Emergency Rescue Team: Special Police Unit
The first group of about twenty people and the second group of about sixty people unexpectedly met halfway.
The national highway had collapsed, and the county roads and village roads were either blocked by falling rocks or broken by landslides. The navigation systems were completely useless. The first group of officers had taken three detours, only to end up back where they started.
The second group already knew the roads were unusable. Before setting out, they contacted local village cadres. Although communication was later cut off, the diligent cadres still braved the heavy rain, wearing raincoats and standing at possible intersection points where the county teams might pass.
Both police groups carried satellite phones. After the first group connected with the village cadres, they quickly reunited with the second group and were guided onto a village road closer to Zhongbao Town.
However, the road still did not lead through.
The SWAT team leader was grinding his teeth in frustration. Although satellite communication was unstable due to the thunderstorm, they could still barely maintain contact with the county and had even called the Zhongbao Town duty office during the journey to report they were on the way.
Each time they connected with the county, they were asked for updates. The leadership was clearly anxious.
But they kept reporting—and they were still on the road.
The leaders did not scold them during the precious call time, but the SWAT captain still felt deeply uneasy.
More than an hour had already passed. The infection reportedly took effect within thirty minutes, and they had already delayed far too long.
“We can’t pass. Comrades, if we detour again we’ll have to go through another town—it’ll take even longer. Should we go down through this forest slope instead? If we run down there, it’s only about twenty minutes.”
The road simply could not be cleared in the short term. A previous collapse years ago had taken over a month to repair. The village cadres were also anxious, as they had many urgent tasks assigned by the town government.
The SWAT captain immediately ordered, “All personnel, park the vehicles in the fields beside the road and leave space for later emergency repair vehicles.”
“Everyone check your equipment. Take what you need, carry what you need. Leave the vehicles—run forward!”
No matter what, they had to reach the government office first!
Dozens of officers got out of the vehicles and ran into the forest.
After about ten minutes of running, the SWAT captain suddenly tensed. He stopped, raised his strong flashlight into long-range mode, and pointed it into the depths of the forest behind them.
A long-haired woman, drenched in rain, stood silently about a hundred meters away.
Her light purple dress was stained and dirty. She was holding something and chewing on it. Her abdomen was slightly swollen. Her features were unclear from a distance, but under the flashlight, her eyes glowed a faint eerie red as she stared directly at them.
SWAT captain: “……”
I’ve got a Party badge on my chest—why would I be afraid of you?!
He drew his pistol in one swift motion. “Who are you!”
At his signal, the team immediately halted. Shields were raised in front of the captain, and the rest formed a defensive formation with riot forks.
The woman tilted her head strangely, let out a hoarse sound, and seemed to sense their numbers. She dropped what she was holding, stepped backward stiffly, then suddenly dropped to all fours and rapidly disappeared into the forest.
The captain swallowed hard. Her movements were too unnatural—too eerie.
Everyone remained silent, shaken by what they had just seen.
Glowing red eyes… infected?!
The captain signaled the formation to hold position. A small team followed him forward cautiously.
Thunder and rain echoed through the forest. Their boots sank into wet leaves and soil, vines scraping against their gear. Even a hundred meters felt like walking through a criminal pursuit scene.
Suddenly—hiss!
A large snake burst out from the leaf litter!
The tense officers reacted instantly. One used a riot fork to pin it down. The snake was not injured and coiled around the fork.
Others struck it with expandable batons until its head was crushed.
Strangely, this calmed the captain slightly. He continued forward, using his baton to probe the ground and brush aside leaves and bushes to avoid more snakes.
At the place where the woman had dropped something, he used his flashlight to inspect it, then carefully poked it with a baton.
Only after confirming it was safe did he crouch and pick it up.
It was… a freshly torn-off dog leg.
Because of the extreme weather, all medical personnel who had received urgent deployment orders were extremely anxious.
Ceng Meiling was an emergency nurse from the county People’s Hospital. Tonight she was on frontline duty, traveling with more than ten doctors and nurses from various departments to Zhongbao Town for emergency rescue.
Not only their hospital—the Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital had also dispatched staff. The police, agriculture bureau, power companies, and telecommunications teams were all mobilizing.
It was a massive emergency response, comparable to the COVID period.
Before leaving, she had messaged her cousin, Lin Miaoyao, who worked as a deputy secretary in Zhongbao Town, asking what was happening.
Her cousin only replied: “Come when you get here. Be careful.”
The mountainous Zhongbao region was currently under a severe thunderstorm. Heavy rainfall had forced upstream hydropower stations to release water, triggering landslides and debris flows. Communication base stations were likely damaged, causing widespread signal loss.
After that, her messages were never delivered and calls could not go through.
Ceng Meiling felt frustrated. The nurse beside her, Sister Xia, patted her shoulder.
“Alright. This might be your last emergency shift. After this, you can return to internal medicine. We survived the worst of the pandemic—this shouldn’t be harder than that.”
Sister Xia was in her forties and could have avoided night shifts, but she continued working due to staffing shortages and her sense of responsibility.
Ceng Meiling smiled bitterly. “Sister Xia, when I go back to internal medicine, you should apply to stop night shifts too.”
During the worst years of the pandemic, she had been temporarily appointed acting head nurse. As a vocational school graduate, she had fought hard for her nursing license and worked her way up from a township clinic to the county hospital, where she first experienced academic discrimination.
Over time, promotion criteria became stricter, eventually requiring full-time bachelor degrees. She had always felt an unspoken frustration.
During COVID, she worked herself to exhaustion in protective gear, handling critically ill respiratory patients, even surviving infection herself. Her efforts were recognized.
But after the pandemic eased, things changed. The promised respiratory department was never established, and her promotion never came. She was reassigned back to a regular nurse role, her relationship with leadership becoming strained.
Eventually, she was transferred to the emergency department—almost like exile.
Now, just as she was about to transfer out again, she was caught in another emergency.
Rabies-like infection. Highly contagious. Protective suits again. It felt like returning to the pandemic era.
She sighed.
“Well… I’m a nurse. My job is to save lives.”
The convoy encountered road collapses halfway. The director of the CDC nearly lost his temper.
They tried detours, but the large emergency vehicles could not navigate village roads.
In the end, they abandoned the large vehicles and transferred supplies into ambulances: one vehicle from the Health Bureau, one from the CDC, and four ambulances.
They continued along rural roads with guidance from village cadres. But landslides and fallen trees made progress extremely slow. Two ambulances even got stuck in farmland.
Eventually, they found police vehicles parked by the roadside. Notices were left on the windshields:
“County Public Security vehicles stopped here. Personnel have proceeded to the town government for rescue. Do not move vehicles.”
Ahead, a large tree blocked the road, and both sides were landslide zones.
The deputy director of the Health Bureau, who had previously worked in Zhongbao Town, sighed and said, “Looks like the police went on foot.”
The CDC director shook his head. “We can’t proceed without vehicles—we need medicines and equipment. Otherwise it’s useless.”
Village cadres said the river crossings were also blocked due to flooding.
The deputy director finally decided to take a longer detour through another town, using a narrow mountain road.
But after hours of driving—
they entered Zhongbao territory and saw glowing red eyes in the bushes.
Dozens of them.
“Dogs?” the driver asked nervously.
But in the rain, at night, with red eyes everywhere—
that was not normal.
Then the dogs attacked.
“Don’t stop! Run them over!” the deputy director shouted.
The convoy surged forward, hitting several infected dogs, while the rest chased them into the darkness.