This is a work of fan fiction, written in homage to the 2009 Taiwanese police action series, Pizi Ying Xiong or Black & White. It is not for sale. For the full disclaimer, click here.
For Part One, click here.
For Part Two, click here.
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With one lithe movement Ying Xiong hurled himself to one side, grabbing at the overhanging bough of a tree that stood at the edge of the path. Hanging from the branch he managed to swing around and land a hard kick on dog’s flank. It yelped as it skidded past on braced legs, its paws failing to find traction in the mud.
‘I’m a police officer!’ he shouted in English. Maybe the foreign woman, seeing a strange man wearing a hooded jacket on a lonely path had feared an attack, and had taken self defence a step or two too far. He doubted it, though. He dropped down from the branch and kept a wary eye on both his assailants.
‘Go away!’ he shouted. ‘Take your dog and go!
He wished he had his handgun in case he needed to lend authority to his words, but he was on leave, and he had followed the rules.
Photo credit: here
The woman smirked at him as if registering his naivete and said something sharp to the dog. It came at him again with bared teeth, very fast. He stepped back only to have his footing give way from under him. He suddenly found himself sliding rapidly down an embankment, caught up in a shute of thick, primal smelling mud. Several meters down his feet finally lodged against the bole of a tree fern and this checked his descent. In the fog he had not realized that the path had run along the lip of a ravine.
He caught his breath and tried to scramble back up the embankment, grasping hold of every shrub and fern that offered a moment’s purchase before it pulled free of the mud. He could see very little. Fog clung thick and low to everything and by now with nightfall it had become darker still.
He could hear the dog panting on the pathway up above and he headed for the sound. He felt a rush of pure rage now and a determination to bring these two down. Who was she anyway? This was no frightened tourist. Maybe she was an assassin from a local triad. Or maybe she was from Sarkozy.
Clinging to a sapling, Ying Xiong had nearly regained the pathway when the woman loomed again out of the fog and brought her walking stick down hard, aiming for his head. He broke its trajectory with his hand and wrenching it from her grasp, he flung it out into the abyss. The dog growled and rushed at him but just then the sapling that he had been entrusting with his weight uprooted itself and he slid down the slope again. He tried to regain some kind of grip but the soil was too wet and loose. He continued to slide in an avalanche of mud and vegetation, a worse fall this time, much faster than before, down and down…
Finally he burst feet first through a screen of ferns and bracken and plunged into a pool of icy water that went over his head. He gasped and swallowed mouthfuls of water but managed to come to the surface. He was in a narrow creek that ran at the bottom of the ravine. He found his footing on the slimy rock bed and discovered when he stood up that the water in places was only waist deep. He felt unhurt other than from a dozen scratches and gouges scored by vegetation on his way down. And his right palm stung painfully from where the woman’s stick had smacked into it.
Suddenly he saw a narrow, concentrated beam of blue light illuminating the fog only centimeters in front of his face. Was it a torch or did she have a firearm, he wondered. Taking no chances, he threw himself towards the near bank, close to where he’d slid down. There, seasons of rain-fed waters had carved out an overhang. He scrambled under it on his hands and knees. Here the water was very shallow. If the foreign woman wanted to shoot him, he thought, she’d have to come down and find him. The dog probably wouldn’t be able to manage the slope. Anyway, one way or another he’d have the advantage of them because he’d hear them coming.
Peering out from his hiding place, he could still see the eerie blue light moving around, from time to time touching the rippled surface of the water, but after a few moments it vanished. He thought he heard a sharp bark from the dog but then there was nothing more from above. There was a small waterfall just upstream of his hiding place and its steady rumble tended to deaden other sounds.
Ying Xiong rolled onto his back, holding himself just above the water on his elbows, catching his breath. By now water had soaked his jeans and penetrated under his jacket, but strangely the water that at first had felt so icy now seemed quite warm. He remembered that this was after all a region of hot springs. Perhaps there was one nearby that fed into this stream.
