Chapter Fifteen

  There was something in my heart that made me unaware of the pain in my legs when I limped outside Zenda City. In the rain, someone pulled me and then supported me, or it seemed like he leaned on me, and neither I nor Dr. Hao knew who was leaning on whom as we walked step by step in the rain.

  Hao the veterinarian kept wiping away rainwater from his face, later I found out he was crying. "Eight heavily wounded! All of them are more seriously injured than you! Thrown into a house with no one to care for and left to rot! They said they would kill me, kill me. I don't have a gun, I told them I came to save you all, how could I kill people? I am a doctor! You guys also call yourselves doctors!"

  I ignored him and we both struggled to pull each other out of the mud pit.

  At this time, I saw that huge dog again. It shot through the rain and the wild grass of the suburbs instead of running. The vast expanse of the rain made me unable to see its end at all, so I didn't know why it was running so frantically.

  When Hao and I squeezed in through the crack in the broken wall at the back, the ground inside the temple had already started to float away in fragments. The dragon and his new friends, a group of foxes and dogs, were sitting high up soaking their feet.

  "You'll be riding on two big fish when you come back. Then there will be fish soup to drink." The snake's butt was slapping the water with its feet.

  I exerted myself to get a bit drier, "when I saw a dog."

  Kang Ya slammed his mouth shut, "Dog meat is delicious too!"

  I wring out the clothes and say, "You go tell it."

  Kang Ya looked around anxiously, "Where is it? Where is it?"

  I didn't bother with him anymore because Hao Shouyi was anxiously asking almost everyone: "Has anyone checked the head? Has the hour been pointed?"

  "I said: 'Veterinarian, do you really think they know how many people are here?'"

  As I spoke, I heard the sound of water splashing outside the temple gate and He Shuguang's sneeze.

  "How many people are here?"

  He Shuguang replied uncertainly: "More than 70?"

  We crowded from the back to the front, looking out through the cordon of soldiers who were guarding the front but not the back. The car driven by He Shuguang stopped in this desolate and godforsaken place, with muddy people sitting on top of a muddy vehicle.

  "Reporting to the officer, more than seventy."

  Then a bag of rice was pushed down from the several bags on the vehicle, and it splashed into the muddy ground. The escort soldiers made way without shouting at us, we rushed over to pull out the rice from the mud by ourselves. Zhang Lixian started the vehicle again, splashing more mud onto the rice and us.

  Zhang Lixian threw down a sentence from afar, "Stay put! The team leader has set off! There will be action soon!" Then he disappeared into the distance with He Shuguang's laughter.

  We gathered a few old steel helmets, looking for relatively dry hay to prepare dinner - who cares.

  The empty rice bag was placed on Dr. Hao's body, which is a way of showing respect for the oldest person.

  The damp hay crackled and popped as it burned, the wet smoke making our eyes red and teary even in deep sleep. A few steel helmets that had been used as cooking pots were thrown to one side, some of which we slept on as pillows in the muddy ground.

  I had a snake's buttocks padded on my knees, holding a broken paper head and a broken pen head to draw characters, "...son wants to be loyal, then it is difficult to be filial. This battle is uncertain, with more disasters than blessings. Son thinks of father's kindness, then feels sad..."

  We lingered here for another day, having two meals of thin porridge. In addition to the thin porridge, some of us were given official titles. Ai Yizhang became battalion commander, I became regimental commander, Li Wula and Kang Ya became company commanders, and Hao Shouyi was finally formally appointed as a junior medical officer. I'm now certain that we're really going to go into battle; otherwise, the ranks wouldn't have been handed out so generously.

  Hao Shouyi painfully turned over, looked at me with a somewhat reproachful expression. I shouted back: "I know you have rheumatism! Sleep, sleep!"

  The old man muttered: "Writing a will again? I'm fed up, is this proper? One letter after another, the wills are all over the house. If I were your father, I'd be scared out of my wits."

  "He's not you, you're not my dad, and I'm not his son."

  "Can't we just get along?" The old man said, unwilling to give up.

  "Sleep and sleep." I'm fed up already.

  The soldiers rushed in and started shouting: "Departure! Let's go! Let's go!"

  People got up in a mess, some were making a last fire, and others were busy putting it out. Mi Long yawned loudly, Ma Hei was almost dancing with excitement, Kang Ya put on his helmet and scooped the remaining rice grains into his mouth, Hao Shouyi wrapped himself in a sack, heard Dou Bing coughing uncontrollably, and then wrapped the sack around Dou Bing's body.

