Chapter 2: The Sichuan Revenant Panic of ‘95 (Part Two)
H1: A Dream of Dead Eyes
Sleep refused to come that night. I lay in the dark, my ears straining for the rumble of trucks at the main gate, but Jiang Tao and his unit never returned. A low, persistent drum of anxiety beat against my ribs. What if they found one? What if the rumors were true?
The night was so still I could hear the cheap plastic clock on my nightstand ticking off the seconds. Then, a new sound: the soft patter of rain, the first real downpour of the summer, slicking the world outside my window.
I was drifting in that gray space between wakefulness and sleep when a draft of impossible cold slithered across the back of my neck. I jolted upright, a shiver racking my entire body. In the deep gloom of my room, I thought I saw a shadow flicker past the window.
Barefoot on the cool concrete floor, I navigated through the darkness and fumbled for the switch on my desk lamp. A weak, hazy light bloomed. I threw the window open. Nothing. Just a sheet of black, rain-streaked night and the damp, earthy smell of the storm. The chill on my skin shocked me back to full awareness. You’re just spooking yourself, I thought. Too much thinking.
I shut the window, the latch clicking into place, and turned back to my bed.
THUMP.
The sound was hard, flat, and right against the glass. It wasn’t the wind. It was the sound of a palm striking the pane.
In one fluid motion, I rolled off the bed, my hand diving under my pillow and closing around the familiar an of my service-issue nightstick. I moved toward the window on silent feet, my heart hammering against my ribs.
I leaned in, peering through the rain-streaked glass. My breath caught in my throat, and a cold fire prickled across my scalp. There, perfectly outlined in the condensation, was a handprint.
I live on the fifth floor.
My mind raced, trying to find a rational explanation and finding none. Who—what—could be out there? My hand, slick with sweat, gripped the nightstick. Slowly, deliberately, I pushed the window open again, craning my neck to scan the sheer brick wall to my left and right. Nothing but rain and darkness.
As I was about to pull it shut, a thought struck me. I hadn’t looked in one direction.
Down.
My gaze drifted downward, below the level of the sill. And then I saw it. The world tilted, and a wave of ice-cold dread shot up my spine and exploded in my skull.
Two hands, the color of dried mud and antique parchment, were gripping the concrete ledge. The nails were long, yellowed, and cracked. And just below them, a face that was barely human—a desiccated, sunken thing of taut skin and exposed bone—stared up at me. Its eyes were hollow, dry sockets. Dead eyes. And they were looking right at me.
It had been there the whole time. It had watched me the first time I opened the window.
A scream tore itself from my lungs as I stumbled backward, the back of my head cracking hard against the metal bedframe.
“Ah!”
I shot up in bed, sheets tangled around my legs, gasping for air. The gray light of dawn was filtering through the window. The rain had stopped.
My heart was still pounding a frantic rhythm against my chest. I looked around the empty room, my breath coming in ragged pants. It was just a dream. Thank God. Just a dream.
H2: A Relic from a Sunken Grave
The tinny, familiar notes of the morning bugle call finally steadied my nerves. I poured a glass of boiled water from the kettle and sat at my desk, chasing away the last phantoms of the nightmare. I opened a drawer and pulled out an old photo album. I flipped to a group picture from my time in Qinghai, a company portrait of a hundred smiling, sun-darkened faces. A bitter wave of nostalgia washed over me.
My fingers traced the images of my old friends. Zhang Yuan. Pang Zhi. And the Old Company Commander. Suddenly, I remembered his last moments—as he was being pulled down into the dark water, he had thrown something to me. A bead.
A frantic search began. I tore through my footlocker, my duffel bag, finally finding it tucked away in the pocket of an old jacket at the bottom of a suitcase. I rolled it into my palm. It was a simple, unassuming sphere, a deep blackish-green. It was neither stone nor metal, cool to the touch. It looked like nothing special, except for the faint, coppery smell that clung to it, like old blood or the bottom of a lake. Why had he insisted I take it, in his final moments?
What did those three men see at the bottom of that cursed reservoir? And what was the thing that dragged the commander back under, just as he was about to reach the shore?
The bugle’s call grew more insistent. It was time for formation. During this state of emergency, roll call was mandatory for everyone. I tucked the bead into my shirt pocket, letting it rest against my skin, and hurried out.
H4: A Story Told in Blood and Smoke
It was nearly noon when my detail finished up at the city television station. I turned down my colleagues’ offer for lunch and headed straight back to base. As I approached the gates, I saw them. A small convoy of military trucks and two jeeps, caked in mud, was rolling in.
Jiang Tao was back.
After our formation was dismissed, I found him. He looked like he’d been through a warzone. His face was a pale, exhausted mask under a layer of grime. His camouflage fatigues were ripped in several places, the tears looking less like snags and more like they’d been made by claws.
