American Medicine: I survived the death knell thanks to the devil.

Chapter 447 Something Big Has Happened

Park Min-ah pulled down the brim of her baseball cap, zipped up her hoodie, and followed the people in front of her into the tolerance zone, her destination the strip club in the distance.

She simply changed her makeup intentionally to make her originally outstanding appearance less attractive.

This is less conspicuous than men's clothing.

After all, in the United States, a country with extremely free sexual orientation, it is as common for women to sit in front of a striptease stage to watch a performance as it is for men to buy tickets to watch a male striptease show.

Sexual orientation is a personal freedom, and everyone is used to it. Nobody will give her a second glance because of it.

Moreover, male dancers occasionally perform in the tolerance zone. They perform whatever the audience likes to see and whatever makes money, which is a natural commercial practice.

Lynn's task for her was simple: to regularly visit the East Harlem Tolerance Zone, record its size, population, and changes, and hand over all the photos and notes to Kowalski.

The checkpoint was less staffed than when she first arrived.

After all, this place has developed its own ecosystem, and everyone has been working hard to maintain order. The police also feel that there is no need to keep such a close watch and waste their energy.

There were only two officers at these checkpoints tonight. One was looking down at his phone, and the other was leaning against a container smoking. Neither of them had their walkie-talkies on their waists turned on.

I wonder if the other two also went to the strip club.

After the tolerance zone expanded, too many people were coming and going every day, and the two of them couldn't keep up, not even having time to search everyone individually. They would stop unfamiliar faces, but waved familiar faces over and let them go.

Park Min-ah has become a familiar face.

The barricade was raised, and she followed it inside.

The changes here are happening much faster than she expected.

The first time I came, there were only about ten audience members in front of the striptease stage. There were seven or eight rows of plastic seats, with a few broken sofas behind them, and two young men wearing baseball caps were in charge of keeping watch. One person was dancing on stage, and the audience was sparsely populated, much like a small pub in town.

Tonight, the seats have been moved up to the fifteenth row.

The first ten rows were packed, and the back rows were also mostly occupied. There were also quite a few people standing on both sides of the aisle, holding plastic cups and chatting and laughing against the metal wall.

Park Min-ah found a suitable angle and roughly counted; there were over a hundred people just within her sight. Including those backstage...

There were probably nearly 150 people in the passageways and corners.

The stage has been expanded several times.

The scaffolding has been raised by one level, and the wooden plywood platform has been replaced with steel treads; the welding marks are still very fresh.

The stage was at least twice as wide, with four dancers performing simultaneously. Red, blue, and white spotlights shone from different directions, following their movements. A set of speakers was added to each side, the subwoofers vibrating so loudly that my feet went numb and my chest felt tight.

The cardboard sign next to the stage has also been replaced with a new one.

Show starts at 8 PM every night. Front row: $15; Middle row: $10; Back row: $5. Payment can be made with equivalent goods. Private dancing is available at a different price. Handling is strictly prohibited; violators will be permanently banned.

Seat fees have actually gone up!

Park Min-ah found an empty seat in the twelfth row and bought a whiskey for two dollars. She placed her phone on her lap, picking it up as if to check a message, and casually snapped a picture.

The liquor stand was set up on the right side of the stage, with two more folding tables than originally planned.

Straight whiskey was still two dollars a glass, and mixed drinks were one dollar. Sangria, ladled directly from the barrel, was also included, costing one dollar and fifty cents a glass. Customers carrying their drinks crowded the aisles.

Smoke billowed from the tortilla stall on the left. Chicken was 2.5 yuan, beef was 3 yuan, and adding cheese cost an extra 50 cents. The queue snaked from the stall all the way to the side of the stage.

Cigarettes sold by the stick have also gone up in price; from fifty cents to seventy-five cents. The tobacco vendors say there's been a recent supply shortage.

The person cursed a few times, but still paid up.

Business in the red zone continued as usual. The bald white man was still sitting in his folding chair, with a long line in front of him.

Customers came forward one after another, handed over money or items, received a small plastic bag, and turned to leave, with almost no conversation throughout the process. The line was even longer than the one in front of the burrito stand.

Against the wall to the left of the stage, several people squatted together, smoking drugs through aluminum foil tubes. The flame of a lighter flickered under the foil, and white smoke billowed from the other end. They inhaled slowly, without any hurry.

A little further away, a young man in a gray hoodie leaned against an abandoned metal barrel, his head drooping. He had started "nodding," half-awake and half-asleep after taking a nap, with a slight upturn at the corners of his mouth, looking quite comfortable.

People around him didn't even bother to look at him.

Taking drugs in the tolerant zone doesn't need to be hidden; it's as casual as smoking a cigarette in a park's designated smoking area. This place was originally meant for them.

Park Min-ah roughly estimated that there were more people in the tolerance zone tonight than on any previous visit. Just from the places she walked through, there were at least six or seven hundred people.

Striptease, drugs, burritos, whiskey, and cigarettes sold by the stick—the business was booming. Customers who came for one of these items would often spend money at other stalls as well, thus creating a synergistic effect between the businesses.

There was a dancer on stage whom she knew.

The first time she came, she noticed the Black girl backstage. The girl was thin and didn't talk much. She sat alone on an overturned plastic bucket, slowly applying eyeliner in front of a cracked oval mirror.

Driven by a reporter's instincts, Park Min-ah began to intentionally approach her, buying two glasses of whiskey, handing her one, and chatting for a few minutes in a corner backstage.

The girl was initially wary, but gradually relaxed after chatting with him a few times. She knew which days business was best, which days there had been trouble, what new rules Jefferson had recently added, and who had brought in the new employee.

