Rain Bell | December

Rain Bell

Rain Bell is an ongoing Twitter-novel experiment serialized simultaneously on Fanfou and Twitter. It tries to tell a near-future story set in Chengdu by following a real-time timeline in the voice of someone posting as events unfold.

12-17 18:00 This week has passed neither fast nor slow. Tonight the company had a gathering at a hotpot place on Chunxi Road. These days you can no longer trust hotpot with free broth bases. Who knows what kind of chili essence and coloring go into them. Still debating whether I should drive later. Saw a news item today about an unidentified woman’s body found in a greenbelt downtown. News like that barely registers with me now.

12-17 22:22 Dinner ended, and the others all went off to karaoke. I live too far away, so I headed home first. The giant screen on Chunxi Road was replaying The Feast of the Taotie, that star-packed football show from Beckham’s retirement. I stood there in the cold wind watching for five minutes before leaving, when the square suddenly turned noisy. Someone seemed to have collapsed. City enforcers with red lights flashing on their shoulders were shouting something. Friday night traffic was abnormally heavy. It felt as though everyone in the city was on the move.

12-18 11:32 Had barely gotten out of bed this morning when my brother called. He said he had suddenly received orders to lead a field medical team out on assignment, but even he did not know where they were going or how long they would be gone. So this afternoon’s family gathering has been postponed. Yesterday I got a postcard from Senge in America. He looks absurdly funny with a big beard. Turned on the TV and watched a little NBA. Sure enough, Yao Ming was sitting in the stands. Rumor still has it that Yao’s team is about to take over management of the Fast Rail franchise.

12-18 15:33 I was just about to go out for a walk at noon when my brother called again and told us we’d better stock up on bottled water and food. He said there might be a citywide water outage over the next few days. His voice sounded lost. The line was loud enough that I assumed he was at Taipingsi Airport. He hung up after only a few sentences. My wife grumbled that this probably meant she would not get a proper bath tonight. I’m a PSK enthusiast, so naturally I was almost excited. Walk canceled. Straight downstairs to Auchan.

12-18 17:30 The supermarket was jammed. We bought some fruit and pork ribs and planned to stew soup tonight. Because it’s winter, not many people were at the drinks shelves, but I noticed several families hauling away case after case of mineral water. So we are not the only ones who got word. After a quick discussion, my wife and I decided to take five cases of Lanjian, plus some canned roast pork and fermented-black-bean fish. She originally wanted to buy two cases just for form’s sake. I insisted on taking ten.

12-18 19:57 TV is urging citizens to turn over any meteorite gravel they picked up to the authorities. The government says it will pay fifty yuan per gram. On the night of the fifteenth, during the Geminid shower, meteorites fell over western Chengdu. A lot of people picked up black, obsidian-like fragments, and the reporters at the scene were practically shrieking into their microphones. Fifty yuan per gram sounds high, but it really isn’t. Zhang Beihai paid 180,000 for three iron meteorites the size of apples. The water is still on here. Everything seems normal.

12-19 10:03 First thing this morning I got both a call from 10000 and a text from 10086 saying the meteorite gravel carries radioactive danger and that citizens must turn it in voluntarily. Browsed a bit on my phone and was shocked to find that it wasn’t just Chengdu. A lot of places saw meteor showers on the fifteenth, and the rumors are now flying everywhere. Quite a few people have apparently died already, all of them people who picked up the stones. When I was a kid there really had been cases of children stealing “crystals” and dying afterward.

12-19 11:36 We live on the sixth floor, top level of a small high-rise right beside the intersection of the Third Ring Road and Chenglong Avenue. While hanging laundry just now, I saw large convoys of field ambulances and oddly shaped military vehicles heading into the city. Sure enough, the water was cut off at eleven. I have a bad feeling. Went out to the Hongqi convenience store for a box of No. 1 batteries and filled the car up on the way back.

12-19 13:54 The local noon news says fifty-one people have already died after touching meteorite gravel, including government employees responsible for collecting it. Experts are urging anyone who still has fragments at home to report them immediately and stay away from the area. In the entire second half of the twentieth century, only around a hundred and twenty people worldwide died of nuclear radiation. If these fragments can kill in such a short time, what kind of millisievert reading would that even imply?

12-19 13:55 On the news I could see white-helmeted military police on Chunxi Road and special personnel in biochemical suits. The whole city feels tense in a way that’s almost physical. The strange thing is that CCTV and the major provincial satellite channels still are not reporting any of this. Weren’t a lot of places hit by meteor showers? I own a portable radiation meter, so I took it onto the terrace. It read only 1.2 millisieverts, which is basically normal background radon.

12-19 18:08 The death toll has risen to 160. Property management is going door to door asking whether anyone in the building has had contact with meteorite gravel. I asked when the water would be back. They said a meteorite fell into a reservoir serving the water plant and they are still dredging it out, with no estimate for restoration. Radioactive contamination of a water source I can understand, but instant death? Chengdu has six water plants, and the meteor shower was supposed to have fallen only in the western suburbs. So why is the entire city dry?

12-19 19:47 A fire engine came with water after seven. Apart from a few old ladies no one cut the line, but the supply ran out before it reached me. Police lights are flashing inside the compound. The streetlamps on the Third Ring are still dark, as if a black collar has cinched itself around the whole city. Yesterday, to store water, I filled the bathtub. Mango dropped half a cockroach into it, so now it’s for washing only. My wife says we should drive out to Longquanyi to take a shower. Off we go.

