Chapter 565 - Malaria Strikes

Luck is a finite resource. The blasting team had escaped disaster, but the rest of the project was not so fortunate. In the feverish drive to extract iron ore, safety protocols were trampled by the march of progress.

Workplace accidents became a daily ritual.

The rush orders from the Mechanical Works meant that equipment arrived in Sanya fabricated by hastily trained apprentices. These machines were then operated by equally green native laborers. The result was carnage.

In the first week, two boilers exploded, killing eleven. An automatic brick-making machine disintegrated during operation, shrapnel killing one man and maiming several others.

The death rate stabilized at a chilling 0.778 persons per day. And this was on the relatively benign coast. What would happen when they pushed into the mountains?

"We need to slow down," Zhuo Tianmin argued. "Strengthen safety education. Reduce the workload."

"We need iron ore," Wang Luobin countered, his face set like stone. "Deaths are rising? Yes. Will education stop a boiler from blowing? No. Our mission is iron. Everything else is secondary."

"This is treating human lives as consumables!" Zhuo Tianmin's voice rose.

"This is National Destiny," Wang Luobin said quietly. "If we fail here, everyone dies eventually. Write a report to the Manufacturing Supervisor if it makes you feel better. We can co-sign it."

Zhuo Tianmin swallowed his anger. He knew Wang Luobin was right, in the cold calculus of survival. He wrote the report.

But morale was plummeting. The laborers were terrified.

"We need to do something for them," Wang Luobin conceded. "He Fanghui, find a cemetery site."

"A cemetery?"

"Yes. A nice one. High ground, good fengshui. Burying the dead in shallow graves scares the living. Make it a park."

He Fanghui found a gentle slope overlooking the sea. He cleared the brush, planted flowers, and laid out flat stone markers in the style of the Cuigang Martyrs' Cemetery. It was a beautiful place to be dead.

Yet posthumous honors did not stop the bleeding. The Yulin-Tiandu railway line was a meat grinder.

The route winded through subtropical jungle where the air hung heavy and wet. Casualties from landslides and falling timber were common, but the true torment came from the wildlife.

Leeches. Millions of them.

They dropped from trees; they crawled up boots. The Construction Command issued multi-layer "anti-leech socks" and tubes of salt, but it wasn't enough.

Shan Daoqian declared war on the jungle. He employed a scorched-earth policy: bulldozers stripped the earth bare for fifty meters on either side of the track. Flamethrowers and brush fires incinerated the undergrowth. Drainage ditches were dug to dry out the breeding grounds.

Laborers worked in sweltering 30-degree heat, bundled in layers of protective clothing, choking on the smoke of burning qinghao (wormwood) designed to repel mosquitoes.

Meter by meter, the rails extended. A coal-gas locomotive chugged back and forth, bringing food, ammo, and fresh bodies to the front.

But the jungle had a weapon they couldn’t bulldoze.

Forty days after the landing, the first cases appeared.

Dr. Hippo walked into the field hospital ward. Six patients lay on the cots. Some were shivering violently under heaps of wool blankets, helpless against an internal chill. Others were flushed crimson, sweating through their sheets.

"Shaking fits," the natives called it.

"Malaria," Hippo pronounced the death sentence. "Isolate them. Screens on the windows. Now."

"Yes, Doctor."

Head Nurse Guo Fu moved efficiently to carry out the orders. She had become indispensible, and the Health Department was already grooming her to be the first native-trained physician.

"Tomorrow, summon all health workers," Hippo instructed, lighting a cigarette to mask the smell of sickness. "Inspect every camp. Mosquito nets must be hung properly. No net? Screens. No screens? Burn wormwood 24 hours a day."

"Prevention is key," he continued. "You will personally oversee the distribution of antimalarials. Watch them swallow the pills. That includes yourself."

"I understand."

"Assign two nurses just for these six," Hippo sighed, exhaling smoke. "Keep them warm during the chills, cool during the fever. Hydrate them. Give them Grade 1 sick rations."

He looked out the window at the green hell of the jungle. "This is just the beginning. We're past the incubation period. The peak is coming."

"With you here, Doctor, we can overcome anything," Guo Fu said, her eyes shining with absolute trust.

"I'm not a god, Guo Fu." Hippo smiled bitterly. His stockpile of drugs was finite. The mosquitoes were infinite.

"Doctors aren't gods," she smiled, a sweet expression that made his heart skip a beat. "But they are close enough."

The news of the outbreak hit the Command Post like a bomb. An emergency meeting was called. If the workforce collapsed, Project Giant would grind to a halt. The real war for Sanya had just begun.

(End of Chapter)