Arguing with the big boss

Leaving the capital region, we wandered around the surrounding counties, creating a smokescreen, until 3 a.m. before returning to Jinyinshan. We had initially planned to blindfold the base commander and Lieutenant Colonel Wu before heading up the mountain, but realized this was futile. With the leader kidnapped, the base would certainly react; this smokescreen was merely a delaying tactic to facilitate negotiations. If the negotiations succeeded, there would be no need to escape; if they failed, escape would be impossible.

So we drove into Jinyinshan openly and honestly, while the base commander kept his head down, looking at the road signs through the high beams, until we arrived at the hot spring hotel.

These past few days, the lead sheep hasn't been on the mountain, and the support personnel have been frequently coming and going. The night watch has switched back to password mode, and the topic has changed from classical Chinese to vegetables and fruits. After a round of questions about potatoes and cucumbers, I think everyone must have had enough of canned meat and is craving fresh vegetables, regretting not bringing some back from the base.

I really wanted to brag about our excellent victory, but everyone was sound asleep at this hour, and waking them up would likely result in a bunch of grumpy people, which wouldn't achieve the effect I wanted. In the end, I only managed to wake up Dr. Tang from the emergency room to have him check Xiao Qing's injury.

Gao Chen and the others went to settle the two base chiefs separately, letting me, who was exhausted both mentally and physically, go and rest first. I dragged my feet back to my room, and as soon as I opened the door, I saw a flickering candlelight and a man with his hands in his pockets, leaning lazily against the window.

"You're back?"

I was terrified. If I hadn't remembered that my parents lived next door, I almost yelled. I forced a smile and asked, "You... what are you doing here? Are you done?"

"It was all done yesterday." He didn't seem proud at all, as if he were talking about something extremely ordinary.

Liu Meili didn't sleep here. I guess she went to solidify her relationship while I was away these past two days. I don't want to talk to him in the middle of the night, but I'm so curious that I can't sleep without finding out. I also don't want to be alone with him with the door closed, but if the door is open and the noise gets out, my mom will come running.

I turned around and closed the door, resisting the urge to throw myself onto the soft bed. Instead, I sat down on the edge of the bed and asked, "Did you bring him back?"

"Hmm." In the flickering candlelight, his face looked quite clean, as clean as Gao Chen's. His clothes were still the training uniform style, but they were clearly new.

I sniffed and leaned forward: "What's that smell? Soap? You used soap!"

He smiled and said, "I took a shower before I came back. Didn't you shower at Red Star?"

I really want to slap myself for thinking about this. The Red Star Base has staff bathrooms open on Wednesdays. Xiao Qing could have taken me there, but I was so engrossed in my work—taking down Lieutenant Colonel Wu—that I missed it... Is taking a shower even suitable for post-apocalyptic humans? I'll just wipe myself down if I find wet wipes, and if I don't, oh well. I can't smell any stench anymore.

"So what if I didn't wash them!" I said, annoyed. "Let's get down to business. I tied up two people. Besides Shan Kelun, I also brought back that bastard who flew the rescue helicopter."

He nodded: "I saw your car going up the mountain, so I came to wait for you."

"What are you saying? You came to wait for me just to show off, right?" I snorted. "It doesn't matter that you came back earlier than me. In terms of results, our group deserves to be number one."

"Not necessarily. You've tied up two people, but Zhou Yi and I have just as many."

"What? Zhou Yi is back too?" This blow left me even more dejected. "What's going on? Didn't you agree to use a scheme, to fish in troubled waters? You resorted to violence, didn't you? A general with a large army and a high-ranking scientist under protection, and you managed to bring them back so quickly?"

“Yeah,” he said, his smile widening as he watched me roll my eyes. “Alright, I just came to see if you’d gotten into any trouble. Since everything’s going well, get some rest. We can talk about business tomorrow.”

As soon as he took a step, I stood up abruptly and stopped him: "Wait, what do you mean by 'out of control'? Explain yourself clearly. When we were leaving, you absolutely refused to let me go to Hongxing. Did you already know that Gao Chen had a woman he knew who was clinging to him, and were afraid that I would act impulsively and cause trouble?"

"What does it have to do with you that Gao Chen has a woman?" He feigned ignorance and then twisted the meaning of the question.

"A question you already know the answer to."

He continued to feign ignorance: "I don't know, why don't you tell me?"

