novelsite Chapter 19 Complicity Structure
Chapter 19 Complicity Structure
5:40 a.m.
The first floor was dimly lit. Qin Wei squatted beside the first-aid kit, the aluminum box open. She held his right wrist with her left hand, her palm burning hot. She pressed an iodine swab into the crack in his palm, the fibers rubbing against the flesh, making a slight, rough sound.
Zhang Xun inhaled, his fingers stiffened, and his knuckles turned white.
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.
"Forty minutes."
Zhang Xun nodded and turned to walk towards the back door. He pulled back the bolt, and the sunlight flooded in, making him squint.
A stench of decay wafted through the doorway. He stepped out, slamming the door shut behind him with a clattering sound. He glanced back at the steel plate above the hinge. Dew clung to the welds, the plate was icy to the touch, and the blackened welds at the edges exuded dampness. He withdrew his hand, didn't linger, and turned to walk into the morning mist.
Qin Wei did not come out.
Zhang Xun slung his quiver over his shoulder, fastened his belt, and tucked a dagger behind his waist, its hilt wrapped with anti-slip tape. His right hand reached for the matchbox at his waist, his thumb opening the lid and closing it again. His fingers trembled. He pressed his palm against an old wound on his thigh, his nails digging in, a sharp pain shooting through him, but his fingers steadied. He glanced back; the curtains on the second floor of the shop stirred slightly, then fell silent again.
A white SUV was parked at the alley entrance, its bumper dented on the left side with peeling paint. He walked around it, hugging the broken wall.
The streets were deserted. Two infected individuals wandered around the intersection ahead. He circled around into a gap in the broken wall on the side and slipped down the freight passage beside the slope.
At the end of the slope, the light suddenly dimmed. A musty smell mixed with the stench of gasoline rose up, thick and cloying. He stood in the shadows, not moving forward immediately. His right hand hung at his side, his knuckles white. His eardrums vibrated, a fine buzzing rising from the base of his skull.
He walked toward the entrance. Half of the roller shutter was broken, letting in the wind. There were fresh, black bloodstains on the ground, drag marks stretching from the guard post into the shadows. A roar came from deep within the ventilation ducts, closer than before. There were dragging footsteps above the slope, but they hadn't come down yet.
Old Liu stood beside the abandoned toll booth, the greasy folding table, three candles, and moldy compressed biscuits. He twirled a metal walnut, his eyes gleaming: "Boss Zhang. This way."
Zhang Xun walked over. Ten meters behind him, four people were crouching in the shadows of three abandoned bread carts, the outlines of steel pipes and machetes flashing in the darkness.
The sixth brother lowered his voice: "Ninth Sister has been waiting for you for ages."
Zhang Xun looked up.
A woman sat on the edge of the back of a modified pickup truck. Her legs dangled in the air, her high-heeled boots kicking the tires rhythmically. She twirled a Zippo lighter in her hand, clicking it. She didn't get out of the truck, looking down at Zhang Xun.
The smell of strong perfume mixed with antibiotic solution wafted from deep within the parking lot.
Zhang Xun stood still, his right hand hanging at his side. His neck tensed for a moment, then relaxed. He pressed his palm against his old thigh injury, steadying it. Hu Jiu'er jumped down from the back of the pickup truck. Her high-heeled boots clicked on the ground. She didn't look at Zhang Xun's face. He unloaded his backpack and placed it on the edge of the table. She first picked up the antibiotic foil from the side pocket, held it up to the candlelight to examine the reflection of the embossed foil, then rubbed some powder between her fingers to check the fineness of the particles. She even brought it closer to smell it; the distinctive bitter smell of cephalosporin hit her. Only after confirming it wasn't counterfeit did she look up.
"Boss Zhang, stop acting." Her voice was low, like sandpaper polishing metal. "My men saw you carrying that woman into a car. A white SUV, heading towards the national highway. She's in your shop now, isn't she?"
Zhang Xun's right hand hung limply at the edge of the folding table, his fingers trembling. He pressed his palm against an old wound on his thigh, his nails digging in, and a surge of pain shot through him, but his fingers steadied.
