by Xu, Lei
God protect me, it was then that I felt a sudden jolt. My shoulder tightened and somehow I stopped falling. I shook my head and looked up. A vertical line of steel bars, their sharp ends pointing out, jutted from the wall of the dam. They were set into the concrete two palm-lengths apart from each other, probably installed while the dam was being built to give workers something to hold on to. The end of each had been curved into a hook. The strap of the canteen I'd so recently plundered had looped around one of these steel hooks and had actually managed to hold me up.
The deputy squad leader was nowhere to be seen. The flashlight and torches we'd prepared were all lost. Darkness surrounded me. If the searchlight had not been so close by, I really would have been finished. I composed myself and pulled myself up the canteen strap. The hooked steel bars were very strong, but so narrow they supported only my toes. Trembling, I climbed from one to the next until I'd reached the bay window where the searchlight shined. As I grabbed on to it, I found that all my strength had left me. I could exert myself no further. This was a very familiar feeling. I'd probably broken a bone. Just as I began to give up, a hand suddenly extended from within the window, grabbed hold of me, and pulled me inside.
I slumped to the ground, barely able to keep my head up. I saw only a faint figure behind the beam of the searchlight, but from that glance alone I could tell this person was very small and thin. Definitely not Wang Sichuan. At first I believed my eyes had to be mistaken—I was sure Wang Sichuan had been controlling the light. The shadowy figure then moved out of the darkness behind the tail of the searchlight and walked over. He was wearing an oldfashioned gas mask. After looking me over he helped me up. Who was this person? Some Japanese man who'd been left behind? My next thought was to hide somehow. He called out to me, his voice made incomprehensible by the gas mask. Though he made several attempts at communication, I could only shake my head. At last he removed the mask. My mouth dropped open. It was the young soldier we'd left behind to look after Chen Luohu and Yuan Xile.
After getting over the shock, I felt a surge of happiness. I tried to give him a hug, but my arm lacked even the tiniest bit of strength. Instead I asked him what had happened to the other two. He ignored my question, and with an agitated expression said only: "Come with me right now!" He put the mask back on and supported me as we moved toward the back of the room. I told him the deputy squad leader was probably still out there, that I didn't know whether he'd fallen all the way or was still hanging somewhere. The soldier nodded and told me that he'd go look in a moment. We continued on. The space here was illuminated by a dark-red emergency light. This was likely the dam's machine level. The floor was made of iron grates and concrete. Through the grates I could see the river and a gigantic piece of old-fashioned machinery. It looked like a huge iron spindle cast in concrete. Rusted iron pipes and power cables wrapped around it, crisscrossing as they extended upward. At the end of the room was an iron wall with a circular iron door built into it. The door was airtight, triple-proofed, and rusted the color of a fried-dough twist. The private turned the spinner handle in the middle of the door, the assistance mechanism kicked in, and the door swung open. He helped me inside.
We entered a ready room. Japanese-style hazmat suits hung on the walls. When the door closed, the air in the room was automatically changed. The soldier ran ahead to the end of the room, where there waited an identical triple-proofed door. He opened it in the same manner as before. Inside was a sealed chamber smelling of rust. Everything was made of iron. There was an ironwork chair and writing desk with a mess of papers stacked atop it. Maps were hung all around, and a Japanese slogan was draped across one of the walls. Small cup-shaped emergency lights lit the room. The young soldier told me to wait here, that he would return in a moment. Yuan Xile was shrunk into a corner of the room, her body curled into a ball. Chen Luohu sat on the iron chair. When he saw me, he nervously stood up. His eyes were all bloodshot, his mouth opening and closing, not knowing what to say.
I too was at a loss for words. Never would I have expected to find them here. We'd split up less than a day ago, but already it was as if a lifetime had passed. Far too much had happened. I asked Chen Luohu how they'd gotten here. He said that when the river started to rise, they'd blown up the oxskin raft and set out. With the river at a high point, a number of new branches had opened up. The water was too fast and they'd been swept down one of the branches. In the end, they found themselves here. Then Chen Luohu's responses stopped making sense. He seemed to have reached his mental breaking point. Not that it was his fault. If I hadn't already been scared into a kind of numbness when the water rose, who knows how I would have reacted when I saw the Shinzan?
