They were only four hours out of Shingdian and it was still dark when they saw the military trucks stopped on a cratered stretch of road that had been bombed during the day. Medics were tending to wounded civilians. Lamplight threw long shadows behind soldiers and civilians. Men and women crouched at the side of the road, keening over unresponsive shapes. A crew of exhausted-looking workers helped soldiers pile long bundles onto a flatbed truck. With a pang, the professor realized the bundles were corpses.

At first, Minghua 123 tried helping the injured but the army doctor ordered them to keep moving as quickly as they could. They had to get beyond the reach of Japanese aircraft. To linger meant more risk.

“The students’ safety is your priority,” the doctor said to Professor Kang. “I shouldn’t even have stopped to treat these people. We’re already short on medical supplies. The more we do here, the less we have for our soldiers.”

“How far inland should we go before it’s safe?” Kang asked. “How far can Japanese planes fly?”

“The range of those planes isn’t the issue,” the army doctor said. “It’s the front lines you need to worry about. They shift all the time and if they shift farther west, the enemy will be able to fly deeper into the province. Consider yourselves always at risk. Until you get to Chengtu, anyway.”

“How can we find out where the battle lines have moved?” Professor Kang said.

The doctor snorted. “If you find out, you’re better off than we are. Communications are terrible, always late, and not even accurate. Just keep going west and south as fast as you can.”

There was very little chatter among the students after the sobering sight of the injured and dead. The first they’d seen. Their journey was no longer an adventure. A few of the male students trudged with rifles over their shoulders, old equipment the army had given them, along with some rudimentary training, in case they ran into bandits. But the guns were all for show, just a deterrent. They had fewer than two dozen bullets between them.

“WE CAN’T BE that far from Chuanjiao,” Meirong said. “The sun’s already coming up. We should’ve arrived an hour ago.”

“It’s because we stopped to try and help those wounded refugees,” Lian said. “And the wagons had to go very slowly through the fields since the road was bombed out.”

Minghua 123 had also stopped at a village to refill canteens, a short break that had turned into a long rest. Daylight showed them a flat road and fields of newly harvested wheat, the short bristly stalks of pale gold standing straight up from the brown earth. The travelers walked over a small bridge, its stone balustrades carved in cloud and dragon patterns, a relic of a time when the village had been more prosperous. The stream below the bridge was just a thin trickle.