Rain Bell | Fufonfia

Rain Bell Extra | Fufonfia

Dark Fragrance

Thursday, December 16. PLA 452 Hospital, Surgical Ward Three, Orthopedics Inpatient Department.

This wasn’t originally Old Mo’s night shift, but since the weekend was coming and he wanted to head back to his hometown in Nanchong tomorrow, he traded shifts with another doctor.

Under normal circumstances, orthopedics at night either had nothing to do or a major operation. Small injuries that just needed plaster casts and bandages could always be put off until dawn under the excuse of “observation” and then dumped on the interns for practice. As for the really big cases, the sort that required plasma, power saws, and steel pins, those never fell to him. The department chief would certainly take the lead himself. So when Old Mo was on night duty, he played PSP and watched soap operas.

That evening, just as Old Mo was about to slip back into the duty room, emergency sent over a patient. A girl. Pain in both upper arms. X-rays had already been taken in emergency. On the chart was written: no obvious fracture visible; suspicious fine fissures in the midshaft of both humeri; recommend admission for observation.

She was probably twenty-one or twenty-two, with big eyes and a pointed chin, very pretty. Old Mo couldn’t help taking an interest. In their ward there were already more than a dozen doctors who had ended up dating patients. It was practically tradition. So he personally arranged her bed, prescribed medication, set up the IV drip, did the routine checks, and asked about her condition.

Her classmates had come with her, but once she was admitted they all left, leaving her alone in the chilly ward. Old Mo asked, “What happened to you? How do you end up with stress fractures in both arms? You don’t look like a weightlifter.”

She said, “I stayed up all night watching the meteor shower. When I got back and woke up this morning, my arms hurt so much I could barely lift them. It feels like nails are chiseling into the bones inside the flesh. It hurts terribly.”

Old Mo said, “It’s just a stress fracture. Nothing serious. Don’t lift anything heavy for a while, get more calcium, rest up, and you’ll recover quickly.” While saying this, he was thinking about her X-ray films. The pattern on those arms looked like geometric motifs on blue-and-white porcelain, encircling both bones, as if some tattoo master had etched the design directly into the periosteum.

“Thank you, doctor-brother, you’ve been so kind. The meteor shower last night was beautiful. I even picked up a bit of meteor grit. One of my classmates gave it to me. It’s in the pocket of my coat. You can take it out yourself.”

Old Mo agreed and bent his head to search her coat pocket for the meteor. His face came very close to hers. He could feel the warmth radiating from her body, and there was also a faint dark fragrance. It smells just like Xu Xiaozhu, the girl who sat beside me in middle school, he thought.

The meteor grit was black and unimpressive at first glance. Only when Old Mo held it up close did he see that it had an irregular diamond shape, deep and dark like obsidian, reflecting the cold light. “You could drill a hole in it and wear it as a pendant someday. It would look very nice with a sweater.”

“Really? I was thinking the same thing.” The girl looked delighted. Her face was a little too flushed, but her eyes gave away how exhausted she was. Every now and then, while speaking, she had to force them open wider.

Old Mo got up to leave. The girl nodded weakly, and the ward fell quiet again. Then in an instant the air seemed to quiver. A tiny cracking sound arose in the room, almost inaudible, like the sound a plump bamboo stalk makes after summer rain when it stretches lazily and splits its skin. The girl gave a low moan, then suddenly began screaming and rolling wildly on the bed. Her cries were agony itself. She clawed frantically at her own arms as though she wanted to snap them off with her bare hands.

Old Mo hurriedly pushed her back to radiology for more films. The result left him stunned. Compared to an hour earlier, the fracture lines in her arms had lengthened, and widened too. Like, like the skin of soybeans after soaking overnight.

When she came back she was transferred straight into ICU, and from that point her screaming never stopped again. Old Mo stayed anxiously by her bedside in ICU, watching her smooth, rosy skin shrivel in fast motion, as if he were watching the making of raisins on fast-forward.

By the time dawn approached, the girl’s cries were already weak and fading. No trace remained in her face of the youthful brilliance of a girl in her prime. It was as if old bark had been stretched across her skull. Through the cotton T-shirt, Old Mo could see broken bone spurs thrusting outward beneath her arms, and he knew how much that must hurt. Bracing himself, he took scissors and cut open the shirt. What he saw was several gnarled bone spurs punching up through the flesh like newly sprouting branches. The tips were forked, and on them were several petal-like calcified growths, giving off waves of rich pollen scent.

