Invasion of America

Chapter 104 God is with you
At the museum site, a large hole has appeared in the glass curtain wall on the south side, and broken glass and aluminum frames are scattered everywhere in the direction leading to Independence Avenue.

The exhibition hall looked like it had been through a catastrophe; piles and stacks of historically significant old airplanes were now all in ruins.

Like a toy roughly dismantled by a child, the skin is torn, the wings are broken, the dashboard is exposed, and the propeller blades are twisted into abstract art.

A dozen or so agents from the Department of Homeland Security and soldiers from the National Guard were looking around the scene, searching for debris, taking photos and making records. They were busy but it was unclear what they were doing.
Several medical personnel in protective suits arrived at the scene, examined the heads of the victims, and immediately opened the body bags—they had been shot in the head, and there was no need for emergency treatment.

Amidst the throng of people, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, four-star admiral Rachel Levine, stepped on the trash and shrapnel scattered on the ground, and angrily began to curse.

"Tell me, who killed my daughter?" The general had a strange face, which was now twisted into a demonic shape.

Under the watchful eyes of everyone present, Diaz couldn't help but feel a chill run down his spine.

Monica was placed under his command by the General, with the intention that the security department had high authority, so that his daughter would not be wronged and that professional personnel would help look after her.

Arranging Monica to be next to Zhou Qingfeng was also a deliberate arrangement by Diaz—that young lady is more trouble than she's worth; giving her a proper job would definitely ruin it.

It would be better to assign him to Zhou Qingfeng's team. He could earn a high salary and wouldn't cause any major trouble—after all, Zhou Qingfeng is just a nouveau riche Asian man who is not even twenty years old.

Generally speaking, Asians are easy to get along with; to put it bluntly, they are 'weak,' 'well-behaved,' and 'easy to bully'—and this is indeed true for most Asians.

Because of this stereotype, Diaz thought he had Zhou Qingfeng under his thumb and could control the kid well, but now he really regrets it.

This hothead's ability to cause trouble is unmatched, and his action-oriented nature is exceptional. Unfortunately, Monica had already suffered a loss against him, and she seemed determined to fight him to the bitter end.

It was too late to turn back now. Diaz lowered his head, not daring to look at the general's face—this woman, or rather, this 'transvestite,' was extremely ugly.

General Levin was originally the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services. He benefited from LGBT benefits in his early years and rose through the ranks very quickly.

When the Democrats came to power, he underwent gender reassignment surgery to become "she" and joined the Navy; after the Republicans came to power, "she" immediately emphasized America First and switched sides to align with "real estate developers".

With such a shameless "mother," Monica's extreme spoiling is understandable. But the fact that she rose to the rank of four-star general and became one of the highest-ranking military officers shows she has both ability and connections.

As a high-ranking intelligence agent, Diaz could control everything in front of outsiders, but when faced with the general's questioning, he had no way to express his grievances.

“Miss Monica was murdered during a pursuit mission. The killer is most likely an Asian man named Victor. I will personally investigate, without fail.”

Diaz glanced up slightly as he said this.

The transvestite general opposite him had eyes like poisoned daggers as he roared viciously, "I don't care who the murderer is, bring him to be buried with my daughter."
-
When Zhou Qingfeng saw the DC-3 take off, he was dumbfounded—was this escape a success or a failure?
If we call it a 'success,' almost all the core members of the team died; if we call it a 'failure,' although the elderly, weak, women, and children suffered a lot, they all boarded the plane and escaped.

The museum is now a mess, littered with dead and wounded, and Zhou Qingfeng is left standing in a daze amidst the ruins—the dozen or so National Guard soldiers are nowhere to be found.

Forget it, I should just think of myself first.

Zhou Qingfeng dared not linger, much less wander aimlessly outside the museum. He retrieved the handcart loaded with survival supplies, gathered some of the scattered weapons, and returned underground.

The 'J-12' maintenance access route is obviously no longer an option, and the officials who conducted the subsequent investigation are not blind; they will certainly have explored it.

The good news is that the National Air and Space Museum is located in the heart of Washington, D.C., and its underground parking garage is a genuine nuclear defense facility.

On Mr. Brown's map, the underground transportation network of the US capital is multi-layered, radiating outwards, as dense as a spider web, and extremely complex.

When Diaz judged that Zhou Qingfeng might have escaped in the DC-3, he instead wore a fire mask, opened an inconspicuous cast iron manhole cover, and went deeper underground.

With the help of a flashlight and supplies brought by a cart, he spent a day groping his way through the pipeline maintenance passage, eventually reaching the underground of the U.S. Capitol Hill, a kilometer away.

