“Damn it! I’m going to set fire to this whole cursed place and burn it to the ground!!” A criminal screamed in rage, not caring about the rabbits gnawing on him, and in a fit of hysteria moved to smash the portable gas stove. Before the rescue team could stop him, he let out a cry of agony and dropped the stove; a rabbit, seizing the moment when he had reached for the stove, had bitten a chunk of flesh clean from the back of his hand, rupturing a vein on its surface so that blood welled up in a continuous flow.

By now Yellow Hair’s corpse had become a blood-soaked skeleton; nothing remained above it but strands of yellow hair still clinging to the skull. The rabbit carcasses too were piling up across the ground in grisly heaps, and the air was a suffocating blend of blood, damp earth, and the stench of the flesh-eating rabbits’ waste — enough to make you ill even if the rabbits didn’t kill you.

Diao Zhuo had knocked one rabbit unconscious with a punch when a new idea occurred to him. He grabbed one of the rabbits clambering up his back and hurled it toward Li Haozhang, the criminal nearest to him, then grabbed other rabbits from his body and continued throwing them at the criminals.

The criminals, mired in the general chaos, couldn’t tell whether the rabbits flying at them were launching themselves there of their own accord or being thrown by someone. With ammunition running low after their furious round of shooting, none of them had time to reload their magazines; some had even dropped their guns and had no chance to pick them up.

For the rescue team, this was a perfect window to break free. Everyone’s stamina had limits, and the rabbits were coming in endless waves; it seemed they were all waiting for the moment when their targets would collapse from exhaustion. Staying here and fighting to the death against rabbits was not a rational choice. They had to escape.

Diao Zhuo kept beating away the rabbits surging at him and worked his way toward Ba Yunye, his feet treading on countless rabbit carcasses beneath him — soft and yielding underfoot, but he absolutely couldn’t be tripped up. Ba Yunye caught him from the corner of her eye struggling toward her and instinctively pushed toward him as well, knife rising and falling, every stroke aimed at a rabbit’s eye or forehead, her blood-soaked hands full of blood she couldn’t say was her own or the rabbits’.

At last the two of them were side by side.

“Damn it!” Diao Zhuo couldn’t stop himself from swearing.

Ba Yunye said: “We need to get up a tree. Otherwise none of us is getting out of this alive.”

“To go up a tree, we need to go simultaneously, all at once. How do we signal the others?” Diao Zhuo stamped down on one rabbit; three more immediately launched themselves onto his thigh. He picked up one in each hand and flung them toward the criminals, where they landed and immediately hurled themselves at the criminals.

As he finished speaking, a bullet passed right between him and Ba Yunye. Looking up, they saw Red Beard ignoring the rabbits clinging to him and leveling his gun directly at the two of them, as if in warning.

One of the criminals had just stumbled and fallen; the rabbits around everyone else surged instantly toward that person, and Red Beard, appearing to have gleaned something from witnessing this, abruptly took aim at them with cold calculation.

“Take cover!!” Diao Zhuo shouted.

With everyone entangled by rabbits, reacting in time and finding cover was far too difficult. A shot was fired, and Pang Hou suddenly shoved Liu Ming aside, letting out a shout as the bullet grazed his calf, his trouser leg immediately stained red with blood. He pushed himself not to fall.

Red Beard was shooting at the mountaineering club? Diao Zhuo, who had all along suspected Liu Ming’s group were Red Beard’s confederates, was taken aback.

Red Beard, seeing he had scored a hit, shook off several rabbits, then lowered his barrel to aim at their legs, so they couldn’t stand. To him, everyone except Ba Yunye — who could find Long Ge’s markers — and Diao Zhuo — who could be used to threaten her — was disposable.

Bang! A bullet caught Da Qin in the shoulder; he lurched to one side and sank to his knees, and rabbits immediately sprang at him.

Bang! Another shot, and everyone froze. This one was not fired by any criminal. This bullet had struck Red Beard in the leg, sending him down to his knees as well, where a swarm of rabbits immediately attacked him.

Everyone searched for the shooter, and it was — Liu Ming.

Liu Ming stood there with a look of absolute panic, the hand holding the gun shaking uncontrollably. He had apparently just managed to grab a gun that one of the criminals had dropped.

“Give me the gun!” Ba Yunye shouted.

“I killed someone! I killed someone!!” Liu Ming collapsed into sobs.

