Buried Alive

Zhu Hua had gone ahead while Hui Nan was still talking with Fei Qiang. She had said she needed a moment alone and walked a short distance up the path. Hui Nan hadn't thought to stop her.

When Hui Nan turned and called out, there was no answer.

Fei Qiang's dog lifted its head and gave a single low sound.

They searched. Fei Qiang knew the mountain better than Hui Nan did; he went ahead with the dog while she followed the flashlight beams through the trees. The clearing Fei Qiang was heading toward was a part of the mountain that had once been used as a secondary storage area by the graveyard — a flat-cut shelf in the hillside, partially roofed in timber and stone. As they came through the last line of trees, the structure was visible: a long low building with wooden walls and a roof that had partially collapsed on one end.

The door was open.

Inside were ten wooden beds in a row — stretcher-width, set along the wall. Each one had a sheet draped over it. Nine of the sheets were flat. The tenth had a shape under it.

On the wall above each bed, a name had been painted. Hui Nan recognized most of them: the dead teachers, in order. Ma Dahua. Huang Lu. Xiao Jin. Wang Qin. And the others.

Above the tenth bed, a name she didn't expect: Wang Qin.

She pulled back the sheet on the tenth bed. Wang Qin was there, alive, blinking in the flashlight beam. Thin and pale, but alive.

Wang Qin looked at Hui Nan. Then she sat up and looked at the room around her. Her expression was not frightened. It was composed and watchful, the expression of someone who has been in a contained situation for some time and has made terms with it.

"Where is Zhu Hua?" Hui Nan said.

Wang Qin looked at her. "She found me first." Her voice was dry and flat. "We've met before. You could say we have history."

A cold feeling moved through Hui Nan. "Where is she?"

Wang Qin stood up. She was unsteady — her legs had been still too long — and she braced herself against the wall. "Outside," she said. "I sent her outside."

Hui Nan ran. The door, the steps, the clearing — empty. She swept her flashlight in a wide arc. At the edge of the clearing the mountain dropped steeply; the fall would be a long one. At the treeline to the right, she could see disturbed earth.

A shovel. Recently used.

Hui Nan crossed to it. The ground was dug open in a rough rectangle, the soil mounded to one side. In the pit, just below the surface, a plank of wood. She dropped to her knees and clawed the loose earth away from the edges and lifted the plank.

Zhu Hua was underneath it, in a shallow trough in the earth, still alive, eyes open and wild, hands scrabbling at the sides. Hui Nan grabbed her arms and pulled.