Capitol Hill has an extremely large underground infrastructure, including subways, parking lots, traffic tunnels, and nuclear defense facilities.

It is connected to many surrounding U.S. government office buildings, and its underground network is so extensive that trucks can drive in.

For example, there is a dedicated motorized conveyor belt between the Capitol Building and the nearby Library of Congress for transporting books and other paper documents, which is hard for outsiders to imagine.
-
Zhou Qingfeng wandered aimlessly through the dimly lit corridor until he pushed open a normally closed fire door, where the glaring fluorescent light and the smell of disinfectant hit him.

Behind the door was not the expected escape route, but an underground hospital converted from an air-raid shelter.

Hundreds of temporary hospital beds were lined up densely, each with a patient suffering from illness.

The 'X' virus is highly contagious and has a high mortality rate, but what is truly terrifying is its speed of spread—once the number of infections surges, the healthcare system is the first to collapse.

If medical staff fall ill one after another, and ventilators, medications, and hospital beds are all in short supply, the death toll will increase exponentially.

The underground hospital before us, filled with groans of pain and cries of despair, is proof that the medical system has been completely overturned.

The conditions here are already considered "good" - each bed is equipped with a monitor and life support equipment, some are being intubated, some are receiving IV drips, and the nurses are moving back and forth, doing their jobs conscientiously.

Zhou Qingfeng discreetly hid the handcart behind the fire door, preparing to pinpoint the exit, when suddenly—

"Who are you?!"

A sharp shout came from the side.

He turned his head and saw a Black female nurse in her forties, her eyes staring at him warily from behind her protective mask.

Zhou Qingfeng opened his mouth, but before he could think of what to say, the other person had already taken a step closer and questioned him again: "Did you come from the subway station? This is the intensive care unit, and non-staff members are not allowed to enter!"

The nurse's gaze swept over his empty hands and then fell on his body, which was not wearing any protective gear. Her brows furrowed more and more.

"Sorry, I've gone to the wrong place. I'll leave right away." Zhou Qingfeng couldn't see the exit, so he decided to turn back to the original route so as not to alert the guards.

The Black nurse, noticing his strong voice and seeing that he looked healthy and robust, asked, "You haven't been infected with the virus?"

"Uh, no," Zhou Qingfeng said honestly.

"You have antibodies, right?" The Black nurse suddenly became excited. "You went into the subway to find a way out because the city was under lockdown, didn't you?"

"It's no use, everything's sealed off now, you can't get out. But you can't wander around now either, since we're here, we can't leave."

Zhou Qingfeng looked closely and saw that the person in front of him had a name tag on her protective suit with the name 'Debra Williams' and the position 'Head Nurse'.

The middle-aged head nurse pressed the intercom on her chest and called out, "Xia Ni, bring the antibody test kit. A strong young man has come here. I'd like to see if he can help relieve some of our stress?"

What? !

Zhou Qingfeng was a little confused and said in a low voice, "Madam, I really have come to the wrong place. I'm an illegal immigrant and I don't belong here." The head nurse suddenly said fiercely, "Listen to me, kid, don't make me call the guards. I don't care if you're illegal or not. Even if you were Satan, you'd still have to obey me."

A short while later, a white female nurse in protective clothing arrived, holding a device for rapidly testing viral antibodies—a small instrument that looked like a blood sugar test.

The head nurse forcefully grabbed Zhou Qingfeng's hand, pricked his fingertip to collect a little blood, dripped it onto a test strip, and inserted it into a small instrument.

A short while later, the instrument lit up with a green light.

"Great, we've got a strong and capable caregiver." The head nurse punched Zhou Qingfeng in the chest with considerable force. "Wow, Xia Ni, you've got a lucky break with this kid."

The white nurse looked Zhou Qingfeng up and down and asked, "What's your name?"

"Victor."

Korean, Japanese, or Vietnamese?

“Chinese.”

"You haven't become a citizen yet, have you?"

"I am not American."

"I see it."

The white female nurse pulled Zhou Qingfeng to the hospital office, found an unopened protective suit and threw it at him, "Listen, my name is Xia Ni, you are now under my jurisdiction."

Uh... Holding the protective suit, Zhou Qingfeng began to stammer.

"I've been working for 72 hours straight and haven't had a proper rest. I'm in a bad mood and not in good spirits right now, so don't provoke me."

Behind the nurse's mask was a haggard face and large dark circles under her eyes. She spoke in a hurried and rapid tone, and it was clear that she was in a bad mood.