"Yes, I carried her into the car," he said, "but I wasn't going to see her."
He spoke as if reporting a bad debt, his voice calm and unwavering: "In the early morning of April 14th, the SWAT officer in my shop had a bad knee injury. Qin Wei said there might be municipal reserves of cephalosporins in the western suburbs warehouse area. I drove there to buy some, and while I was escaping the zombie horde at warehouse C-14, I ran into her. She was hiding in a ventilation duct, her left foot caught in a piece of metal, delirious with a high fever. When she saw me, her first words were: 'I have the coordinates of the government's reserve points. Carry me out, and I'll give you three.'"
On the second floor of the shop, Zhang Xun's voice blared from the loudspeakers, like something rising from the depths of water. Bai Mo sat at the foot of the folding bed, the tip of her scissors pressed against the scab on her left foot, halfway through picking at it. She didn't stop.
"I carried her. But she lied to me—she showed me half a page of tattered paper with a few words smeared with blood on it, it was useless. I asked, 'Where are the coordinates?' She said, 'Carry me to a safe place first.' I carried her to the national highway, where a horde of zombies surrounded the platform, and we were trapped for almost two days. She had a fever of 40 degrees Celsius, and her left foot was rotting and infested with maggots. She cried and begged me not to abandon her."
On the second floor of the shop, a small clump of scabs lay on an enamel plate. Bai Mo's scissors slipped and pierced the flesh. Blood beaded out, but she didn't make a sound. She wiped the blood from the blade with her thumb and continued to the next spot.
With her back to the speaker, Qin Wei's suture thread snapped, the end of which bounced off the aluminum shell of the medical kit.
"She fell off the platform early the next morning and into the horde of zombies." Zhang Xun's tone was flat. "The zombies were drawn there by the smell of blood, and the density below the platform decreased. I climbed down the drainpipe and drove out. I hit two infected on the national highway; the bumper was dented. If your people have sharp eyes, they should have seen it."
Lin Xiaotang hugged her rabbit doll, pressed her ear to the speaker, and counted her breaths. One, two, three. When she got to "three," she missed a beat.
Zhang Xun pushed the medicine box half an inch towards the edge of the table: "Before she died, she vomited out two coordinates so that I would bury her—the air-raid shelter at the northern foot of Hutou Mountain, and the C area of the underground parking garage at the textile factory. The one at Hutou Mountain definitely exists; the main gate has an electromagnetic lock, and the manual switch is behind the ventilation duct after the power is cut off—that's what she said before she went delirious. I didn't go in, but I could see piles of cardboard boxes inside through the crack in the door, with the municipal reserve logo printed on them, and the packaging of water purification tablets reflecting light. There were too many infected people at the textile factory; I only climbed to the entrance ramp before turning back."
Hu Jiu'er didn't reply immediately. She twirled her Zippo, clicking away. Her gaze swept over Zhang Xun's face before settling back on the antibiotic foil. She didn't believe him, but she didn't immediately refuse either. The potential benefits were quickly calculated in her eyes.
The sixth brother was spinning an iron walnut nearby, making a cracking sound, but he didn't say anything.
Hu Jiu'er suddenly slammed her Zippo shut, the metal making a sharp clang. She tilted her head. A thug stepped out from the shadows behind her, shoving Zhang Xun hard in the lower back with a steel pipe. Zhang Xun staggered half a step, his knee slamming into the iron leg of the folding table, his right hand instinctively bracing itself against the ground. Hu Jiu'er bent down, her high-heeled boot grinding into the back of his right hand as he braced himself against the ground, grinding it down forcefully.
Zhang Xun winced in pain, but smiled as if he had botched a deal: "Ninth Sister, I wanted the coordinates in her head. She lied to me and said there were three, but she only coughed up two before she died. As for the third, she said, 'I'll tell you when we get to a safe place'—I didn't get the most valuable thing, so I still need to live."
On the second floor of the shop, a muffled groan, amplified by the microphone, burst from the loudspeaker—short, sharp, like bones being crushed. Su Nian lay on the bed, a composite bow resting on her lap, her fingers yanking the string taut, then releasing it. The open string emitted a dull thud.