More bone spurs were poised to burst forth, as if someone had stuffed countless bottle caps beneath the skin.

Old Mo staggered backward in terror and hit the wall, staring at the girl in horror. Somewhere along the way he had lost the meteor grit.

Her ruptured blood vessels were pumping blood steadily out, staining the sheet and clothing red. Her brows were tightly knotted, her body warped and twisted on the bed. Seen from a distance, she looked like a red plum tree in full bloom.

Rain Bell Mainline

Slow-Rolled Sleeves

Monday, January 3, sleet. Day 19 after the meteor shower, Day 17 of the Twitter record.

“Please give me two more pieces, I’m begging you, there are two little grandsons at home.” The old woman clutched at the young soldier’s sleeve with both hands and pleaded bitterly. Great black flakes of ash whirled down through the air and settled on her gray-white hair, making the deep wrinkles in her face look even more worn and haggard. The soldier shook his head helplessly, both hands clamped around the box of compressed biscuits. “No. That’s all each person gets. Children count as half.”

The old woman kept begging, but the people waiting in line behind her grew impatient and began calling out for her to move. At last she could only turn away, bent over, carrying her basket with effort. Half a box of military compressed biscuits and a four-liter jug of drinking water should not have been much, yet she carried them as though she were fighting a duel with gravity at every step.

Suddenly the basket grew lighter. A large hand had caught the handle. Startled, the old woman reached to cover it at once, but another large hand dropped seven or eight extra biscuits into the basket and let go again. The basket became heavier than before, so heavy that it nearly threw her off balance.

She looked up to find the owner of those hands, but all she saw was the receding back of the man who had been standing in front of her in the line just now, wearing an army-green overcoat and a 3M mask that hid his face. The old woman wiped the moisture from the corners of her eyes and hobbled laboriously back toward her apartment block.

The man in the green coat carried the water in one hand and the few remaining biscuits in the other. He had only just reached the entrance to the flowerbed in the middle of the compound, the end of the queue and the choke point every resident had to pass to get in or out of the buildings, when a hand shot out from atop the flowerbed and blocked his path.

He frowned, sidestepped in disgust to avoid the reaching hand, only to be blocked again by several more men and forced to stop. They were security guards in gray woolen uniform coats, holding electric batons. One of them had a notebook and pointed to the things in the man’s hands. “Army supplies. By compound regulations, you hand over half. It will be used to relieve other households in difficulty.”

“I am a household in difficulty.” The man moved to walk on.

“Hold on,” said the head of security, barring him with an electric baton. “In extraordinary times, everyone has to hand it over, for the stability and harmony of the compound…”

“Not handing it over. The military gives supplies to the compound so everyone has a share. Go line up yourselves if you want yours.”

“What, nice words don’t work on you? Let me tell you, it’s chaos outside right now. If you don’t cooperate with property management, we can mess you up like it’s noth…”

“Mess up your granny!” The man in green shoved him hard. “The supplies the soldiers handed out here on Christmas Eve, where’d they get ‘stabilized’ to? The water and food you collected door to door a couple days ago, where’d they get ‘harmonized’ to? Your property office works for us homeowners because we pay you. We didn’t hire you so we could serve you!”

He used real force in the shove. The head of security staggered backward and cracked into the edge of the flowerbed, instantly turning from anger to fury. “You Jap bastard! Beat this son of a bitch!”

The other guards had already moved. The man in green only saw a blur and instinctively twisted aside, but still took a vicious hit across the right cheek. Fire exploded across his face. His mask was broken, hanging from one ear. He dodged the second blow, drove a kick straight into the chest of the guard in front of him, and with his right hand yanked a telescopic baton free from his belt buckle. With a metallic snap it extended to twenty-six inches, the titanium rod throwing sparks as he swung it straight at the guard’s head.

“Hit him! Damn it, hit him!” More guards swarmed in, the tips of their electric batons spitting blue sparks as they struck at the man in green from all sides. In an instant he took several shocks, clutched his head, and went down face-first.

The guards closed around him, their electric batons raining down on his back and legs. Holding the notebook, the head of security turned and shouted at the homeowners in the line, who had all twisted around in shock to watch. “What are you staring at? If people don’t cooperate with the property office, who’s going to keep the compound safe? Who’s going to stand watch for you? Huh? Every household has to hand over half, and the property office will redistribute it!”