12-19 19:55 In my earliest Rain Bell posts I already hinted that this was meant to be a near-future story set after Beckham’s retirement and just before Yao Ming buys a new NBA team. Yet even an account with barely two hundred followers can stir up real panic on Twitter, which tells you something about the medium’s power. Every post has to be stingy with words, so I can’t keep repeating that this is fiction. If it comes to that, I’ll have to hide the real place names, though that would run against the whole point.

12-19 21:12 Longquanyi still feels like its usual relaxed, slow-moving self at night, but even the supermarkets here have seen people panic-buying bottled water. We only used about a quarter of a tank making the round trip, but I still filled up the auxiliary tank, which had been empty for two months. My wife says my PSK obsession has gone too far. She isn’t wrong. I can already see in my head the image of myself driving a Wrangler piled high with supplies and escaping Chengdu. When we reentered the compound, police checked the car with instruments for radiation anomalies.

12-19 21:32 I looked it up and found that years ago Baotou had a tailings-dam “nuclear slurry” incident that polluted the Yellow River, so yes, radioactive material really can contaminate water. But contamination shouldn’t kill on contact. Then I got a system message from work: tomorrow is canceled, one day of emergency leave, employees are to look after their own safety. Property management came with police again to register long-term residents. The owners’ chat group is boiling over, everyone announcing they aren’t going to work tomorrow. Damn. Is this turning into martial law?

12-20 00:05 Bought myself an Australian-made Tornado chemical suit on eBay before bed. I’ve wanted one for ages; now I finally have an excuse. Fastest delivery is next month, of course. Went downstairs for my usual jog before sleep. There was no wind tonight, but far too many leaves had fallen, carpeting the lawn — only they were still bright green. The police car at the gate was gone by then, so I assumed the earlier visit had been routine. A few big rats darted across from inside the Third Ring and nearly scared me out of my skin.

12-20 08:53 Even though work is canceled, I still woke on schedule. The radio says the death toll is now 214. Some people who never touched the meteorite gravel but did touch the dead are showing symptoms of acute radiation sickness. They are all being treated at West China Hospital and the provincial hospital. The news is warning everyone to stay away from crowded areas and has officially declared a citywide day off. The owners’ committee called and told me to come to the clubhouse later for a meeting. I checked the terrace again with the meter. Still normal.

12-20 11:12 The meeting was supposedly about replacing the property-management company. Those retirees have been making noise about that for months, but today of all days they still want to argue over it. The owners’ committee chairman is a lanky old man who looks ill. His eyes are red, and the back of his neck is grotesquely swollen under a thick scarf. Overnight far too many leaves fell, far more than is normal. Chengdu winters are supposed to stay green. Now the place feels like the northwest. I find myself missing Xiying.

12-20 12:21 I cooked lunch and was planning to watch A Song of Ice and Fire: Finale with my wife. Last night I downloaded Episode 5 of this season. The noon news says the situation is under control, that there are no new deaths, and in the same breath urges everyone to stay home and avoid going out. At eleven my boss called and told me to come by the office this afternoon. The Spring Festival project absolutely has to be finished this week. The bastard still refuses to learn how to use Gtalk video meetings.

12-20 15:19 The city looked just as crowded as ever, as if no one had taken the warnings seriously. Traffic, oddly enough, was lighter. Along Renmin South Road I noticed that the flowers and shrubs in the median had all withered as if hit by frost. The areas around West China and the provincial hospital were restricted, so I had to make a long detour. At the office my boss dumped a stack of tasks on me and said I might as well work from home for the rest of the week, since there was little chance of regular office life resuming tomorrow or the day after.

12-20 15:20 I tried calling my brother several times but could not get through. I still have no idea whether his assignment had anything to do with the meteor shower. The last meteorite fall of this scale I can think of was Jilin in 1976, and that only left a crater two meters across. On the way home I saw long streams of cars heading out of the city. With all of Chengdu’s districts and counties, if no one has to work and the water is out at home, the city’s famously leisure-loving residents are evidently all going out to amuse themselves somewhere else. Traffic radio is still asking for information on meteorite holders.

12-20 18:06 After four in the afternoon the compound filled with military vehicles and ambulances. Yellow tape sealed off the front gate. Word is that one of the residents had secretly kept meteorite gravel and only called for help after becoming critically ill. Now the whole compound may have been exposed. Property management says medical checks will be done door to door tonight. I tried to leave the compound to buy vegetables and was politely turned back by a military policeman at the gate. The whole courtyard is furious. Everyone is cursing the person who hid the meteorite.

12-20 19:30 It has now been confirmed that the man who hid the meteorite was the owners’ committee chairman, surnamed Wu, a retired geologist from the Institute of Geology. Supposedly he meant to sell it later to help his son buy an apartment, and instead got the entire compound placed under martial control. I saw men in biochemical suits carrying him to the ambulance. The swelling on the back of his neck was as thick as a handball. The tape at the front gate has not come down. During dinner I heard that the State Council Information Office will hold a press conference at eight.

12-20 20:26 The press conference just ended. They admitted that more than thirty cities across the country saw meteor shower incidents, that all localities are actively treating the wounded, that there are no new deaths, that social order is normal, and that public sentiment remains stable. But the most important line was the last one: citizens are advised not to eat fruit or vegetables grown in the suburban outskirts. Instantly I thought of the fallen leaves in our compound, the dead greenbelts on Renmin South Road. What sort of meteorite does that? There is definitely more they are not telling us.

