Chapter 8: Collapse

After leaving, Lin Feng drove straight to Maeve Chen’s rural home. Since her college days, financial burdens had lifted from her family, thanks to her regular remittances.

The elderly couple lived comfortably, tending a small plot of vegetables and fruit.

The pickup halted before a farmhouse courtyard. Lin Feng surveyed the two-story structure—its walls scarred by slime mold growths, now scrubbed clean but leaving crimson stains.

Hearing the commotion, Matriarch Chen emerged, dishcloth in hand—the quintessential farmwife. It was noon, post-lunch.

Only when Maeve Chen leapt from the truck did her mother’s face brighten. “Maeve! Why’re you back?”

“Mom, this is urgent! Inside now!” Maeve cut to the chase.

Matriarch Chen’s gaze flicked to Lin Feng, her grin widening. “Bringing a boyfriend home, eh?”

“Maeve’s father! Come down! Our girl’s brought a man!”

A figure leaned from the second-floor window—Baba Chen, peering through bifocals. The former village official appraised Lin Feng.

“Decent build. Tall. Drives a good truck.” He nodded approval.

Lin Feng forced a polite smile.

The elderly couple were well into their years. Lin Feng knew from Maeve Chen that her parents had been nearly forty when she was born. They’d doted on their daughter, and though the family wasn’t wealthy, their home brimmed with warmth.

Matriarch Chen ushered them inside with bustling hospitality.

“Mom, why’s it so dark? Turn on the lights!”

“Power’s out. Just went.” Matriarch Chen replied absently.

Lin Feng and Maeve Chen exchanged grim glances.

Baba Chen descended the creaking stairs, deliberate as a tortoise.

“Hurry, Dad! I’ve got news!” Maeve Chen pressed.

“Wedding bells? A grandchild?” Baba Chen teased.

“Seriously!”

“Eat first!” Matriarch Chen puckered her lips, steering them toward the kitchen. “This cursed weather—mold ruined the rice storage. Had to toss the cured meats too. I’ll whip up noodles with garden veggies.”

“Who knows if cities even get fresh produce now? Take some when you leave.”

As she cooked, her chatter—“Use less oil!” “Wipe that counter!”—flooded Lin Feng with memories of his own parents. Their faces seemed to overlap with the Chens’.

Exhausted and ravenous, the pair delayed their grim revelation.

Two bowls of homestyle noodles soon steamed on the table—plain broth with fried eggs, a sprinkle of seasoning, and blanched bok choy crowning the top. Simple, yet savory. Lin Feng devoured every strand.

For a moment, he imagined surviving the apocalypse with this family—a flicker of warmth in the gloom.

After the meal, the truth spilled out.

“It’s real,” Maeve Chen insisted, recounting the slime mold’s spread and the hidden shelter.

Baba Chen bolted upright. “Truth? Or village gossip?”

“A police officer confirmed it!” Maeve’s voice sharpened. “We’re here to evacuate you!”

Matriarch Chen, though uneducated, trusted blindly. “Must we suffer again? But the government will fix this!”

Baba Chen rubbed his temples. “No signals. No power. This… slime mold did this?”

“Dad!” Maeve gripped his arm. “I studied this! Trust me!”

Lin Feng leaned in. “The city’s chaos proves it. We’ll show you if needed.”

“I’ll trust my girl!” Baba Chen barked. “Pack up!”

Matriarch Chen scurried to gather belongings. “ID cards! Don’t forget IDs!”

The family mobilized swiftly, packing only survival essentials. Matriarch Chen meticulously covered abandoned items—tea sets under cloth, photos in drawers—preserving hope for their return.

Four bodies squeezed into the truck. Lin Feng accelerated toward Quinn Cheng’s coordinates.

Halfway there, Baba Chen stiffened. “Riverwatch Peak bomb shelter?”

“Correct.”

“But it’s tiny,” he muttered. “Wartime capacity—10,000 max.”

Lin Feng’s grip tightened on the wheel. Northspire Haven’s population: 5 million. His foot sank heavier on the gas.

The concrete path Quinn Cheng described soon materialized—a logjam of abandoned cars. Families trudged uphill with bulging sacks.

Lin Feng slammed the brakes. “We walk. Essentials only.”

“Oh no!” Matriarch Chen slapped her thigh. “My heart medication! I forgot it!”

“Heart condition?! Why didn’t you tell me?!” Maeve Chen paled.

“Didn’t want to worry you…”

Lin Feng unlocked the doors. “Go ahead. I’ll retrieve it.”

“I’m coming!” Maeve Chen turned to her parents. “Get inside the shelter! We’ll catch up!”

They split up without hesitation.

Maeve Chen’s parents panted their way uphill with minimal luggage, their progress agonizingly slow.

