Ember Legion

A boot woke him.

Chen Jin slept on a plank bunk by the barracks door, clothed, rifle in his arms, not two hours down. The boot was Lei Changgeng’s. ”Fire, west side. The med shed.”

He found the rifle first, then his boots. By the time his brain caught up, he was out the door.

On the way west, heads poked out of the shelter’s door gaps and none of them came out. A dog chased the firelight two barks deep before somebody yanked it back.

The casualty shed was burning. Port medical office converted—west end of the shelter, taking the wounded pulled off the line and the burned and scalded civilians from town. Thirty-odd cots, seven or eight plank sheds in a row. Days of night fighting had packed the garrison’s wounded in with nowhere else to go. Third night without power; candles were all the light the sheds had. How the fire started—nobody had time to think about that yet.

From a distance they could see flame punching out the windows in mouthfuls, breathing. Smoke got there first, spreading low along the ground, thick and choking. Plank walls, oil cloth, crates of alcohol swabs—the whole place was tinder.

People were already dragging the wounded out the far end. One white coat, gray past white now, short, hauling a burn case toward the open ground and counting heads over her shoulder between hauls, voice shredded: ”If they can’t move, carry them! If they can walk, get clear and stay out of the way!”

”Two teams.” Chen Jin shoved his rifle into Big Liu’s arms. ”One team relays water from the well. One with me—we tear the sheds down. Whoever comes out goes to the open ground.”

Big Liu grunted an answer, crouched, and pulled off his shoes.

”What are you doing?” Lei Changgeng asked behind him.

”One’s already gone. So.” Big Liu sent the other one sailing off into the dark. ”Now I’ve got a matching pair of bare feet. Tidy.”

Inside, smoke was worse than fire. Chen Jin went in low, eyes scalding shut with tears, coughing from the boots up. Cot boards crackled; an old man was curled at the foot of a bed—Chen Jin clamped him under one arm and hauled. A burn victim huddled arms-tight in a corner—he took him on his back and walked. Every body that came out, a line of red characters blinked in the corner of his vision:

[Humans saved +1]

At the seventh line he stopped counting.

Demolishing the third shed, a sheet of nail-studded iron swept his forearm as the doorway collapsed, opening a gash—blood and dust running together. He wiped his face and kept tearing. Half the roof came down; he shouldered the burning beam and shoved it aside, the skin of his palm searing with a hiss, no grunt in him, and two more came out from under.

Wind moved through the smoke. The current shifted, he picked the wrong direction, and walked chest-first into the medicine shelf. Glass bottles went down in a bright crash. The white coat was on him instantly: ”Those are DRUGS! Can you pay for what you broke!” He didn’t argue. Bent, picked up the two survivors, reshelved them, went back to tearing.

That white coat was still in there, deeper in than anyone. She knelt on a scorched threshold, cutting the splint loose from a wounded man with a pinned leg, hands steady past all reason. She saw Chen Jin and barked, ”Not that shed! The beam’s hollow—it’s coming down!”

”You’re—”

”Wen Heng. Medical officer for this shed.” She didn’t look up. ”Talk less. Tear down more.”

Among the walking wounded a half-grown boy had crawled out on his own, and seeing people still being carried, he gave the one dry spot by the well to an unconscious man and moved himself to sit at the ditch’s edge. Nobody noticed him. Chen Jin did—he hauled the boy over to the upwind side as he passed, and the kid grinned, teeth white through a face full of black grime.

First gray light, and the fire sank. Water went up bucket by bucket; the last ribbons of smoke turned white.

Nobody talked. Ember Guards, med-shed staff, residents who’d hauled water—all of them crouched in loose clumps on the open ground, watching the roof smolder. The wind kept delivering the smell of scorched cloth. Somebody coughed, finished coughing, said nothing. Three or four shots cracked off from the north wall, far away, then stopped. The patrol was turning back a probing party. Two nights running now, Lei Changgeng said—small ones, like knocking on a door.

Lei Changgeng ran the count. Thirty-four in the sheds. Thirty-three came out. The one who didn’t was the worst-burned veteran—alive when they carried him, gone before they set him down. Wen Heng crouched at his side and worked his chest with both hands until her arms shook, and then she stopped. Lei Changgeng closed the man’s eyes for him, took off his cap. The old soldiers around him took off theirs. From the man’s collar he fished out the dog tag, squeezed it once in his fist, and put it away inside his jacket. Garrison rule: the tag goes home. Where the man lies, the tag doesn’t say.

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The fire’s cause came out later. A veteran had rolled over in his sleep onto a bedside candle. That was the whole story.

Among the wounded was the recruit with the splinted leg, face blacked with smoke—the one who’d hollered about never getting paid, the night the sky fell. He grinned at Chen Jin, white teeth splitting the black, voice too wrecked for a whole sentence: ”S-Sarge. Did we... get paid this time?”

”Paid. I’ll square yours later.”

The recruit got half a laugh out, winced through it, and kept laughing anyway.

Then everyone found work. The men who’d queued for the barracks yesterday and missed the slots showed up on their own at first light to haul lumber. Big Liu took all comers. ”Work first. Roll call later.”