I glared at him for a while, the pleasant scent of soap wafting into my nose, and then, annoyed, I backed away: "Shut up, let's go, I'm going to sleep."

He stood there, his fingers fiddling in his pocket again. After a while, he pulled out a bright red object and threw it into my arms: "This was sent by Feng Huo. I ate one last one, so it's yours."

After he left, I tossed and turned for a long time, unable to sleep, I was so angry. Leftovers for me? I've eaten stir-fried vegetables back at the Red Star Base! What's there to brag about?

Looking at the slightly limp tomato beside my pillow, I angrily turned my head away, but less than five seconds later I turned back. I asked myself: Why am I picking on a tomato? I answered myself: There's no need. So, without caring about its cleanliness, I grabbed it and ate it in two bites. Not sweet, a little sour, but juicy with a sweet aftertaste—it was a good tomato; I wouldn't be able to sleep well without eating it.

After eating, I slept soundly and even dreamed that I was rolling around on a pile of tomatoes, shouting that they were all mine!

The commanders of the three bases disappeared almost simultaneously, and the capital's emergency response was much faster than I had imagined. On the second and third days, the situation over Jin Yin Mountain suddenly became severe. Two helicopters patrolled back and forth, the sputtering of their rotors making me tense. They might not have locked onto Jin Yin Mountain, but rather were searching for unusual activity throughout the entire outskirts of Beijing.

At this point, allowing anyone to run around in the mountains could easily attract attention. Therefore, we withdrew all reconnaissance personnel, closed the hotel doors, and distributed weapons to each person to prepare them psychologically for a tough and bloody battle before focusing our efforts on dealing with the hostages.

To be honest, with these three big shots on my side, I'm not afraid, and I firmly believe the capital won't abandon them. Especially the key expert Shan Kelun and the bio-engineering expert... I still don't know the name of the Wolf Smoke Base Chief.

Zhou Yi and Han Bo's group of seven was the largest and most efficient, their method of capturing the big boss far more ruthless and brutal than ours. They appeared and disappeared mysteriously amidst the smoke of battle, setting fires, damaging public facilities, and instigating conflict between ordinary survivors and the fighting teams. Starting with the unfair distribution of supplies, they organized two protests in three days, forcing the base commander to personally address the issue in the survivor area. Then, under the guise of "hearsay," they released news of the base commander's private storage of supplies from two counties exploding, causing a major riot. No matter how many guards there were, they couldn't outnumber the survivors. A few of them, shouting "Protect the base commander!", escorted the big boss to Gold and Silver Mountain, also managing to bring along two close bodyguards who would never leave his side.

Yu Zhongjian was tight-lipped about how he got the general to the mountain, but when I walked into the top-tier VIP suite where the big shots were being held—a suite with a jacuzzi, a small sauna, a round water bed, and a special bed for acupuncture and cupping—and saw him and the burly general standing on the balcony smoking cigars together, I was completely dumbfounded.

We agreed to conduct criticism together, but instead he's smoking cigars with the enemy? Is this some new form of interrogation I've never seen before?

The other two big shots were chatting in the living room, not seeming particularly scared. They even nodded amicably when they saw me walk in. I was even more confused. "Shan Kelun, what happened to you, Shan Kelun? Have you forgotten how brutally I slit your throat the night before last? The cut on your chin is still clearly visible, and your cable knit sweater and plaid pajama pants are still covered in blood!"

"Captain Yu!" I called out to him coldly. When he turned around, I said stiffly, "What are you doing? Old Lin is sharpening his knife down there, and I couldn't stop him. Do you want to go and take a look?"

Yu Zhongjian slowly walked into the room and smiled, "How can Old Lin sharpen a knife with only one hand?"

I coldly surveyed the three people inside and outside the room: "Oh, you also know he only has one hand? Not only Lao Lin, but also Captain Fu from Yangcheng, Captain Qian from Baicheng, Teacher Yan from Yucheng, and my parents, are all sharpening knives."

The big shots didn't speak, just watched me quietly. The general on the balcony also came in. He was fifty years old, tall and strong, with thick eyebrows and fierce eyes, and his temperament was indeed very iron-blooded.

Yu Zhongjian placed his cigar on the ashtray on the coffee table, pointed at me, and said to the bigwigs, "What I'm saying to you all represents only my personal opinion. This is Captain Qi of the Huaicheng Survivor Team. Here, she has the final say."

