Debtors: Survival Rules for the Apocalypse

Chapter 17 Broken Porcelain as a Countermeasure

The platform is tilted.

Zhang Xun's right shoulder pressed against the concrete railing, rust staining his coat. He carried Bai Mo on his back, his back burning hot, like a piece of charcoal just taken from a flame, searing his shoulder blades through the fabric. Her breath sprayed onto the back of his neck, carrying the scent of blood. His right hand gripped Qin Wei's wrist tightly, her pulse pounding wildly in his palm, her fingers icy cold.

"The solder joint is about to break." Bai Mo's voice was close to my ear, barely audible.

Zhang Xun looked down. The welds at the bottom of the railing were cracking, one after another, the patterns resembling the cracks in a dried-up riverbed. Wind rushed in through his collar. Below, the arms of the horde of corpses clawed upwards, their grayish-white hands undulating in the darkness like maggots churning in boiling water—grayish-white, viscous, and surging upwards in unison.

There were no arrows. No flames. And no figure kneeling on one knee.

"Jump," Qin Wei said. Her fingernails dug into his web of thumb.

Zhang Xun knelt down. Bai Mo's arms tightened around his neck, the camera bag strap digging into his collarbone. He pushed off the ground—

The railing is broken.

The sharp crack of metal breaking exploded in his ears. A feeling of weightlessness tugged at his stomach. Bai Mo's camera bag strap lashed his face, the nylon webbing scraping his cheekbone, burning with pain. Qin Wei's fingers slipped from his palm, her nails scraping against his hand. Darkness swallowed everything; they fell, as if plunging into a deep well, with only the sound of the wind and the ever-approaching roars below.

Zhang Xun suddenly woke up.

The shop's ground floor. Darkness. His heart pounded in his ears, thump, thump, thump. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead, and the shirt on the back of his neck clung to his skin. He tried to swallow, his throat dry and painful, as if it were stuffed with sandpaper.

He propped himself up. His right hand reached for the plastic cup next to the folding mat. The moment his fingertips touched the cup, his fingers began to tremble, more and more violently. The plastic cup slipped from his hand and fell to the concrete floor with a dull thud. Warm water spilled out, spreading across the ground.

In the shadows, Lin Xiaotang sat up. She took a dry cloth from beside the folding mat, walked over, and squatted down in front of Zhang Xun. She placed the cloth in Zhang Xun's hand. Her fingers touched the cold sweat on the back of his hand, paused for a second, and then withdrew. The whole process was silent.

The water stains stopped spreading.

Zhang Xun gripped the dry cloth tightly, his knuckles turning white. Lin Xiaotang retreated into the shadows, clutching her rabbit doll, her eyes shining in the darkness as she watched him.

---

6:20 a.m.

Zhang Xun knelt on one knee beside Su Nian's bed. The curtains on the second floor were tightly closed, with only a sliver of pale sunlight seeping through the gap, cutting like a blade against the edge of the sheets. He adjusted the pillow under her knees with his right hand, fixing the angle at fifteen degrees. His fingertips brushed against the bandage, the astringent sensation of iodine lingering on his fingertips, dry and sticky.

Su Nian lay flat. Her left hand, which had been hanging at her side, suddenly rose—grabbing Zhang Xun's wrist. Her fingertips pressed against his radial artery, which was throbbing too fast, tapping rapidly against his wrist bone.

Zhang Xun looked up. Su Nian looked at him. Her lips parted slightly, paused for a moment, and her breath brushed between her teeth: "...Downstairs." She paused, then added, "Be careful." Her voice was so soft, as if she were afraid of waking something.

Zhang Xun reached out and grasped her hand. Her hand was icy cold, her knuckles stiff. He released her grip, and her wrist slumped downwards, her fingernails leaving marks on his skin. His fingers were still trembling, the lingering pulse striking his wrist.

Su Nian released her grip. Her fingertips brushed against the inside of his wrist before slowly withdrawing. She clutched the candy wrapper beside her—the last half of a fruit candy from yesterday, the cellophane making a soft rustling sound.

Zhang Xun stood up. His wrist bore five crescent-shaped bluish-white marks, throbbing with pain.

He slung his quiver over his shoulder, fastened his belt, and headed for the stairs. The dim light from the second floor sank into the darkness of the first floor.

