Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 331: City D Military Base

Chapter 331: City D Military Base

With everyone on the same page and Zhao Jun Jie and Hu Wen Cheng already getting started in their new roles, the guys and I decided to go on a bit of a scavenger hunt.

While I was interested in hitting up the antique stores within the city, Bai Long Qiang, Cheng Bo Jing, and the rest of the guys were chomping at the bit to be able to go to the base and see what was going on there.

I was willing to bet that they thought there would still be someone living there; however, I wasn’t as hopeful as they were.

But I still went with them to offer my support, just like they had been offering theirs for the last few years. There was a chance that someone could be left alive, and if they were, they would most likely need medical help.

The nine of us walked down the deserted streets of City D, covering Wang Chang Ming’s eyes whenever we crossed a dead body in the streets. I spotted some stores that I wanted to go into and see if there was anything interesting, but the base was still a ways away, and I didn’t want to have to be there overnight.

"Do you miss it?" asked Bai Long Qiang as he pointed to the hospital just off to our right. The cars from the collision the day the EMP struck were still in the intersection, and I was sure that if I looked close enough, I could still see the body of the first person I had ever shot.

"Maybe?" I said, pushing the memories away as I looked at the building itself. "I don’t miss the people, which, now that I said it makes me sound horrible since almost all of them are probably dead. But I really don’t miss the environment."

"Should we keep the building or rebuild it?" asked Bin An Sha, his head cocked to the side as we continued to walk past the place.

Narrowing my eyes, I thought about it. Once again, I had assumed that we would just keep the building, but that was a huge place for our small population. Maybe it would be best if we just took everything apart and used what we could.

Proposing that to the guys, they nodded their heads.

"We can do that with all the schools, too," mused Ye Yao Zu. "There is no point in keeping a school built for a thousand students when we only have a couple of hundred people. We could use the extra space for fields."

"Even the base and apartment building could be torn down to make space for more fields," continued Bai Long Qiang.

The more we talked about it, the happier I became. We could do it. We were doing it.

A couple more hours of walking later, and one very tired three-year-old later, we arrived at the first gate of the City D Ground Force Military Base.

The beam that initially blocked people from entering and exiting was utterly destroyed, and even the guard shack beside it was painted with blood.

Taking in a deep breath, Bai Long Qiang walked into the small hut and looked around. "Nobody," he murmured.

Thank God for small favors. I don’t think that any of my men would be able to come across the body of one of their friends and not break down. It was one thing to be far away from here and wonder about whether they lived or died, but it was another thing to actually be confronted with the truth.

We continued forward to be confronted with what must have been a big battle. Bones littered the parking lot in front of the base itself. There was even a tank in the middle of it, I had no idea we even had one in the city or if it had even worked, but it was there.

There was a crunch under one of our boots, and Si Dong leaned forward and picked something up from the cement. A dull silver chain dangled from his fingers as he spun the dog tags around.

"Qi Xie Fa," he murmured low, reading off the name. "I don’t recognize that name."

Cheng Bo Jing shifted Wang Chang Ming in his arms and held out his hand. "He was one of mine. Normally, he was posted out of the country as a deep operative, but he had been called back for an in-person debriefing right before we left for the training mission. His wife and daughter were left back in Country R."

He cleared his throat as he pocketed the tags.

Now, everyone’s attention was on the ground, trying to find more dog tags from their fallen comrades. We might not be able to bury their bodies, but we would create some type of memorial for them.

It was the least we could do.

Let’s face it, it could have been any one of my men to have died on this battlefield. Those that did needed to be remembered, too.

It took us maybe another 45 minutes to go through the area, and we managed to find over 500 dog tags. Fan Teng Fei put them all in his space for safekeeping, but the atmosphere was definitely more sober as we went in through the main doors.

This was the first time I had ever been into the base; civilians were usually not allowed unless they had proper clearance.

There was a security desk right in front of us with two doors on either side of them that had a security scanner beside them. I could only assume that if you had a pass, you could go right through the doors, but if you didn’t, you would need to speak to the officer at the desk.

Pictures of the commanding officers at the base were front and center, while plaques of past battles and the history of the County K military were fixed to the walls beside them. Some of the glass frames were covered in blood spray, a testament that the fight didn’t start and end in the parking lot.

The security doors were handing off their hinges, and Fan Teng Fei pushed through, leading us all into a massive room with two sets of stairs on either side.

More blood, more bodies, and more dog tags littered the floor, causing me to take a deep breath.

"We need to split up," murmured Bai Long Qiang as he looked at the carnage in front of us. "Otherwise, it will take too long to go through everything."