"Put on your protective suit quickly, I'll arrange some work for you. There's a shortage of manpower everywhere right now, as long as you can work, I don't care where you come from."

The nurse wrote 'Victor' on two A4 sheets of paper and stuck them to Zhou Qingfeng's chest and back, and also hung a walkie-talkie on his chest.

As for the nurse herself, she had written her name and a sentence in pen on the front and back of her protective suit: "Hang in there, Shani Costa. God be with you!"
-
The disinfectant, mixed with the smell of vomit and excrement, fermented in the poorly ventilated space. Everyone who entered the underground hospital couldn't help but frown.

Under the stark white lights, medical staff in protective suits moved about like ghosts. Zhou Qingfeng inexplicably became a "temporary caregiver" in this underground hospital.

“Victor! Bed C3 needs cleaning!” Shani’s hoarse voice came over the radio.

He walked quickly to his assigned bed.

There are many obese people in the United States. A patient who weighed at least 300 pounds just died, and a bed needs to be freed up quickly.

This type of work usually requires three nurses working together, but here—

“You lift the shoulders, I’ll lift the feet.” Xia Ni’s slender arms contrasted sharply with the deceased’s robust physique. She meant she would work together with Zhou Qingfeng.

“I know that most people have some psychological aversion to the dead, but now you have to overcome that barrier.”

Zhou Qingfeng bent down slightly, grabbed the deceased's thick shoulders with both arms, and as the muscles tensed, the heavy body was steadily lifted up.

Xia Ni, who wanted to help, hesitated for a moment, but quickly opened the body bag on the mobile stretcher so that Zhou Qingfeng could put the body inside.

The same job would require four or five people to do if done by women, and even a regular male caregiver would need at least two people to work together, and it might not be completed in four or five minutes.

Zhou Qingfeng was incredibly strong; he could easily finish the job in just over ten seconds by himself, and he showed no aversion to the corpse.

"Victor, were you a weightlifter before?" Shani's eyes widened.

“No.” Zhou Qingfeng shook his head; he was just used to it.

Before anyone could answer, the walkie-talkie suddenly blared. "Bed B13 needs emergency intubation. The patient is reacting too violently. Someone come to help!"

Xia Ni grabbed Zhou Qingfeng's wrist: "Come with me!" As they ran, she quickly instructed, "You need to hold the patient down, and remember, no matter what happens, don't let go!"

On bed B13, a burly male patient was convulsing violently. Four or five medical staff members tried to subdue him, but were easily pushed away.

"Neurological symptoms caused by the virus!" the attending physician shouted. "He needs to be sedated immediately, hold him down!"

The patient was unconscious, and the force of the muscle spasms was astonishing. Zhou Qingfeng stepped forward and forcefully pressed down on the patient's shoulders with both hands.

"Hang in there!" The attending physician pushed the sedative into the IV line. As the medication took effect, the patient gradually calmed down.

The way the medical staff around Zhou Qingfeng looked at him changed. What was the hospital lacking most? It wasn't highly skilled doctors or experienced nurses, but strong nursing assistants who could do all the odd jobs.

Over the next hour, Zhou Qingfeng: moved eight tanks of liquid oxygen (each weighing 80 kilograms); assisted in the transfer of six critically ill patients; and repaired a stuck elevator door with his bare hands.

Someone had drawn a simple sketch on the whiteboard at the nurses' station: a Superman symbol with the word 'Victor' scrawled below it—Zhou Qingfeng quickly erased the drawing.

He spun around between the wards like a top. His extremely high work efficiency suddenly made the entire B ward run smoothly.

Half an hour later, Shani found herself with a moment to catch her breath.

She dragged her heavy steps back to the makeshift office, and as soon as she sat down at the 'desk' made of stacks of medicine boxes, she collapsed onto the table and instantly fell into a deep sleep.

This scene is heartbreaking to watch.

"Shani! Sector Two needs backup!" came the head nurse's furious call over the walkie-talkie. After several unanswered attempts, Head Nurse Debra angrily pushed open the office door.

Seeing Xia Ni fast asleep, the head nurse was about to get angry when Zhou Qingfeng stepped in front of her: "Let Xia Ni sleep for a while."

Otherwise, she'll be the next one lying in a hospital bed. If it's something like moving things, I'll do it.

The head nurse's sharp gaze lingered on Zhou Qingfeng for a moment. Finally, she sighed, "You're right, Xia Ni is too tired and needs rest."

However, the head nurse turned and opened the door. "Come with me, young man. There's never enough work to do at the hospital these days. There are plenty of female nurses who need your help."

(End of this chapter)