Lin Feng U-turned and raced back to the farmhouse. He found Matriarch Chen’s medication tucked in a corner cabinet—a month’s supply at best, judging by the label.

“Maeve…” He hesitated.

“Not now.” She swallowed tears, dragging him outside. “We’ll solve this later.”

Thirty minutes later, the pickup reached the mountain base. They shouldered packs and climbed, overtaking straggling families through sheer desperation.

Fifty minutes of grueling ascent brought them to the trail’s end—a weed-choked plaza now teeming with refugees. To the north and east, cliffs plummeted, framing a panoramic view of the crimson-veined city below.

The shelter’s entrance yawned ahead, its newly installed silver-gray door inching downward on hydraulic gears. The alloy—unidentified but clearly slime mold-resistant—sealed with glacial finality.

Armed guards encircled the entrance. As the door descended, the crowd erupted:

“We’re citizens! Let us in!”

“Public shelters belong to the people!”

The crowd’s rationality held—until a voice roared above the chaos: “I worked there! They retrofitted this bomb shelter in weeks! Advanced filters to block mold spores! The elites knew!”

“Unfair! Let me in!”

“Open the damn door!”

…

The mob surged toward the shrinking gap beneath the shelter door. Lin Feng clamped Maeve Chen’s wrist, but she strained on tiptoe, scanning the throng for her parents.

She spotted Baba Chen and Matriarch Chen—jostled and faltering, their elderly frames buckling under the crush.

“Dad! Mom!” Her voice shredded into a rasp.

“Maeve… honey…” Matriarch Chen’s reply thinned to a wheeze.

“Stay calm!” Lin Feng warned.

“No!” Maeve Chen mustered inhuman strength, wrenching free. Her slight frame wedged through the seething mass.

“Maeve! Stop!” Lin Feng plunged after her as the mob breached the guards’ human barricade.

Gunshots cracked the air. “Agh! They’re killing people!” The mob’s frenzy metastasized into pure pandemonium, bodies scattering like shrapnel.

Refugees near the plaza’s edge tumbled over cliffs. Even Lin Feng—sturdy as he was—gasped for breath, fighting the current of fleeing bodies to reach Maeve Chen.

“Maeve! Maeve!” His shouts dissolved into the cacophony. Her petite frame vanished in the seething mass.

An eternity later, he staggered into a clearing, doubled over and heaving. As he straightened up, the plaza—once teeming—now lay littered with motionless bodies.

“Maeve!”

She sprawled twenty feet ahead. Lin Feng lurched forward on buckling legs, vision swimming. The panicked stampede had birthed a secondary horror—trampled forms twisted at unnatural angles.

He dropped to his knees, hands already compressing her chest. “You’ll be fine. Fine. Fine.” The mantra spilled through clenched teeth.

But when he rolled her over, primordial terror surged through him.

A gaping wound bloomed on Maeve Chen’s neck, blood frothing with each shallow breath. “Maeve! Maeve!” Lin Feng crumpled, his howls drowning in the chaos.

Before him, guards retreated into the shelter. The shooter—voice trembling—stammered, “Didn’t mean… warning shot… stray bullet!”

A squad leader yanked him away. “No apologies. Move!”

Lin Feng’s eyes burned with helpless rage as the vault door slammed shut, sealing the elites inside.

Maeve Chen’s lips twitched—a final whisper lost to the din. Lin Feng pressed his ear to her mouth, catching only death rattle.

Then stillness. The blood flow slowed to a trickle.

Lin Feng’s mind went blank. The woman who’d dragged him from darkness now dragged him deeper.

Her parents lay nearby among a dozen corpses.

He stumbled toward the cliff’s edge. Some demon whispered to leap.

But then—Maeve Chen’s voice, bright as sunlight:
“Live on, Lin Feng. For me. For my parents. For all five of us.”

Then Baba Chen’s and Matriarch Chen’s voices joined the chorus—“Live for us”—followed by the spectral tones of Lin Feng’s own deceased parents:
“Son, survive. Live well. For all of us.”

“AAAAAAAAAAHHHH!” Lin Feng howled with primal anguish toward the crimson hellscape that was Northspire Haven.

A thunderous reply shook the earth.

He rubbed tear-blurred eyes. The city’s skies had cleared abruptly, afternoon sunbeams piercing through Tyndall effect rays—golden shafts illuminating the apocalypse.

Skyscrapers folded like accordions, their collapse triggering chain-reaction destruction. Concrete monoliths crumbled, raining debris that shattered neighboring towers.

The resulting dust cloud swirled dreamlike pink—gray particulates mingling with slime mold spores. A gust hurled the lethal cocktail skyward.

This wasn’t urban annihilation. This was civilization’s death rattle.

Lin Feng laughed—a jagged, broken sound contorting his face into a mockery of joy. “HAHAHAHAHA—” echoed off the cliffs, harmonizing with collapsing steel.