Zhang Xun reached behind his back with his left hand, his fingertips brushing against the alcohol bottle in the waterproof bag. His thumb pried open the matchbox lid—just a crack, then stopped. The B2 level was a sealed space; spilling half a bottle of alcohol wouldn't create a fire, it would only set him on fire. Setting himself on fire wasn't a way out, it was suicide.
Hu Jiu'er didn't loosen her grip; instead, she leaned down, the flame of her Zippo almost scorching Zhang Xun's eyebrows: "She's really dead? How do I know you weren't hiding her on the second floor of the shop, waiting to exchange the coordinates for antibiotics with me, and then use me to save her life?"
Zhang Xun remained unfazed. His right hand was being crushed, the muscles in the back of his neck tensed sharply, his teeth clenched, and his cheeks bulged. Tinnitus rose from the base of his skull, the click of the Zippo amplified in his eardrums. He pressed his palm into an old wound on his thigh, his nails digging in, the pain making him steady his voice: "Ninth Sister, if the people in my shop knew I brought a government reporter back, they'd kill me first. Qin Wei hates government officials the most. Did I bring her back just to die? What's in it for me?"
Zhang Xun's voice came through the speaker with a slightly amplified breath. Bai Mo's knuckles gripped the scissors tightly, almost digging into her nails. She didn't look down at her left foot.
"Those three people in my shop, Qin Wei saves lives but doesn't support idlers. Her ex-husband died in the quarantine zone, and she's annoyed by every government official she sees. Su Nian's leg is rotting, but her brain isn't; she can tell whether Bai Mo is a reporter or a secret agent. If I really bring a living person back, Qin Wei won't kill me—she'll just take the antibiotics and water purification tablets I've saved and leave overnight. If the team falls apart, all the savings I've accumulated over the past two months will be gone. Ninth Sister, what am I after? A woman with a fever of 40 degrees Celsius, a left leg rotting and infested with maggots, who only knows how to summon hordes of corpses with a loudspeaker?"
Qin Wei's hand, holding the iodine swab, froze in mid-air. A drop of the dark yellow liquid from the swab dripped onto the floor, spreading in a small patch. She didn't move.
Zhang Xun took a breath, the pressure on his hands causing sweat to bead on his forehead, but he didn't pull away: "If I were really in cahoots with her, if I really wanted to protect her, why would I come alone? The people in my shop have no idea I'm carrying her on my back—so I had to come alone, secretly selling the coordinates to buy other things. I'm selling coordinates, not people. People are already dead, coordinates can be sold many times."
The parking lot fell silent. Only a faint hissing sound came from deep within the ventilation ducts, like some kind of background noise.
Hu Jiu'er stared at him, twirling the Zippo between her fingers, the flame flickering across his brow bone before moving away. She was calculating. That second was fleeting, like a blade scraping against a whetstone.
Hu Jiu'er suddenly chuckled. It wasn't out of joy, but rather the sound of a blade scraping against bone.
"She wasn't as 'awkward' as you described on the radio." She tapped her Zippo on the pickup truck door, the metal making a crisp sound. "'You could carry people for hours back then, I wonder if you could still do it now'—that tone makes it sound like you're just given the coordinates and asked to carry them for fifteen kilometers?"
Zhang Xun's blood froze.
A ringing sensation exploded from the base of his skull; the click of the Zippo lighter, the muffled thud of high-heeled boots kicking tires, the echoing sounds of the parking lot—all twisted into a single wire, piercing his eardrums. His right hand was still being crushed, his left hand dangling at his side, his fingers beginning to spasm uncontrollably. He reached for the waterproof pouch at his lower back, his thumb barely brushing the edge of the matchbox—
Hu Jiu'er leaned down, the flames almost reaching his eyebrows.
Zhang Xun jerked his head back, pulling the walkie-talkie cord clipped to his collar, and his earpiece slammed against the car door. A piercing static noise exploded from the wires, then silence fell.
On the second floor of the shop, only a hissing white noise, like a snake shedding its skin, could be heard from the speakers.
