37°45'07.7"N 98°44'23.8"E – Tianjun County

  25.05.2024 – 20.30 UTC +08.00

  The door chimes rang as Little Guy opened the door and started running around the gas station’s courtyard.

  “Gài! Just for a while, it is getting dark!” I shouted at him, but his puppy instincts had kicked in. He had eaten for dinner more than he had eaten all week. Ming’s search hit the jackpot when he managed to find some deep-freezing rooms in the cellar, where the owners had decided to store whatever they could not transport, from vegetables to poultry. Little Guy had a whole chicken to expend in energy. Plus, the weather had made a turn to the warmer side – almost summer-like – that afternoon. If we hadn’t found all that food, I would have regretted losing the chance to hike through the one afternoon that could have been nice to hike.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I said with the strictest voice I could imagine, imitating the best I could my father. Ming was just about to exit the restaurant as well, to play with the hound. “For Gài, the night is safe. For you it is not. You don’t get out until dawn.”

  “But…”

  “Go find a place to sleep,” I said, “I will do the same once I am done with all the dishes.”

  Ming kicked a chair in a fit of a tantrum, but one look from me was enough to remind him: I was not his parent, and he should not assume I would use best practices with him.

  It worked. He ran upstairs, where he had previously chosen one of the service rooms as his bedroom tonight. I would make a bed out of one of the couches at the back of the restaurant, and call it a night.

  I left the last dish to dry, and I walked to the restaurant’s door. I opened it slightly; it was breezy but not cold. The bells chimed as I shouted.

  “Gài! Where are you? Silly dog,”

  Little Guy was nowhere to be seen. The last twilight allowed me to see just up until the riverbank nearby. I considered for a moment to find if the gas station had any outside lighting, but then I had to remind myself that we were squatting in the building.

  I shut the door. Little Guy would find his way back, and he could open it by pushing with his snout.

  “Good night!” Ming shouted from above the stairs.

  “Good night,” I said, initially shouting, but then my voice trailed off. I looked at the restaurant, and how normal the past few hours had been. In another life, I would have had a wife, maybe, a kid like Ming, a restaurant, and enough space for Little Guy to run around.

  In this life, all I could think of was the scarlet sun above Sulixiang and the villagers killing each other in Lóngmén earlier this morning. I could not run anymore, but I could not play pretend in this abandoned place either.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here first thing tomorrow,” I said to myself, heading to my makeshift bed at the back of the restaurant. I lay down and sleep took over me, instantly.

  ? ? ?

  My sleep was dreamless, but Little Guy kept me warm. His fur by my face was how I had gotten used to sleeping the past week, and apparently, the same was true for the hound.

  The doorbells chimed. Little Guy was finally back, that silly dog.

  My eyes sprang wide open, and my heart rate tripled in an instant. The hound was sleeping under my head; I could feel his fur. Was it Ming who had just used the main entrance?

  The chimes rang once more, as if someone else had followed just behind.

  In the dark, I slowly shuffled and repositioned myself so that I could look at the door at a sharp angle. Two figures stood at the entrance, wielding a flashlight each. They were talking to each other:

  “…else got here first?”

  “And did the dishes too? What the fuck?”

  Who were they? The owners would definitely not act like this.

  “I go upstairs to check for any safes,” said the taller figure, walking closer to the stairs.

  “Of course you do.”

  Were they looters? They must have been. Of course, looters would see this as a chance. People had no self-control.

  “Stop complaining, and check the ground floor,” the taller figure – probably a man – said and rushed up the stairs.

  Oh shit. The kid was upstairs. I looked around for anything that could act as a weapon. A bottle? A chair?

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  The shorter figure mockingly repeated the phrase: “check the ground floor.” It sounded like a woman’s voice, but older than me.

  I could see her moving with the flashlight near the register at the bar. I had some time to surprise her, but I had no time to waste while the other man was on the same floor as Ming.

  I saw Little Guy shuffling, waking up as well.

  I heard comms static, and the woman spoke:

  “Everything is empty, and someone cooked. Someone passed by here already, Don,” she said.

  “Fuck there is a mess up here too,” the man answered back, “but they didn’t take things? I don’t understand.”

  I grabbed the bottle and slowly walked behind the woman’s back. Her flashlight rested on the counter, pointing to the kitchen, as she went through the cupboards I had already been through. I tiptoed behind her. Next to me, Little Guy had stood upright and was ready to prowl.

  A scream, and then gunshots, stopped me in my tracks. One, two… five shots.

