“…Humanity has been split down the middle. Children, we trust that from this fresh wound you will bring forth radiant flowers.
“As for us, we came, we worked, and we are leaving…”
She turned off the TV and then, with her husband, took one last look at their home. They took their time, wanting to impress it indelibly onto their memory. Zheng Chen paid particular attention to the spider plant hanging from the bookshelf, and the goldfish swimming calmly in the fishbowl. If there really was a world after this one, she wanted to take this memory there with her.
Leaving the house, they saw Lin Sha’s father in the hallway. Lin Sha was on duty at the hospital and did not know that the adults were leaving.
“Where’s Dr. Lin?” Zheng Chen asked.
Lin Sha’s father pointed back at the open door. Zheng Chen went in and saw Lin Sha’s mother writing on the wall with a marker, adding to the writing that already covered the walls as high as she could reach.
You’re a good kid. There’s food next to the TV. Remember to heat up the egg soup first, so you don’t catch a chill. Use the kerosene heater, not the propane stove. Remember, don’t use the propane stove! When you use the kerosene heater, put it in the hallway, and turn it off when you’re done. Remember to turn it off! There’s hot water in the thermos, and cooled boiled water in the plastic jug. Mix a little of the water in the jug with the hot water from the thermos. Remember, never drink cold water from the tap! The power may go out sometimes, but don’t light any candles. You’ll forget to blow them out when you go to bed. So no candles! There’s a flashlight and fifty batteries in your bookbag; the power might be off for a long time, so conserve the batteries. Underneath the pillow (the one on the left with an embroidered lotus flower on it) there’s a leather case with medicine in it, and instructions for how to treat different illnesses. I’ve put the cold medicine out in the open since you’ll probably need it more often. Know what you’ve caught before taking any medicine. If you have a cold, you’ll feel…
“That’s good. Now it’s really time to go,” said Lin Sha’s father, who had come in after Zheng Chen, and he took the marker out of his wife’s hand.
Dr. Lin looked blankly around her, and then mechanically picked up her small travel bag.
“We don’t need to take anything,” her husband said softly, and then gently took the bag out of her hands and set it back on the sofa. All it contained was a hand mirror, a pack of tissue, and an address book, but Dr. Lin took it with her whenever she left home. Without it, she felt like she was missing part of her body and became agitated. Her psychologist husband said that this reflected her own insecurity about life.
“We should at least take some more clothes. It’ll be cold there,” Dr. Lin mumbled.
“That’s not necessary. We won’t be able to feel it. When you think back on it, we used to take far too much stuff when we went out walking.”
The two couples went downstairs where a coach filled with passengers was waiting. Two girls came running over. They were Zheng Chen’s students, Feng Jing and Yao Pingping, who were now working in the nursery. They seemed so feeble to her, as if they themselves would have a difficult time without anyone to look after them. They had come for her baby, but Zheng Chen held her four-month-old tightly as if afraid they were child-snatchers.
“This little boy loves to cry, so give him lots of attention. He takes ninety milliliters of milk every two hours, and then goes to sleep twenty minutes after eating. If he cries when he should be sleeping, it means he’s hungry. He doesn’t usually cry if he’s wet or dirty. He may have a calcium deficiency, so I’ve put calcium supplements in this bag. Remember to give him one every day, or else he’ll get sick…”
“The bus is waiting,” her husband said, clasping her shoulders lightly to keep her from going on indefinitely, the way Dr. Lin could have filled the walls with writing. Trembling, she finally passed the baby into the delicate arms of the young nursery attendants.
Dr. Lin helped her onto the bus, where the other passengers stared at them in silence. All of a sudden her baby began bawling outside, and she jerked round as if by electric shock to look at the baby in the girls’ embrace, its tiny arms and legs flailing wildly outside the swaddling, as if it knew that its mother and father were headed out on the road, never to return. She fell faceup to the floor, and saw the sky turn red and the sun blue, and then her vision turned black and she lost consciousness.
Once the bus started up, Dr. Lin glanced absently out the window and suddenly froze stock-still at the sight of children in the distance running toward them. Despite the quietness and secrecy of their departure, they had still been found out. The children ran along the road racing as hard as they could after the bus, waving their arms and wailing, but the bus increased its speed and left them farther and farther behind. Then Dr. Lin saw Lin Sha, who stumbled to the ground and then crawled to her hands and knees and waved in the direction of the bus. Perhaps she had injured her leg, because she could no longer run after the bus and squatted on the road and buried her face in her hands, crying. Even at this distance, Dr. Lin was convinced she saw blood on her daughter’s knees, and she poked her whole upper body out the window and watched her daughter until she vanished into a point in the far distance.
When Zheng Chen came to, she was lying down on the bus headed to the final assembly point. The first thing she saw was the dark red of the seat cushions, stained, she imagined, by the blood that had drained out of her shattered heart, now dry as a bone and ready to die. But a remark from her husband kept her living a while longer.
“Our kid will have it hard, but he’ll grow up to live in a world much better than ours, my love. We should be happy for him.”
“I’ve been taking your car for most of my life, Mr. Zhang,” Yao Rui’s father said to the driver as he was helped onto the bus.
Zhang nodded at him. “This will be a long journey, Chief Yao.”
“Yes. A long journey.”
The bus started up, and Yao left the power plant he had worked at for more than two decades. Now, his thirteen-year-old son had replaced him as chief engineer. He strove to look at the plant through the rear window, but there were too many people on the bus and he couldn’t see anything. After a while, even without seeing outside he knew that they were driving up the hill he had crossed four times a day every day for the past twenty years. The whole plant complex was visible from here, and again he tried to look out, but again there were too many people to see clearly. Someone said, “Don’t worry, Chief Yao. The lights are still on.”
After another stretch of road they reached the last spot where the plant was visible, and someone else said, “Chief Yao, the lights are still on.”
As long as the lights stay on. The power plant’s greatest threat was an outage to its own supply, but so long as it remained lit, it could handle any problem, no matter the scale. Their bus skirted the edge of the city and entered the flow of traffic leaving on the expressway. Then someone said, “The city lights are still on, too.”
That was something Chief Engineer Yao could see for himself.
“Wei Ming of Division 115, Fourth Regiment, for post change,” Wei Ming said, saluting his father.
“Wei Jianlin of Division 115, Fourth Regiment, handing over post. Conditions normal in this regiment’s defense zone during this duty period,” his father said, saluting back.