My footsteps creaked softly on the steps. The last step disappeared into complete darkness, and it felt as if I were stepping into empty space.

On the first floor, the roller shutters were tightly shut, the windows were boarded up, and the darkness was thick and almost stagnant. Zhang Xun's pupils dilated, trying to catch the only glimmer of light—the candle in Qin Wei's hand, flickering beside the shelf, casting her huge, swaying shadow on the wall.

The folding bed sat in the shadows at the top of the stairs. Lin Xiaotang lay there, clutching her rabbit doll, her breathing shallow, but the rhythm too regular—only a conscious person would count their breaths like that. As Zhang Xun passed by, his knee bumped against the edge of the bed, the metal frame making a soft click. Lin Xiaotang shrank back against the wall, her eyelashes fluttering in the darkness, but she didn't open her eyes. Zhang Xun bent down and pulled the blanket up to her waist, covering her shoulders. The rabbit ears brushed against the back of his hand.

The shop was dimly lit. Qin Wei stood by the shelf, holding a candle, half a step away from him. Wax dripped into the metal tray, piling up into a small mound.

Zhang Xun walked over, raised his left hand, palm up—the wound on his fingertip had split open last night when he was filing arrows; the scab had been torn off, and it was oozing tissue fluid, making it sticky.

Qin Wei supported his right wrist with her left hand, her palm burning hot. With her right hand, she took an iodine swab and pressed it into the crack in the candlelight, circling it. The fibers rubbed against the flesh, making a soft, rough sound.

Zhang Xun inhaled, a hissing sound escaping between his teeth. His fingers stiffened, his knuckles turning white, but he turned his palm over and offered it to her more steadily.

"Remember to come back if it hurts," Qin Wei said softly. The pungent smell of iodine mingled with the acrid smell of burnt candle wick between them.

She tossed aside the cotton swab and adjusted his shoulder strap with both hands. Her fingertips slid from his collarbone to the back of his neck, pausing for half a second to make sure the buckle was secure. A soft metallic click.

"Two hours," she said. "If you don't come back in two hours, I'll go out and look for you."

Zhang Xun nodded, turned, and walked towards the door. He unlatched the back door, pushed it open, and a sudden burst of sunlight forced him to squint. A gust of wind immediately rushed in, carrying the stench of decay from the alleyway.

He stood on the threshold. A soft sound came from the second floor—like a piece of cardboard falling to the floor. Behind him, in the darkness of the first floor, candlelight flickered, and Lin Xiaotang's shallow breathing could be heard.

His palms burned, and the touch of hers still lingered on the back of his neck. The door slowly closed behind him, shutting out the darkness and candlelight with a click.

Qin Wei did not come out.

---

The iron gate in the alley behind the community hospital rusted to death.

Zhang Xun didn't go through the main entrance—two ambulances that had crashed together were blocking the way, their windows shattered everywhere. He went around to the back alley and climbed over a low wall. His jeans scraped against the broken glass on the left knee, tearing open with a ripping sound, and his outer thigh burned with pain.

When he landed, he braced himself against the wall, which aggravated an old wound on his palm, causing blood to seep out and sting painfully.

He leaned against the wall, panting, the medicine box in his backpack digging into his spine. The setting sun cast a dim, half-lit glow on the alley, and the wind carried the smell of decay.

Not right.

The alley was too clean. It wasn't that no one had been there, but that it had been cleaned up—there were tire tracks on the ground where broken glass had been run over, fresh, no more than six hours old.

Zhang Xun squatted down and wiped the tire tracks with his sleeve, which were covered in engine oil.

He looked up. On the second floor opposite, a steel plate was stuck diagonally behind a broken window. The setting sun danced on the cut, the reflection too straight, not like a natural impact—it looked like someone had cut it with a tool.

My gaze shifted to the left. Fifteen centimeters above the ground at the alley entrance, a nearly transparent thin line stretched across the wall, connecting to some metal sheet hidden in a crack. Suddenly, the line moved without wind, trembling slightly.

Zhang Xun squinted: It could be a bell, or it could be a fuse.

A trap. But not for hunting; it's for warning—like a spider's web at the entrance of its burrow.

