The trading post is exactly where Jiang Jin said it would be, directly under the now broken bridge that used to lead into the eastern part of town. If you drive down that road far enough it becomes the New East Bank, where all the rich people own mansions.

  It’s hard to make them out now, though. A few scattered flames burning on rooftops aren’t enough to light up an entire river.

  Zan Xinyi drags her focus back down to the trading post in front of her.

  Though, rather than a trading post, isn’t it just a junk yard? Even at a distance there are just piles everywhere, tires thrown right next to crowbars, shovels, and a tangled mess of fishing poles.

  Zan Xinyi, busy holding her broom as if it were an oar but doing absolutely no rowing, feels doubt creeping into her heart. Is this guy even going to be able to get ahold of toilet paper, let alone sound equipment?

  “There’s something underneath the water,” Wei Shengyuan says suddenly.

  The boat halts in the water as something with both fur and scales jumps out before woofing and diving back under when Zan Xinyi swings at it.

  “That’s just my dog, don’t mind it!” Comes a yell from behind one of the junk piles. “Xiao Ma, stop scaring the customers! Just dock anywhere, come right up! Hey, there was no need to bring your own boat. I provide a ferry across the river since the bridge’s broken. If you pay.”

  Naming your dog Little Spot when it’s not a dog, not little, and it doesn’t have spots.

  Zan Xinyi looks at Wei Shengyuan. They had brought the wheelchair, but it’s the transition that’s going to be annoying. Dock the boat, get out of the boat, unfold the wheelchair, and then what. She has to pick him up and get him into the chair. Or he crawls out and then she helps a bit?

  Wei Shengyuan shakes his head, which just makes him get water on her as his hair is soaking wet.

  “I’ll just stay with the boat,” he says. “I don’t need to--”

  Back when she’d been stocking shelves, she could’ve deadlifted 100 pounds easily. But that was back in high school, when she had access to the gym.

  Now, of course, she has something greater than that. A base understanding of her own psyche.

  “I hate shopping alone,” Zan Xinyi says, and hauls him up.

  While they’ve been doing all that, the trader has walked up and stared at them like he’s got a free pass to the circus.

  She looks right back at him. This guy deserves his own spotlight in that circus, too.

  He’s in his mid-forties, grey hair, and has been effortlessly chainsmoking cigarettes instead of offering to help. He’s got overalls and thigh-high waders on over a t-shirt that says I’ll Believe In Anything.

  What the hell did this guy do before the apocalypse?

  “Damn,” the trader says. “Haven’t seen a fishman yet. Crazy world we’re living in. You want a fish tank or something?”

  Behind him Zan Xinyi can now make out a signboard that’s been scribbled over with a can of spray paint.

  Wet Dog Post.

  Sure is.

  “What’s your name?” Zan Xinyi asks, deciding that that question wasn’t worth acknowledging.

  “Ah, my manners. Wow, you’re really civilized. And you smell good, too. Doing well for yourself, expecting a name and soap everywhere you go. Nobody I knew was wearing a filtering mask even when the government was saying they had to.” He coughs when she just glares at him. “It’s Zhang Hai.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Zhang Hai,” Wei Shengyuan says after a pause where he realizes she’s obviously not going to engage in small talk. “I’m Wei Shengyuan. We’ve made a long list of things-- just tell us if you’ve got any of it.”

  He shoves a neatly folded page of paper over to the guy.

  Zhang Hai takes the paper and squints at it.

  “Yeah, I got toilet paper. Sealed in plastic, unopened, though that’s worth more. I got most of this other stuff too-- the some of the instruments I don’t have, but very easy to get. What, you guys’ tactic for mass zombie killing is to have a fucking one man band or something? Speakers, they don’t work but I’ve got them right here. You can basically have those for free, so you can see how well they don’t work. Professional grade insulation--”

  He takes his cigarette out of his mouth, spits to the side. Gross.

  “Sure, it’s possible. Might take some time. I can sell you some shitty stuff in the meantime if it’s urgent. But look, this is a huge list. And that’s a tiny boat. I don’t accept any form of money, jewels or gold. Trade goods only. So...you got anything that’s worth all this crap? If you don’t, a couple of the bigger crews have organized their own meet up here every few weeks. Come back and try to get it directly from them. Of course, if it’s too precious, maybe they take it directly from you...”