12-20 20:47 Meteor showers aren’t rare. Thirty-plus cities being hit at once is the kind of thing no novelist would dare write. I wandered over to Facebook and found that central Europe and North America saw similar incidents. Are we about to get a real-world version of The Fungus from Outside? When a PSKer realizes that all the tension he’s stored up for years might finally be useful, the truth is that he becomes a little cowardly instead of bold. The medical team has already come and gone. My wife and I are both fine. The cordon around the compound remains.

12-20 22:55 The internet went down at ten. I dragged out the VSAT, but maybe because of the weather the satellite connection is wildly unstable. The plants in the courtyard are withering almost visibly, including the tea plant on our balcony. Epidemic-control personnel are spraying white powder. The air reeks of something harsh and chemical. Wearing my German-made VM40 gas mask, I stood looking out over the city. The stream of cars leaving town glowed in the distance like dark-red molten steel.

12-20 22:57 VSAT: Very Small Aperture Terminal. A miniature satellite earth station used to connect to the internet via satellite communications.

12-21 09:04 I woke early and reached for the TV remote in the dark, only then remembering that the power was out. The radio’s rolling bulletin says today is still a holiday. There have been no new deaths for twenty-four hours. The number of patients is still rising, but none are in mortal danger. Most of them show only mild redness of the skin. Property management doesn’t know when the electricity will return. I looked out the window. The whole city was black.

12-21 11:48 All morning the news kept repeating that the entire city began losing power one district at a time from three a.m., that the cause remains unknown, and that there is no estimate for restoration. No water, no power, no internet. All that’s left is for the gas to go too. It feels as if things are sliding toward the edge of total loss of control. Foreigners can dig nuclear shelters in their backyards. We, suspended in our blocks of reinforced concrete, will have to improvise. The compound is still sealed, even though the community supermarket remains fully stocked. I need a plan.

12-21 16:06 I spent the whole afternoon trying and failing to get out of the compound. Large numbers of military vehicles are massing outside, right alongside our buildings. I managed to buy two canisters of liquefied gas from the snack shop and a few bottles of medical alcohol from the community clinic. At any time, in any disaster, fire and food are the essential supplies. Neither landline nor mobile calls are getting in or out. Satellite internet is crawling at around 20 kilobytes per second. Hardly anyone is online. Even the local portals have stopped updating.

12-21 16:49 The power came back briefly just now, so I immediately put every phone, flashlight, and rechargeable battery in the house on charge. Turned on the TV and found every channel showing the same blue screen with white text: do not spread rumors, do not go to densely populated areas, wait patiently at home for instructions. The more they say that, the less I believe them. This afternoon, while trying to sweet-talk the guard at the gate, I heard a company commander say that a lot of the patients had turned into plants. I assume he meant vegetative patients. I hope he meant vegetative patients.

12-21 17:06 A military truck with loudspeakers drove into the compound and began broadcasting in the central courtyard. Any resident with skin redness, ulcers, bleeding, vomiting, or diarrhea was to report immediately. I was in the middle of discussing with my wife what we should do once the compound is released when the power died again. By five o’clock it was already almost dark. The courtyard had lost the clamor of last night. Everyone was standing on their balconies, watching. The faces I could see were blank with fear.

12-21 22:36 I lit the camping lantern in the living room and played guitar for my wife. When I was a child and the power went out, my mother used to play harmonica for me. I have mostly come down now from the panic of dusk. Preserve the food and water, then go lie low in the countryside near Qionglai for a while. The woman downstairs came knocking again, carrying her child, asking to borrow water. They had not stored any at all. When she saw light in our home, she even asked to borrow a flashlight. I gave her four bottles of Mizone.

12-21 23:43 The radio says every hospital in the city is full, and the illness is spreading by some unknown route. I have a Class III radio operator’s license, which means my legal range is only about thirty kilometers. Still, I spent the whole evening monitoring several local ham frequencies on my handheld set. They said the city is crawling with military vehicles and ambulances, that the hospitals are all ringed off, and that anyone with a car should get out now. I aimed the binoculars at the overpasses along the Third Ring. The traffic leaving town was endless.

12-22 00:22 I had only just fallen asleep when shouting outside jolted me awake. I slid open the balcony door and heard someone yelling, “They’re sealing the city!” The dead streetlamps along the Third Ring came on in sequence. Endless military trucks were already lined up there. Soldiers were climbing down and laying concertina wire and sandbags along the road. The flyovers crossing the ring were jammed with cars, and several tanks had formed checkpoints. We are outside the Third Ring, thank God, but that still does not mean we can leave the compound.

12-22 08:42 No sleep all night. From three in the morning onward, the radio kept broadcasting announcements: roads inside the Third Ring were closed; ten overpasses, including Jiaozi, Chuan-Shaan, Supo, and Tianfu, had been opened as outbound safety and quarantine stations to channel evacuees leaving the city. They still did not explain why the city was being sealed. The only message repeated over and over was that staying at home remained safe. Beyond the wire on the far side of the Third Ring was a black mass of people pushing electric bikes. Helicopters kept flying into the city from the Longquanyi side.

