The Decaying Dream of America: I Assemble Corpses and Confront Madness

Arthur stared at the line of dark blue text on Lin Zheng's phone screen and exhaled a puff of white smoke mixed with cold air.

"Raw material prices have surged."

He repeated it to himself in a low voice, savoring the bitterness.

"This rain couldn't have come at the worst possible time."

Lin Zheng did not answer.

He silently put away his phone and turned to walk towards the inconspicuous black tool bag in the corner.

That's not an ordinary toolkit.

There were no hammers or wrenches inside, only rows of instruments carefully wrapped in canvas, gleaming with a cold metallic sheen.

Scalpel, bone shears, needle holder, sutures.

He unzipped his jacket, ran his fingers over the tools, and greeted his old friend.

His movements were slow and steady, with a kind of formulaic precision, as if he was trying to suppress all the emotions that had just surged within him through this familiar sense of ritual.

Sarah's hug, a mixture of rain and warmth.

The children's satisfied expressions as they shared the hamburger.

"I have to go now."

Lin Zheng said in a calm voice, revealing no emotion.

"I send you."

Arthur picked up the trench coat draped over the back of the chair without hesitation.

"Do you know the way?"

"The church in the west of the city, where Reverend Dunbar is."

Arthur's tone was very certain.

"In this kind of weather, no one but his lousy place would take in those... 'raw materials'."

Lin Zheng zipped up his tool bag, pausing for a moment.

He glanced at the mess on the ground and the piles of food wrappers in the trash can.

"These……"

"I'll handle it," Arthur interrupted him. "You just do your job."

Lin Zheng nodded and slung the tool bag over his shoulder.

The two walked out of the apartment one after the other.

Get into the car.

The engine made a labored coughing sound, but finally started.

The windshield wipers swayed weakly across the cracked windshield, each wipe only briefly tearing through the rain to reveal a corner of faded, distorted city lights.

The car's heater was broken, so Arthur turned on the blower, but it blew out cold air that smelled musty.

Lin Zheng shrank his neck and turned his face to look out the window.

Occasionally, you can see a few shadows at the bus stop; it's hard to tell if they are garbage bags or homeless people.

"The government has been shut down for two weeks now," Arthur suddenly said, breaking the silence.

His voice sounded somewhat muffled amidst the engine noise.

"The food stamp program has been suspended, and social security payments have also been delayed."

"For many people, this rain was the last straw."

Lin Zheng hummed in agreement.

He didn't want to talk.

But Arthur's words stubbornly pierced his ears.

"Dunbar is a good man," Arthur continued, "a stubborn old fool."

"He turned the church into a shelter, but all he could provide was a bowl of thin porridge."

There were almost no pedestrians on the streets, not even homeless people, because the flooding made it almost impossible for them to stand.

"When the water rises, the rats in the sewers will all run to higher ground. Maybe tomorrow or the day after, you will see that there are no homeless people on the streets. They have either gone to seek refuge, or they have been washed away by the flood or frozen to death."

Those who survived learned these lessons.

The car left the main road and turned into an even more dilapidated street.

The streetlights were spaced far apart, and most of them were already off.

The wheels rolled over the potholes, splashing up murky water.

"You...did this before?" Lin Zheng finally asked.

He was referring to the processing of "raw materials".

Arthur tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

"No."

He didn't reply for a long time.

"When there were too many corpses to handle, I helped them write reports, and that's when I met Evelyn."

"Accidental death, hypothermia, acute drug overdose... there's always a suitable official explanation. Evelyn was just a young girl who had just started out, as naive as I was at the beginning, wanting to investigate everything thoroughly."

"And I've been stuck in this quagmire for a long time, all I can do is give everyone a neat ending in the report."

"Was the United States already like this decades ago?" Lin Zheng asked.

Decades ago, the United States was the brightest beacon in the world, and people all over the world longed to live there.

Lin Zheng had also read the exaggerated articles published in domestic magazines like Yilin and Reader.

"always..."

Arthur didn't say who wasn't in power, or which periods weren't; he said it had always been.

At the end of the beam of the car headlights, the outline of a low-rise building appeared.

It was an old Gothic church, its stone walls appearing a dark gray, almost black, in the rain.

Most of the stained glass windows in the church were broken and hastily nailed together with wooden boards and then covered with newspaper and plastic.

There was only a small cross on the roof, stubbornly resisting the wind and rain.

The car stopped in front of the church.

A tall, thin Black pastor was standing on the steps, holding a black umbrella.

He wore a simple black priest's robe, his face was covered with deep wrinkles, and his eyes were tired, yet unusually calm.

Lin Zheng pushed open the car door, and the biting air made him shiver.

He carried his tool bag and walked up the steps with Arthur.

The black pastor nodded to Arthur as a greeting, then turned his gaze to Lin Zheng.

It was a complex look in his eyes, containing scrutiny, pity, and a hint of apology.

"Come in," the pastor's voice was hoarse and deep. "Everything is ready."

