Mr. Hao's first call was to the school.
It rang four times and hit the automated message. He pulled the phone away from his ear, stared at it, and then remembered what day it was, Saturday.
He made a sound that wasn't quite a word and dialed again. Vice principal this time. It rang. And rang. Voicemail.
We were all watching him from a loose half-circle without being obvious about it. The way you watch someone try to parallel park in a tight spot, not staring but not not staring either.
Head of year: Engaged.
Physics teacher, Mr. Bao, who was apparently the emergency contact on the trip paperwork. Picked up on the first ring, which briefly lifted Mr. Hao's expression, and then Mr. Bao's voice came through the speaker saying he was currently in another province visiting family and had no vehicle and also what did Mr. Hao expect him to do about zombies specifically.
Mr. Hao hung up.
He stood there for a moment with his thermos in one hand and his phone in the other, looking like a man quietly renegotiating his relationship with the choices that had brought him here.
Then he straightened up and dialed the Public Security Bureau mainland branch.
It rang twice.
"Public Security."
Mr. Hao exhaled. "Yes, this is Hao Jingwei, I'm a teacher. I have thirty-four students with me on Hulian Island and we cannot return to the mainland. I need to report our situation and request assistance."
A pause and then the voice on the other end shifted into the focused tone of someone who had been receiving unusual calls all morning and had decided to take all of them seriously.
Mr. Hao explained everything. The camping trip. The videos. The news. The fact that we had arrived on a motorboat this morning that, and this was the part where his jaw tightened slightly, did not currently have enough fuel to make the return trip.
This detail landed on the student audience with varying reactions. Junho made a noise. Someone muttered something. Tianxu turned to look at the boat docked at the small pier like it had personally offended him.
The short version was this, the man who had lent the school the boat had apparently forgotten to mention the fuel situation, and we had apparently forgotten to check, and now that was everyone's problem equally.
The officer on the line said they would dispatch assistance to Hulian Island as soon as units were available. He said it in the careful, even voice of someone who was choosing the word available deliberately. Mr. Hao thanked him, hung up, and stood still for exactly three seconds.
Then he turned to face us.
"Alright," he said. "Here's where we are."
---
Hulian Island.
Not famous for anything. One of those mid-distance islands that exists on maps without being anyone's destination, far enough from the mainland that you noticed the quiet, close enough that on a clear day you could see the outline of buildings across the water. The island itself was bigger than it looked from the boat on the way in. Dense treeline covering most of it, a rocky coastline on the far side we hadn't explored, the campsite sitting in the clearest flat ground near the pier.
It was past two in the afternoon now. The sun had moved and the light had gone from bright and cheerful to the kind of warm yellow that usually meant a good evening. Under different circumstances it would've been nice.
Mr. Hao laid it out plainly. The fuel. The call. The dispatch that was coming but had no confirmed time. The situation on the mainland which was, ongoing.
The reaction split the group cleanly.
A few people started crying immediately, which was reasonable. Several more looked like they wanted to but were holding it together through effort. A cluster near the back went into urgent whispered conversation. One girl sat down directly on the ground and stared at nothing.
And then there were the others.
I was sitting on the cooler with my arms resting on my knees. I wasn't performing calm exactly. It just genuinely hadn't reached panic level for me yet. We were on an island. The island had trees, fresh water sources if I remembered the terrain from this morning's walk correctly, and a lake with fish, weird ones, apparently, but fish. The situation was unusual. It was not yet unmanageable.
Minxue was standing slightly apart from the main group. Still. Her expression was the kind of neutral that could mean she was frightened and managing it, or could mean she simply wasn't frightened. With her it was hard to tell. She came from money, the real kind, not the show-off kind, and I had a vague sense that somewhere on the mainland right now, someone in her family was already making phone calls of a different type. The kind that got answered faster than Mr. Hao's.
Tianxu had his arms crossed and his chin slightly raised. He looked like a man who had assessed the situation and concluded that most problems could be resolved by being significantly larger than them. It wasn't the most sophisticated analysis but it wasn't entirely wrong either.
Wang Lee was eating.
Not aggressively, not performatively. Just... eating. Calmly working through something from the snack bag like a man who understood that worrying on an empty stomach was strictly worse than worrying on a full one.
Tianxu noticed. His eye twitched.
"Are you seriously—"
"You want some?" Wang Lee held out the bag without looking up.
"I don't want, that's not the point—"
"Then let me eat in peace."
"We might be STRANDED—"
"I know. I'm stress eating. It's a coping mechanism." Wang Lee looked up briefly. "Scientifically supported."
Tianxu stared at him. Then at the bag. Then back at him.
"...What flavor."
"Spicy."
Tianxu sat down and took a handful. The crisis in his expression did not disappear but it relocated slightly.
A few people nearby laughed despite themselves. The atmosphere dropped one degree from unbearable to merely bad, which was an improvement.
---
Mr. Hao raised his hand for quiet and got it.
"The immediate question," he said, "is where we set up properly. The current campsite is functional but it's open. We need to assess the island before it gets dark and establish a more secure position."
"Do we need to worry about things. On the island?" someone asked from the middle of the group.
It was a question everyone was thinking and nobody had wanted to say out loud. Mr. Hao opened his mouth.
"Statistically low," Wang Lee said, still eating.
Everyone looked at him.
He swallowed. "Think about it. Whatever this is, virus, mutation, whatever, it spreads through contact, right? Water or air or physical touch. We're on an island. If it came through water, the animals here would have it but the progression would be much slower than mainland. Dilution effect, exposure time, whatever." He shrugged. "If it's airborne, we'd probably already know. And if it's contact only, then nothing here has had contact with the mainland. So whatever's on Hulian right now is probably just... Hulian."
"That's actually—" Junho started.
"I know," Wang Lee said.
It wasn't airtight logic. Anyone with a biology textbook could probably pick holes in it. But it was structured, it was calm, and it gave people something to hold onto that wasn't pure fear, which right now was worth more than being technically correct.
Mr. Hao nodded slowly. "We proceed carefully regardless. But we proceed."
He straightened up fully and looked across the group with the expression of a man who had decided to be a teacher right up until the situation stopped requiring one.
"The survival equipment, first aid, tools, the emergency supply kit, it's all still packed in the motorboat. I'm forming a team of five to move the supplies, assess the immediate area around the pier, and report back before we make any decisions about relocating."
He looked out at the group.
"I already have some of you in mind."
His eyes moved.