12-22 09:23 The sun is out, and satellite internet is a little faster. YouTube pushed a video from Los Angeles to its front page, showing a man who had touched meteorite gravel. At first he displayed all the classic symptoms of acute radiation sickness. Then, over the next forty-eight hours, his skin gradually turned like bark, and branch-like calcified growths began to emerge from his joints. He looked like one of the Ents in Fangorn Forest. Once the brain calcified, his heart stopped. How in the hell is that supposed to be contagious?

12-22 11:44 The owners’ committee chairman is a widower, and aside from him there have been no second cases inside our compound. This morning the residents all crowded at the gate and shouted at the white-helmeted military police, demanding to know why our quarantine still had not been lifted. The ambulances have long since left. The answer was simple: until they receive orders, the isolation stands. And so we stood there watching the flood of vehicles and pedestrians jam Chenglong Avenue and move southeast in a vast, sluggish tide.

12-22 11:43 My wife asked what we should do. I told her to throw away all the vegetables and eat only rice and meat from now on. Some households in the compound have already run out of water. Did they really have no habit of storing any? One woman actually said she hadn’t even been able to enjoy her bath last night, incredible creature that she is. A lot of the local ham-radio people still haven’t gotten out. There are reports of entire ginkgo trees dying in the city. Looting and smashing have already begun. Every so often I hear the sharp crack of gunfire. Helicopters are carrying heavy equipment into town.

12-22 15:52 By noon the most impatient residents tried to break through the gate. The military police drove them back by shooting out the tires of several private cars. On the inner side of the Third Ring, people waiting to get out attempted to climb over the wire. At one point they tore open a few gaps, and the crowd spilled onto the expressway before being forced back with great effort by troops and police. The machine guns on the riot-control vehicles, which had previously pointed skyward, were lowered toward the crowd. Loudspeakers ordered everyone to obey instructions or bear the consequences.

12-22 16:46 The woman downstairs came again with her child to borrow water, acting as though this were only natural. I gave the kid a can of cola and said my own supplies were not abundant. This is already the third day without running water. The water we stored from the tap will last only a few more days, and bathing is out of the question. The radio is now under military control. Every frequency carries only traffic-control orders for outbound evacuation. News coverage has stopped. There is no green left anywhere in sight. It looks more like the desolate northwest than Chengdu.

12-22 22:37 At eight tonight, a group of residents smashed open the side gate that is usually kept sealed except for fire-engine access, and several large SUVs got out successfully. Not long afterward, though, several violent explosions sounded in the distance, followed by a red glare burning across the sky. They had fired shoulder-launched rockets directly at the escaping cars. After that, no one tried to break out again. The families that had made no preparations at all began crying and knocking on neighbors’ doors trying to buy water.

12-23 00:00 It is nearly midnight, and the stream of vehicles leaving the city has not thinned at all. Compared with last night, the direction of the city center is no longer entirely dark. Moving patches of fire and muffled explosions are visible everywhere. Engineering troops arrived along the Third Ring this evening and started digging trenches all along the route. At one point a yellow Toyota van with hazard lights flashing tried to punch through the cordon and was greeted by curses, bricks, and stones from the crowd, while the soldiers and police shoved it back without ceremony.

12-23 00:30 I can’t believe I forgot to withdraw cash over the last few days, though in a true disaster it may be the least useful thing in the world. I just pulled fifteen thousand yuan from the ATM downstairs using a few different cards. Since sleep is impossible anyway, I’ve started sorting the supplies in the apartment. A small portion is already loaded into the car so we can run at any moment. People are still shouting outside asking who has drinking water. I’m starting to worry that sooner or later the compound will turn to looting. The gas was cut this afternoon. My wife and I washed our feet in cold water.

12-23 12:09 Another clear day. Good weather makes bad things feel even worse. I have a set of polysilicon solar panels that can be assembled into a crude little off-grid power system, so now they have finally come out onto the terrace. A full day of sun is enough to charge devices and boil one liter of water. The flow of people beyond the Third Ring has thinned a bit compared with yesterday. I even saw some people heading back into the city. There is no real news, so no one knows what is happening in there now.

12-23 12:16 The atmosphere outside the city is growing tenser by the hour. Overnight, the central greenbelt of the Third Ring was gouged into a trench three meters wide. It is being filled with black oil and combustible debris, as if they mean to ring the city with a wall of fire. More and more military equipment has appeared on the outer side of the road, including troops in snow camouflage and biochemical helmets. The area around our compound has effectively become a logistics post. If that’s the case, why not simply requisition the compound and let us go? No one is getting out.

12-23 22:27 Eight hours ago the radio said that many third-generation infected patients had recovered and been discharged, and that the epidemic was essentially under control. Some people have begun returning toward the city, but security along the Third Ring has not loosened in the slightest. Most people remain suspicious and keep queueing to get out. Five hours ago, after thirty-nine straight hours, the evacuation surge finally tapered off and ordinary traffic patterns resumed. Some people are going back and forth through the checkpoints, ferrying out belongings. The soldiers are widening the isolation trench.

12-23 23:27 The child downstairs came to knock again tonight. I didn’t open the door. There are military floodlights outside now, so bright that the rooms barely need lantern light anymore. Someone managed to send in an entire truckload of water from outside. The guards at the gate, to my surprise, allowed it through. But before the household who ordered it could move the water inside, the rest of the neighbors had already looted every bottle. Most threw down a fistful of cash. Some simply ran. Mango has been yowling all day. The sound is driving me out of my skin.