He thought he’d stay where he was for a few minutes more, just to be sure his attackers had indeed moved on. As he waited he felt overtaken by a sense of intense and powerful well being He’d been attacked from behind by a ruthless female thug and her killer dog and he had survived. Perhaps when he told Pizi about this escapade he could claim he had at least come out of it even.
His mind wandered and he considered that now that Pizi knew his beloved fast food girl was still alive, he would release whatever hold he had over Chen Lin. She would in time realise her pursuit of his handsome partner was hopeless and would turn to him, Ying Xiong, as her friend, confidant, and maybe at long last, something more. And with the return of Gao Yi, there was every chance he could counter this threat through clever police work and get his career back on track. There would definitely be a chance to atone for the death of Section Chief Chen.
He began to feel drowsy and as long as the water remained warm, he thought that there was no reason to move. The climb back up to the path would be very arduous and perhaps he should rest for awhile longer. Some minutes later, however, something startled him out of his torpor. It was the sound of applause and a repeated piano dissonance, incongruous in a natural setting. It was the beginning of a song by an indie band–the ringtone of his mobile phone.
His phone was still in the inner pocket of his jacket inside the waterproof bag. Exasperated he smacked at it and prodded it through his jacket and managed to break off the call without having to fish it out.
Under the overhang he luxuriated in the warmth with just his face above the water. He hoped the caller would leave him alone. He was all right where he was. He must have dozed off because he was startled when this time his phone vibrated insistently, over his heart. He jabbed at it but it wouldn’t turn off. After a while it stopped. He had just dozed off once more when it buzzed again. It was very annoying but he realized he’d have to answer it if only to tell the person to leave him alone. He sat up, hitting his head of the rock face above him but eventually he managed to retrieve his phone from his pocket and the waterproof bag where it had been nesting with his camera.
With bleary eyes he made out the message. It was from Zai Tian. I’m with Hao Ke and his mother, it read. Where are you?
With a tremulous and erratic thumb he managed to punch out: The river is my good friend. With that, he mashed the send button, turned the phone off and shoved it into a side pocket of his jacket.
He lay back in the water and began to dream in pleasant, multi-coloured arabesques. But soon into these visions stalked a youth with hot, mad, scum-rimmed eyes, who said mockingly, ‘You will be so overcome you won’t be able to do anything.’
Gao Yi. He remembered then that the drug lord had said this to him once before, on the metro, when he had been affected by Dreamer.
Ying Xiong sat up spluttering. While dreaming of Gao Yi, his face had slipped under the water. He was suddenly trembling with cold. He water now felt freezing. Had it ever really been warm, or had he imagined it?He wondered what had come over him. Suddenly clear headed again, he thought of hypothermia and knew he had to move, fast. He began to crawl out from under the overhang but his limbs felt heavy and lethargic. He clambered awkwardly over the barrier of rocks that formed the little waterfall and into another small pool where the bank might be less steep. He could hardly see at all. He pulled out his phone—maybe the screen would offer a little light, but the water had got to it and it would not turn on. He found his camera still in the waterproof bag and by the light of the flash, he was able to pick out a section of slope that looked at least possible to climb.
He set off feeling around for handholds that tore away at once and would not bear his weight. On his third try he had made good progress when an entire stratum of soil fell away and he plunged downwards again in another cascade of mud. This time he landed hard in the creek bed, his shoulder blade cracking against a rock. He was trembling violently now from cold and exertion.
When he attacked the bank again and found he could not lift his left arm above his head. This is becoming very serious, he thought.
Just then he heard some commotion and saw a flash of light coming from the path above. He pressed his face into the mud and lay still. The female assassin might have returned, this time with reinforcements.
‘Wu Ying Xiong!’ he heard a familiar voice, shouting. ‘You idiot! Where are you?’
It was Zai Tian.
He tried to shout, ‘Down here!’ but he felt so weak his voice came out as a dull croak. He tried again but could not make himself heard against the rush of the waterfall.
‘Wu Ying Xiong!’ his partner shouted again.
[to be continued]