  “You got a mutation index checker? That’s charged, and works?” Zan Xinyi asks.

  “If anyone’s got one piece of electronics, they got that,” Zhang Hai scoffs. “I can’t even give them away.” He gestures at a colorful pile of ugly watches that on closer inspection had, before the end of the world, been very expensive ugly watches.

  She’s never bothered with them. But Wei Shengyuan occasionally uses his to check on their food. There’s not a one to one correlation between eating high pollution foods and becoming mutated: it just worsens the odds. At least, that’s what the news was saying months ago. She and him could eat the same things and only one of them could grow another set of gills.

  Though recent reports on the radio have been saying that being already mutated itself makes you more likely to react to pollution.

  So the sick get sicker.

  “We’ve got pre-apocalypse soda,” Wei Shengyuan says, picking up the conversation that Zan Xinyi had let languish and die. “And a few water bottles if that’s not enough.”

  “Soda’s not worth that much,” Zhang Hai says. But when the index on his wrist flashes green, his eyes nearly pop out of his skull. “Even before the neighborhood went to the dogs, it wasn’t that pure— what the hell?”

  “It’s a high end brand,” Zan Xinyi says shamelessly. “Luxury soda.”

  “Right,” Zhang Hai says. He pulls the cigarette out of his mouth and crushes it beneath his boot. “Let’s take this list of yours a bit more seriously, shall I?”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Zan Xinyi leaves Wei Shengyuan behind to do the actual hard work while she navigates the various stacks of garbage that make up Wet Dog Post.

  When it comes to retrieving extra computer screens, it’s better to just raid other apartments in her own building-- she prefers the floors above her, where the slightly richer tenants used to live--, so this trip is only for the type of things that are needed in bulk or that the average economically challenged family did not keep in their household.

  See, that’s the problem. If she’d been living in an apartment building where actually rich people lived, she’d have access to rich people stuff. Instead, nobody in that building has a speaker system better than her own, and most of everything is old, run-down, and barely functioning. It’s shocking how easy it is to live with every single thing in your home broken, if the money to repair it simply never drops from the sky.

  She sees a couple of comic books buried under a lampshade and tries to pull them out, pausing when the entire pile of shit starts shifting ominously. She didn’t need to see it that bad.

  Well, maybe one last yank--

  Zan Xinyi muffles a shriek as she leaps to the side while the whole rest of the pile crashes to the ground next to her.

  “You alright over there?” Zhang Hai yells. “You break it, you buy it!”

  “Everything’s in one piece!” Zan Xinyi yells back, lying.

  She glances at the comic book still gripped in her hand.

  The cover art is stained with something that’s a bit too green to be human blood, but the title is still recognizable enough.

  My Journey to Become Invincible Through Big Spending!

  She thinks she can vaguely make out a white haired girl with a huge chest newly granted modesty by the stain.

  Wow, there’s real garbage still in this world. Who is going to buy this? It’s not even the first volume.

  She gives it a second glance.

  It’s not even the tenth volume.

  Ignoring the stack of comics back in her own apartment with similar titles, Zan Xinyi tosses it back in the pile and starts circling back, only to stumble again as a much more frightening sound begins to echo all around here.

  “I really don’t like new things,” Zhang Hai says, his “dog” growling softly behind him in response to the loud tolling of a bell. “Doesn’t sound like it’s coming from the radio, now does it? My radio broke weeks ago. I think only the military still has any that work, and they aren’t sharing.”

  “No,” Zan Xinyi says. “It doesn’t.” The rhythm, however, is familiar. Like the sounds coming from her next door apartment that have necessitated soundproofing.

  The bells fall silent, and she hears the crackle of a radio broadcast that sounds identical to the one now residing in her apartment.

  Oh, no.

  “It would be even crazier to hear a radio when there’s none working nearby, wouldn’t it?” Zan Xinyi says loudly.

  The crackle dies down. Thank fuck.

  Zan Xinyi had really not thought that Jiang Jin’s ability to copy sounds could be broadcast at such range, or with such precision. Though it still might not have precision, if the bird-brained musician has just blasted sounds in every direction-- no, no she responded as if she could hear Zan Xinyi. So it must be targeted.

