Chapter 3: The Sichuan Revenant Panic of ‘95 (Part Three)
H1: The River of Fog and Fire
The rumors outside the base walls intensified, spreading like a contagion. Meanwhile, the pressure from the top was immense, a crushing weight on all of us. I hadn’t seen Jiang Tao for two days after our last conversation. He never did tell me where the men in black took the remaining six bodies.
On the evening of the 17th, I was cycling back to the base, my body aching after another long day of spinning the official “rabies” narrative to skeptical civilians. The truth was, the grueling work was a blessing in disguise. By the time I hit my bunk, I was too exhausted to think, too tired to wonder anymore about monsters in the dark.
But tonight, something felt wrong.
The streets, usually bustling with evening strollers, were utterly deserted. Not a single car passed. An unnerving silence hung in the humid air. A knot of unease tightened in my gut, and I started pedaling faster. After turning at a crossroad, I found myself under a canopy of weeping willows lining a riverbank. I’d biked the wrong way. I was at the Funan River.
I’d lived in the city long enough to hear the ghost stories about this river, but I’d always dismissed them as local folklore. Every major waterway in China has its share of spooky tales. Tonight, however, the dead-quiet street felt charged with a strange, malevolent energy. As twilight bled from the sky, a genuine fear began to creep in.
Suddenly, two figures darted out from a side alley, and I nearly crashed, my heart leaping into my throat.
I squinted, my eyes focusing on the two caps emblazoned with the national emblem. Police. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
Seeing my military uniform, one of the officers relaxed as well. “Comrade,” he said, “are you on patrol out here?”
I straightened my bike, annoyed. “Something like that,” I replied, glancing at their nervous expressions. It was obvious they’d been posted here to lock down the area and watch the river. “What are you two doing hiding in an alley?”
The younger cop blushed. “The rumors are getting pretty bad, you know? Word is the army found the rest of the… things… hiding out here. They’ve cordoned off the Hejiang Pavilion. We just got assigned to this checkpoint. We were just, uh, chatting.”
Their faces told a different story—one of pure, undisguised fear. I didn’t press them. I just waved and pushed off, pedaling toward the pavilion where the two rivers met.
I wasn’t sure why I was going there. Common sense told me to head back to the safety of the base. The place was clearly an active military operation now. But the thought that Jiang Tao might be there—that I might finally see one of the three missing revenants with my own eyes—spurred me on.
The closer I got, the more people I saw. Most were soldiers in camouflage, but there were also plainclothes police, the tell-tale bulge of a sidearm visible under their jackets. My uniform acted as a passport; no one stopped me, they just gave me a passing glance and assumed I was part of the operation.
Rounding a bend in the river, I saw it. On the opposite bank, the night was torn apart by plumes of fire. The sound of sporadic, heavy-caliber gunshots echoed across the water.
I ditched my bike in the bushes and scrambled to the stone railing, peering across the river. The distance was considerable, but I could make out seven or eight figures in white hazmat suits, wielding what looked like agricultural sprayers that spewed jets of liquid fire. Their targets were two pillars of flame in the shape of men. Surrounding this inferno was a perimeter of soldiers in gas masks, keeping their distance. The gunshots came from them; whenever one of the burning figures shrieked and lunged at the hazmat team, the soldiers would unleash a volley, the sheer kinetic force of the rounds knocking it back.
Two? I thought. Weren’t there three missing?
My eyes scanned the crowd of soldiers, searching for Jiang Tao. He wasn’t there. Had the horror in the cave broken his nerve?
As I watched, a thin, unnatural layer of mist began to rise from the river’s surface, obscuring my view. The fires on the far bank became blurry, demonic shapes dancing in the haze. A foul stench, like rotting fish and swamp mud, drifted on the air, so potent I instinctively covered my nose.
The scene across the water was nearly invisible now. Disappointed, I turned to leave. That’s when I saw him. A short distance down the railing, a lone figure stood silhouetted against the fog, staring intently at the chaos on the other side.
I decided to approach, my curiosity overriding my caution. After a few steps, the silhouette did something bizarre. It leaned out over the railing, craning its neck toward the river below. But the movement was… wrong. Unnatural.