Suddenly a scream burst out from the brawl. One of the guards hopped backward on one leg, blood gushing from the top of his foot. “He, he pulled a knife!” Then came more cries, “Ow!” and “Shit!” Several guards dropped almost at once. The beaten man was down on one knee now, a gleaming M9 bayonet in his right hand. He drove the blade straight through boots into feet, one after another, turning cowhide inside out in bright red. One guard took advantage of the fact that the man hadn’t fully risen yet and brought his baton smashing down toward the back of his head. The man in green rolled sideways to dodge, smashed the guard upward with an elbow, seized the man’s right hand in both of his own, and bent the index finger back with a sharp crack. The guard howled and collapsed, writhing on the ground.

Better to break one finger than wound all ten. That sentence filled the man’s mind.

Seeing the tide turn, the head of security bolted. “Just you wait,” he shouted, heading for the other security booths to call for reinforcements, only to slam straight into somebody coming the other way. “Motherf…” he cursed as he looked up, only to meet another pair of furious eyes. By now the other homeowners in the queue had all closed in, especially several grown men who were slowly rolling up their sleeves and showing what they had in their hands.

“Damn it, the property office is supposed to be the dog we feed, and now the dog wants to eat the owners’ flesh!”

“Beat the bastards to death! Throw the property office out! We want a new one!”

“What the hell do we even need a property office for anymore?”

The crowd exploded. Days of pent-up grievance were finally set alight. Enraged homeowners beat any property staff they could find, stormed into the management office and smashed it to pieces, then hauled every drop of water and every scrap of food from the storerooms out onto the little square.

“Please give my grandsons something to eat.” The same old woman squeezed around the edge of the crowd, pleading for a share.

No one paid any attention to her. Everyone was going mad over the spoils.

Outside the compound wall, the military police watched everything with cold detachment. No one stepped in. The beaten security guards had curled up on the ground whimpering, and only then was it obvious that they were really no more than half-grown kids.

The man in the green coat did not join the beating that followed. He picked up the water and biscuits that had fallen to the ground, put away his baton and bayonet, and limped home. His wife sprayed Yunnan Baiyao on his wounds, her eyes full of tears.

“You, you could’ve just given it to them. We still have plenty of food and water at home.”

“Someday it’ll run out. Every little bit extra means one more day of peace of mind.”

“Jap bastard” is a Chengdu colloquial curse, roughly like “motherfucker.”

Far Road Ahead

Mainline 2

Monday, January 3, sleet. Day 19 after the meteor shower, Day 17 of the Twitter record.

In the night, the man made a final inspection of his home. The weatherproof wooden table and chairs on the terrace had been covered with oilcloth and pushed into a corner, the door locked with an iron chain. The rappel device still hung on the balcony wall, but the safety rope had been taken away. The furniture in the living room stood shrouded in striped cloth, except for the shattered dining table. The giant power strip in the study looked strangely empty, but not a single book was missing from the shelves. Though the water, electricity, and gas had been out for a long time, the breaker, water valve, and gas meter had still been carefully shut off. All the appliances had been unplugged, the curtains drawn, and the house had fallen into its own staggered, sealed-off time.

Caches of remaining water and canned food were hidden in the corners of every room. The man could not take all the supplies with him, so he dispersed them through the house in pieces. He still felt certain he would one day return here. Whatever the place became, it would still be his home. The litter box at the bedroom door had been changed with fresh sand. The cat food and water were fresh too. Everything was arranged as neatly and methodically as if they were only leaving for one of the long holidays they used to take, except that now there was a finality to it.

Rain was still falling outside, the drops falling into the ink-black night and stirring only wave after wave of piercing cold. The man looked at his watch and woke his wife.

“It’s time to go,” he said softly.

“Are we really leaving?” his wife asked reluctantly.

“Yes.”

“Where are we going?”

“I don’t know. But it’s better than sitting here waiting to die.”

“How long will we be gone?”

“I don’t know.”

The two of them shouldered their packs and slipped quietly out of the apartment. The couplets from last Spring Festival were still pasted to the door. Harmony for the whole family, blessing for the whole household. Auspiciousness fills the hall, spring fills the hall.

The young father carried a close-fitting backpack with his laptop inside, and in his arms he held a child not yet a year old. The child’s mother was searching nervously through the room, as if terrified she might still leave something behind.

“Can you hurry up? It’s time,” the father urged from the doorway.

“What if the baby gets hungry on the road? You’re a man, you never think about these things. How would you know what a baby needs?” the mother said as she stuffed yet another bag of milk powder into her shoulder bag and tucked the child’s little cloak under her arm.