Zhang Xun was silent for two seconds. He chuckled, a disgusted laugh, like someone who had botched a deal but was trying to finish it off: "Ninth Sister, have you ever heard a dying person talk? When someone has a fever of forty degrees and knows they won't live past tonight, they'll grab onto their last straw, they'll whine, they'll play the victim, they'll say, 'You carried me, you have to take responsibility.' That 'carried me' thing wasn't from when she was familiar with me, it was from putting me in handcuffs on the radio."
His tone turned cold, and his voice became extremely low, as if squeezed out from between his teeth:
"She deliberately said those things on the public channel so that everyone who heard them would think she was one of my people. That way, I couldn't just leave her to die in C-14; secondly, if anyone found her later, they would think she had me as her protector. She's using me, Ninth Sister. That tone of hers wasn't friendly, it was like kidnapping."
As Zhang Xun's head left the car door, his collar sank, and the earpiece walkie-talkie slid back to its original position by the slack in the cord, the end of the cord reattaching to the skin of his neck, and contact was restored.
On the second floor of the shop, the sound came back through the loudspeaker, but only a single word could be heard – “kidnapping.” The entire preceding sentence was swallowed up by static electricity. Bai Mo looked up sharply at the loudspeaker; she had only heard one word, but didn’t know what the complete sentence was.
Hu Jiu'er didn't respond immediately. She stared into Zhang Xun's eyes, twirling the Zippo between her fingers, the flame flickering across his brow bone before moving away. She was calculating. That second felt like a thread stretched to its limit, ready to snap at any moment. Then she closed the Zippo with a crisp metallic click.
"Where's that piece of paper you showed Lao Liu last time?" Her voice suddenly softened, like a viper flicking its tongue. "The E-series, Project Fireseed—Lao Liu told me about it when he got back. Now you're giving me the coordinates again. How much stock do you actually have?"
Su Nian lay on the bed with a composite bow resting on her lap. When she heard the words "Project Fireseed," she tapped the bowstring with her fingers, producing a very soft "tap."
Zhang Xun remained unfazed. The pressure on his right hand made his fingertips numb, but he didn't flinch. "That piece of paper? I only showed it to him once. It's still in my hand. There are only a few words left on it: E-series, Project Fire. Before Bai Mo died, she said it was 'packing notes,' but she didn't have time to explain the details before she fell. Ninth Sister, that piece of paper is dead, but the coordinates are alive."
He took a breath and lowered his stance even further: "What I can sell right now isn't that piece of paper, but the coordinates spit out by a dead man. Tiger Head Mountain air-raid shelter and textile factory garage—I can guarantee those two places really exist, but I can't open them, move them, or defend them by myself. Ninth Sister, if you have guns and men, you can go and inspect the goods. After you've inspected them, give me 30% of the antibiotics, or let me join you."
Hu Jiu'er stared at him for a long time.
Then she tilted her head, signaling the thugs to surround her. She didn't give a deadline—she didn't trust Zhang Xun, nor did she intend to let him go. Her logic was: detain him and interrogate him slowly.
"Hold him down," she said. "Break one of his legs so he can't run away."
The sixth brother suddenly interjected, cracking his iron walnut: "Ninth Sister, without his guidance, my men would just be feeding the infected if they went into Tiger Head Mountain. If you need coordinates, you'll have to leave him alive."
Hu Jiu'er glanced at Lao Liu, didn't change the order, but added two words: "Hold him down, don't hit him yet."
Four thugs rose from the shadow of the bread cart, their steel pipes and machetes gleaming coldly in the darkness. Zhang Xun's left hand had already reached for the matchbox at his lower back, his thumb pushing the lid open—just a crack. His thumb froze on the lid, not pushing it open any further. The thugs' footsteps rolled across the concrete, growing ever closer.
Hu Jiu'er stared into his eyes and said, word by word, "I'll send people to search your shop. If they find anyone alive, you won't be spared, and you won't be spared your life either."
Zhang Xun retaliated in a final showdown, his voice hoarse as if sandpaper was grinding against his bones: "Ninth Sister, there are still three people in my shop. If you detain me today, they won't come to my rescue—they'll just burn the shop down and hide in the air-raid shelter with crossbows and Molotov cocktails. If I die, the directions of Tiger Head Mountain and the textile factory, how to pry open the electromagnetic lock, and whether there's a manual switch behind the ventilation duct will be forever rotten in my head. If you kill me tonight, you'll get an empty building and three enemies lurking in the shadows; if you let me go, you'll get two stockpiles that can be emptied. Coordinates can be copied, but how many times can a person die?"
