The water buffalo calmed after that, smelling only the scent of the barn in the bag's fabric.
Bingwen guided it back down into the valley. He wasn't turning around, he had decided. He had come this far; he would see it through. He wouldn't give up as quickly as the water buffalo had.
They moved toward the nearest patch of healthy crop. If they crossed the valley by sticking to the green shoots, maybe they could pass through without contaminating themselves.
Bingwen took the first few tentative steps into the tall shoots and waited to see if he felt sick or light-headed.
Nothing happened.
He pushed on, pulling the water buffalo behind him.
The healthy green shoots crumpled and broke under their feet. Damaging the crop like that went against everything both of them had ever been taught, but they walked on nonetheless.
They passed dozens of bodies. The first few faces were strangers: men and women from other villages. Then Bingwen began to see people he knew: neighbors and friends of Grandfather. Yi Yi Guangon, one of the elders from the village council. Shashoo, the only woman in the village who owned a washing machine. Bexi, the nurse who made herbal remedies for Bingwen whenever he got sick. All of them were lifeless and lying in unnatural positions, their skin red and blistered, as if they had worked for days in the sun without a hat.
A suffocating fear gripped at Bingwen's chest whenever he saw someone new: What if the next person's face was Mother's or Father's? What would he do then?
Once he was sure he had found Mother. The dead woman lay in the mud with her back to him and her face turned away. She had hair like Mother's and a shape like Mother's and the same plain, faded clothes like Mother's.
But when Bingwen walked around her and saw her face, he realized it wasn't Mother. The relief was so sudden and overwhelming that Bingwen broke down and sobbed. His chest heaved, and his body shook, and it took several minutes to compose himself again. By then the water buffalo was growing restless and pulling on the lead rope again. Bingwen wiped at his eyes and nose with the sleeve of his good arm. He had been crying for everything: his arm, Hopper, Meilin, the dead woman who looked like Mother, Mazer's ship. Everything. When he finished, he felt better, braver even. I've had my cry, he thought. My final one.
He kept walking.
There were dead children as well, though Bingwen couldn't force himself to look at them. He made his eyes defocus whenever one came into view, always looking above the body, never directly at it ... until a bright shirt caught his attention. A shirt he recognized. A shirt he had seen up close when the person wearing it had put him in a headlock once.
Zihao.
Alive, Zihao had always worn a bullish, condescending sneer. But here, lying on his back in the mud, he looked afraid: wide eyes, rigid body, a dirty face streaked with tears. He seemed younger, too. Like a child. Bingwen looked away.
A faint hiss from behind caused Bingwen to turn around suddenly. Back at the end of the access road, a few hundred meters behind him, four aliens were spraying the healthy grass and moving in his direction. They seemed unaware of Bingwen, but he knew that wouldn't last.
Bingwen yanked on the lead rope and got the water buffalo moving. He didn't stop to look at faces. He didn't step carefully. He ran.
The water buffalo sensed his urgency and ran as well, big lumbering strides that weren't fast enough for Bingwen, who kept yanking and pulling on the rope. The animal stumbled once, but quickly regained its footing. They ran for fifteen minutes, never slowing until the valley turned south and the aliens were long out of view. They stopped, both of them wheezing and breathing heavily, the water buffalo moaning and mooing. Bingwen's broken arm felt as if it were on fire; all the jostling and running had aggravated the break. A stitch in his side burned so hot Bingwen was convinced he had torn something inside.
The water buffalo wavered, and for a moment Bingwen thought it might keel over. Then it shook its head and gathered itself.
Bingwen looked to his left and saw that they had arrived. There was wreckage a hundred meters away. Mazer's aircraft. Bingwen was sure of it. A fire had consumed it and burned it black, but the flames had long since died out, and the familiar shape of the aircraft was still intact. The only new feature was the four rotor blades on the top of the aircraft, which must have snapped open as the aircraft fell.
Bingwen's heart sank at the sight. There couldn't possibly be any survivors. The aircraft had exploded, sending shrapnel and debris in every direction. Even if someone had survived the impact, they couldn't have gotten clear of the explosion in time. Nor could they have ejected before impact, not with the rotor blades, not in a dead drop.
Bingwen felt ashamed. He should have listened to Grandfather. He was foolish to have come out here.
Something near the wreckage caught his eye. A rifle perhaps? That would be useful. And where there was one, there might be others; and if not other weapons, then perhaps other tools. He pulled on the rope. The water buffalo didn't want to move; it still wheezed and whined from their run. Bingwen pulled anyway with his good arm, and eventually the animal walked.
The wreck smelled like ashes and burning things and what might be the scent of charred human remains. Smoke still hung thick in the air and stung Bingwen's eyes. He didn't want to look inside the cabin or cockpit. He knew what he would find there.
The ground was littered with shrapnel and debris, some pieces as big as Bingwen, all folded up and bent in odd shapes with torn edges that looked dangerously sharp.
Bingwen's eyes were locked on the rifle ahead of him, but as he approached it, moving through the smoke, something else near the weapon caught his eye. A body.
Bingwen ran forward, frantic, the lead rope dropping from his hand.
It was Mazer. There was blood and mud all over him. His arms, his head, his side. His side was the worst. A bloody bandage lay draped across his abdomen, soaked through and deep red. The contents of a med kit lay scattered around him. Someone had administered first aid. Someone was alive and helping. Bingwen looked around.
"Hello?"
No one answered.