Plague Doctor

Chapter 327: Bodies in the Mud

The storm drowned out the human screams. The small island shook under the wrath of nature. It shook the survivors’ hearts as well. Their eyes could barely open in the storm. The little that they saw changed before their eyes. The illusory and the real were overlapping. The storm appeared to have pulled them into a different world, or perhaps this was how the island actually looked like.

“Oh my god...””Where are we?””Is this the lost island mentioned by Jack Wales?” As the vision cleared, the gasps erupted. The storm suddenly abated and when they came to, everything was different. They were no longer on a small island. There were mountains that stretched down the horizon and before them was a sparse plain with bushes and trees. Instead of a cliff, they found themselves standing by the edge of a black swamp. Everything Jack Wales claimed was happening before their eyes. The stink made their eyes water. Several lifeboats were stranded and the swamp was filled with corpses. There were dead fish, animals and...

The corpses of the agents who died in the storm. Their bodies were half-submerged in the black mud. Their exposed torso and head were already decomposing and there were mysterious bite marks on their bodies. Their features, though, were still recognizable. Their bulging eyes spoke of the horror of death. Who knew what they saw before they perished...

“No! Elina, no...” Someone’s wail broke the silence. It was an English agent, Calum Degrase. He was not given guard detail but his girlfriend and a few of his friends were. They were now decomposing bodies stuck in the mud. The wails were echoed by others. It was not only Calum Degrase who had just lost his lover and friend. At first glance, there were more than 20 bodies in the swamp. The horrifying deaths of these agents corrupted the mental stability of the living agents... Less than 5 minutes ago, they were still laughing and chatting but now... Death came so suddenly.

“It’s you, this is all your fault, bastard!” Calum roared with a face red from anger. He lunged at Gu Jun with a ready punch, “Why didn’t you warn us earlier?”

The mud slowed him down. Before his punch connected, Gu Jun stopped the man in his path with a direct hook to the man’s face. Calum was knocked over. The people around him gasped. Gu Jun surely spared no mercy for a grieving man... Xue Ba and Malachite rushed forward to detain the enraged man. Gu Jun ordered calmly, “Uncle Dan, an anaesthetic shot stat!” The Problematic team kept most of their supplies. The medkits contained quite a number of sedatives. Uncle Dan moved to oblige.

Lou Xiaoning reprimanded in Chinese. “What do you mean by that? Even at the hotel, we’ve warned you guys of the danger, even earlier, we’ve urged everyone to run to high ground but did anyone listen to us? Do you think we wish to see so many deaths? How is this our fault?!” Kathlyn translated that into English. The Shearwater members were silent. The English team only had 3 remaining agents left alive. None of them knew what to do. “So what do you plan to do?”

“Ah, ah...” Calum Degrase hissed and snapped his teeth before he started to cry.

“He needs to be sedated immediately.” Gu Jun minded his terminology, he did not bring up words like ‘mental corruption or mental breakthrough’ for he feared that it might influence the other living agents. He noticed some of them were at the verge of a mental breakdown too. After Uncle Dan readied the sedative, Gu Jun accepted the syringe. Gu Jun rolled up the man’s right shirtsleeves and injected the drug into his right inner vein. He did not fault Calum Degrase for his meltdown, after all, the man had just lost so many of his loved ones. Gu Jun would probably be worse if he was in his shoes.

There were quite a number of doctors and psychiatrists who survived. They caught up to what was happening. They started to consult the surviving agents. They found out that there was more than one agent that needed sedatives. Their weapons were confiscated and were corralled together for easy monitoring. These people might suffer from PTSD and would need multiple counselling should they survive this mission. For now, they needed to be desensitized.

2 to 3 minutes after the sedatives were applied, Calum Degrase started to calm down. He stopped screaming but his soul appeared to have disappeared. When the doctor asked him about his condition, he just shook his head. The others who were given sedatives responded in the same listless way.

The other members started to salvage the supply and made inventory. 172 agents arrived at the island but now only 109 were left. 63 agents lost their lives in that strange storm. And among the 109 living, 17 of them were sedated so only 92 agents were available for the next step of the mission.

“What should we do about the dead bodies?” Bell Grant asked Gu Jun, “Should we dig them out?” Now they knew it was better to heed Gu Jun’s advice. There were 45 visible corpses around them, so 18 were missing. They had probably submerged into the swamp. If that was true, digging them out was not going to be easy. But then it did not feel right leaving them in the depths either. In the end, they opted for the latter because leaving the dead agents in the watery grave would cause mental stress on the surviving agents. They set up a temporary camp on the adjacent plain. Since Jack Wales once did the same, the plains should be relatively safe. He eventually escaped through the plains back to the real world as well.

So what was this place?

Gu Jun had no idea but he was sure it was not Dreamlands. That was because they still had their weapons and supply. This was more likely an abnormal space. The sea, swamp, plain and mountains were joined together seamlessly. That could not have been natural.

According to the files on Jack Wales that some of them brought over, Wales claimed 4 days of trekking down the western side of the plains would bring them the highest hill. A river slithered through the hill and the stone plaque with the carving and text would be on the other side of the river. That was where he was visited by Dagon.

With such a large distance to cover and so many weakened members to take care of, the best solution was to set down a main camp and then split into two groups. One to guard the camp and the other to head towards the hill.

Gu Jun looked around and contemplated. ‘Is that really the best course of action?’

...

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