We were silent for a moment. "What about everyone else?" he asked me. "Have the higher-ups sent in a team to rescue us?"
I didn't know how to explain what I had experienced and could give him only a rough idea of what had happened. Hearing that Old Cat had come, his expression changed and all at once he relaxed. Then it occurred to me: If this place was our assignment's intended destination, then where had that strange telegram led the others to?
As I was about to say this, the triple-proofed door opened again. In rushed the young soldier, the deputy squad leader slumped across his back. Covering his nose and panting heavily, he yelled to us, "Close the door now!" Before I could react, Chen Luohu had already jumped to his feet and swung it shut. Together we spun the handle dozens of times without stopping. At last we heard it click. Only then did we drop our hands and relax. Through the glass aperture atop the door I looked into the airlock. The door at the far end was wide open and gray mist floated slowly in, filling the room.
CHAPTER 34
Trapped
It's hard to describe the mist, and since then I've never seen anything like it. What I remember most was how gray it was. It appeared extremely heavy, yet nevertheless it managed to float. The mist continued to pour through the outer door. It moved at an even speed, its pace calm and unhurried. Because of the light I could make it out only dimly. I then turned to help the soldier lay the deputy squad leader down. When I looked back, the ready room was already pitch-black. Mist had covered all the lights.
The door was sealed tight. The mist could sprawl no farther. The quality of this decades-old triple-proofed installation was better than I could have imagined. Still, I didn't dare stand too close to the door. The feeling that the mist might seep in through some crack never left me. I bit my lip and thought, if I was still outside right now, would I look like that corpse in the sinkhole?
Chen Luohu called for me to help. We lifted the deputy squad leader onto the writing desk. His face was covered in blood. The young soldier was panting and frantically checking him for wounds. I asked him where he'd found the deputy squad leader. He said that only a very short distance down the wall was a water chute, above which there was a concrete buffer strip to prevent people from falling. The deputy squad leader hadn't been as lucky as I. He'd tumbled all the way down and smacked into the buffer strip. That area was reachable from this level of the generator facility, and the young soldier had immediately rushed down. The mist was almost at their feet. The deputy squad leader had lost consciousness, but kept a death grip on his flashlight. As soon as the soldier saw how close the mist was, he picked him up and ran like mad back the way he'd come. The mist nearly overtook him, leaving him no time to shut the outer door.
We all had experience giving emergency medical treatment. This kind of thing happened often in the field, and injuries from falls were particularly common. By now my hand was killing me and I could barely lift it, but I ignored the pain and helped undo the deputy squad leader's clothing. He had a heartbeat and was still breathing, but out cold. His whole body had gone soft, and there was a huge gash on his head. It's hard to tell how serious head wounds are. I've seen people fall from tall trees, hit their heads and bloody their faces, then wrap the wound and climb back up the next day. I've seen others fall dead after getting knocked on the head by
a fist-sized rock while picking pecans. Miraculously, the deputy squad leader had otherwise suffered no major external injuries.
The young soldier's face crumpled. Seeing the deputy squad leader like this, he began to sob. I told him not to worry and patted him on the back, although the pain in my hand was agonizing. Rolling up my sleeve, I could tell for certain that it was either not a break or only a minor one. My wrist was heavily swollen and hurt like hell. I'd probably sprained it, but there's no good way to treat a sprained wrist. I just had to endure it.
We stopped his bleeding and let the deputy squad leader rest. I asked the young soldier how, after reaching this place, he'd found the triple-proofed chamber. With a blank look, he said it wasn't he who'd found it. Yuan Xile had led them here. The current had swept their raft all the way down to this dam. They'd found a place to dock, and as soon as they climbed out, Yuan Xile took off running like a madwoman. The soldier and Chen Luohu ran as hard as they could after her, but she didn't stop until she'd reached this chamber, where she immediately curled up in the corner and hadn't moved since.