These are things you can't see if you're sitting in the audience.

A girl dancing here knows far more than the reporters mingling in the audience.

Tonight, the girl stands in the center of the stage.

She had just changed her sequined miniskirt and her high heels. Having danced the same dance hundreds of times, her movements were already very familiar, and she performed with ease.

Applause and whistles erupted from the audience. She turned around to the beat, a red spotlight shining on her back, making the sequins on her dress sparkle.

The September night breeze blew through the gaps between the shipping containers, carrying the smells of diesel exhaust, barbecue fumes, and the sweet, cloying scent of marijuana.

Strings of lights were strung from the roofs of both warehouses, extending to the opposite side, several rows more than initially had, crisscrossing in mid-air. The bulbs swayed in the wind, causing the shadows on the ground to flicker, illuminating the entire stage area.

The generator outside the warehouse was constantly humming, but it was barely audible amidst the roar of the subwoofer.

Park Min-ah, holding her whiskey, had finished memorizing the numbers and planned to leave after listening to the song.

The spotlight on stage switched to blue, and the four dancers changed formation. The bass drum beat sped up by half a beat, and the audience clapped along.

Park Min-ah raised her glass, just bringing it to her lips.

Suddenly, a burst of fire erupted to the right rear.

There was absolutely no warning beforehand.

Blue and white flames shot out from the base of the warehouse's outer wall, accompanied by the pungent smell of burning diesel, and in the blink of an eye, they ignited the waterproof tarpaulin that was tightly attached to the wall.

The tarpaulin was made of polyethylene, which burns faster than paper. Flames spread rapidly along the surface, reaching two meters high in two seconds, and the entire tarpaulin was ablaze in the third second. Thick black smoke billowed towards the stage, and the acrid smell of burning plastic made it difficult to breathe.

The fire spread from the tarpaulin to the warehouse's wooden trusses. The dry wood crackled and popped as it burned, sending sparks flying everywhere, landing on the stage's steel steps and on the heads and shoulders of the audience.

The string lights flickered once.

It flashed again.

The world suddenly went dark before the eyes of more than a hundred people.

The bass from the speaker continued for another two seconds, then abruptly stopped with a "crack." All the spotlights went out, leaving only the tarpaulin on the warehouse wall still burning, emitting an orange-red glow.

The firelight illuminated everyone's faces.

A sharp, piercing scream rang out from the right rear, almost cutting off the throat. Then someone else screamed, a second, a third, and soon the entire audience was screaming.

The plastic seats were kicked over one after another, making a loud thud all over the ground.

People in the front row backed up, while those in the back rushed forward, crashing into the middle rows. Those sandwiched in the middle couldn't even straighten their backs.

Someone's knee hit the armrest of the seat, and he screamed as he knelt down. The people behind him simply stepped over him.

Someone bumped into Park Min-ah from behind, spilling the whiskey in her glass. She threw down the glass, stood up, and used the firelight to orient herself.

The fire was to her left and behind; the exit was in front of her.

The tolerance zone has two checkpoint exits, one on the north side and one on the west side. The closest one is the north exit, which is about 100 meters away from the stage as the crow flies.

She immediately ran forward with the crowd.

People from the blue zone surged in from the east, people from the red zone squeezed through the middle, and people from the black zone also rushed into the passage from the west. The people from all three sides collided head-on at the intersection, forming a dense, jumbled mess.

The passageway was only four meters wide, with iron walls of shipping containers on both sides. When hundreds of people tried to squeeze in at the same time, it quickly became so congested that it was impossible to move an inch.

Park Min-ah was also trapped inside.

The person in front of her had their back pressed tightly against her chest, and another person's shoulder was pressing against her back from behind. Her arms were squeezed to her sides, making it impossible for her to lift them.

For a fleeting moment, her feet even left the ground, and she was suspended there, supported by those around her. Her ribs ached slightly from the pressure, and she could only inhale half a breath each time.

People kept pushing their way in from behind.

The pressure on her was increasing.

Waves of heat surged from behind, even warming the tips of my hair. The thick smoke pressed lower and lower, filling the air with the acrid smell of burnt plastic, along with the stench of sweat and blood.

Someone collapsed in the passageway.

Five or six meters ahead, a man in a plaid shirt suddenly collapsed to his knees, his legs giving way. He tried to get up with the help of someone next to him, but he couldn't muster the strength, and he slumped to the side, vomiting on the ground.

At the same time, another woman collapsed in another direction, her limbs twitching twice before falling still. The people behind her couldn't stop themselves and were tripped by her, followed by a third person falling on top of her.

The fallen people were entangled in each other's arms and legs, piling up in a heap in the passageway.

The people behind were still pushing forward. They couldn't see what was happening ahead; they only knew that the exit was in that direction.

Someone stepped on the body of the person who had fallen.

The soles of the shoes fell onto his arms, back, and even his face.

The cries of the person who fell to the ground grew weaker and weaker until finally no sound could be heard at all.

Park Min-ah stumbled forward, trying to stay close to the edge and avoid the people who had fallen in the middle of the aisle. Her shoulder bumped against the metal wall of the container, and her elbow hit the metal ridge, causing her excruciating pain.

She gritted her teeth and continued to push forward.

By the light of the fire, she finally saw the exit of the checkpoint ahead.

There is a three-meter-wide gap between the container and the wire fence, through which two iron railings stand. To enter or exit, one must make two turns, walking in a zigzag pattern. Normally, only two or three people can pass through at a time, making it convenient for police officers to check each person individually.

This arrangement was originally intended to control the entry and exit of personnel.

Now, all the people trying to escape are stuck here.