His left hand hung limply at his side, not daring to brace himself on the ground, his back pressed against the wall. Blood seeped from the wound on his thigh, flowing down his trouser leg and into his boots, warm and sticky, each step tugging at his nerves.

Deeper inside, several black wires were dragged out from under an abandoned SUV. The bare copper wires were wrapped with tape, and the way they were connected looked wrong, as if they were meant to start a fire.

There's someone nearby who knows about mechanics, and they're very close by.

In the distance behind them, the roars of the horde of corpses suddenly rose in pitch—it wasn't the sound of wind, but the approach of living beings.

Zhang Xun didn't look at the line again, turned around and squeezed into the gap in the collapsed fence. The sheet metal scraped his right shoulder, and his jacket got another tear—the price he paid for his haste.

He glanced back at the window with the steel plate. The setting sun danced again on the metal edge, and the angle of the plate seemed different from before—it had tilted to the left before, but now it seemed… to be tilted further outward?

The feeling of being watched crept up the back of Zhang Xun's neck. He quickened his pace, not because of the approaching horde of corpses behind him, but because of his intuition—there was another pair of eyes in the alley, coldly scrutinizing him through a crack.

He gripped the backpack strap tightly, blood seeping through his fingers onto the medicine board, and didn't dare look back.

---

Zhang Xun stood outside the iron gate, tapping his knuckles on the rusted door panel—three times, stop, one more time.

There was no immediate response from inside. He waited, hearing the soft sound of the peephole being pried open with a piece of plastic, and a gaze swept across his tattered clothes through the crack in the door, lingering for half a second on his bloodstained left knee.

Click. The lock turned from the inside, and the door was pulled open a crack. The setting sun immediately shaved his silhouette into a dark shadow, casting it inside the threshold.

Qin Wei blocked the doorway, the beam of her flashlight suddenly shining on his face, the intense light making him squint. The beam slid down, sweeping across his neck and wrists—no scratches, no bite marks. Finally, it landed on the tattered cloth on his left knee.

"Enter."

She stepped aside. Zhang Xun took a step forward, almost stumbling into the doorway. Before he could even steady himself, he heard a click behind him as the bolt snapped into place. His back slammed against the cold door, and he slowly slid down with the force of the impact. It was safe inside; the tension of two hours suddenly released, and his muscles began to give way.

Lin Xiaotang sat up from the folding bed—she hadn't slept at all. She ran to Zhang Xun, looked up at his blood-stained trouser leg, and twisted the hem of his shirt with her fingers. She wanted to touch his knee, but then pulled her hand back, turned around and ran to get a basin of water. She ran so fast that the water sloshed all the way.

"Two hours and seven minutes," Qin Wei said. She squatted down and rummaged through the bottom of the medical kit to find examination gloves; the latex made a taut, crisp sound. She reached out to support Zhang Xun's arm, her fingertips pausing for half a second at his elbow to confirm his temperature was normal, before grasping his wrist and turning his palm over to examine it. Several blood grooves from the wire were embedded in his palm, the deepest one still covered in rust and mud—a mark left from gripping the broken wire mesh while climbing over the wall. She frowned and picked up a pair of tweezers from the medical kit.

Zhang Xun reached into the side pocket of his backpack with his right hand, intending to show her the antibiotics, but his fingers were stiff and wouldn't obey him. The lid popped open, and a blister pack slid out, falling onto the concrete floor at his feet. He tried to reach for it, but his fingertips only moved forward half an inch before giving way and drooping, his knuckles turning white. He could only hand the medicine box to Qin Wei, his hand trembling.

Bai Mo sat in a wicker chair by the door. She had moved the chair very close to the door, close enough to hear Zhang Xun's heavy breathing. The medicine had fallen less than half a foot from the edge of her chair. She didn't touch it immediately, but first looked at him, her gaze quickly darting back and forth between his bloodied left knee and his split right shoulder. His shoulder slumped slightly, as if he had breathed a sigh of relief. She didn't bend down, but simply used the tip of her shoe to gently hook the medicine packet to the edge of the chair, her fingers dangling as she picked it up. She wiped the cement dust off the aluminum foil with her fingertips and slowly turned it in the candlelight.