12-24 00:12 Deep in the night, the troops and police along the Third Ring received the order to ignite the isolation trench. A wall of flame more than five meters high leapt up at once. The heat rolled even through the shadows. I could smell gasoline and burning timber from inside the apartment. The soldiers in snow camouflage kept throwing accelerants into the fire to keep it raging. From an airplane above the city, Chengdu would now look like a ring of fire fifty-one point four one nine kilometers in circumference.

12-24 09:56 At first light, the wall of fire that had burned all night along the Third Ring was much lower. I noticed that during the night the snow-camouflage troops had also sprayed a wide band of thick white foam outside the trench, more than ten meters across, and the stuff gives off a sharp, choking smell. Today makes exactly one week since the first death was discovered. Information-starved civilians seem to be relaxing a little. The checkpoints are far less crowded. I, on the other hand, increasingly suspect things are worse than I imagined.

12-24 10:51 My wife reminded me that tonight is Christmas Eve. God willing. It rained lightly last night, and today is clear again. Perhaps because the factories have lost power and the city has no cars left running, visibility is astonishingly good. From here I can clearly see the Chengdu TV Tower near Xinhua Bridge. It is no longer the white tower I remember. It is covered in gray-brown vines and looks like an immense, withered Christmas tree. The whole city has taken on a pale, exhausted darkness.

12-24 17:53 The property-management guards came knocking to say they hoped each household would donate some food and water for homes with children or elderly people. I gave them six bottles of water and a large pack of instant noodles. When they took the things, they craned their necks to peer into my apartment. Then, right in front of me, they twisted open one of the bottles before going to the next door. The owners’ committee says the military police have agreed to lift the blockade in thirty-six hours if the compound remains free of new cases. That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.

12-24 19:50 Toward nightfall, large groups of people came walking out from the city along Chenglong Road. They moved very slowly, almost in a shuffle, carrying no luggage and speaking not a word. When they reached Jiaozi Interchange, the loudspeakers began ordering them to halt. Not one of them did. When they came within fifty meters of the checkpoint, the troops opened fire. Bodies were torn apart, and everyone watching was dragged back into bloody reality.

12-24 19:59 Jiaozi Interchange vanished into a red fog. Severed limbs lay everywhere. Through my binoculars I could make out a UNI logo on one of the corpses. They all had looked perfectly normal, with no aggressive behavior, and yet there was something deeply wrong about them. The gunfire jolted the whole compound. Screaming and crying broke out on every side. The soldiers who had fired were spread out at long distance inside their cover positions, rifles leveled at the bodies as if expecting them to rise again at any moment.

12-24 20:02 The corpses on the bridge still haven’t moved, and no one has gone up to clear the scene. Moonlight reflects cold blue from every helmet, making the bridge look even more ghastly. The last time I saw a corpse in person was at a traffic accident. I went back to the bedroom and sat in the dark, arms shaking, holding my wife. She hadn’t seen any of it. Christmas Eve, she said. Let me peel you an apple. Fine, I said. We had both forgotten that we had already thrown out all the fruit.

12-25 09:14 I spent all of Christmas Eve trapped in nightmares, surrounded by the spirits of the dead, soaked in cold sweat and unable to wake myself free. At dawn, explosions dragged me back into reality. A layer of gray-brown vines had sprouted where yesterday’s shooting happened, just like the growths on the distant TV tower. Thorny canes had burst out through the corpses, punched through the thick bridge deck, and spread in every direction. Combat engineers were pouring accelerant over them and blasting apart the entire interchange.

12-25 09:42 Those vines quickly burned down to ash in the flames. They were nothing like the grotesque tentacle monsters in Japanese comics. The snow-camouflage troops were busy in the ruins, and a number of tanks and riot-control vehicles were moving into the city along Chenglong Road. There were still scattered cars and pedestrians leaving town, and astonishingly they were all being allowed through. I have no idea how many people are left in the city. Every radio frequency is just white noise now. Even the hams who got out can’t be reached anymore. Longquanyi has fallen silent too.

12-25 13:38 Another clear day. The temperature has risen quite a bit, but the nauseating scorched smell in the air is enough to turn your stomach. Fires are burning in multiple parts of the city center. Whole towers are glowing red as they burn, the heat haze is warping the skyline, and the crackle of flames and muffled thuds of collapsing buildings go on without pause. Smoke and ash are rising hundreds of meters high. Chengdu almost looks like its old smog-shrouded self again, except now it comes with the shriek of gunfire.

12-25 13:50 The military police delivered drinks, candy, and biscuits to the compound, and property management locked them away in storage on the grounds that distribution had to be centralized. The owners’ committee demanded they hand everything out immediately, only to be driven back by the security guards’ batons. Quite a few residents were injured. I saw the woman downstairs come back crying with her child, empty-handed, so I went down and gave them two tins of crucian-carp preserves and several bags of milk, while stressing that that was all I had left. I was saying it to myself as much as to them. Staying alive matters more than anything.

12-25 19:19 Last Christmas, my wife and I had a proper holiday dinner at a Mexican restaurant on Kehua Road. This year the two of us ate black-pepper pasta, canned yellow peaches, and our homemade wine at home. Outside the windows the city was silhouetted through the firelight, and the isolation trench along the Third Ring was burning again, like some vast bonfire carnival. Strange children came to the door begging for food. I didn’t open it. Someone in the compound was playing Christmas songs. Is there really so much electricity they don’t know what to do with it?