“Give me the gun!” Ba Yunye called again. Liu Ming gave a startled cry and flung the gun at her; she caught it and, ignoring the rabbits gnawing at her from every side, pushed through the pain and fired at the several criminals still raising their weapons.

With each shot, a criminal clutched their arm or leg and cried out, then was engulfed by rabbits.

Ba Yunye very much wanted to lay down complete suppressing fire on the criminals, but bullets were finite, and she counted as she fired, always telling herself to hold back one or two rounds for contingencies. The gun felt comfortable in her hands — it had to be domestically made; she hadn’t expected the criminals to be “internationally sourced” themselves.

“Up!” Diao Zhuo called for everyone to pair up and climb trees; he went down on one knee and called to others to use him as a step. “Master Ba! Come!”

“Get the injured up first!” Ba Yunye waved the others on with authority, in her element — naturally yielding her position to the wounded “comrades” first. That was the measure of her character and depth.

Temporarily free from the rabbits, Liu Ming and Tan Lin stood in the tree and reached down; Diao Zhuo kicked away the rabbits gnawing on Da Qin and dragged him to the base of the tree. Da Qin’s blood was running down from his shoulder along his neck; he held his breath, summoned his strength, and hoisted Da Qin bodily in an inverted carry, while Liu Ming and Tan Lin each grabbed one of Da Qin’s legs and pulled him up. Though Pang Hou’s leg was injured, he could still hold on, and after several tries he too managed to climb up.

The criminals’ side was in total disarray. Having already lost several people in succession, the group was falling apart; with some knocked down by rabbits, the rest seized a moment when the swarm thinned slightly around them and made for the trees themselves.

Ba Yunye looked up — her own people were all up, except for Diao Zhuo. She tucked the gun at her waist, and climbed the nearest tree with practiced ease, three quick pulls and two kicks and she was up. That settled the last weight on Diao Zhuo’s heart, and he climbed up last.

The branches spread overhead in every direction; Ba Yunye recalled the general direction Long Ge’s marker had pointed, gave everyone a silent signal, and they began moving that way. Everyone followed Ba Yunye, leaping between the branches of one great tree and the next. Fortunately this was a stretch of ancient forest rarely touched by human feet; the trees soared to great heights, some with branches thicker than a person’s waist — they could bear the weight of one or two fully grown adults with no difficulty.

“I’ve been dragging everyone down…” Da Qin’s face had gone white as ash from pain; the bullet appeared to be deeply embedded in muscle, possibly even lodged in bone, though it had at least temporarily stopped the worst of the bleeding. Left untreated, though, the outlook was bleak.

Ba Yunye shook her head. “Don’t say that. In a moment we’ll have a look at your wound.”

“Watch behind!” Xiang’an called out — but he was too far from Ba Yunye to do anything about it in time.

Ba Yunye instinctively dropped flat and hugged the branch; a bullet struck the trunk just behind her. The criminals who had managed to escape the rabbit swarm were not about to be left behind and were trying to retake the offensive. There weren’t many of them up in the trees, but every one had a gun.

“All of you go ahead!” Diao Zhuo urged them on. The others were torn, but afraid to slow the group, and had no choice but to move faster.

Ba Yunye lay flat on the branch and drew her own gun.

Bang! Bang!

Bang!

Three criminals who had been about to close the distance were stopped — one hit, one startled by a shot at his feet and losing balance — all three fell.

Ba Yunye stared blankly at the gun in her hand, seeming genuinely bewildered, until Diao Zhuo, thinking she’d been wounded, climbed over and grabbed her, and she came to her senses, leaped up, and ran.

Hand over hand and foot over foot they moved through the canopy; the wounded were helped by others or carried by the group together. After how long no one could say, they gradually drew away from the terrifying gathering place of the flesh-eating rabbits.

The night had grown deep; everyone was utterly spent. After coming down from the trees, not even their torches were switched on, for fear the light would guide the criminals to them.

In the dark, they took stock: everyone was accounted for.

Ba Yunye sat on a folding stool, turning the gun over in her hands. It might not matter much to others, but she was no stranger to using firearms. She clearly remembered firing three shots just now, and she was completely out of bullets on the third one — so why had there been three shots fired, and why had all three criminals fallen from the trees?

Could it be that the criminals had accidentally shot each other? Or was it that someone on their side was still carrying a loaded weapon?

Diao Zhuo came over, held out his hand; Ba Yunye understood at once and handed the gun to him. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s empty.”

Over to one side, the rescue team members were examining Da Qin’s wound.

“It didn’t go through. The bullet’s still inside.”

