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

Chapter 448 Lynn Enters the Scene

Hundreds of people crowded in front of the gap, pushing those in the back to move forward. The first iron fence was already packed with people, bodies piled on top of each other, some faces pressed against the railing, their features distorted by the crowd.

The base of the iron fence is welded to the ground and remains completely still.

Some people managed to squeeze through the first barrier, only to immediately crash into the second. The zigzag bend suddenly narrowed, trapping three or four people there, unable to move, while those behind continued to push them forward.

Two barbed wires are strung along the outermost wire mesh.

Those in the front row were pushed forward, the barbs piercing their clothes and digging into their skin. They desperately tried to pull back, while those behind them pushed forward, their chests squeezed from both sides, only able to let out low, painful groans.

Someone tried to climb over the container. A young man jumped up, grabbed the top edge, and desperately climbed up, his fingers gripping the metal ridges.

The sharp edge sliced ​​through his fingertips, and blood streamed down his arm. He was suspended there, unable to climb up or back down, with people pulling at his legs from below.

All the containers in other directions were welded tightly shut.

A uniformed police officer appeared outside the gap, desperately reaching out to save people. He grabbed one person's arm and pulled him halfway out, but the people pushing up from behind pushed the person back down. The officer's face was flushed, and his hands were trembling uncontrollably.

He turned and called out into the darkness, but no one answered.

The Z-shaped passage in the gap was completely blocked.

The people stuck in the bend had stopped struggling; they were surrounded by people pressing down on them from all sides. Their faces were ashen, their mouths were wide open, and they were trying to breathe, but they couldn't even get a breath in.

Then she saw the girl.

It was the black girl who was dancing on stage just now, wearing a sequined mini-skirt, with one of her high heels missing, leaving one bare foot on the ground.

The girl fell down.

She collapsed about two meters to the left and in front of Park Min-ah.

She lay on the ground, trying to prop herself up with her arms, but people kept stepping over her. A foot stepped on her shin, and her face pressed against the ground, she groaned in pain.

Park Min-ah looked at the girl.

She bought the girl several glasses of whiskey and patiently chatted with her for several nights before finally developing this informant.

The exit was just a dozen meters ahead, and the crowd was still surging forward. The smoke behind us grew thicker, and waves of heat were closing in.

If we stop now, we might not be able to get out.

But she still hesitated.

"Fuck it, whatever!"

Park Min-ah used her shoulder to block the person squeezing in from the right, barely making half a step of space for herself, then bent down and reached out to grab the girl's arm.

The girl's skin was sweaty and hot to the touch, making it impossible to hold her. She adjusted her position, using both hands to grip the girl's wrists and pulling upwards with force.

"Get up!"

It was too noisy around her, and her shouts could barely be heard.

The girl looked up, her eyes filled with terror. Park Min-ah knew that she probably had the same expression on her face.

The girl struggled to her feet, and Park Min-ah used all her strength to finally pull her up from the ground.

Just then, a large group of people suddenly squeezed in from the side.

Dozens of people rushed from the blue zone into the main passage, pushing Park Min-ah and the girl to the right. The exit was getting further and further away, but the metal walls of the shipping containers were getting closer and closer.

Park Min-ah panicked completely.

Dozens of people were crowding around her, and all her journalistic training was forgotten. She couldn't observe, couldn't record, and couldn't even make a coherent judgment.

She had only one thought left.

We must get out of here alive.

She shoved and nudged people aside with her shoulder and elbow. Someone grabbed her hoodie, and she struggled free, hearing the sound of tearing fabric. The hood was pulled off, and her hair fell down, but she didn't bother to fix it.

The girl gripped her wrist tightly, her nails digging into her skin.

"Don't let go!" Park Min-ah called out as she turned around.

Turning around, she saw what was happening behind the girl.

The entire stage area was engulfed in thick smoke, and the firelight pierced through the smoke, turning half the sky a murky orange. Further away, a corner of the warehouse roof had collapsed, and burnt wooden trusses crashed down from above, sending up a shower of sparks.

The Marses drifted into the sky.

It flickered on and off, still burning.

She lowered her head, staring at her feet and the step in front of her, desperately trying to squeeze towards the exit.

The surroundings were finally less crowded. Some people had already escaped, while others lay motionless on the ground. Some space had opened up in the passageway, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to walk.

She stepped on something soft.

Before the gap, the police officer was still pulling people out, his uniform collar torn open, his face covered in sweat. The first iron railing in the Z-shaped passage had been squeezed at a more than ten-degree angle, barely leaving a gap of half a body length.

Park Min-ah pushed the girl in front.

"Get out of here!"

The girl was pushed through the gap by the crowd. As she squeezed through, her shoulder hit a crooked iron fence, and she stumbled. A police officer grabbed her and pulled her out.

Next up was Park Min-ah.

She squeezed through the gap, the barbed wire on her left grazing her right forearm, the barbs catching on the sleeve of her hoodie and digging into her flesh. A burning pain shot through her forearm instantly.

She struggled to break free, tearing a gash in her sleeve, and the wire, dripping blood, was pulled from her flesh.

The people behind her pushed her out.

The air blowing in was cool and clean, and finally, I could no longer smell the smoke.

She bent over, hands on her knees, gasping for breath. Blood trickled down her right forearm, dripping onto the ground.

Sounds were still coming from the barbed wire behind us.

It was the dull thud of bodies hitting sheet metal, one after another.

The people inside were still trying to break down the wall.

The wall, however, remained firmly in place.

She turned around and glanced back.

