Chapter 12: Main Text Chapter 12 Earthquake

Main Text Chapter 12 Earthquake

Luo Ning suddenly thought of something, lying against the stone wall and shouting at me: 'Xiao Hutongzhi, grenade!'

The others realized the same thing: yes, we still had one grenade left, never used, now loaded in the big guy's belt; the standard wooden-handled grenades made in China are all waterproof, and soldiers stationed at Qinghai Lake often used grenades to blast fish in the lake. Although everyone had just fallen into the water, the grenade should not have gotten wet. Thanks to Luo Ning's reminder.

The big guy pulled out the grenade: 'Lao Hu, catch.' He threw it from above toward me.

I quickly held the bayonet sideways in my mouth, grabbed the grenade with my right hand, pushed off the safety catch with my thumb, spat out the bayonet, bit the pull ring, the grenade's fuse was lit, and it hissed out white smoke.

I aimed at the giant salamander's big mouth and threw the grenade in. The salamander didn't know what a grenade was; seeing a dark object fly in, it, following its usual feeding habit, flicked its long tongue and swallowed it. With a muffled pop, the grenade exploded in its mouth. Though its outer skin was hard, the flesh inside its mouth was soft, blasting its head from inside out into a mangled mess. It fell to the base of the cliff, its massive body twisted a few times, and it died belly-up on the riverside rocks.

I exhaled, my whole body soaked in cold sweat; I hadn't felt scared just then, but now my limbs went weak and a glance downward made me dizzy.

Suddenly the cliff shook violently, the underground river's water surged, the air filled with the scent of vitriol, and waves of heat rushed up from below.

The volcano beneath the riverbed became active, happening so suddenly that everyone was caught off guard and nearly fell. In a panic we scrambled up a gentler slope, sat down and caught our breath, still shaken, but saw the underground tremors growing more violent, the cliff of piled volcanic rock ready to collapse at any moment.

Luo Ning said an eruption wasn't certain; it seemed merely the volcano's periodic activity, whose interval is uncertain—could be every few days or every few hundred or thousand years. Volcanoes come in many types; the common inverted-funnel chimney form only appears after a major eruption, while some volcanoes, though not extinct, have not erupted for tens of thousands of years, remaining deep underground and only occasionally showing tremors.

No matter how often it activates, we were unlucky to run into it. We had wanted to follow the underground dark river to find an exit, but the water below had boiled—going down would mean becoming boiled dumplings in a pot; it seemed we couldn't go down. Just as we were at a loss, Ga Wa tugged my clothes and pointed upward for us to look.

A few hundred meters above us appeared a thin white beam; my eyes blurred and my vision stung—what was it? Could it be another extinct creature?

Luo Ning exclaimed with joy and surprise: 'It's the sky! It's the sky!'

The underground volcano's tremors caused an earthquake; the ground above split open a great fissure. It had been so long since I'd seen the outside sky that I almost forgot what it looked like—was it blue or white?

I told the others: 'Comrades, truly heaven does not abandon those who persevere; to endure to the end is victory. For New China, forward!'

The four of us, already exhausted, suddenly saw hope of escaping alive; strength seemed to spring from the flat ground, we flung out our legs, swung our arms, and clawed up the slope with all our might.

The rumbling below grew more violent, the heat oppressive, the strong vitriol sting making our foreheads ache; we worried the fissure might seal shut from the quake, and everyone wanted to get out as fast as possible, so on the forty‑five‑degree slope we put forth the effort of a hundred‑meter sprint.

The higher we went, the more the volcanic rock broke up, some like sand, making footing hard; we'd climb three feet then slip back two, the skin on our hands rubbed raw, but we ignored the pain, gritted our teeth, scrambling and clawing; the five‑to‑six‑hundred‑meter height felt as grueling as crossing snow‑capped mountains on the Long March. After all our strength was spent, we finally reached the surface: blue sky, white clouds, mountains stretching on both sides. The place we climbed out of is a stretch of the Kunlun River valley, also the lowest‑elevation area of the Qinghai‑Tibet Plateau, only a few kilometers from the 'Unfreezing Spring' outpost of the First Squad.

Luo Ning was out of strength, Ga Wa had a foot injury; they fell behind at the last moment. I couldn't rest, so I hurriedly linked the big guy's and my load‑bearing belts together and lowered them for Luo Ning and her to grab.

The quake grew fiercer; the fissure over a meter wide might collapse at any moment. Luo Ning and Ga Wa could only cling to the belts, and because of the underground tremors each step up slipped them back a step—they couldn't even gain half an inch.

The big guy and I pulled with all our strength, but even combined we couldn't lift both at once. Then Ga Wa released the belt, pushed Luo Ning up from below, and with our pulling from above we hauled her out of the fissure in one go.

When I was about to throw the belt down again to rescue Ga Wa, a violent shock came, the earth closed together, and Ga Wa was crushed to death in the middle.

At twenty‑something degrees below zero, our coats and hats were long gone; the three of us forgot the cold, wearing only thin clothes, weeping and futilely digging at the gravel with our hands and bayonets...

Three days later I lay in the military region hospital bed; the region's chief of staff took my hand and kindly said: 'Xiao Hutongzhi, you showed great courage this time; on behalf of the Military Commission I express my condolences, wishing you a swift recovery and further merit on the revolutionary path. How do you feel now?'

I replied, 'Thank you, commander, I… I… I…' I wanted to say 'I'm fine,' but thinking of the comrades forever gone—Xiao Lin, Ga Wa, the instructor, the second squad leader— the word 'good' stuck in my chest and I couldn't get it out.