12-25 20:10 Tonight the convenience store in the compound was smashed open and stripped of food. Leading the raid were several of the stronger residents. The shopkeeper and his wife went to the security team in tears asking for help, only to be told they would have to pay compensation in food. Then they went outside the gate and pleaded with the military police, who said they were forbidden to enter the compound. Driven to the wall, the shopkeeper grabbed a cleaver and fought back, coming away covered in blood but managing to recover several cases of goods. More people, like me, watched the whole thing with cold detachment while quietly checking our own doors and windows.

12-26 09:27 Six this morning was the final deadline in the military police’s promise to lift the lockdown after thirty-six hours without a new case. At seven, a lieutenant colonel came over from the encampment and announced that the compound was in fact safest under quarantine, and that even if martial restrictions were lifted we would have nowhere to go, since every road was under military control and stray fire was a real danger. The best choice, he said, was to wait patiently for the situation to improve. The military police handed each household half a box of compressed biscuits and a small bucket of water, without letting property management touch any of it.

12-26 09:47 When I went downstairs to collect the biscuits, it took only a moment for black dust to settle all over me, ash blown in from the city fires. In the distance many buildings were still belching thick smoke, and the sun hung behind it all like a lamp behind black gauze. The military police all wore chemical-protection masks, while the residents covered their mouths and noses with towels and handkerchiefs. Some people were coughing constantly. My 3M mask felt conspicuous enough already. The security guards were eyeing everyone like hawks.

12-26 20:36 This morning, when we went to collect the military police rations, the security team tried to force every household to hand over half for centralized safekeeping by property management. I was the first one to say no. Pepper spray and batons did not settle anything, but the issue knife my brother gave me years ago was enough to bluff them. I took a hit and split the corner of my mouth for my trouble, but in the end the other residents stepped forward too, and the security team backed down. To be honest, most of those guards are just half-grown boys from the countryside. They were more fragile than I expected.

12-26 20:47 At dusk, several military vehicles marked with the blue Star of Life drove into the compound. Leading them was a senior colonel in snow camouflage. They brought in more than a dozen wounded soldiers and asked to borrow the compound clubhouse as a temporary field hospital. There are so many empty buildings around us, and yet they insisted on ours. The colonel’s explanation was that this place is now the safest location available. It was my first time seeing the unit tab on the chest of those snow-camouflage troops up close. So they are from a special biological epidemic-prevention force.

12-26 20:54 The vice chair of the owners’ committee came forward to negotiate. He knew perfectly well it was impossible to reject the army’s request, but he still stated our terms: dig us a well and restore our power. The colonel spent quite a while discussing it over his radio before replying that this was Shizishan, where digging a well was neither feasible nor safe, but they could provide the compound with four diesel generators, with fuel to be paid for by the residents. And so, after five days without electricity, the compound lit up again. In that sudden brightness, everyone found a brief, unreliable sense of safety.

12-27 08:47 With the compound lit up all night, I actually slept worse. The entire city around us was black, and only our little patch was showing off with lights blazing. It reminded me of Liu Cixin’s “dark forest” idea from years ago. Fortunately the owners’ committee realized it was burning too much diesel and shut the generators down after ten. I sat on the terrace listening carefully. From deep within the city came the low metallic groan of bending steel, like some giant beast ruminating in endless darkness.

12-27 12:03 Military doctors and epidemic-control troops have been moving in and out of the compound all morning. The soldiers brought in yesterday were almost certainly not suffering from ordinary injuries. The clubhouse has been wrapped layer after layer in semitransparent plastic sheeting like hanging curtains, turning it into an isolation zone inside an isolation zone. Everyone entering or leaving is disinfected. People are deeply unhappy about it. We endured all this time and proved the compound itself wasn’t infected, and now aren’t they bringing the danger straight to us? But the military police answer every objection with black gun barrels.

12-27 12:15 The city fires are still burning. According to one sharp-tongued neighbor, the army is deliberately burning down infected buildings inside the city, just as we saw three days ago. More smoke and ash is blowing in than yesterday, like black snow. There can hardly be anyone left downtown. I haven’t seen a single local license plate on Chenglong Road in well over ten hours. Even the military traffic on the Third Ring seems thinner than before. Soldiers and police are scattered loosely behind their cover positions.

12-27 15:53 At noon I was on the terrace wiping ash off the solar panels when a crashing sound suddenly came from the kitchen. I ran over and found a large hole smashed through the glass. Down below, two figures were hurrying away. I live on the sixth floor. I have to admire their aim. When we renovated, all the windows facing the street were replaced with reinforced glass, but the kitchen facing the courtyard kept the ordinary kind. Wonderful. Another problem to deal with. I suppose I’ll just board it over with cardboard.

12-27 16:36 Another clear day. For the Chengdu Plain, weather like this is unnaturally wrong. Over the past ten days, every plant in the compound has withered without exception. The osmanthus on our balcony is dusted with gray particles that look like some kind of botanical skin disease. All at once the thing disgusted me. It looked like a dead rat. I put on rubber gloves and a mask, wrapped it in plastic, and threw it downstairs. Some neighbors saw what I was doing and quickly followed suit. Soon the courtyard was piled with broken pots and dead planters.

12-27 18:01 As dusk approached, the generators started up again. The sound was unexpectedly beautiful. This morning the owners’ committee announced that power would be supplied for two hours each in the morning, noon, and evening, with diesel paid for out of the maintenance fund, and the measure passed unanimously. The smell of meat drifted through the hallway. Someone was cooking. It suddenly struck me that I haven’t seen anyone walking a dog for days. I plugged in the rice cooker, washed rice with bottled water, and got ready to make curry. From now on I need to record our daily consumption of supplies.