  This is an army that is not only suffering from hunger and cold but also has sleepy eyes.

  What I worry most is that they will send the seventy of us as a company to the battlefield, but this so-called company isn't even enough for a Japanese army platoon or squad. However, they promised that a standard company would be waiting for us at our destination and our weapons and equipment would also be there.

  We set off, but most people were crowded at the temple gate in a daze - today was heavily foggy, and the thick fog blocked out everything more than ten meters away.

  We struggled through the fog, the fog was so thick that we could only pull each other to avoid getting lost. Ah Yi was coughing, I was coughing, Ma was coughing, the bean pancake wrapped in a rice bag was coughing, and even Hao Shouyi, who had been given the rice bag by the bean pancake, was coughing. The dragonfly "Cough! Cough!" was making a loud noise with its coughing, but it was not actually coughing, it was just mocking others' coughs.

  We are an army of coughing that traverses the fog. Our leader, A Fan, is very nervous because someone told him yesterday that he was the regimental commander, the highest officer, and he had to command us in battle.

  A Yi crowded beside me, coughing made his terrified eyes more prominent, "What am I going to do? What am I going to do when I get there?"

  I looked at him sideways and asked, "Graduated from the military academy, can't you fight?"

  A Yi's face turned red, "Apart from practicing swordplay and reciting military classics... I've never been in a real battle!"

  I looked at him but didn't sympathize with him, we have many officers like him.

  I turned my head and didn't look at him, saying: "Do whatever the person who made you a battalion commander tells you to do."

  A Ya was so anxious that he almost went crazy, "He asked me to supervise the troops! What is supervising the troops?"

  This is a word that makes all of us who are about to go into battle feel disgusted. I gave him a look and walked away.

  My indifference made Ah Yi more anxious, "What is a battle?"

  The dragon intentionally bumped into him as he passed by, "Turtle Commander, ox-headed supervisor."

  A Yi was knocked to the side of the road. He looked at people who had always been indifferent to him, now even more indifferent than before, and he felt even more bewildered.

  The ground beneath our feet finally leveled out, and we stepped onto the obviously artificially flattened hard earth, listening to the massive engine roar coming from the fog, the fog hit by the propellers seemed like a tangible monster rushing towards us.

  "Dough cake shouted in horror: 'Japanese devils! Japanese devils!'"

  He suddenly rushed towards us, making the whole team even more chaotic. The escort soldiers and a few of us who still had guns took off their guns and pointed in the direction he was pointing at - but we only saw the shadow of a huge object in the fog, its engine warming up, its propellers slowly pushing the fog towards us.

  Slap a palm on the head of the silly bean pancake who is drilling into the crowd, "Stupid melon! Seeing an airplane and shouting Japan!"

  Kang Ya excitedly jumped up and down, "Our plane! It's fighting the Japanese planes! Boom boom boom boom! Look at that big cannon!"

  He was cut off by Ahn, who said firmly but then corrected himself, "It's an American ally's plane."

  I looked at the big guy that Kang Yao called a fighter, he said the gun was a propeller engine, and the US Air Force insignia were clearly visible. I told them: "C-46 is a transport plane, this is the China-based Air Task Force."

  The dragon was so excited that it couldn't move, "Are we going up? Where's the butt? There must be a place to grab?"

  Look at this guy's attitude, as if he thought he was going to sit on the wings, but before he could jump up there, the escort soldiers hastily drove us away - that was a taboo that even they did not dare to touch.

  We trudged along in the fog, our numb nerves stirred up again by the wonders of modern industry. The "Rat-a-tat-tat" and "Boom-boom-boom" of simulated gunfire and "Whoosh-whoosh" and "Zoom-zoom" of simulated bombing continued unabated among us. We had really been bullied by the Japanese for too long.

  "Are we going to conquer Tokyo?" Ah Yi asked me with a mix of fear and caution, yet also with a lot of longing.

  I took a glance at him and said, "Shanghai can't even fly without running out of oil."

  But I was laughing, and that laughter wasn't entirely at A Yi's shame, I was excited just like everyone else.

  When I was a student, I wrote an essay on filial piety, brotherly love, loyalty, honesty, etiquette, righteousness and integrity as the soul of the nation. By the end, it was all mixed up and unclear. The part that discussed the nation's blood being oil, its bones being steel, and its nerves being technology was well-organized and antithetical, because my father was one of the early people to study mechanics abroad.

  Yu Xiaoqing's military display didn't impress me much, because close combat requires a messy and complicated soul. However, the fleet of machines in the fog excited me, like a person without legs touching their first prosthetic leg for the first time.

