Chapter 34: Aftermath (Part 1)
As Wang Luobin walked out of the administrative area, his heart was still pounding. He dragged his rifle behind him, a desperate attempt to calm his frayed nerves. That was too close, he thought. He had been exhausted from the day’s construction work, and the enemy had come so quickly.
He had emptied a full magazine during the battle, though he had no idea if he had hit anything. He had fired all thirty rounds in a blind panic as the enemy swarmed over the rampart, and then he had shamefully fled. The whole experience was a chaotic, fragmented dream. When he finally came to his senses, the enemy was in retreat, and he was on the other side of the front line, with only a few scratches to show for his cowardice. He wondered if he had what it took to survive in this new world.
The ground was littered with spent shell casings, some still smoking. What a waste, he thought. They couldn’t produce their own shell casings yet. They should be collected.
He saw Xiao Zishan standing on the rampart, his face a mask of disgust as he looked at the corpses below.
“Zishan, what are you doing here?” he asked.
“Arranging the funeral,” Xiao Zishan said, forcing a smile. He looked like he was about to vomit. “To be honest, I can’t stand the sight of dead people.”
“Who can?” Wang Luobin said, averting his eyes from the grotesque tableau of death. The movies had lied. Bullets didn’t leave neat little holes. They tore through flesh and bone, leaving a trail of mangled tissue and a shocking amount of blood, which stained the earth a deep, purplish-black.
A nearby corpse lay twisted on the ground, half its skull missing, exposing a gruesome mix of white and red. Its cotton armor was riddled with bullet holes, the blood-stained wadding fluttering in the wind. Wang Luobin quickly looked away. The corpse collection team, using grappling hooks, dragged the bodies out and threw them onto wheelbarrows, to be taken away and buried.
The captives, their faces numb, carried and dragged the corpses as the transmigrators looked on, their own faces grim. “Revolution is not a dinner party,” they had once joked. Now, the words had a chilling new meaning. Revolution was bloodshed and sacrifice. And no matter how just the cause, it was the common people who died in the greatest numbers.
“By the way, Engineer Wang,” Xiao Zishan said, “the Executive Committee is holding an enlarged meeting at 7 p.m.”
“An enlarged meeting?”
“A post-war review. In addition to the committee members, the leaders of the professional groups, key members, and representatives of the masses will also be there.”
“Representatives of the masses?”
“Yes,” Xiao Zishan said, his face grim. “I think we’ll see our first line struggle tonight.”
“What? Didn’t we fight well?” In Wang Luobin’s view, the battle, though embarrassing, had been a success. Their losses had been minimal.
“There are two sides to every story,” Xiao Zishan said, lowering his voice. “We have a massive technological advantage, weapons that are centuries ahead of theirs, and yet we were nearly overrun. Is that not a mistake?”
“Indeed…”
“This place is only four kilometers from the enemy’s stronghold, yet the Executive Committee sent only three men to monitor them. Is that not underestimating the enemy?”
“Yes, yes,” Wang Luobin nodded.
“When we discovered the enemy had left the city, we didn’t harass or attack them. We sat and waited for them to besiege us. What kind of strategy is that?”
A cold sweat broke out on Wang Luobin’s brow. “Zishan, you’re trying to frame someone.”
Xiao Zishan shook his head. “After we landed, we pursued a steady, cautious course, trying to avoid direct conflict. But now, it seems the radical line is about to take power.”
“Impossible. The basic ideas in the Executive Committee are all the same.”
“It’s easy for the leading group to be in harmony. That’s why we’re holding an enlarged meeting,” Xiao Zishan said. “Do you know what the professional group leaders, the technical backbones, the representatives of the masses think?”
“No matter what anyone says,” Wang Luobin said, “I will stick to a steady course and firmly support Wen Zong’s ideas.” He laughed and clapped Xiao Zishan on the shoulder. “You’re too much of a conspiracy theorist. You see political struggle everywhere.”
While they were talking, the medical team was busy in its tent, the air filled with screams. Lacking anesthetics, most of the wounded were treated while conscious.
Most of the injuries were minor, but many were to the face, and the men, their faces covered in blood, looked terrifying. Many had fainted from fear and shock, not from blood loss. The doctors cleaned the wounds with saline, disinfected them with alcohol, removed the foreign objects, and stitched them up.
The bacteria of this era had no drug resistance, so they used only sulfanilamide ointment for anti-infection treatment. Some also received tetanus shots.
“Okay, all the iron sand is out,” Dr. Lan said, comforting a poor soul from whose face he had just spent an hour removing twenty small fragments.
“I’m going to have pockmarks,” the man wailed. “Doctor, do you know how to do plastic surgery?”
I’m more familiar with your stomach, Dr. Lan thought, but he said, “No problem. I’ve worked in a beauty hospital before.”
“Then I’ll make an appointment. I’m planning to marry a princess, you know, Ah Jiu…” At this, Yang Baogui’s wife, Zhang Ziyi (a name he had requested himself, not a product of the author’s bad taste), injected him with a sedative, and the would-be princess-marrier drifted off to sleep.
But there were also serious injuries. One man had his teeth knocked out and a hole in his cheek. Fortunately, they had a dentist and the necessary materials for dentures. Shi Niaoren was worried about maxillofacial defects; he was not a skilled surgeon. Of the five doctors in the medical team, none specialized in surgery: he was in infectious diseases, Lan Fangfang in internal medicine, and He Ma was an internist with some clinical experience in orthopedics. As for Dr. Yang, no one was willing to let him treat them—he was a veterinarian.
The wounded captives were crowded on the ground in front of the infirmary. Most were silent, bleeding quietly, their wounds wrapped in rags. When they had been brought here, they had been terrified. But seeing the wounded pirates being carried in and out, they understood they were to be treated, and they quieted down. They were, after all, a patient people.
Fu Buer was among them. During the retreat, he had been pushed and had fallen, his left leg now useless. He had managed to limp here with the help of a fellow villager, but he was exhausted and thirsty. He knew he could not fall. To fall was to be thrown in with the seriously wounded, a pile of men who would never rise again.
The lightly wounded were given water. They crowded around the buckets, their thirst a raging fire. The guards had to restore order, pushing them back so that everyone could drink.
Fu Buer drank some water and lay down, feeling a little better. The bleeding seemed to have stopped, and the pain in his leg had subsided. He regretted following Huang Shoutong. He had been safe in his village, with his tenants and his long-term laborers. But he had been grateful to Huang Shoutong for helping him fight off bandits in the past, and he had been curious about these strange pirates. He had seen the strength of the Huang Family Village militia and had felt safe in their numbers.
He had not expected such a swift and total defeat. The pirates’ firearms were too vicious. He did not know what had become of Huang Shoutong. He was probably dead; he had been the first to charge.
A dozen or so men lay in the distance, their groans a faint, mournful chorus. They were hopeless cases. Soon, they would be either put out of their misery or buried with the dead. Fu Buer shivered.
But his own life, it seemed, was not in immediate danger. If they were going to treat their wounds, they would not be in a hurry to kill them.
“Master,” his long-term laborer, Ma Peng, whispered, “what do you think the pirates want to do with us?” Ma Peng’s own injury was minor, a sprained ankle from the retreat. If not for his bad luck, he would be home by now.