  Little Guy lunged at the woman, who immediately kicked the hound back. Her left hand rushed to her belt: she had a gun. I jumped and flung the bottle right at her head.

  Another scream from upstairs made me shiver. These were no child’s screams, but a grown man’s. What had scared him?

  One more gunshot followed, while the woman tumbled back, disoriented both by Little Guy and my throw. I grabbed the flashlight from the counter and turned it off, making sure she could not use her handgun effectively.

  “Don!” she shrieked and started shooting where her flashlight had been. I quickly crouched and rolled over the opposite side, near the stairs that headed upstairs. I had to head to the kid, even if it was stupid. I could not let him…

  I lost track of thought as I caught a glimpse of a blue light from the corridor with the service rooms. The man screamed again and rushed outside the room, his back against the wall, while his fingers tried to load a bullet into his revolver.

  “Fuck,” I said and crouched, as the light dissipated and I heard another gunshot.

  “Dhondup?” yelled the woman from the ground floor, “I can’t get past the fucking dog.”

  Dhondup did not respond, and I could not understand in which direction he shot.

  “Jiang? Jiang!” I heard Ming’s voice. He sounded scared. I could no longer cower in wait: I turned the flashlight on and aimed where I thought I had previously seen the male looter.

  The light fell right onto his body, illuminating the blood trickling down from his mouth.

  “What the…” I said, and then I saw Ming, running scared in my direction.

  “Duìzhǎng!”

  “Ming?” I asked, as he rushed by my side, jumping first over the man’s body. “Who… how did you?”

  Another gunshot from the ground floor and a whimper from Little Guy tensed my muscles to run; and then the doorbells chimed again, as the hound retreated, running outside, barking in fear.

  I turned to run, but Ming pulled on my leg.

  “No, wait.”

  “What?” I said, aiming my flashlight at him. His eyes were full of tears, but his expression showed he was serious. He shook his head left and right, again and again. At the edge of my peripheral vision, I saw the same blue light as before, and then I froze as it disappeared. Or rather it…

  “Don, is that…” I heard the woman shout from the ground floor. And then she screamed. She screamed some more, and then she started shooting.

  I held Ming down, although it was clear the woman was shooting someone on the ground floor, not us. Was she shooting at her companion? I turned the flashlight to where I had just seen his body before. It was still there.

  Then I noticed a detail. His handgun, still smoking, was by his left hand. A gaping wound above his jaw kept bleeding. Had he shot himself?

  I heard glass break from the ground floor, just as I asked myself the question. Then silence. No running around, no gunshots. The man had bled dry next to us. Ming relaxed his grip on my leg:

  “Let’s go find Gài,” he said, and I could tell he was crying.

  I nodded. We could not stay up there forever. I turned the flashlight off, and I put a finger in front of Ming’s lips.

  “We go quiet,” I said, whispering.

  I walked down the stairs, making sure I took each step as slowly as I could, as silently as possible. Ming did as well. In every step, I expected the woman to shoot me, or for this blue light to appear again, whose thought was just enough to make my skin crawl.

  Nothing happened. We reached the ground floor, and just from the moonlight from the windows, I could see the result of whatever fight had taken place while I was upstairs with Ming.

  Chairs and tables had moved, bullets had left holes in the walls.

  A familiar sound turned my attention to the front door: a car whose engine was left on standby. A rush of excitement overcame me. Did we just inherit a means of transport?

  I took one step and felt sharp porcelain below my naked feet. Pieces of glass and porcelain were lying everywhere. I squinted my eyes, trying to trace their origin: a cabinet behind the kitchen bar.

  It used to display glasses and porcelain plates. A dark mass lay at the center of it.

  “Ming, go get your stuff. We are leaving,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Now.”

  Ming ran upstairs more scared than before. I knew he did not want to see that dead guy, as much as he probably did not want to see that.

  I turned on my flashlight – well, her flashlight, as much as she could claim any possession at that state. Her soulless body lay hurled head-first into the glass cabinet, hundreds of larger and tiny porcelain pieces ripping the skin of her face apart, and blood spilling everywhere from her neck.

  I looked around in the restaurant. There was nobody in here. And Little Guy definitely did not do that. I looked back at her body, and for a moment, something shiny caught my eye.

  I walked carefully to avoid any cuts from the glass on the floor and reached her side. As I saw the blood spilling over her neck, I wondered if there was a hope of saving her life by stopping the bleeding. Or maybe if I had to find a way to expedite her death and take her out of her misery.

  And then I turned my attention to the keychain by her belt. The car keys were just dangling there.

  “Keys, stuff, and we run,” I said to myself, “we run the opposite way.”