The general spoke first: "Little girl, I heard you slid Lao Dan down ten floors and stole him from Red Star, and you also blew up checkpoint 507. Pretty impressive."

"You flatter me." For some reason, with Yu Zhongjian here, I wasn't intimidated by this general with gold stars on his shoulders. My tone was icy. "I don't know what Captain Yu said to you. I invited you all here because I have grievances to voice and justice to seek. Once things are cleared up, we can all go home. If we can't reach an agreement..."

The general looked at me with a smile: "What if we can't reach an agreement?"

"Let's die together."

There was a moment of silence in the room. All four of us, including myself, turned to look at the person who had spoken. Yes, it wasn't me who had spoken, but Shan Kelun.

He pushed up one of his glasses: "This Miss Qi likes to say, 'Let's die together.'"

The general burst into laughter, clutching his stomach, while the commander of the Wolf Smoke Base also wore a typical, naive smile—a typical of a science-minded man. I didn't laugh; in fact, I felt a deep sense of indignation. Were they treating me like a child? Their lack of fear and tension—had Yu Zhongjian made some promise, or were they simply incredibly confident in the base's rescue operation?

"Is it funny?" I said slowly, word by word, "I don't think so, because when I said we'd die together, I was genuinely prepared to die."

The commander of the Wolf Smoke Base stopped laughing, but the general still couldn't hide his smile: "This girl's personality is suitable for being a soldier. Why don't you come to my base and I'll let you join the female soldiers' team for some training?"

I remained silent, my face taut, my eyes blazing with hatred as I stared unblinkingly at the three of them, expressing my emotions through silence. After a while, the general stopped laughing, gave a rough snort, and sat down on the sofa: "Xiao Yu has already told us about the situation on the southern front. What you saw were casualties of a few or a few dozen people, but what I saw was a massive horde of corpses gathering, converging from J Province to A Province to S Province, advancing northward like a tide. You should have encountered this once before you entered Beijing. Do you think that's a lot?"

I remained silent, and he continued, “You might think that’s already a huge zombie horde, but the truth is, 600 kilometers south of Huai City, there’s an even larger and more numerous one heading towards you, and further south, there are more! If we don’t bomb them, how long do you think you can hold out in Huai City? If we don’t bomb them, the two zombie hordes will eventually merge into a massive… then it won’t be called a zombie horde, it will be called a zombie howl! They will fill every corner of the city, occupy all the roads, invade the countryside and mountains, turning everything in their path into zombie territory, leaving no place for survivors.”

I said angrily, "The survivors have nowhere to go! I don't care about the zombie hordes or howls. I only know that since the outbreak of the virus, no country, no government, no organization has come to help us. We have been desperately trying to survive, desperately killing zombies, and desperately building our own living space! We survived the virus and the zombie hordes, but we couldn't survive your bombs! Everything we had built up overnight has vanished, and even our brothers in the neighboring city have lost their lives because of it!"

The general shook his head: "In a battle between two armies, casualties are inevitable. We must look at this issue from a broader perspective..."

"Macro my ass! You're just using us as cannon fodder!" I couldn't even pretend to show the most basic respect for elders, and I started cursing.

"You!" The general slammed his hand on the coffee table. "You incomprehensible little girl, you have no sense of the bigger picture!"

"The bigger picture my ass! We need to survive!"

The general got angry, stopped smoking his cigar, and roared at the top of his lungs: "There are a billion zombies in the country. If they surround you for half a year, how will you survive?!"

"You, you're the one who's alive! You're just a bunch of high-ranking bureaucrats who don't know the suffering of ordinary people. You didn't come to the rescue when it was your turn, but you were quick to drop the bombs!" I don't know why we started arguing after only a few words, and I was full of profanities. But I was so angry that I felt dizzy and just wanted to curse.

"You're killing people! You're killing people! You, Shan Kelun," I turned my guns on the Red Star Base Commander, "it was you who sent out the rescue plane. That bastard surnamed Wu didn't take the rescue seriously at all. He just flew over and went back to report no survivors, causing the deaths of so many people! I'm going to kill him! I'll make him pay for his crimes in blood!"

Dan Kelun pressed his hand down: "Miss Qi, calm down."

