Saving lives

"Stop!" Norman suddenly shouted, jumping down before the carriage had even come to a halt.

He rushed toward the roadside with his heavy medical case on his back-a woman was kneeling in the muddy water, wailing in anguish.

"My child! Save my child!"

She clutched a little boy of about six or seven in her arms. The flesh around a hideous wound on his shoulder curled outward, and blood had soaked through his ragged clothes.

Norman immediately crouched down and opened his medical case.

He glanced at the terrible wound, then looked back toward the carriage and gritted his teeth. In the end, he did not call for Vanessa, instead shouting urgently to the woman, "Quick! Help me lift his arm!"

Vanessa's close friend was probably somewhere up ahead, or perhaps far away in the East District. In any case, she would not be here, but Norman could not abandon the injured boy before him either.

He knew what it felt like to lose someone important. He could not bring himself to ask.

Norman was a doctor. This was his duty, but Vanessa was not, and she had no obligation to share that burden.

Yet the next moment, a hand wrapped in white bandages appeared before his eyes-bandages he had applied himself yesterday.

Only yesterday, he had assured the girl that Mad Rat Disease would not break out in the city.

"You..." Norman looked up in astonishment. "Aren't you going to look for..."

"I'm a caregiver." Vanessa's voice was unusually flat, betraying no emotion. "I'm needed here."

"You're a caregiver for the dead. This isn't your responsibility."

"If a doctor hadn't saved me, I'd already be dead." Vanessa shook her head, her gaze falling on the boy's deathly pale face. "Dr. Norman, focus."

Norman pressed his lips together and said no more, the needle and thread in his hands stitching swiftly.

The boy's injury was not fatal. Before long, Norman straightened up and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

At some point, quite a few injured people had gathered around them, watching him pleadingly.

"Is Eli... all right now?" the woman, who had been helping press down on the wound, asked urgently, her voice thick with tears.

"He's all right for now. He isn't infected. It's only an external injury. Make sure he gets plenty of rest over the next few-"

"Thank goodness..." The woman suddenly interrupted Norman. Looking at her child, she took a few steps back, looked behind the two of them, and closed her eyes.

Bang!

A gunshot rang out, and a bloody hole appeared between the woman's eyebrows.

Norman and Vanessa whipped around.

A wisp of smoke was rising from the muzzle of the revolver in Dorothea's hand.

"She was already infected." Dorothea's voice was cold and composed, as though she had not been the one who had just fired. "She died just now."

Only then did Vanessa notice that the woman was covered in wounds too, wounds far worse than the child's. Those with Mad Rat Disease only turned into monsters that attacked wildly after death. She had actually been clinging to her last breath all this time.

Only after seeing her child saved had she died.

Before Vanessa and Norman could recover, the people around them were already speaking over one another. "Yes, I can testify! This lady was right to shoot!"

"That's right! If she hadn't shot, we were ready to do it ourselves!"

"Please, doctor! Look at my little sister! She's dying!"

Norman and Vanessa were soon swamped by more injured people.

The wounded came one after another, and the gun in Dorothea's hand rang out from time to time.

Vanessa did not know how much time had passed. When she raised her head, somewhat dazed, she found that a large crowd had gathered around her.

Some had volunteered to help her and Norman, passing them instruments. Others were handing out the limited food and drinking water. There were even a few people carrying crude weapons, vigilantly providing the makeshift medical station with a fragile guard.

"Tired? Take a break." Dorothea's voice came from beside her. Vanessa turned and found that, at some point, she had put on a large hood that concealed most of her face, leaving only a few chestnut-colored strands of hair showing.

Only then did Vanessa remember that she was also the Wild Dog Gang's "Miss Crow."

"Where are your companions?"

"They went ahead to scout." Dorothea sighed, her tone filled with deep frustration. "We actually had a chance to destroy the core, but... we failed."

She fell silent. The shadows beneath her hood hid her expression, but her fingers gripped the revolver so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.

"Those corpses chased us, and we barely escaped. I saw Winnie along the way... A lot of corpses rushed from the East District into the Harbor District. This was where it happened to Winnie."

"Those corpses were chasing us. We only just managed to escape, and on the way back, we saw... Winnie." Her voice sank. "A lot of corpses poured from the East District into the Harbor District. It happened to Winnie somewhere around here."

"Didn't you say Winnie was in the East District?"

"She was taken to the East District on the hospital's corpse cart."

Vanessa frowned, vaguely sensing that something was wrong.

The East District lay at the easternmost edge of New Scandinavia, right next to the Harbor District. Beyond that was the Mist Harbor District, where the hospital stood.

The hospital's corpse cart should have set out from the East District, passed through the Harbor District, and headed back toward the hospital.

And the timing did not add up either. When Dorothea and the others were investigating, the plague had not yet fully broken out.

They had struggled so much to escape. How could the hospital's corpse cart have made it deep into the East District so quickly?

Vanessa voiced these questions.

Dorothea glanced at Dr. Norman beside them and hesitated. In the end, she shook her head. "Let's talk when we get back. Save people first."

Vanessa nodded, suppressing her doubts.

She had just turned to return to the treatment station when a fierce argument and commotion suddenly erupted up ahead.

She and Dorothea exchanged a glance, then immediately hurried toward the noise.

They rounded a stretch of collapsed low wall, and the sight before them made both their breaths catch.

A large crowd of injured Harbor District residents blocked the road. Most had difficulty moving, and after hearing there was a doctor here, they had come supporting one another, only to block the road completely.

On the other side was a carriage-a carriage piled high with corpses.

Vanessa recognized it at once. It was a hospital carriage. She also spotted the hospital's Coat of Arms in the shadows-an Ouroboros Emblem formed from twisted, joined vertebrae.

Several fierce-looking, burly men carrying short-barreled shotguns stood beside the carriage, shoving the packed crowd and roaring at them:

"Get the fuck out of the way!"

"This is a hospital carriage! Move aside, all of you!"

"Get to the side of the road!"

"Keep dawdling and I'll shoot!"

Dorothea's heart immediately clenched, and she turned to look at Vanessa.

"Damn it, don't tell me..." Dorothea tightened her grip on the revolver in her pocket.

The girl's expression had frozen completely. Her gaze passed over the chaotic crowd and locked onto a familiar, lifeless body atop the carriage.

Her body began to sway uncontrollably. As though sleepwalking, she stumbled toward the carriage, one step at a time.