The church's wooden doors were heavy and ancient, creaking as they were pushed open.

An air filled with a mixture of damp, musty smells, the waxy smell of cheap candles, and a certain indescribable, sweet, fishy odor.

The interior of the church appears more spacious than the exterior, but it is also more dilapidated.

The benches were moved to both sides, creating a large open space in the middle.

Dozens of candles burned in different corners, the flickering flames casting distorted shadows onto the mottled walls.

On the ground of the open space, neatly arranged were human-shaped silhouettes covered with white sheets.

A rough count reveals at least fifteen.

"I am Dunbar," the pastor said to Lin Zheng, giving a brief self-introduction.

"The rain has been too heavy these past few days, and the municipal morgue is full, so I have to keep the body here for now."

After a long sigh—

"Many people didn't make it."

Dunbar's voice carried a profound weariness.

"With the government shut down and welfare cut off, many people can't even get a hot meal."

Reverend Dunbar made the sign of the cross on his chest.

"They are abandoned old appliances, just waiting to run out of power."

Lin Zheng put down his toolbox and prepared to start working.

He first needs to check the integrity of each "raw material", assess the "usable parts", then label them and wait for the company's transport truck to pick them up.

Even without the meat processing plants, pharmaceutical companies will still acquire them.

Just as he was about to put on his plastic gloves, the church door was suddenly slammed open with a loud bang.

A young white woman rushed in, clutching a baby wrapped in a blanket tightly in her arms.

The woman was soaked to the bone, her long golden hair clung messily to her face, her complexion was ashen, and her lips were purple from the cold.

Her eyes burned with an almost insane light.

"Priest!" she cried out hoarsely, her voice broken by her rapid breathing.

The baby made a weak but sharp cry in her arms.

Reverend Dunbar immediately went to greet him.

"What's wrong, child?"

"My child...he's starving to death!"

The woman pleaded and cried; she would have almost collapsed to her knees if Reverend Dunbar hadn't supported her.

"I need baby formula! Please, I need some baby formula!"

"I called many churches, but they...they all rejected me!"

The woman buried her head in the baby's swaddling clothes and sobbed.

"They said...they said today isn't food distribution day, and we shouldn't be here seeking help..."

Her words were broken and fragmented, filled with incomprehensible pain and humiliation.

"They...they made me go out and sell myself...to earn money for my child's milk powder..."

Lin Zheng looked at the baby crying helplessly in the cold wind, and thought of the children who had come to his apartment earlier to beg for food while holding back their tears. He then looked at the "raw materials" on the ground covered with white sheets, which would never cry again.

The tragedy of the living and the tragedy of the dead were stitched together at this moment by an invisible thread.

"God guided her here, and my job is to help her. I'm sorry, you'll have to deal with these things yourselves from now on," Pastor Dunbar said calmly but firmly.

He took off his robe and draped it over the shivering woman, then led her and the baby to a small room at the back of the church.

"Come on, I have some milk and bread here. I'll go out and buy some milk powder right away. Do you need any other help?" Pastor Dunbar asked in great detail, trying his best to help this poor mother.

Reverend Dunbar left without hesitation, braving the wind and rain as he went out of the church.

Silence returned to the church, broken only by the soft crackling of the burning candles.

Lin Zheng stood there, motionless for a long time.

Arthur walked over and patted him on the shoulder.

"Welcome to Emerald Dream City."

The old detective's voice was filled with endless sarcasm.

"Here, both God and the devil are on vacation; the human world is purgatory."

Lin Zheng shook his head, forcing himself to look away from the direction of that small room.

We began checking each item one by one and making a preliminary, simple assessment.

one two three four……

Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen...

Most of them die from rapid hypothermia caused by freezing rain or excessive use of enhancers. Freezing rain with 99% humidity can cause people to freeze to death quickly in two or three hours if they are outdoors.

fifteen.

He walked toward the last corpse and knelt down.

The white sheets were very thin, and the outline of the body underneath could be vaguely seen through them.

It appeared to be a young man, rather thin.

His hand reached for a corner of the white cloth, his fingertips stiff.

He told himself that this was just a job.

A pile of parts.

A mixture of tissues, muscles, and bones that needs to be sorted and labeled.

He grabbed the corner of the cloth and suddenly ripped it open.

A young man's face was revealed.

His face had taken on an eerie bluish-purple hue due to the cold and lack of oxygen. His eyes were half-open, his pupils cloudy, and a trace of bewilderment remained before his death.

Lin Zheng's breathing stopped completely in that instant.

His pupils suddenly shrank to the size of pinpoints.

He recognized the face.

Despite the swelling and deformity, he still recognized her.

He was a classmate Lin Zheng had met a few times at school, the white boy who would smile at him kindly in the library and discuss the same course with him.

The young man Arthur mentioned, burdened with decades of student loans.

His brother had just come to get him some food, and now he was lying here.

"Josh Vic".