“We need to find a spot free from the magnetic interference, somewhere we can get a satellite phone signal out and call for rescue.”

Da Qin’s face was white; the entire side of his body where the bullet had struck went numb in waves; his breathing came in fits and starts, shallow and labored. He asked weakly: “On TV… they cut the flesh open to dig out the bullet — does anyone here… know how to do that?”

Ba Yunye was the first to answer, the most likely person to attempt such a thing: “We have no way to properly sterilize anything in these conditions. Infected wounds can be more dangerous than the bullet itself. The first priority is to find a signal and call for rescue. If it really comes down to it and we can’t find a signal, then it’s a risk worth taking to dig it out — but it will be extremely painful. Can you hold on?”

The others each tried in turn to get a signal, and without exception failed. The radio still couldn’t connect to anything; the GPS maps had reverted to showing Kunming; the phones showed no signal and garbled data; the satellite phone was as useful as a brick. As far as the police outside were concerned, this rescue team was almost certainly now listed as “out of contact.”

Though they’d been following the direction Long Ge’s signs indicated, the whole business of moving through the canopy like monkeys meant they had very likely missed other directional signs Long Ge had left along the way. Which meant either they would have to backtrack to find those signs, or press on and hope for the best. Worse still, even Ba Yunye — their living map — could not retrace the route in the dark, through the dense tangle of branches above.

Anything useful to eat or use in their packs had been almost entirely seized by the criminals; everyone patted down their pockets to see if anything had “slipped through the net.”

Tan Lin felt around his pockets. “If I hadn’t kept my lighter, we’d be out here rubbing sticks together for fire.”

“I’ve got two packets of erythromycin,” Xiang’an said, pulling them out.

Qi Zi said: “I have some alcohol.”

The mountaineering club members, who had barely spoken throughout, sat with their heads down; they had not a single unbitten patch of skin between them, and Pang Hou’s leg was injured — they were all thoroughly dispirited. Ba Yunye thought about questioning them, but considering how they had all been like grasshoppers tied to the same string, it didn’t feel like the right moment to disrupt things. So she let it go.

Diao Zhuo rolled a sleeve into an appropriate size and told Da Qin to bite down on it. The others took turns sterilizing the blade with alcohol — twice — and Ba Yunye, not satisfied, held the blade’s edge over a flame to heat it, trying as best she could to kill any remaining bacteria. But in the field, anything like true sterile procedure was impossible.

What followed — extracting the bullet — left Da Qin in a pain beyond weeping and beyond screaming, something he would never forget for the rest of his life. The alcohol alone, used to clean the wound, was enough to make him feel death might be preferable. After half a day of effort, Da Qin finally passed out.

The others watched, unable to bear it, their faces going pale one by one, staring blankly ahead.

After some time, Da Qin regained consciousness, took his anti-inflammatory pills, and lay propped on his side. He managed a weak smile, reassuring everyone: “I’m not going to die. Relax, everyone.”

“You’re from Shaanxi, aren’t you? Why the full-on northeastern accent?” Xiang’an remarked helplessly.

“Pain made me forget my own dialect,” Da Qin sighed.

Ba Yunye wrung the blood from her hands. “I wonder if rabbits can carry rabies…”

“They can’t,” Diao Zhuo said with certainty.

She was skeptical. “You’ve been bitten by a rabbit before?”

“I’ve bitten a rabbit.”

“Who hasn’t bitten a rabbit…” Ba Yunye muttered. “They really are delicious.”

Xiang’an passed over the alcohol and cotton swabs. “Whether they can or not, we should all go get shots when we’re back. With all these rabbit bites on us, rabies, tetanus, avian influenza — one shot after the next wouldn’t hurt. Ah! The rabbits were eating as though they’d been starving for years, and here we are starving ourselves while they got a good meal at our expense.”

He was only venting, but Diao Zhuo fell into thought: all animals have some sense of territory, carnivores especially, and their distribution follows patterns — that’s what is meant by “one mountain cannot hold two tigers.” A group of flesh-eating rabbits this large would need to consume an enormous number of prey animals to sustain itself. What was their survival mechanism?

Strange. Unsettlingly strange.

“What do we do now? We can’t tell direction whether we’re going back or forward.” Liu Ming asked. “Those criminals, as long as they haven’t all died, will still come after us.”

Diao Zhuo, who had been sitting silently with his head down, suddenly looked up at Liu Ming. “Where did you get that gun?”

The whole group went still, everyone turning to look at Liu Ming.