Shadows of JiangXi

[arvg]

He'd been following the nugget for a while now, watching the young man staggering along the Highway and into what had been one of the main boulevards of the city. The shops were dark, shattered windows and rags that had once been high fashion hanging on half melted mannequins. The tea shops that New HangZhou had been famous for, with their rotting rattan chairs, the desolation lay everywhere around him.

He tried, as usual, to not let it affect him. He had come to JiangXi aboard one of the IND refugee convoys, dropped in the relative paradise of New Hong Kong, and granted an opportunity to build a new life for himself in the Idyllic, modern city. Of course he'd chosen to forsake all that, enlisting in the army and look where that had gotten him...

The man ahead of him seemed to be having problems, limping and occasionally jumping at shadows. While it was healthy to have a certain amount of paranoia on JiangXi... almost a requirement for survival... there was something feverish about this man's movements.

Early stages of Radiation poisoning? But he was wearing protective gear...

Elias' eyes strayed down to the ankle. An injury.

He was going to regret this.

"Hey!" he called out.

The answer was a hail of bullets clumsily shot back in his general direction. Sending Elias diving for cover behind what had once been a bus shelter. The bullets drilling through a bicycle rack, pinging and ricocheting into silence.

"HEY!" Elias called again, "Nuggets aren't really supposed to have mush for brains you know!"

Silence.

Elias poked his head up, keeping his AKM ready in case he needed to do some shooting. Staring at the crumpled body lying in the middle of the boulevard.

"Great..." he murmured, getting up and cautiously walking across to the prone Coalition recruit. Chinese by the looks of him.

Elias did the only thing he could do, picked the boy up, carrying him towards one of the shop fronts, pushing past the old sports equipment and rotting clothes, through to the back room. Stripping off the boys boot and cutting the trousers to get a closer look at the injured ankle, noting that there was another injury on the upper arm.

"You've made one hell of a mess out of yourself," Elias murmured, digging through his pack and pulling out his medical kit, selecting anti-radiation drugs, precious in this kind of emergency, and in critically short supply... he administered it, before setting to work patching up the wounds. Having little choice but to cut the uniform to get at the wounds.

Once he was done with his basic field treatments, he glanced around at the sports shop he was in, digging through some of the boxes, finding some rubberized sailing gear, garishly coloured, but would do the job of offering some modest radiation protection. He left it on the boys chest.

"Now if you don't get eaten by rats," Elias murmured to the boy. "You should stand a fighting chance..." Taking his permanent marker out, he scrawled on the wall opposite the youth. 'River boat'.

Figuring that was enough help, he got up, closed the outer door and set off back into the city.

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