The wounded lay in rows on door planks. Wen Heng worked down the line, and at each cot she tied a red cloth strip around a wrist. One full pass: eleven strips. She directed the carrying: ”Red strips go by the fire end first.” Nobody asked why. They just did it. One militiaman asked what gave her the right to sort people that way; she didn’t turn her head. ”The red ones rot first.” He shut up.

Saline to wash the wounds. Salt still in stock, well water boiled. One pair of hands couldn’t run it all; her voice went hoarse and she started pointing instead: this one first, this one after, this one can wait. Somebody dabbed sesame oil on a scald and she roared him down: ”No oil! Saline, and keep flushing until it stops steaming!” Big Liu held down a struggling wounded man, and after it was done he stepped back and looked at his own two hands shaking, and wiped them on his trouser leg, and wiped them again.

Her kit had hit bottom. The last strip of pills she snapped in half—half for now, half back into the box. At the well a pot of water was coming up to boil; Xiaosui and a few half-grown kids ladled from the well, one dipper at a time, dead serious about it. When the pot rolled, she stood on tiptoe to look this way and waved in the direction of Chen Jin, and an auntie pressed her back down. ”Dip your water.” Chen Jin saw it. He didn’t go over.

He crouched at the edge of the open ground waiting for her to free up, eyelids dropping, head nodding. Big Liu went by and steadied him with one hand, saying nothing—the same way Lei Changgeng had done for him the night before.

Wen Heng came to see to his forearm. She didn’t ask about pain. She took his wrist and turned it over.

”Sheet iron,” he said.

”I can see it’s sheet iron.” The saline went on, and the tendons in his forearm jumped with every second of it. She finished flushing and didn’t let go; her eyes went to the bandage ring on his shoulder. ”The shoulder. Two days ago?”

”Mm.”

She peeled the bandage. Underneath, the gash had scabbed—thicker than a scab should be, rimmed with the pink of new skin. She stared two seconds, measured it against a fingertip in the air, said nothing, pulled a palm-sized notebook from her pocket, and wrote a line. Then she tied the bandage off, tightened the knot. ”Chen Jin.”

”Hm?”

”Next fire, come rested. An unconscious commander is harder to deal with than a fire.”

While she wrote, a scalded kid nearby had his dressing changed and arched with pain. Chen Jin went and held the kid’s shoulders. The gash on his forearm wept fresh blood, and it smeared beside the kid’s scalded hand. Wen Heng wiped it off with gauze—and then stood looking at that patch of skin a moment. The ring of red was fading faster than the other burns around it.

She flipped the little book open again and added a line.

”What are you writing down?”

”Accounts.” She closed the notebook and looked up. ”When you were carrying people out—what were you looking at over your shoulder?”

”Headcount.”

”You counted three times. The second time, you weren’t looking at people.” Her voice wasn’t heavy. She laid the words down one at a time. ”What were you waiting for? For someone to keep your books?”

Chen Jin didn’t answer. There was no answer to carry that.

”A man who keeps accounts still saves people. Better than not saving them.” She pocketed the notebook. ”Barely better. Hypocrite.”

Beside them an auntie stood holding a water basin, hands wiping and re-wiping on her apron. Chen Jin reached for half a sentence: ”Garrison troops get paid for pulling people out.” The words were out and he regretted them instantly—the auntie had worked all night for nothing. He looked away and corrected course. ”Auntie, leave the water—I’ll call more hands.”

Wen Heng looked at the auntie, then at the half of his face he’d turned away. ”Glad you know.”

Neither of them said anything after that. She crouched and picked up the scattered gauze, strip by strip, shook the dust off, stacked it into the med kit in a neat pile. Only when it was done did she straighten up.

His stomach chose that moment to growl, loud enough for half the clearing to hear. Wen Heng didn’t raise her eyes. ”Flatbread by the well. Take it. Chew slowly.”

The bread had come from shelter households, still warm. He demolished one piece in two bites, choked, and washed it down with cold well water.

”Med officer Wen.” He broke the second piece and held half out.

”Wen Heng.” She took it without ceremony, finished it in a few bites, and clapped the crumbs off her fingers. ”Two days from now, this time, come get the bandage off.”

”And if it’s not healed all the way?”

”Then you owe me a breakfast.” She picked up the med kit, walked two steps, and stopped. ”I’m not joking. Three days since I’ve eaten anything hot.”

There was a burn hole in her left cuff. She didn’t know it was there. Chen Jin saw it. Said nothing.

He looked down. The gash on his forearm had already closed—too fast, far too fast. He pinched it. Nothing. Didn’t make sense. Think later.

The corner of his vision was still blinking:

[Night total: Humans saved +26][Embers: 634]

The armor sat at 800. One hundred sixty-six short.

Across the ground, Big Liu was organizing the burned lumber into frames for new bunks, bare feet slapping the ash. He was telling the man next to him that Med Officer Wen had ruled the first rebuilt shed would be an isolation ward, and that the next person she caught taking a candle to bed was going to lose the whole bed.

Chen Jin pulled his sleeve down and walked over.