Then it hit me. A flash of ice-cold realization stopped me in my tracks. The figure’s entire body had remained rigid, tilting forward from the ankles at an impossible angle. It was a movement no living person could make. A movement reserved for something stiff… something dead.
My blood turned to ice. I was unarmed. If that thing was what I thought it was, my story was about to end right here on this riverbank.
Then I saw it extend a hand into the thick fog and begin making a series of complex, silent gestures. It was like he was communicating with someone—or something—in the water below.
Compelled by a morbid curiosity, I peered into the murky river, my eyes straining to use the distant firelight. For a second, I saw it. A dark shape, as thick as an oil drum and at least sixty feet long, coiled just beneath the surface.
At the same instant, the foul stench intensified, washing over me in a nauseating wave. I gagged, a single, choked retch escaping my lips.
The sound was my undoing.
The silhouette at the railing snapped its head around, its gaze locking onto mine. A paralyzing fear seized me, rooting me to the spot. The figure straightened and began to move toward me.
As it drew closer, the faint light from across the river caught its face.
“Jiang Tao?” The name escaped my lips as a hoarse whisper.
The figure paused for a fraction of a second when I said his name, then resumed its steady, silent approach. When he was about ten paces away, I saw the glint of steel in his hand. A combat knife. His eyes were fixed on me with a cold, predatory intensity I had never seen before.
“What are you doing?” I cried, taking a step back. “It’s me! Xia Zhu!”
His cold stare sent a shiver of pure terror through me. Was he going to kill me? Had he seen something he wasn’t supposed to, and now I had to be silenced?
Suddenly, a flash of metal flickered in my peripheral vision. A gust of wind carrying the stench of putrid flesh hit me from behind.
In that instant, Jiang Tao lunged. He grabbed my shoulder and yanked me violently toward him. I stumbled, a searing pain exploding in my back as I was thrown to the ground. My head slammed against a stone pillar, and the world dissolved into a dizzying, weightless blur.
Leaning against the railing, my vision swimming, I watched as two shapes—one I knew to be Jiang Tao, the other the thing that had attacked me from behind—collided in a flurry of motion. I couldn’t tell them apart, but I could hear a guttural, inhuman roar coming from my attacker that made my skin crawl.
A warm liquid streamed down my face. Blood. My own. The darkness was closing in. Through the haze, I saw the figure I recognized as Jiang Tao spin behind the other. The cold, silver blade of his knife flashed once. The roaring stopped.
The rest is blackness.
I woke up in a military hospital three days later. Officials from the district command questioned me repeatedly. Why was I at the river? Who killed the… body… found next to me? And most importantly, where was its head?
I had no answers to give them.
After the investigation concluded, I was given a formal demerit for breach of discipline. A week later, when I was well enough to walk, I was discharged.
The first thing I did was go look for Jiang Tao.
I went to his company barracks and asked for him. The soldiers there just stared at me with strange, pitying looks. The answer they gave me chilled me to the bone.
There was no Jiang Tao in their company. They had checked the records. There was no soldier by that name in the entire military district.
So who was the man I had known?
I thought I was getting closer to the truth, but I had just stumbled into an even deeper mystery. The events of 1995 remain shrouded in secrecy. Who were the men in black? Where did the desiccated corpses end up?
And who—or what—was Jiang Tao? Why did he insist those things weren’t zombies? What did he know?
I spent another year going through the motions, my mind a fog of unanswered questions. Eventually, I applied for an honorable discharge and went home. That decision, born of confusion and fear, inadvertently saved my life. I avoided being caught in the maelstrom of the ‘98 floods, where I watched on TV as so many of my former comrades gave their lives as heroes. I felt a pang of guilt, but also a deep, shivering sense of relief.
After the revenant incident, I stopped asking questions. I had learned that curiosity doesn’t just kill the cat; it gets it ripped to shreds. I settled into a quiet, civilian life. And for a few years, it was peaceful.
Until a hot summer day in the year 2000, when an old friend—a brother-in-arms I thought I’d never see again—showed up on my doorstep and dragged me back into the abyss.