12-27 22:51 Even though the evening power window has long since ended, the generators are still roaring on. The requisitioned clubhouse remains brightly lit, unreal behind layers of plastic drapery. I have no idea what those epidemic-control troops are doing in there. At least four body bags were carried out today. It looked less like they were treating patients than like they were running experiments. The whole compound reeks of disinfectant, mixed with the soot in the air, and together the smell is almost impossible to breathe.

12-27 22:59 The air is getting worse. It’s not just that a fine layer of dust has settled through the apartment. Even the smell in the bathroom has grown heavier. Our masks are enough in theory, but no one can wear them all day without going mad. I started sealing up the doors and windows in the bedroom with weather stripping and plastic film, trying to make that one room as airtight as possible so that when the power comes on, the air conditioner can filter the air. The water we stored before the cutoff is nearly gone. We’ve already been living on bottled water for days. My wife’s face, dry from not rehydrating properly for so long, is hard to bear looking at.

12-27 23:03 Since we now have regular charging hours, I watched The Road on the laptop tonight. Halfway through, my wife burst into tears and asked why I was watching something so hopeless. I closed the laptop and stroked her back while she sobbed. That film was what first got me hooked on PSK. Maybe in a few more days we’ll be living that kind of life ourselves. I want to stay with you, and I still want to believe there is hope somewhere inside me.

12-28 13:45 I was busy all morning and did not get around to lunch until noon, when I finally ate a bowl of instant noodles. I have scattered every scrap of food and every bit of water in the apartment across the floor, inside the ceiling, under the sofa, in every corner I can find. It’s messy, but at least it means we can’t be cleaned out in one sweep. My wife says I’m worrying too much, but I suspect things may yet deteriorate to the point of home invasions. I even dug out the banned gear from the bottom of storage: a fifty-centimeter steel crossbow, still wrapped in the oilcloth from when I bought it in Jiamusi two years ago.

12-28 13:57 In my sleep at dawn I thought it was an earthquake. Then came a thunderous explosion that sounded like underground demolition. I rolled over and scrambled up, and through the filthy air I saw that where the Chengdu TV Tower used to stand there was now empty space. The city fires have not fully died down yet, but from here I can no longer see open flame. Many of the landmarks that defined the skyline are simply gone. Only the billowing black smoke and the swaying ruins mark the places where they still stood a few days ago.

12-28 15:03 The situation inside the compound has changed. While I was tidying the apartment this morning, both property management and the owners’ committee came by. The former were all deference, while the latter praised me up as though I were some public-minded hero. Turns out the military police now want a residents’ representative to receive incoming aid supplies, and diesel is no longer being charged for. Both sides want control of distribution, which has led to the first direct election of this emergency period. I voted for the owners’ committee, even though some of their people had also taken part in looting the convenience store.

12-28 15:04 Quite a few people are backing property management too. In times like this, the garbage downstairs is somehow still being cleared every day. In truth they’re worse off than we are. The older women who do the sweeping are trapped inside the compound as well, with no dormitory to go back to, and have been sleeping on the office floor for ten straight days. Unfortunately sympathy doesn’t solve anything. Either simple fairness is preserved for as long as possible, or everything drops quickly into chaos. Watching the aid supplies being unloaded at the compound gate, I suspect the army is getting ready to pull out.

12-28 23:55 I just got back from an owners’ committee meeting. The military aid we received contained no food at all, only a batch of entrenching shovels and gasoline, not even enough to give one shovel to every household. We asked whether the army was really pulling out, and the captain handling the handover said yes. The reason, he said, was lack of manpower. Longquanyi is burning now too. Only then did we notice that farther to the south, the sky itself was burning red. No one will tell us what exactly they are burning, or what they are trying to keep contained.

12-28 23:56 I took one of the entrenching shovels an old soldier had used. It was sharp enough to take off half a man’s head with one swing. I’ve decided to find a chance to bribe one of the troops and trade for something harder. Everything being burned these past few days has been high-rises over thirty stories tall. The soldiers moving back and forth into the city may not know what they’re doing either, or what exactly they are fighting. Only the officers from the epidemic-prevention unit inside our compound clubhouse seem to know any fragment of the truth.

12-29 00:12 It’s this late again, and the child downstairs came knocking once more, holding out a small bowl of scrambled eggs his mother had made. I sighed and gave him a bottle of water. He kept looking at me hopefully, and I shrugged and closed the door. My wife and I drank only one 550-milliliter bottle of water between us today. I can’t afford to give more away. Mango has spent these past few days curled up asleep on the sofa. Her cat food and litter might last half a year, but lately she feels to me like a ticking bomb.

12-29 00:13 For the record: at home we have five shrink-wrapped flats of 550-milliliter Lanjian, with 102 bottles left; five four-liter bottles of Nongfu Spring, one of them from relief distribution; six cans of Wanglaoji; ten cans of Diet Coke; a little under half a barrel of purified water still in the dispenser; and two 800-milliliter bottles always packed in the EDC bag. The bathtub’s utility water is gone. There’s still one pot of water in the soup pot. In the car we have one case of 380-milliliter Nongfu Spring, twenty-four bottles total, plus two more four-liter bottles. How long can that last? I don’t know.