“My God,” I said. “Did you guys go to battle?”
He didn’t even greet me. He just reached into my pack, pulled out my cigarettes, and lit one with a trembling hand. He slumped onto the low brick wall of a planter box, his posture unnaturally tense.
“Worse than a battle,” he rasped, smoke leaking from his lips. “The goddamn things are bulletproof.”
My curiosity spiked, overriding my concern. “Why? Did another one… wake up?” I sat down next to him. “How did you finally take them down?”
Jiang Tao seemed to relive it as he spoke, his face paling even further. The fingers holding the cigarette wouldn’t stop shaking. “We got there last night… the moment we went into the cave, the smell hit us. It was like nothing I’ve ever… it made you want to vomit. The nine stone coffins were just standing there, propped upright against the back wall. They were all chained together, one to the next. I don’t know anything about that feng shui bullshit, but it looked… wrong. The first three coffins were empty.”
He spoke in short, halting sentences, his voice quivering. I pieced the story together. The black-suit guys were adamant: move the coffins whole. Don’t open them. It should have been a simple, if creepy, job. But some of the veteran soldiers were pissed off by the suits’ arrogant attitudes. One of them got careless while moving the first coffin. A chain rattled and swung sideways, knocking the lid off the next one in line.
A soldier, trying to be helpful, rushed forward to steady the desiccated corpse before it could fall out.
That’s when the suits started screaming, drawing their pistols. “Don’t touch it! Get back!”
But it was too late. The soldier had his hands on the corpse. The thing’s head snapped up. It lunged, tackling him to the ground, and buried its face in his neck. A spray of arterial blood painted the cave wall. All hell broke loose. The suits opened fire, the deafening cracks of their pistols echoing in the confined space. They fell back, yelling at Jiang Tao’s team to get out and grab their rifles.
“Listen,” Jiang Tao said, his voice cracking. “I’m a soldier. I’ve seen men die. I’ve seen blood. But I’ve never seen anything like this. It was… unholy. Some of our guys froze, their legs just gave out. We had to drag them out of there.”
Once outside, they surrounded the cave mouth, rifles raised. Only three of the five black suits made it out, covered in blood. They scrambled for their vehicles, one screaming into a radio for backup with flamethrowers and heavy weapons. “Standard rounds are no use!” he shrieked.
A dead silence fell over the unit as they waited, every man aiming at the black maw of the cave, their palms sweating. Then they heard it. A wet, rasping sound, like air being forced through ruined lungs. A figure emerged from the darkness, shambling slowly into the glare of the truck headlights.
Jiang Tao and every man there sucked in a collective breath of horror. It was the desiccated corpse, but it was… changing. The blood it had consumed seemed to be plumping its withered flesh, its muscles swelling with a grotesque, unholy life. You couldn’t make out its features on its mangled face, but its crooked mouth gaped open, issuing that horrific rasping. Its mouth wasn’t filled with the fangs from movies. It was worse. It was packed with rows of interlocking, needle-sharp teeth, like a shark.
“Fire!”
It wasn’t an order; it was a collective scream of terror and instinct. A dozen assault rifles erupted, spitting fire and lead. The sound was apocalyptic. You could hear the thump-thump-thump of the rounds punching into the creature’s body. It shuddered like a leaf in a hurricane and finally collapsed.
The shooting stopped. The silence that followed was even more terrifying. No one dared to move. Finally, one of the braver soldiers crept forward and gave the tattered body a kick. When it didn’t move, he turned to give the all-clear.
In that instant, a rotten, skeletal hand shot out and clamped around his ankle. The creature was on him in a flash, pulling him down and tearing into his head. The soldier’s screams were cut short as his comrades watched in horror, unable to shoot for fear of hitting him. The thing just… ate him. Ate his head like a rotten melon, the sound of its teeth grinding on his skull echoing in the night air.
I could feel a cold sweat slicking my own back as I listened. “What happened then?” I whispered. “Did you kill it?”
Jiang Tao buried his face in his hands, his shoulders trembling. “Yeah,” he choked out. “The support team arrived. A flamethrower… they cooked it until there was nothing left but a charred skeleton.”
He lifted his head, and his eyes were a terrifying web of bloodshot veins. I couldn’t read his expression. It wasn’t just fear. It was something else. Rage? Despair?
“Trust me,” he said, his voice a dead monotone. “You never, ever want to hear the sound something like that makes when it’s burning. It was a scream from hell itself.”
He stood up slowly, his face ashen. He started to walk away, then stopped and looked back at me.
“I don’t think that was a zombie,” he said.
The words hung in the air between us. I watched his retreating back, a hundred new questions swarming in my mind.
If a thing that dies and comes back to life isn’t a zombie, then what in God’s name is it?