“Hurry up, hurry up. The car is packed as it is. Enough stuff to drive from Xi’an and back twice.” The man reached out and pulled the door open.

“All right, all right, let’s go. Honestly.” The mother gave the light switch one last check, stepped into her shoes, and came out. “Do you think I should bring those leather shoes I bought at Moore?”

The man loaded everything into the trunk. The rear windshield had been smashed, and a perforated tarpaulin covered the opening, tied to hooks at the doorframe with rope. Inside the car it was bitterly cold, with wind constantly seeping in.

The others arrived one by one. Five vehicles in all. Men and women, and two children, one of them not even able to walk yet. The mother of that child had clothes tucked under her left arm and in her right hand held a blue-and-white porcelain vase about a foot high. The man frowned slightly.

We’re fleeing for our lives, not moving house. But he didn’t say it aloud.

“Let’s go.” He waved his hand and everyone started their engines.

The father fastened his seat belt and saw the companion on watch in the distance flash a signal with a flashlight. One by one the five vehicles started and rolled out in file. His Subaru was last. The mother strapped the child into the car seat, the family heirloom blue-and-white vase clutched in her lap.

The lead Grand Cherokee slammed the accelerator to the floor. The steel cable at its rear drew taut as a rod. With a few sharp metallic snaps that tore through the night, the ornamental European iron fence bent and broke from the base. The orange Land Rover leaped first over the forty-centimeter concrete footing, followed by the Grand Cherokee after it reeled in the cable. The violent jolting flung the water bucket from its roof. Then came the Tiggo. Its chassis was too low, and it failed twice before finally scraping over with a howl from the underside, leaving a deep gouge on the front wheel.

When the man saw that even the Tiggo had made it out, he let out a breath and ran back to his own car. His wife slid out of the driver’s seat to let him take over.

“Go on. It should be fine now. I was just afraid this car wouldn’t make it over.”

At that moment, a shot rang out.

The alarms along the compound fence went off one after another like beacon towers, and from far away came the confused sound of running feet.

The man shifted into four-wheel low. The Wrangler’s thick tires bit into the concrete ledge and climbed over with ease. Ahead, the other three vehicles had already lined up, white exhaust billowing from their tailpipes as if they could not wait to disappear into the night.

The father’s palms were slick with sweat. The child had been frightened by the gunshot and was now bawling. The mother wedged the blue-and-white vase between her legs and bent over to soothe the child. “Move! Go! What are you doing?”

Stall. Start. Stall. Start. Stall.

The man suddenly felt as if he had been thrown back into driving school. His legs trembled. He could no longer work the clutch properly. He had been licensed for exactly one month and three days.

The gunfire grew more intense.

A ricochet struck the Cherokee’s rear right window. Its driver laid on the horn, frantic with impatience.

The man rolled down the window and shouted, “Don’t panic! Hurry up! Everyone’s waiting for you!”

His voice passed through the gunfire and alarms and became almost impossible to hear, like a stone skipping desperately across the surface of water before being swallowed.

At last the Forester caught. The father floored the accelerator and the car lurched sideways up onto the wall.

The front right wheel and rear left wheel hung across the wall like a seesaw. The tires spun madly in the air, then suddenly jerked forward, only to slam hard back into the wall.

The child was hurting from the plastic bag cutting into him and cried even louder. The mother began to cry too.

The father looked at the military policeman who had jumped onto the hood and switched off the headlights.

With their lights extinguished, they left the compound as fast as they could. Just as expected, no pursuers came.

The father, carrying the child, opened the door once more and went back inside. He collapsed onto the sofa as if released from a sentence.

“Be good, baby. We’re not going anywhere after all.”

The mother crouched beside him in distress, staring blankly at the tiny chip in the blue-and-white porcelain.

Stay Home

Fufonfia2

Friday, December 31. Eastern Jianshe Road, SM Square.

At dawn, before the first thread of gray light had even appeared on the horizon, the air already carried a scorched smell. A cold, slick film of mist had condensed on the car windows, as if even the sound of the engine had frozen stiff.

The boy sat behind the front passenger seat, wedged tightly between his mother and the auntie from next door. His father drove with total concentration. The neighbor uncle sat in the front passenger seat, constantly pointing out directions.

The boy wasn’t fully awake yet, but after curling up in the car all night, every part of him ached, and he couldn’t fall asleep again no matter how hard he tried. Outside the window everything was gray and dim. At first they had been in the countryside, with construction sites flashing past one after another, but later it became city again. Yet it wasn’t a city the boy knew. Here there were burned-out towers everywhere, leaning power poles, dead trees. Whenever people saw his father’s big Hummer go by, they hurled stones that struck the outside of the vehicle with loud bangs. The boy remembered how when his father drove the Hummer to pick him up, other children had shown only envy and fear. Why were people here so different?

