhelming flock filled the sky, then noticed the long convoy below and began to descend. Outside they could hear the beating of wings, followed by the thudding pecks and scratching of beaks and claws on the vehicles, like a rain of stones that made ears ache.
Small dents quickly appeared on the roofs, and cracks spidered across some windows.
This vehicle was solid; whatever weapons those birds had must be formidable. Cheaper cars would take a real beating.
From the footage, Lin Tantan realized these unidentified birds were likely mutated.
As long as they're not zombie-birds.
Suddenly distant cries rose from the rear. The birds outside paused in unison, then beat their wings and flew off.
"What the, who are those people?" Jiang Xiaotian piloted a drone after the departing flock and found that the cries had come from the troops stationed behind them.
At first they weren't making a sound, if the mutated birds had just pecked for a while they'd probably have flown off. But once a cry went up, the flock was drawn in. The noisy big truck was soon surrounded, and people in the cars ahead and behind had to rush to help.
Some birds were shot down and others pecked people; then suddenly a strong, large bird snatched a girl out of a vehicle and carried her skyward. Her clothes tore, however, and she fell back to the ground.
Those watching the scene fell silent, at that height there was little hope.
Lin Tantan suddenly said, "This is bad, if they keep shooting like this the smell of blood will only get stronger!"
Mutated birds aren't the scariest, that's the zombie-birds. Worse still are the swarms.
As she spoke, things grew even more chaotic: cars in front and behind, afraid of being swept up, tried to drive away, but the moment they moved they were swarmed by birds, and people jumped out of vehicles.
Qian Kai cursed, "Have these people had their brains pecked out by birds?"
Lin Tantan frowned and suddenly said, "Give me the gun."
"What are you going to do? It's too far, the gun can't reach them."
Lin Tantan pulled a pistol from his waist, told Qian Kai in the driver's seat to move aside, climbed into the driver's seat herself, rolled down the window and thrust out her gun-bearing arm.
She was aiming at the biggest bird, the one that could grab people, but it flew fast, diving and rising. How could she hit it?
Lin Tantan's brow tightened, yet her metal-type ability kept charging into the bullet. Then, at the right moment, she fired.
The bullet, infused with metallic energy, trailed a pale golden light as if it had ripped a slit through the air, and in an instant reached an altitude kilometers away, far beyond what an ordinary round could achieve.
With a whoosh, the golden streak swept beneath the big bird's talons and tore apart several mutated birds farther off.
"Ah!" So close, Lin Tantan regretted.
"Shriek!" The large mutated bird seemed to sense a grave danger; it turned its head, locked onto Lin Tantan, and dove toward her.
Come on, come on, get closer and I'll finish you off.
Lin Tantan thought that, when suddenly something zipped past and struck the big mutated bird. Its head exploded and the whole body tumbled down.
Lin Tantan froze and turned to see a massive, four-wheeled, wildly built vehicle roaring over, clearly made for climbing, its sides cut away to a bare frame with a single mounted machine gun. Ye Xiao stood on the vehicle, holding his firing stance; a few rattling bursts sent several of the fiercest big birds tumbling.
It was obvious his shots were enhanced by wind-type ability.
Lin Tantan's eyes lit up.
Ye Xiao glanced at her and said, "Sit down and pull the window up."
Lin Tantan: "Ye Xiao, are you going to take on the birds? I'll help!"
Before Ye Xiao could answer, she opened the car door and a strap shot out, yanking her onto Ye Xiao's vehicle.
"..." With no way to stop her, Ye Xiao let her get seated. "Be careful."
"Hey, you do your thing, don't worry about me." Lin Tantan watched him drop bird after bird, sometimes several with a single burst, and felt a little envious. Good marksmanship really is impressive.
She stopped worrying about wasting bullets. A few mutated birds spotted the moving vehicle and its occupants and flew over; once they entered her ability's range she sent out golden barbs and blades, one after another, sometimes several at once, and they were just as accurate.
Besides their vehicle, other cars in the convoy launched nimble vehicles that helped take down the zombie-birds with suppressing fire or ranged attacks from ability-users.
The most effective, surprisingly, was Zhou Li. He unleashed a lightning strike that flashed a blue-violet streak through the air, hitting one bird and then another; sometimes the bolt split into two or three, weaving a net in the sky. Birds caught in that "net" screamed and fell in a flurry. The power was impressive and the visual effect truly striking.
By comparison, a fellow lightning-user also moved in to support, but her strikes could only focus on a single bird, neither the color nor the thickness of her lightning matched Zhou Li's.
Lin Tantan couldn't help watching Zhou Li's ability a few more times, murmuring, "He's really something."
Ye Xiao heard her murmur, glanced toward Zhou Li and gave a slight nod.
The mutated birds weren't stupid; they realized there were powerful ability-users here who could counter them, and seeing several leaders in the flock dead, they lost interest in fighting and gradually flew off.
If they'd been mindless, single-minded zombie-birds, it wouldn't have happened like this, they wouldn't leave until every last one was taken down.
When the flock left, they left behind a carpet of mutant bird carcasses. Some people scavenged the bodies looking for crystal cores; others tried the meat, after all, food was scarce, especially among the more than two hundred thousand survivors traveling with the army.
There were plenty of wounded. They came to Lin Tantan for treatment; she picked the three who were bleeding the most and stemmed their blood quickly, leaving the rest.
Two people had died. The human and bird corpses were buried and the blood cleaned up.
While everyone was busy, Lin Tantan rode back in Ye Xiao’s vehicle, and halfway there someone flagged them down.
