Inside the infirmary, people were frantically busy, like a disturbed beehive, hastily moving patients.
I ran to Khang's hospital room and found it empty.
My heart panicked. I grabbed a young nurse: "Excuse me, where is the patient from this room?"
The nurse was also very anxious and brushed my hand away: "He probably ran outside. Go look for him out there, I'm very busy."
I stood frozen on the spot.
Why didn't I think of that? If he wasn't here, he had probably run outside.
I steadied myself on my trembling legs and walked out of the infirmary.
I scanned the crowd of people passing by, but no one was the person I was looking for.
"Phuong, Phuong..."
"Khang."
My heart filled with immense joy. I looked towards the sound of the voice.
Khang was standing right there in front of me, separated only by a chaotic stream of people.
He rushed towards me, his hands tightly gripping my sleeves, panting as he spoke: "You scared me to death. I went to find you but you weren't there, I thought you..."
His sparkling black eyes were glistening with unshed tears.
I stepped forward and pulled him into my arms: "I went to find you, and I couldn't find you either."
Khang buried his face in my chest and let out a laugh: "We really are idiots."
"Yes, we are." I thought so too, the corners of my mouth turning up unconsciously.
The fire in the distance was growing larger.
I let him go: "Where's Fatty Bang?"
Khang was stunned for a moment, then said blankly: "I remember him being right behind me."
"My god, you two little princes of mine! Your brother was shouting his throat raw behind you, and you didn't hear a thing?"
Fatty Bang stood not far away, his face smeared with soot.
Both of us were a little embarrassed.
Khang gave Fatty Bang a sheepish grin, which was met with a glare from him.
"What's going on? Do you two know?"
The worry in my heart had been relieved, but looking at the ever-growing forest fire, my heart grew heavy again.
"Ah, I was about to tell you two about this. I just ran into Luong on the way. He said many of the elderly people from town are heading up the mountain. They went over there first and told us to stay put in the camp and not go out; it's chaos out there right now."
Khang and I looked at each other. Our intuition told us this might be related to the forest fire.
"Are you going?" Khang looked at me with a gentle smile.
I looked back at him and replied: "Let's go together."
Fatty Bang, standing beside us, was a bit hesitant.
I continued: "Bang, you stay at the camp and keep watch. Khang and I will go lend a hand. There will definitely be people who try to fish in troubled waters right now, so keep an eye out."
Fatty Bang understood my meaning: "Wait for me to get my sister settled. Once she's stable in the camp, I'll come find you two."
We split up. Khang ran back to the infirmary for a moment and came out with a gun and a dagger.
He placed the dagger in my hand and looked at me without a word.
The amount of water in the well was pitifully small, nowhere near enough.
Seeing the fire spread faster and faster, we could only stand and watch helplessly.
Shoveling dirt, using every fire extinguisher we could find, but it was all just a drop in the ocean, completely unable to extinguish a forest that had been dried out by half a year of drought, where even a tiny ember could ignite a blaze.
The smoke made our eyes sting, and the heat from the fire licked at our bodies, causing unbearable pain, but we continued our futile rescue efforts.
The elderly and a few women from the town walked towards the fire with expressionless faces.
The soldiers tried to stop them, but they couldn't possibly hold back these people who were determined to self-immolate.
A young soldier was blocking a woman, trying to pull her down the mountain.
The woman fought like a madwoman, kicking and punching wildly.
The soldier was just a kid; his face was scratched and bleeding profusely.
I came up from behind, pulled the woman back, and threw her to the ground.
The young soldier sat on the ground, dazed.
Khang asked her: "Why are you people doing this?"
The woman was both crying and laughing, her eyes filled with despair and lifelessness.
She screamed: "What else can I do? My husband caught that disease and died. My child was only one year old. Without a man, how could I raise him alone? There was nothing to eat. I did everything I could. Those damn bandits, they said if I agreed, they would give me food, but they gave nothing, nothing at all. I've lost everything. My child starved to death, he cried in my arms, cried until he slowly faded away."
The woman suddenly burst into loud laughter, scrambled to her feet, and ran into the sea of flames.
We heard no screams, only the sizzling sound of flesh being burned by the fire.
"Why do you think it's all old people who came here?" another woman said calmly, as if the flames weren't consuming her: "In these times, what use are the elderly?"
We stood there, continuing our useless attempts to put out the fire, even though we knew it was pointless, as helpless as we were in stopping those who were determined to die.
I didn't know how the others felt, but my eyes stung fiercely, yet not a single tear could fall.
All around was silence. The ferocious flames dyed half the sky red.
An atmosphere of despair began to spread like a plague.
This disaster wasn't for one person, one group, or one nation; it was a disaster for all of humanity.
Survive as best you can.
Under the law of natural selection, humans will eventually find their own way to survive.
Perhaps humanity would evolve because of this, and I was very curious to see just how much worse this world could get.
We hadn't been lost in our thoughts for long before news came from the camp: Khe had led a group of people and fled.
"That bastard," Vu cursed through gritted teeth: "I had just gotten to the outskirts of town when I saw the massive fire and rushed back to the camp. Fatty Bang couldn't stop them. Khe and his accomplices timed it perfectly. Luckily, I got back early, or else all the food and weapons would have been cleaned out by him."
The warehouse looked like it had been tidied up, not as devastated as imagined.
Last time we moved here, we had rice, flour, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and various other things that added up to nearly a ton.
Now, only about five hundred kilograms remained.
To be able to move that much so quickly, Khe and his accomplices certainly hadn't acted on impulse.
This forest fire was more or less related to them.
Fanning the flames without losing a single man... there was no way he wouldn't do something like that.