I was dumbstruck. The average person has learned to navigate buildings based on the layouts of those they're most often in. These habits are useless when it comes to structures designed to serve some specific and unfamiliar function. It is for this reason that, when coming across ruined buildings while prospecting, we sometimes decide not to explore too deeply. Within a chemical plant, for example, you might start running somewhere, but not get a hundred steps before hitting a wall. Places you assumed to be walkways turn out totally different. Hydroelectric plants are especially unusual. The structural design of such facilities takes into account only the pressure they must bear and the machinery they will contain. That Yuan Xile could enter a place this complex and sprint all the way here without stopping could only mean one thing: she'd already spent a lot of time here. Remorse skewered me. She'd gone through so much to return to where she'd met up with us, and then what did we do? Goddamn it! We led her right back here. Had she not already lost her mind, I suspect she would have tried to strangle us.
The private told me the mist had already come up once. That time it had also been preceded by a discharge of floodwater, but the mist hadn't risen nearly so high. Yuan Xile had practically gone mad when she heard the siren go off and went immediately to shut the door. As an engineering corpsman, the soldier knew quite a bit about poisonous gas and the measures taken against it. He'd quickly realized that the mist was toxic.
There had to be some kind of induction machine here to regulate the water level, he said. Once the river reached a certain height, the dam would automatically open the sluice gates. Either this facility had been in continuous operation for the past twentysome years, or it had recently been switched back on. When the discharged water crashed into the depths of the abyss, it disturbed the mist, allowing it to ride the crosswind up to the dam. (Later, after making it back out, we would agree that this was the only possible explanation.) As to what the mist was composed of, he had no idea.
I asked his name. Ma Zaihai, he said. He was a soldier from Yueqing, in Wenzhou, a three-year veteran of the engineering corps who'd never once taken a leave. "Then how are you still a private?" I asked. He said his family's class wasn't good. Every time a squad leader mentioned him for promotion, his file was ignored. His squad leaders had changed four times, yet he remained a private. The deputy squad leader was just like him, he said. He too had a bad family background, but having fought against India, he'd been risen one rank. The two of them had stayed within the squad this whole time while each of their leaders was promoted. If I felt bad for him, he said, I should help him out and talk to our superiors. No matter what, he was determined to become at least a deputy squad leader.
I laughed hollowly and made no response. Given the situation we're in now, I thought, let's think about making it out alive first— not that I'd be able to help him, anyway.
The mist persisted. Outside the airtight door, it was pitch-black, and after two hours there were still no signs of it beginning to disperse. From our hiding place in the iron chamber, we could only observe the situation through the small window in the door. We couldn't see anything clearly. Fortunately, the sealed chamber was relatively quiet. We could hear the roar of the current, but the most distinct sounds were our own breathing and the groans as pressure bore down on the dam's concrete structure.
None of us knew when the mist would retreat. At first we talked among ourselves, but then we quieted down and took to resting within the chamber. After lying comatose for an hour and a half, the deputy squad leader finally came to. He was groggy and listless but nonetheless awake, and there seemed to be nothing seriously wrong. Ma Zaihai was so happy he cried again, and I too felt a sense of relief.
Later, I began to worry we'd exhaust the room's oxygen supply, but I discovered an old-fashioned ventilation system installed behind the baseboard. While visiting a captured Japanese submarine on display at a naval base in 1984, I would run into a similar system and realize this chamber's ventilation system had probably been based on submarine models. This chamber seemed designed to withstand the mist. But I had no one to discuss these observations with. I could only silently ponder the events taking place.
Given Yuan Xile's familiarity with the area, her prospecting team must have stayed within the dam for some time. Though I didn't know what exactly had happened to them, it was clear that whatever they encountered, we were soon to face as well. Yuan Xile had lost her mind and a man had been poisoned to death. Whatever had happened here, it was nothing good. But where was everyone else? Was Yuan Xile's extreme terror because the mist had already killed the rest of her team? And, again, what had the Japanese been up to? There was no thread to follow. My mind flashed to an image of the gigantic Shinzan bomber, then to the abyss and the mist rising out of it like some evil ghost. Thinking about this gave me a splitting headache. These were our only clues, but I couldn't make heads or tails of them.