12-29 09:50 I went downstairs just now to dump the cat litter and found a dead feral cat lying in the dried grass. Its body was shriveled down so badly that at first glance it could have been mistaken for a length of wood. The cat obviously had not starved. Two short shoots were growing out of its eye sockets, each tipped with tiny gray triangular leaves. At once I remembered what that company commander had said days ago: many of the patients turned into plants. I hurried to call the epidemic-control troops from the clubhouse. The senior colonel came in person to collect the carcass.

12-29 12:36 The whole compound mobilized this morning. Under the direction of the epidemic-control troops, everyone burned dead grass and trees downstairs. Firebreak trenches were dug carefully between the landscaping and the buildings, for fear the flames might get out of control. The colonel said the cat had died from eating grass. Based on what they currently know, he said, as long as contaminated plants do not come into contact with wounds and are not eaten, people should be safe. He would not say more than that, only that this event is an ecological disaster. Suddenly I thought of a friend of mine who’s vegetarian.

12-29 22:32 If not for the scattered candle- and lantern-light at night, it would be hard to believe anyone still lives in this community. After a full day of labor, all the dangers in the flowerbeds and greenbelts have been cleared away. Even the roots are gone. The compound feels hollowed out now, a bit like a construction site waiting to be handed over. But when we need to light fires outdoors for warmth in the future, where exactly are we supposed to find fuel? This charred wasteland has finally brought our home back into visual harmony with the city around it, no longer standing out so strangely.

12-29 22:46 After several days of instant noodles, neither my wife nor I has much appetite, so we mixed up a little milk powder to drink. Just now the child downstairs came knocking again, this time carrying four or five little sponge cakes. I didn’t take them. I gave him a bottle of Fruitimes instead. The isolation trench along the Third Ring was not set alight tonight, probably because there are no visible plants left within range of the eye. There are fewer troops now as well. Only sentries remain, patrolling back and forth in one-kilometer loops.

12-30 12:17 Five people from Building 39 got out!! Two couples and one child, driving the only Hummer H5 in the compound, forced their way back out through the side gate that someone had once escaped through on the twenty-second, taking advantage of the sentries’ slackness at dawn. They must have spent these past days modifying the vehicle and cutting the lock on the isolation bollards. What surprised everyone was that the soldiers neither gave chase nor opened fire. They simply watched in silence as the Hummer drove into the boundless morning fog.

12-30 21:46 The neighbors argued all day about whether or not we should attempt an escape ourselves. Most agree that we cannot just sit here and wait to die, but some believe that running would harm those who stay behind and amount to a betrayal of the rules holding things together. I suddenly felt disappointed in myself. Once the real disaster arrived, the thought lodged in my head was never how to seize an opening, only how to hold out a little longer. To the five neighbors who broke through today: good luck.

12-30 22:54 On the Third Ring tonight, the sentries on duty were stamping their feet beside burn barrels to keep from freezing, wearing the most ordinary green rubber shoes. The troops from the past few days, the ones in leather combat boots with special unit patches on their shoulders, are gone. A contingent of People’s Armed Police has rotated in instead. The compound’s front gate has been shut. The side gate has been welded closed to prevent anyone else from making a break for it. Barriers have also been laid across the underground garage exits. This time there really is no way out.

12-31 00:07 The child downstairs didn’t come tonight. Maybe he finally found someone willing to give him water. A PL on the third floor has turned a wireless router into a hotspot that covers most of the compound. He also opened an encrypted chatroom and only gave the Wi-Fi password to people in the compound football club. There are nine of us in all. I should have thought of it sooner. Even though the internet collapsed almost at once, a local network can still do a great deal. For example, it can help small groups form.

12-31 00:10 The few of us who play football already know one another well, and everyone agrees that our odds are better together. Unless the crisis takes another sharp turn, holding our ground and waiting is still the right choice. The most urgent tasks now are these: first, find out what the field hospital in the clubhouse is actually doing; second, determine where we would go if we do have to leave; third, keep the car maintained and our supplies ready so we can move at a moment’s notice.

12-31 00:24 The plan is this: Tom is contributing an iPhone. He has a paid app that can turn it into a listening device and let an iPad monitor the feed wirelessly. The ideal listening post would be the property-management accounting office, which is now being used as the epidemic-control troops’ radio room. Old Ma used to be a contractor for this compound years ago, and he says the ventilation ducts in the underground garage can reach that office. But only a child would fit.

12-31 00:34 Old Ma’s seven-year-old son is a clever boy. So the job falls to him. My responsibility is to keep a twenty-four-hour watch on the troop presence along the Third Ring and outside the compound. If the army keeps thinning out, or if anything changes abnormally, we need to make plans early. This is exactly what I’ve already been doing over the past few days. I’ve set up one mirrorless camera on the terrace and another on the balcony, both configured to take a frame every minute instead of shooting video, because with power rationing I can’t keep them charged for continuous recording.

12-31 23:57 Three minutes left before this year ends. Up until now it had been an ordinary year for me. Then, in its last ten days, staying alive suddenly became a luxury, and every life stopped being ordinary. Beside the wavering candlelight, I watched my wife’s hair cast strange, soft-lined shadows across the white wall. Mango lay on my lap, all warm weight and softness. I gently turned my wife by the shoulders, looked into her eyes, and said: Happy New Year.

12-31 23:59 If this were our last minute, what would you say to me? I am by your side.