  Many of us stared at the woman with paint on her side, not just their throats reacted, we were taken to one side, now in the fog is the huge ass of C46 aircraft.

  A military officer who appeared to be in charge of ground operations rushed over and shouted, "Strip! Take off all your clothes!"

  "Time to change into new clothes!" "We're going to change into new clothes!" "Fire the guns!" "Right, and fire the guns too!" "Damn it, I want to set off fireworks!" "What's the point of setting off fireworks? What's that thing called?" "It's called 'hot mom'! Yeah, hot mom!" "You stupid 'hot mom', smash me with a tile." "Let you show off your bravery." We chattered excitedly, whispered, and hastily took off our clothes, stripping off our pants.

  I squeezed towards that officer and handed over the paper note I had written in the ruined temple, "Officer, officer, can you help me mail a letter?"

  That guy was just a second lieutenant, but he stood in front of me, a first lieutenant, as if he were a major general. "What the hell are you sending?"

  I nodded, "It's a ghost letter. A will. The address is written on the back."

  He glanced at me and accepted it, "You're going to win. What's the point of writing a farewell letter."

  I nodded and bowed my way back into the crowd, watching as that guy casually stuffed my letter into his pants, no idea if he'd actually help me send it. After I took off my pants, the bandages wrapped around my thighs were exposed, so I retreated into the crowd, pulling Ming Long and Kang Ya in front of me, and Hao Shouyi also kindly covered for me - but soon I realized that nobody was paying attention to this little matter. So I could focus on using the extra length of rope from my pant leg to tie up the sulfonamide bottle in my hand.

  The officer walked through us without looking at anyone, scribbling something in his notebook, the only thing he noticed was the Hanyang rifle still slung over my shoulder.

  "Put it down! What's with the gun on your back?"

  "...beat Xiao Dongyang..."

  "Americans send guns, British send clothes, what's the point of carrying this piece of scrap metal? Put it down!"

  It was hard to part with the guns, which were put together in a pile with the tattered clothes that had been stripped off. The others who had managed to keep their own firearms followed suit, even putting down the bayonets and the snake-shaped knives.

  The officer shouted at several figures outside the ranks that we couldn't see clearly: "Fire! One each!"

  "Equipment is here!" "Line up! Line up!" We stood in line voluntarily and waited excitedly for our new gear.

  Then we started to get them, one for each of us. We were already cold and now even colder. Our bodies, some red, some pale or dirty, many with dark red new scars, shivering, holding the things we newly possessed, which replaced our clothes and weapons - a paper bag printed with English words.

  "Vomiting bags?"

  "What about clothes?" "What about guns?" Such questions began to appear between us, and finally there was a bit of complaint.

  Then our officer started to get angry, "Are you deaf? Are you rotten wood? Were you listening when I was talking just now? The Americans are distributing weapons over there, the British are sending clothes! At that airport right next door! What's the point of wearing clothes and carrying guns?"

  The strongest complaint among us came from a faint voice, "It's cold, sir."

  The officer puffed out his chest, scanning our shivering group. "Am I not cold? This is an order from above! The country is in crisis! Even the Chairman's breakfast has been reduced to a glass of water and a dry biscuit! You are the best-equipped troops, you must think about conserving for your comrades fighting domestically!"

  We all fell silent, the officer patted our shoulders, and those who were patted on the shoulder climbed up the simple ladder of the cabin door with their frail bodies.

  The officer is much friendlier now, "Be careful. You'll vomit on your first plane ride."

  We climbed up the gangway one by one, Hao Shouyi and Mi Long were swallowed up by the cabin door in front of me, and Ah Yi behind me bumped his head against my buttocks.

  We clutched our VOMITING BAGS tightly, as if vomiting would be the most terrifying thing on our journey.

  I was climbing up a ladder that was almost vertical, when I heard a commotion behind me. I turned my head and saw the officer blocking everyone including Li Wula and several others who were following him.

  The officer stretched out his hand to stop them, "Next one! Next one! Wait for the next one!"

  Ma stood below and shouted: "Not spicy! Bean pancake! - Not spicy you come down, let's go together!"

  He is not far from me, he is a bit hesitant, apparently, he wants to be together, but he doesn't want to go down.

  The officer pushed him away, "Next time we'll go together! What are you shouting? Where did you come from and where are you going?"

  We suddenly fell silent, as if they were being shooed away into the fog that we couldn't see clearly, and we were swallowed up by the cabin.