I considered the situation for nearly three hours. The mist still hadn't dispersed. The pain in my hand was indescribable. I thought again of Wang Sichuan, of whether he was alive or dead, and I wondered where Old Cat and the rest were now. And how were we supposed to get back? Our problems were endless. In this anxious state, I fell into a muddled sleep. I didn't know it at the time, but this was the last bit of rest I would get for a long while. It was only after the bad dreams that filled this short sleep that the real nightmare would begin.
When I awoke, I tried once more to talk to Yuan Xile, but again got nowhere. The poor woman seemed to have reached the very limit of fear. Even the slightest sound would set her off. She'd immediately curl up tighter whenever I tried to speak to her, her eyes involuntarily avoiding mine. Instead I began discussing with the deputy squad leader and the rest how we'd get out of here and what route we should use. The one thing worth celebrating was that Ma Zaihai said their raft should still be where he left it. If the current wasn't too strong, we could paddle it back upstream. We didn't know whether we should travel back up the main underground river or try to locate the sinkhole where we'd fallen in. The wisest route would be the one Yuan Xile had taken, but which was that? Had she still been in her right mind, she might have led us some of the way.
"If only we had some kind of blueprint or map," said the deputy squad leader. "There's definitely one around here. If we can find it, we'll know how the Japanese planned this place out and will be able to find the shortest, safest way back. Many of the facilities here are already ruined," he said. "It wouldn't be smart to just heedlessly rush back." I nodded. These engineering corpsmen can glean a lot just looking at a blueprint, though I suspected that all such materials were destroyed when the Japanese left.
As we discussed the matter back and forth, my mind gradually emerged from its stupor. I began to relax. We were heading back. We knew what awaited us at our destination, and, moreover, we had choices. No matter what, it's always good to be given a choice. That little aphori
sm was something I thought up later.
None of us, however, had realized the most essential problem: It wasn't our journey back. It was right before our eyes. Ten hours later, after settling upon an approximate plan and counting how much food and fuel we had left, we once more looked through the small aperture in the door. Outside was still pitch-black. Suddenly we realized the true crux of the matter. How long would the mist remain out there? A day or a whole month? Nobody else had considered this problem until I brought it up. They all assumed that soon enough it would begin to dissipate. Even after I raised the issue, there was a slight nervousness, but everyone remained hopeful. Ma Zaihai said that while the mist had not risen all the way up last time, it had retreated quickly. He was sure it would be gone within a few hours. And if not, the crosswind would have thinned it out considerably. I took it for granted that he was right. In this sort of situation, it is always better to find a reason to feel relieved than to look for gratification in having suspected the worst. Still, the force of the river smashing against the bottom of an unfathomably deep abyss had caused this demonic mist to rise, and even now the water continued to fall. So long as the sluice gates remained open, the mist would continue to roll upward. How could it do anything else?
We passed the next five or six hours in a state of silent unease. The mist continued to fill the air outside our chamber and showed not the slightest sign of having begun to disperse. The indistinct panic we'd felt earlier gradually intensified. We had no choice but to admit that the mist would not be disappearing anytime soon. Once more we discussed our options. The plans we'd made and the rousing rhetoric we'd spouted ten hours before now seemed no more than a joke. The atmosphere had become rather awkward.
The deputy squad leader and Ma Zaihai asked whether we shouldn't just be patient. Wouldn't overthinking just further confuse the situation? I told them that we had to face reality. So long as the floodgates stayed open, the mist would only get thicker and thicker—no way would it dissipate. "That being the case," I said, "there are a few steps we'll have to take: First, we'll need to distribute the water and grain rations. We need to do our best to survive as long as we can and hope that we'll be able to wait until the mist dissipates. Second, we have to actively think of a way out of here. The first measure is particularly important," I said. "Even though the mist might be gone in an hour, we need to prepare as if we won't be out of here for a month."