He asked his mother, “Why didn’t we spend the night at home?”

His mother said, “We’re going somewhere very far away. There’ll be electricity there, and you can watch Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf.”

Oh, so that’s it. The boy suddenly understood. Then he asked, “So Chengdu won’t have electricity anymore?”

“This is Chengdu,” his mother said, pointing out the window. “And it won’t ever have electricity again.”

What? This was Chengdu? It looked like a completely unfamiliar city. The boy stared out in amazement. Still, his mother had told him before that Chengdu was huge, and there were many slums he would never set foot in. Maybe this was what she meant by “lower Chengdu.”

His father drove around the city for a long time, as if looking for something. The boy began to feel hungry, so he asked his mother for food. She gave him a piece of compressed biscuit. It tasted terribly, terribly bad, but the boy knew his mother would be angry if he refused to eat it, so he forced himself to chew.

After who knew how much longer on the road, the fathers and mothers, the uncle and auntie, discussed things for a long time, and then suddenly they drove into an underground parking garage. It was pitch-black inside, but the boy recognized the place from the special cartoon direction signs: SM Square. His mother had taken him here to watch a movie not long ago. So they must be here to eat. There’s a KFC on the first floor. I want a family bucket, a pair of New Orleans wings, and a box of egg tarts, the boy thought happily.

The car stopped on basement level one. His father and the uncle got out with flashlights in hand. The boy knew his uncle was a policeman and carried a black handgun. The boy had always wanted to touch it once, but had never had the chance.

His mother and the auntie sat with him in the dark car and turned off the lights. It was so black you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Only the beams from his father and uncle’s flashlights swayed in the distance, then vanished from sight.

He had no idea how much time passed.

The boy fell asleep, then woke, then fell asleep again. His father and the uncle never returned.

The auntie began to sob quietly. His mother’s hand gripped his clothes tightly. The boy pricked up his ears to listen, and it was as if his hearing had suddenly grown much sharper. He could hear countless tiny sounds: dripping water, air moving through pipes, footsteps. He couldn’t tell whether these sounds were really there or only in his imagination.

Then suddenly gunfire broke out in the distance, followed by screams. Someone came running without any attempt to hide his footsteps, with heavy pursuers behind him. It was the uncle. He was shouting “Run!” while stumbling over and over and crying out in pain. The auntie climbed into the driver’s seat and started the car. In the brief moment the headlights lit up, the boy saw more than ten figures beating the uncle. His father was nowhere to be seen. His mother was crying or shouting something, then jumped out of the car and locked the boy inside. The auntie started backing up. The attackers stopped beating the uncle, because by then he lay motionless on the ground, and turned to run toward the car. The auntie backed it into the elevator bay, and the rear of the Hummer dropped down several steps. She didn’t know how to use the off-road differential lock. She only stomped on the gas, and the Hummer roared in place with a deafening wheel-spin.

A cold hand yanked the boy out of the car. The hand was so skinny it felt almost skeletal, and its grip hurt him badly. The boy was dragged a long way through the dark until he came to a door. When it opened, white light spilled out. The hand shoved him inside, then shut the door at once. In the instant before it closed, the boy saw that the hand was not like his own.

One, two, three, four, five, six. The boy could now count all the way to one hundred and twenty-three. He had seen that hand had six fingers.

After another little while, the door opened again, and his mother was dragged in too. In the endless blackness, the boy kept shaking her body, but he never got any response.

If only we could always stay at home, the boy thought.

Santai

Fufonfia3

Sunday, January 16. Jiacang Village, 58.8 kilometers from Luqu on National Road 213.

From this slope, if you lay flat, you can see the winding highway several kilometers away. The sun was small and high, with no clouds at all. The gravel on the ground was sharp and freezing, and the cold wind was hard to bear. Wangdui rubbed his reddened hands together and squinted into the distance, still watching intently.

This was Gahai, a purely pastoral township under Luqu County with barely more than three thousand people. More than twenty days earlier, the pasture grasses had begun dying in swathes as if bewitched. Even the least picky yaks refused to eat the diseased dead grass. Wangdui’s family owned ten yaks and more than two hundred Tibetan sheep, enough to consume over a thousand kilograms of forage in a day. In only a few days the yaks’ shoulder blades had begun jutting out sharply, and the starving sheep had even started chewing on the family’s yak-hair tent.