Qin Wei took the medicine box from Zhang Xun's hand. She didn't open it immediately, but first touched his forehead with the back of her hand, a quick, almost casual gesture. Only then did she open the box to check the quantity; the aluminum foil rustled softly in her hand. "No bites," she said softly, her shoulders relaxing slightly with that breath.

Lin Xiaotang followed with a basin of water, placed it beside Zhang Xun's feet, soaked a towel, and, her hands trembling violently, wiped the bloodstains from his calf. When the towel touched the wound, Zhang Xun's eyelids twitched—he didn't even have the strength to hiss.

He raised his eyes.

A notebook with its cover torn off lay open on Bai Mo's lap. The candlelight flickered on the pages. "That cut on your right shoulder," she suddenly spoke, her voice a beat softer than usual, "is so deep you can see the lining. Next time, take a different route."

Zhang Xun didn't have the strength to respond, only managing a muffled "hmm" from his throat.

Bai Mo seemed to want to stand up to check on his leg injury, but as soon as his left foot touched the ground, he frowned, his fingers gripping the armrest of the wicker chair tightly, before slowly sitting back down. In the end, he simply turned a page of his notebook: "You should rest."

A soft sound came from the second floor—the sharp, scraping sound of fingernails scraping against a metal railing.

Zhang Xun looked up from inside the threshold.

Su Nian leaned against the second-floor railing, one leg still bandaged, her upper body jutting out. The light was too dim for Zhang Xun to see the color in her face, but he felt her gaze was sharp, as if it were stabbing into the gash in his right shoulder from above.

"No direct contact?" she asked, her voice soft and strained with pain.

"No." Zhang Xun shook his head, his movements slow, as if his cervical spine had rusted. "The blood was scraped off by climbing over the wall. But someone occupied the land near the community hospital—fortifications, welders, someone who knows electrical circuits. I didn't see them."

Over at the rattan chair, Bai Mo's fingertips, which were flipping through the notebook, paused for a second.

Su Nian nodded, her nails ceasing to scratch, but Zhang Xun heard the rustling sound of her bandages tightening. She slowly retreated behind the railing, her figure disappearing into the dimness of the second floor. The bed creaked very softly.

Zhang Xun looked away and rested the back of his head against the wall.

Qin Wei bent down to clean the wound on his palm, using the tips of tweezers to remove the last piece of rust. She put down the tweezers and wrapped the bandage around his trembling hand, encasing it in the still white cloth. She wrapped it tightly, her knuckles turning white from the force, but paused for a second longer on the last wrap, as if afraid of hurting him.

Outside the window, the sun had completely set, and darkness seeped in from under the door, overflowing the threshold and swallowing the water stains on the floor and the cut threads of the bandages.

---

The candle wick burned down to the very end, the flame shrinking to a tiny blue glow. The first floor darkened.

Qin Wei sat cross-legged on the floor, her knees against the first-aid kit. She rummaged through the bandages, the aluminum box clinking softly. Her fingertips touched a hard object at the bottom of the box.

Those are the row of glass bottles. The one on the far right has a scratch on its body, left from when it bumped into the steps in front of the emergency room in 2018.

She didn't take it out, but just ran her fingertip over the crease. Then she slipped her finger into her pocket—the note was still there, the edges worn rough from the creases, the result of rubbing it every day for the past six months when she checked her pocket to make sure it was still there.

It was written by Zhang Xun. On the night she got drunk in 2025, she carried these words with her as a talisman for a full six months.

"I press the pressure point 100-120 times per minute, and I do it once every eight years."

She looked down at her own hands. They had trembled as she treated his wounds that day. It was only when she pressed the iodine swab into the cracks in his palm that she realized he, too, was broken. Not an anchor, not a fulcrum, but another person, clutching a backpack strap, his palms cracked, still going out to find medicine.

Qin Wei held the bottle against her chest for three seconds. The glass was cold, and it made a soft, rustling sound inside. It turned out that what she wanted was never an anchor, but another person, also with cracks, who would still shield her from the wind. Then she raised her hand to the back of her neck, her fingertips pressing against the spot where she had touched him earlier that day when adjusting his shoulder strap. A trace of warmth still lingered there.

She closed the first-aid kit with a click.

Beside the counter, Zhang Xun's breathing was heavy and slow. Qin Wei sat in the darkness, listening to the sound, without moving.

[End of Chapter]