“Captain Ye, can we join your group?” The man who ran up to stop the car was young and exhausted, but his eyes were bright. “Do you remember me? I’m from the Jiangxi Town community center, you led people who saved my family. I’m an ability user too. I’ll follow any orders, as long as my family can travel with your convoy.”
Ye Xiao asked, “Isn’t it better to follow the army?”
The young man gave a bitter smile. “They... they don’t care about us at all. We drive ourselves and wait behind them. We have to worry about cars cutting us off from behind, drivers up front slamming on the brakes without warning, people grabbing food while you eat, and sometimes fights break out next to you and you get dragged into it. At night you have to stay awake or someone will steal from you.”
He looked uncomfortable, glanced at Lin Tantan, and spoke more obliquely. “Petty theft is one thing, Captain Ye, you don’t know, the night before last was okay, but last night there were incidents. A few women were dragged out; one of them didn’t come back this morning.”
Ye Xiao’s expression darkened. He instinctively glanced at Lin Tantan; she looked innocent, blinking, what were they looking at her for?
Seeing she hadn’t caught on, Ye Xiao looked away. “Nobody’s doing anything?”
The young man answered bitterly, “The soldiers are stretched thin trying to fend off the infected; they don’t handle much else. Everyone else looks out for themselves. Even if there’s a commotion, people won’t intervene. Those gangs are numerous, mess with one and you anger a whole group. As long as the noise is small and it doesn’t draw the soldiers’ attention, nobody dares report them. For me, I have two cousins and a whole family. If we cross them and they take advantage of a moment when I’m distracted and do something...”
Ye Xiao frowned. He’d suspected that a lack of oversight would cause trouble, but he hadn’t imagined it would be this bad.
Lin Tantan finally understood what they were talking about and frowned. She knew the end of the world had many dark sides, but she’d hardly encountered them herself, the only time was when Cai Chengliang harmed Mei Baisheng, so hearing this news made her uneasy.
Ye Xiao told the young man, “Go back for now. I’ll speak with Major General Xing later.”
He didn’t say whether they could join the convoy. The young man was disappointed but said nothing more and turned away.
The vehicle continued on. Lin Tantan asked, “What are you planning to tell Major General Xing? I don’t think he wants to deal with this, otherwise how could he not know? Are all his subordinates dead?”
Round up a few ringleaders, execute a couple of them, and the behavior would be stamped out.
There had been troublemakers in the west of the city before, though not this vicious, they stole and bullied the weak. Once discovered, they were immediately expelled from Yang City, and the others fell in line.
“You have to at least warn them; otherwise, if this continues, something terrible will happen.”
…
Back at the Fifth Squad, Ye Xiao let Lin off and went ahead himself. Before long, the vanguard cleared the way and the convoy moved on.
They went on and off like that all afternoon, covering another twenty-odd kilometers. Around four o’clock the convoy stopped and reorganized on the spot to make camp for the night.
People began preparing dinner. Those with resources scavenged firewood and started cooking; those without had to gnaw on rations.
Unlike civilians, the guard ate from public stores. They could take supplies directly from the convoy and had hired people to cook. The cooks unloaded sacks of rice and water, set up large pots, adjusted the rice-to-water ratios, and began to cook.
In some pots they peeled and added sweet potatoes to make sweet potato rice; others tossed in carrots; some added nothing. For vegetables they mostly stir-fried cabbage or potatoes and simmered a large pot of bone broth.
They were extremely simple, convenient dishes.
Lin Tantan pulled over a stool and sat watching people busy with cooking, helping now and then. The smell of food made her restless, she was hungry.
“When can we eat?” she asked a woman.
“Soon, soon, the rice will be ready,” the woman kept replying as she bustled back and forth.
Lin Tantan sighed and decided to take a walk, just smelling it was too tormenting.
Then she ran into Zhou Li, by chance the convoys were camped together, and the Seventh Battalion was directly opposite the Fifth.
“Miss Lin.” Zhou Li seemed to have been looking for her. He came over and asked about earlier: “When you and Captain Ye fired those shots, did you both infuse your bullets with your abilities?”
There was no reason to hide it; she answered directly, “Yes.”
“Could you teach me how that's done?”
Asked like that, could she really refuse?
But it was something someone could probably figure out on their own; Ye Xiao never asked her... Wait, when did Ye Xiao learn to infuse his bullets with his power, and so effectively?
Lin Tantan drifted off and Zhou Li couldn’t help asking again.
“Huh?” Looking at Zhou Li’s earnest face, Lin Tantan thought about how talented he had been and how tragically he’d been killed by his own younger brother, if he’d been stronger maybe Zhou Yan wouldn’t have suffered. With that in mind she began to explain in detail.
In the distance, Mei Baisheng leaned toward Jiang Xiaotian and whispered, "How many times has this been now? That guy's gone to talk to Tantan again, he must be trying to poach her, right?"
Jiang Xiaotian munched on a biscuit and said, "Pretty normal, isn't it? Who wouldn't want to get close to Tantan? He's just wary of our captain and doesn't dare be obvious. But you don't have to watch him every day, Tantan has the freedom to make friends."
"If he really just wants to be friends, fine. But that Zhou Li is sly. Back in Yang City he hardly showed up; now the boss and Old Bai are busy, and he slips in through the cracks."
Jiang Xiaotian paused mid-chew, thought for a moment, and said, "Hmm, maybe so!"
"See? See? His methods are shady, huh, ill-intentioned!"
"Ill-intentioned about what?"
A voice cut in. Mei Baisheng jumped, saw their leader, and hurriedly grabbed him. "Boss, you're here! Look, look, that kid's gone to see Tantan again. You were kind enough to make him squad leader, and he just thinks about poaching your girl!"