Hu Jiu'er hesitated for a second. Not because she was persuaded, but because she genuinely wanted the coordinates and didn't want to suffer casualties from a direct assault on the shop right now. That moment felt like a bone stuck in her throat, impossible to swallow or spit out. Then she raised her chin.
The thug took a step forward, the steel pipe gleaming coldly in the shadows.
Just then, a scream came from the entrance of the parking lot ramp.
An infected person crept down the slope. Zhang Xun's fingers were still gripping the matchbox on his lower back, his thumb frozen on the edge of the lid. He didn't look down at the slope, but the scream pierced his eardrums—not a complete shout, but a hissing sound of air leaking out of a ruptured trachea, like a broken bellows being violently pulled.
Hu Jiu'er was distracted. She turned around, her high-heeled boots spun halfway across the ground, the toe of her boot slamming into the jaw of the first infected creature that lunged at her, the sound of bone cracking dully. Zhang Xun withdrew his hand from his lower back, abandoning the box of matches. He grabbed his backpack, not running towards the entrance, but rolling towards the loose drain grating by the table leg—the cover was sticking up, without a latch.
He pried open the grille and jumped into the darkness. A sharp rusty piece from the edge of the cover cut a gash on the outside of his calf, and blood immediately seeped into his trouser leg. He fell into knee-deep sewage, the sound of his splash being swallowed by the chaos of the parking lot.
After slaying the second infected, Hu Jiu'er turned around and only saw the swaying afterimage of the grille. She shouted at the swaying grille, "Tiger Head Mountain, Textile Factory, I'll send people to check before dawn. If one of them is fake, I'll burn down your entire street, no matter which cave you're hiding in!"
Then she turned and kicked away the third infected with her high-heeled boots. More infected poured down the slope, her forces were crumbling, and she couldn't chase them.
There was no light in the utility tunnel. Zhang Xun stood up in the sewage, his knees weak. He broke the glowing stick, the eerie green light illuminating his feet—floating on the surface were the half-submerged corpses of infected individuals, their skin pale, their knuckles curled. He crawled forward, but the walkie-talkie went completely silent. The earpiece receiver in his right ear was soaked in water, producing only a hissing static noise that stung his eardrums.
He didn't know how long he had been climbing. The direction was west, away from the entrance, away from Hu Jiu'er, away from South Street. The curved structure of the utility tunnel isolated the sounds of fighting in the parking lot as distant, muffled echoes, intermittent and intermittent.
When he crawled out of the ground, the sunlight was blinding. Zhang Xun sat by the roadside, leaning against a broken wall, trembling all over. He sat there for five minutes, maybe longer. His fingers were still cramping; the feeling of being soaked in sewage in the pipe corridor couldn't be washed away, and a sticky residue remained between his fingers. He looked down at his hands; the cracked wounds on his palms were white from being soaked, and blood seeped from the edges.
He stood up and limped toward the shop. His knees were stiff, and each step dragged him through a trail of sewage and blood.
The back alley was brightly lit. A person squatted by the back door, short hair with a few strands of silver-gray hair tucked behind her ears. She was using a modified welding torch to light something; the torch had a brass casing with gleaming edges. Sparks flew, then the torch went out.
Zhang Xun reached for the dagger behind his waist, but his hand trembled and he didn't pull it out.
The woman looked up. She had a thin face and long bangs. Her pupils were large and dark, not shrinking even in the light. She wore a studded belt and silver-rimmed earlobes. She didn't stand up, but simply moved the welding torch aside, revealing a piece of steel plate beside her—the cut edges were exactly the same as the one on the door hinge this morning.
Zhang Xun looked for three seconds. Then he lowered the dagger back to his waist.
The two faced each other in silence. Only the hissing sound of the welding torch and Zhang Xun's heavy breathing remained in the back alley.
[End of Chapter]