The home of herders is on the grassland. Many households had followed whatever patches of pasture had not yet died, but the speed of men and livestock could not keep up with the pace of the “grass plague.” Wangdui watched their neighbors move and watched their animals drop dead one by one along the way. After more than ten days, most families had given up trying to save their herds and instead turned to preserving their own lives, because before long they discovered that vegetables had stopped coming from the Han areas altogether, and even the fields of the few households that had shifted from herding to farming had withered to nothing.

Wangdui had already been eating mutton for several days. When he was hungry enough, even meat dipped in a little salt was still unbelievably delicious, but these were his own sheep, and every one eaten was one less remaining. The living Buddha of the township and the wealthy households had all left. Wangdui did not know where he himself should go. All he could do was follow his older brothers on their “hunts.” The blood of a Khampa man ran in his veins.

Far away, the highway kicked up a plume of yellow dust. A vehicle was coming. Wangdui let out a whistle, and the three Tucsons lying hidden in the ravine behind him sprang to life. They were the “Calf Team,” made up of his brother Gesang and five or six other young men from the area. The Tucsons circled toward National Road 213 along a side track, and Wangdui sprinted down from the slope, diving into his brother’s car at the exact moment it swept around to him. Not a second off.

His brother Gesang was twenty-three, with curly hair hanging loose to his shoulders, and he wore fingerless gloves his mother had mended many times over. His hands gripped the steering wheel tightly. The inside of the car was filthy. The seat covers were already tattered, and even the lid of the glovebox was gone. Some Han thief had driven this vehicle here to sell off cheap, and it had cost only three yaks. But Wangdui’s family was too large. A little car like this could never take them all away.

“Basang, the two of us take the first car and force them out, that’s all. Don’t stab anybody. Zhaxi, you and Xiaobai block the wheels on the cars behind so they can’t turn around. Wangdui, you stay in the car and don’t get out, understand?!” Gesang shouted as he handed out the assignments. “Got it,” Wangdui muttered, so quietly that even he barely heard himself.

By the time the three Tucsons cut onto the highway, the convoy they meant to intercept had already driven past. Gesang could only slam on the gas and chase hard from behind. The Tucson’s suspension was terrible and the car bucked violently over the road. The convoy had only four vehicles in it. Wangdui recognized one of them as a Cherokee; the neighbors had one just like it.

The vehicles ahead either didn’t notice them or simply didn’t care, because they kept moving at an unhurried pace. Before long Gesang had overtaken the lead vehicle, then stamped on the brakes and swung sideways across the highway. A string of shrill braking sounds rose from behind, and yellow dust billowed up until everything around them was shrouded.

Gesang, Basang, and the other boys leaped out of the car, brandishing bright Tibetan knives in their hands, the magnificent turquoise-inlaid sheaths hanging at their waists. “Leave the cars, you can keep your lives,” Gesang shouted in Chinese, though he had no idea whether the others understood him. The door of a Jeep slowly opened, and a bearded man climbed out holding a steel crossbow, glaring at them warily.

“Leave the cars, you can keep…” Gesang had not even finished saying it a second time when there came a bang. Everything in front of him went black and his body toppled backward. In that same instant he heard two or three more bangs. Those were gunshots.

Wangdui, still in the car and just about to watch how his brother hunted, suddenly heard a sharp crack and saw a spray of blood burst behind his brother’s head. Gesang’s body crashed heavily to the ground. Basang dropped sideways too. Blood poured down their faces in streams and was instantly drunk up by the desperately dry yellow earth.

Wangdui’s mind went blank, his ears ringing. He tried to figure out where the shots had come from, but all he saw was chaotic movement. Zhaxi shot back into the car like an arrow, then drove down off the roadbed and fled for his life.

“Brother…” Wangdui turned back and saw only two brilliant red blossoms of blood still spreading wider and wider across the desolate surface of National Road 213.

“Your brother didn’t die for nothing,” Zhaxi said fiercely as he drove. “Remember this, Wangdui: a Khampa man never dies for nothing.” He drew out an urdo from his belt and handed it to Wangdui.

Wangdui scrubbed the tears from his face hard with his sleeve, took the urdo, and nodded with all his strength. Zhaxi drove the Tucson in a great sweeping arc across the yellow plain, turned back onto the highway, and rejoined the other two Tucsons. Like a pack of wolves, they clamped down tight on the convoy ahead.