People were still squeezing out of the gap, but the pace was getting slower and slower. At the bend of the zigzag passage, several people were pressed against the iron railing by those in front and behind them, motionless, their chests squeezed so tightly they could not rise and fall. Their mouths were still open, but they could no longer make a sound.

Tear strips of cloth, some stained with blood, hung from the gap in the barbed wire.

Park Min-ah covered her mouth and took a few steps back.

The scene she had just witnessed suddenly reappeared in her mind.

As she passed through the passage, she glanced at the corner on her right, where a few people were still standing.

A man sat in the shadows inside the shipping container, his legs stretched out, his right hand still clutching an aluminum foil tube. His head was tilted to the side.

On one side, his eyelids were half-open and half-closed. Thirty meters away, hundreds of people were desperately fleeing for their lives, but he just sat there, looking dazed.

The woman beside her was curled up in a ball, her head buried in her knees. Thick smoke had already reached above her head, but her body still rose and fell slowly with her breathing, seemingly unaffected by the commotion around her.

Further away, there was another person leaning against the wall, looking unsteady. He stared at the falling sparks, humming a tune that was indistinct and broken.

A spark landed at his feet, and he glanced down at it.

Then he started humming a song.

The drugs had dulled their senses, making them oblivious to the danger before them. Fires raged around them, people screamed, and some collapsed, but they remained immersed in the blissful state of being under the influence of drugs, letting the flames creep closer and closer.

Park Min-ah stood outside the barbed wire fence, blood trickling down her arm and seeping between her fingers. She clenched her fists.

Finally, the first siren of an ambulance could be heard in the distance.

Three blocks away, no cries of despair could be heard in the face of death.

At the intersection of Lenox Avenue and 120th Street, two men sat side by side on the fire escape of a five-story apartment building.

One person opened a bottle of craft IPA, while the other held a glass of red wine. A Progressive Pride flag was tied to the iron railing, swaying gently in the evening breeze.

They had only recently moved here. Their friends were incredulous when they heard they had chosen this neighborhood.

Harlem? You guys really dare to move to Harlem?

But the security data speaks for itself: there haven't been any shootings in this area for a long time, and burglaries have also decreased significantly.

They spent the money they'd spend on a one-bedroom apartment in Chelsea to buy an entire floor here. Two bedrooms, a study, and a south-facing fire escape, where you can sit on it on summer evenings with a drink and see half the sky above.

On the sidewalk downstairs, their six-year-old adopted son was chasing after a moth.

"Look, why is it so bright to the south?" The man holding the red wine stood up and leaned forward to look southeast.

A reddish-orange halo shimmered low on the horizon, occasionally punctuated by a flat, dark object that was quickly dispersed by the wind.

The man drinking beer took a sip: "Probably some construction site caught fire, right? There was a fire on 113th Street last month, remember? They later found out it was due to aging wiring."

"Should we call the police?"

"Such a big fire, someone must have called the police already."

The person holding the red wine sat down again and placed the glass on the railing.

The sound of a boy's laughter came from downstairs.

He stopped chasing the moths, tilted his head back, stretched his arms towards the sky, and ran a few steps following what was drifting down.

"Hey, what are you grabbing?" the beer-drinking man called downstairs.

The boy stopped, opened his palm, and showed it to them.

A thin, gray sheet lay in his palm, light and airy, its edges slightly curled, still retaining a trace of warmth.

Those were ashes drifting in from three streets away.

Fragments of burnt-through tarpaulin, scattered ash from collapsed wooden trusses, and remnants of burnt-out materials from several blocks were mixed together and carried by the wind over railroad tracks, abandoned factories, and walls welded together from shipping containers, eventually settling on the clean sidewalks of Lenox Avenue.

The boy knew nothing about it.

He just thought these things floating down from the sky were fun.

He ran a few more steps, grabbed a piece, turned around, and held it up to the fire ladder with a smile.

"Don't put it in your mouth!"

"I wouldn't!"

The boy carefully tucked the ashes into his shorts pocket, then looked up to search for the next piece.

More ashes drifted in from the southeast, swirling under the streetlights, settling on the sidewalks, on the roofs of parked cars, on the railings of the fire escape ladders, and on the colorful stripes of the Progressive Pride flag.

The woman drinking beer reached out and brushed the dust off the railing, then clinked glasses with her husband.

"It's so peaceful here."

"Everything else is fine."

The man holding the red wine glanced into the distance; the orange-red halo was even brighter than before. "It's these old houses that catch fire so easily."

Several blocks away, the clanging sounds from inside the barbed wire fence hadn't stopped.

One sound after another.

They can't hear.

The boy stretched out his hands, chasing the falling ashes under the streetlights, his clear laughter echoing all the way to the fifth floor.

The intersection of 112th Street.

A person was standing under the streetlight.

Lynn stood with his hands hanging at his sides, facing southeast, watching the ever-expanding orange-red halo on the horizon.

The column of smoke had risen very high, its base thick and black, while the grayish-white smoke at the top was stretched into long streaks by the wind, gradually dissipating in the light of the streetlights.

The smell of smoke had already reached him.

The sirens of fire trucks sounded in the distance, one, two, and a third followed closely behind the second, rushing from different directions.

Lynn's expression was calm, revealing no emotion.

He reached his right hand into his coat pocket, found his phone, and lingered his fingers on the cold screen for a few seconds.

He took one last look at the night sky, which was glowing red from the firelight.

He then took out his phone and dialed a number.

The call was connected.

"Activate the mass casualty contingency plan."

He hung up the phone and gripped it tightly in his hand.

In the distance, the sirens of ambulances also blared.

Wandering in the warm red night sky.