"Calm down my ass, and you too!" I turned to the Wolf Smoke Base Chief, "Aren't you a scientist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences? Aren't you supposed to be able to develop vaccines? Zombies have been around for almost a year, what have you developed? Nothing! You're hoarding supplies, you're preparing for your own escape route!"

The base chief, seemingly unconcerned by my accusations, gestured with his hand, saying, "This will take time; the virus strain is still being isolated..."

"Separate my ass!" The more I spoke, the hotter my head became, and I was so angry I was spinning in circles. "Just you wait, you just wait!"

I turned and ran out, calling out several people's names. Soon, I summoned Lao Lin, Fu Hua, Liu Sicheng, my parents, and many others, and led them back to the room.

Completely disregarding my preconceived notions of a calm, deliberate, and methodical negotiation approach, I led my group forward with the ferocity of preparing for a brawl, my ears burning with excitement.

The three base commanders showed no awareness of being prisoners of war. Surrounded by the crowd, they remained calm and composed, waiting patiently for me to continue.

I pulled up Old Lin's crippled right hand: "See that? It was caused by a bomb! That family was living happily in the base, and you turned Fengcheng into ruins and a sea of ​​fire. Their family died! Hundreds and thousands of survivors in Fengcheng died!"

Old Lin closed his eyes in pain, and two tears rolled down his cheeks.

I pulled Fu Hua aside: "His old father, his own brothers, the relatives of his compatriots in his team, all died, all of them were killed by your bombing."

I pulled people from Baicheng and Yucheng together, and made them talk about their heartache, their tears, and the pain of losing loved ones. Several grown men squatted on the ground and cried their hearts out.

The base commanders finally showed a hint of seriousness on their faces.

Finally, I pulled my dad over, pointed at Shan Kelun and said, "Dad, didn't you want to beat up the guy who blew up Rongjun and the Qi family? That's him, go ahead and beat him up." As I spoke, I took out my 92-inch cigarettes. "Go ahead and beat him up, I'll take the blame for you later!"

Under my father's pained and hateful gaze, Shan Kelun could no longer maintain his composure and shrank back. "Miss Qi, don't act rashly."

"Enough!" The general slammed his hand on the coffee table again and spoke. "Have you said everything you need to say? If not, continue. If you're done, then let's talk about your demands. What's the point of fighting him? Even if the three of us are killed here, your loved ones will never come back."

I sneered, "General, are you resorting to shamelessness?"

His eyes widened: "Am I wrong?"

Dan Kelun then spoke up, “Ms. Qi, although I don’t approve of the way you reported the situation, I can understand your plight. Survivors are rare, and every life is precious. I’m very sorry that this tragedy occurred because of our negligence. In addition to holding those responsible accountable, I’m willing to compensate you. How about we invite you all to stay at our Red Star Base? We’ll provide each of you with a certain amount of supplies, arrange suitable jobs for you, and ensure your future living and safety. What do you think?”

The commander of the Wolf Smoke base stated, "We are truly sorry. Our original intention was absolutely not to harm survivors. Here's what we'll do: I can arrange some personnel. Wolf Smoke's infrastructure and medical services are comparable to those before the apocalypse."

The general casually picked up a cigar: "I see a few young men who are in pretty good shape. How about joining the army and going to the front lines to kill zombies? The food at our Beacon Fire unit is excellent."

The crowd was silent. I glanced back and saw that most people had either numb or disdainful expressions, while a few had a flicker of uncertainty in their eyes.

What kind of nonsense is this? After hurling insults and making accusations, they say a few high-sounding words and then try to recruit my people?

Strictly speaking, they weren't all my men; those few with shifty eyes were brothers from the neighboring city. Their city had very few survivors. I originally planned to bring them back with me when I returned to Huai City, but now it seems...

I went downstairs, retrieved a piece of paper, and handed it to the three base commanders: "Pie in the sky won't work. Sincerely apologize to the families of the victims, obtain their forgiveness, and then compensate us for everything listed on this paper. That's it. Otherwise..." I looked at Shan Kelun.

He adjusted his glasses, raised an eyebrow, and said, "Die together?"

I nodded: "Let's die together."

The general lit a cigar, exhaling a thick cloud of smoke, and said dismissively, "Little girl, I only came here because of Xiao Yu. If I had known earlier that you had kidnapped Lao Hu and Lao Dan, I would have already leveled this mountain."