"Just as you must obey me. It is not safe in the valleys."
"Which is why I need to hurry. The mist will get them if I don't reach them first." He untied the animal and pulled on the lead rope. The water buffalo responded, falling into step behind him.
Grandfather sidled to his left, blocking Bingwen's path, his face hard now. "You disrespect your elder, child."
Bingwen stopped and bowed his head, staring at the dirt.
"I disagree with my elder, Grandfather. There is a difference. I have nothing but love and respect for you. You are wise beyond wise. Loyal and of great courage. You find strength despite your injuries. I can only hope to become half the man you are. But virtue does not make a man right every time. Please, Grandfather. Without these soldiers, who will protect us? Who will lead us?"
"If they are injured, Bingwen, they can do neither."
"We don't know the severity of their injuries, Grandfather. And even if they are gravely wounded, do we not owe them our lives? If injury discounts a person's worth, then you and I are worth nothing. We're the most wounded of our group."
Grandfather chuckled. "Such a tongue. Look at me, Bingwen."
Bingwen lifted his head. Grandfather knelt down in front of him, putting a hand behind his head. "I think only of you, little one. I cannot let you go. I could not live with myself if something happened to you."
"Survival is why I must go, Grandfather. We need these men. Mother and Father are still out there. And right now these soldiers are the only ones trying to bring us all together."
That gave Grandfather pause. He pursed his lips, considered, then painfully got to his feet. "I will go then." He held out his hand for the lead rope.
Bingwen sighed. This was wasting time. Every moment counted. "Grandfather, you might be able to walk down this mountain, but you can't walk back up it. Not yet anyway. Not until you've mended. We both know that."
He didn't wait for Grandfather to respond; he tugged on the lead rope and led the water buffalo onto the access road.
"And how will you bring back a wounded soldier?" Grandfather asked.
"Very carefully," said Bingwen.
He hurried down the road, eager to get away before Grandfather made some additional argument and forced Bingwen, out of respect, to stop and address it with a rational rebuttal--neither of which Bingwen had time for. The water buffalo didn't like the speed and kept yanking back on the lead rope and forcing Bingwen to slow down. Twice the animal stopped altogether to stick its nose in the air and smell the smoke that kept wafting across their path. Bingwen gave it a hard slap on the rump and got it moving again.
At the top of the mountain Bingwen had been fearless. But the farther he went down the road, the more his courage failed him. The trees that covered the road were suddenly hiding places for the aliens. The thick scrub on the shoulder was suddenly the perfect place for an ambush. The thin braches that stuck out from the forest were suddenly wands waiting to spray a mist into his face. There were aircraft sounds as well, loud and fast, some close, others far away, and every time Bingwen heard one, he was convinced the aircraft was falling toward him, like a burning meteor, targeted directly to his position. The water buffalo seemed to feel the same way. The closer they got to the valley floor, the more resistant and agitated it became.
Soon the trees began to thin, and the whole of the valley plain came into view. It was the back side of the mountain, a valley Bingwen hadn't been able to see from the farmhouse, and the sight of it stopped him cold.
There were bodies on the ground. People. Not clumped together in a big group, but spread out all over the valley in ones and twos and threes, as if a big crowd of villagers had all decided to find a spot away from the others to lie down and go to sleep.
Only, they weren't sleeping. There was no rise and fall to their chests, no casual repositioning of their bodies as sleeping people do. No movement of any kind except for wisps of hair and corners of clothing blown back and forth in the wind.
The closest body was thirty meters away under the shade of a tree. A woman, Mother's age, lying on her side, facing Bingwen, her shirt hanging loosely off her shoulder in a way that no modest woman would ever consciously allow. One of her shoes lay on the ground beside her. Her eyes were open, her mouth slightly ajar, as if she had been waiting for Bingwen to arrive and was just calling out his name when time had stood still and frozen her in that position.
Around her, the rice shoots were curled and black and dead.
The mist had caused this, Bingwen realized. The chemical the creatures sprayed from their wands had killed everything it had touched: the crop, the fleeing villagers, even a few animals here and there: dogs and birds and two water buffalo. There were large patches of healthy crop as well--green rice shoots that had been spared the mist, some of them as tall as Bingwen's shoulders--but these were in the minority. Most of the valley floor was mud and death and withered shoots of rice.
On the far side of the valley, a downed Chinese aircraft billowed black smoke and ash into the air. Bingwen could hear the crackle and sizzle of the flames and the popping and breaking of components inside. He could smell it, too, an acrid stench of melting plastic and rubber and other synthetics.
It wasn't Mazer's aircraft, he knew. That crash had occurred elsewhere, at least another kilometer away and probably farther. Yet the sight of this one didn't fill Bingwen with much confidence. The aircraft was barely recognizable as such. Perhaps it had been a helicopter once, but now it was nothing more than a heap of twisted, burning metal, with the entire front half of it crushed by the impact. It lay on its side like a wounded animal, burning and hissing and spewing black smoke.
Bingwen wondered how many people had been aboard. Ten? Twenty? It was certainly big enough to carry that many. Perhaps it had been loaded with supplies: fresh water and food and medical equipment, everything he and Grandfather and the others would need to survive at the farmhouse. Whatever it had held,
there was no salvaging it now. Nor would there be any survivors.
Maybe Grandfather was right, he told himself. Maybe this was a fool's errand. Why should Mazer's crash be any different? All he would likely find there was more fire and death.
Beside him the water buffalo raised its head and sniffed at the air. It must have caught the scent of death or smoke because the next instant it pulled so hard on the lead rope that it yanked Bingwen off his feet. Bingwen landed hard on his good arm, but the jolt sent another shot of pain through his bad one. He cried out in agony despite himself. The shout spooked the animal further, and it took off back the way it had come, yanking the lead rope free of Bingwen's grip and giving him a serious rope burn.
It took Bingwen fifteen minutes to corner the animal and catch the lead rope again. By then he had taken strips of fabric from the makeshift bandana around his face and wrapped the strips around his hand to form a sort of bandage and glove for holding the rope. The animal began to resist again, but Bingwen gave it a violent tug and reminded it who was leading whom. Then he took one of the harvesting bags from the pouch and made a sort of face mask for the animal, like a giant feed bag that covered most of its head.