  “We’re heading back to the boat,” Zan Xinyi orders Wei Shengyuan, who gives her a truly irritable look. He points at the giant pile of stuff next to him, then at his own two wheels.

  The wind picks up, flinging cold water droplets in her face, and so does the crackle.

  Wow, everyone’s so demanding.

  “Did you ask for a wheelbarrow? Or some sort of container?”

  “That,” Wei Shengyuan says through gritted teeth, “Was not on the list. That you gave me.”

  “You’re always suffering from failures of imagination,” Zan Xinyi sighs. “Roll yourself to the boat. Zhang Hai? We also need a sack.”

  “Probably too heavy for one load,” Zhang Hai says, shoulders loosening as the radio crackle fades back out. “I’ll cut you a deal and sell you two.”

  Acting like her giving him another water bottle is him doing her a favor.

  “What did you do before the world ended?” Zan Xinyi asks, dropping her broom to the side so she can scoop all of their purchased toilet paper into the provided sack. “Sell snake oil?”

  “I didn’t even live in this part of the city,” Zhang Hai says, striking up his next cigarette. “Came down here to volunteer at the local dog shelter.”

  “A bleeding heart,” Zan Xinyi says, heaving the first bag over her shoulder and staggering. She’s going to need to drag the second bag.

  “Not really,” Zhang Hai says. “Just liked to take a break from lawyering. Help the guaranteed innocent.”

  “Are all dogs guaranteed innocent?”

  She leaves the fact that he was a lawyer unaddressed, unsure of what to think of it. It doesn’t suit him.

  Zhang Hai laughs for the first time.

  “You really don’t believe in anything or anyone,” he says, gazing down at his shirt. “I need to get on your level, lady.”

  She opens her mouth to argue with him, feeling like he’d meant that as an insult in some way.

  “Look, I do believe in--”

  “Zan Xinyi!” Wei Shengyuan’s voice carries all the way from the river, voice strained. “You need to see this.”

  “I do believe in something,” Zan Xinyi bites out. She turns on her heel and turtles her way down to the river under her heavy load.

  Wei Shengyuan is already back in the boat, wheelchair abandoned on the dock. He’s not looking her way at all, locked back in the direction they came from.

  “Our apartment is that way,” he says.

  Our apartment?

  Zan Xinyi heaves all their accumulated luggage into the boat before turning to check, relying on Wei Shengyuan’s water control to make sure that she doesn’t capsize the boat from sudden weight changes.

  Only then does she follow his directive to look.

  Within their neighborhood, around their block, the encroaching mist has turned a vivid, eerie green.

  “You can talk to us now, Jiang Jin,” Zan Xinyi says. “We’re alone.”

  She flaps at Wei Shengyuan to get the boat going. Her laptop is back at the apartment. If she loses that...

  “You can talk,” a direct mimic of Zan Xinyi’s voice comes back to her. Then a radio broadcast begins to crackle. “Green mist has appeared in the central area of Zone A. Specialized powers have said that the mist drove victims of the Grey Rot into a battle frenzy, with effects on mutated animals and persons unknown. We are offering a credit bounty for any reliable witness testimony. Approach the military base if you wish to receive the bounty. Applicable to those with mutation index below 30% only.”

  “Oh, you’re mimic only?” Zan Xinyi says.

  “Mimic only,” Jiang Jin says back in Zan Xinyi’s voice.

  Then the bells ring again. Zan Xinyi is getting the feeling that Jiang Jin is vastly more comfortable with music over copying language, but only one of those is easy to understand.

  “Are you in immediate danger?”

  “Danger.” The bells get even louder.

  Not immediate danger. Zan Xinyi nods, then realizes that Jiang Jin definitely cannot see them.

  “We’re heading back to you.”

  “Back to you...” Zan Xinyi is absolutely sure she doesn’t sound like that when she’s relieved.

  “You won’t be abandoned,” Wei Shengyuan says, speaking up for the first time. He’s under the boat entirely except for his head, as if touching more of the water will help him increase speed. It’s certainly not going to help him reduce his mutation level. The green mist is reflecting into the water now, green beside them and green below.

  Ah, like Jiang Jin had been abandoned not even a week ago.

  “Don’t be so scared, you two,” Zan Xinyi says, annoyed, “Remember, the mist can do what it wants, but my game level needs to be completely on schedule!”