Police officer Chen Shu

Chapter 333: No Guilt
Chen Shu and the young firefighter walked over.

At the epicenter of the accident, two searchlights placed on the concrete guardrail shone directly onto the viaduct from the left and right.

Whether it was intentional or not, the inner track was completely dark, a vast expanse of black, separated by a raised section of track bed slope about 30cm high; while the outer shoulder was illuminated throughout, making it clearly visible.

It must be for the convenience of passengers and rescue personnel, Chen Shu thought to himself as he glanced at it from a distance.

As I got closer, I casually peeked into the inner track.

All that could be seen were corpses, one after another, placed neatly side by side on the laid-out steel rails, with one or two of them not even reaching the shoulders.

Quietly.

As if asleep.

Although the young firefighter's earlier answer had given Chen Shu some mental preparation, when he actually witnessed the horrific scene, he felt a sudden shock in his mind. He forgot to breathe and stood there dumbfounded.

Chen Shu stiffened his neck and slowly raised his head to look at the track ahead.

A row of corpses disappeared into the darkness, with no end in sight.

Seeing this, the young firefighter following behind gently patted Chen Shu on the shoulder and comforted him, "Brother, this place is alright, everything is intact. Our squad leader put the broken pieces into bags; look at the scene before..."

This kind of comfort is worse than no comfort at all!

Chen Shu had worked in the public security bureau for many years, and all sorts of corpses were commonplace to him. For example, there was the case of an elderly person living alone who died two or three months later and was not discovered until later; the case of the giant corpse that was submerged in water for a week and then retrieved from the water; and the most outrageous case was a body that died violently in the wild.

When the body was discovered, it was already decomposed, and the stench was suffocating. Crucially, the flesh was loose and crumbled easily, covered in countless wriggling maggots. After being doused with disinfectant, the external maggots disappeared, but many small worms continued to crawl in and out of the internal organs.

All that has been said cannot compare to the direct impact that the scene at that moment had on Chen Shu.

Although police officers are used to seeing life and death, seeing so many living people suddenly killed is extremely shocking.

Chen Shuchang took a breath and looked at the young firefighter in front of him who was also engaged in the rescue work. He tried to be calm and said, "Let's go, let's get to work."

"Okay, brother!"

The two, one big and one small, formed a transport team. Without a word, they each took a white, sealed bag meant for the body and joined the back of the transport line.

The line was short and there weren't many people. Apart from the rustling sounds as the bodies were being loaded, the whole place was very quiet.

One body after another.

Lift it up and put it in.

go away.

The first body the two men moved was a girl in her early twenties, wearing a pink coat, youthful and beautiful, but unfortunately her spine was broken.

They said it was a two-person effort to move the body, but when Chen Shu lifted the head and shoulders of the corpse, the young firefighter just stood there dumbfounded, staring at the girl's face.

Chen Shu thought for a moment, then bent down and picked the girl up in his arms, signaling the young firefighter to open the sealed bag before sending her inside.

They zipped up the bag and carried it down the bridge, one after the other. On the way, Chen Shu casually asked, "Why were you staring at her face like that?"

The young firefighter suddenly stopped, almost causing Chen Shu, who was caught off guard, to fall down the steps.

"I just wanted to get a better look. To see roughly how old she was."

Chen Shu was taken aback, then softly said, "Let's go."

After moving the bodies, Chen Shu went back onto the bridge. He wanted to do something else, otherwise his empty head would have to be filled with that row of corpses again.

He couldn't bear it.

At the point where the two vehicles collided on the overpass, the empty front running gear and half of the rear vehicle landed directly on the roof of the last carriage of the front vehicle. The rear half of the carriage was crushed and deformed, and the entire rear half of the vehicle was completely broken apart, with the shattered body and seats scattered haphazardly on the ground.

Back on the bridge, Chen Shu saw the young firefighter who had moved the body with him earlier, now carrying a square box and preparing to enter the cabin with another firefighter.

Chen Shu went up and asked, and learned that what he was carrying was a technological rescue device specifically used for searching for signs of life behind obstacles.

This video life detector wasn't as sophisticated as Chen Shu had originally imagined. For example, it wouldn't be able to scan a jumbled mess of stacked seats or collapsed hulls, using X-ray vision, thermal imaging, or human body electromagnetic wave reflection to determine if there were any living people buried underneath.

It actually uses a thin, flexible tube with real-time video capabilities to bypass the broken, heavy hull and scattered seats to explore the underground space buried beneath, and to see if there are still living people buried there.

The pipe wasn't long, about seven or eight meters. Because it was manually controlled by the firefighters behind it, twisting and turning it around, if it extended a little too much and hit a very hard piece of debris or a corpse, it couldn't go any further.

According to the firefighter, another firefighter had previously been carrying a sound detector. The principle was similar, using a flexible hose to listen for sounds from below, but it was removed because of the surrounding noise and its effectiveness was poor.

Chen Shu followed in to assist the two firefighters, and the three of them searched row by row, leaving no corner unchecked.

After searching several times, no surviving passengers were found except in the area at the far end of the carriage that had been crushed by the carriages behind.

The three returned to the end of the carriage.

Looking at the collapsed rear of the train carriage, where debris piled up like a small mountain, Chen Shu asked doubtfully, "Could there still be people trapped underneath?"

The young firefighter holding the thin tube said, "There shouldn't be anyone there. Although there's a lot of stuff piled up inside, and the tube can't go in. But before you came, we lay up there and listened with a sound detector for a long time, and we didn't hear any unusual noises, not a single one."

Chen Shu straddled the top, reached out and grabbed the edge of a piece of hull debris, gritted his teeth and lifted himself up.

Not moving.

The older fire squad leader said, "No need to try anymore. Our whole squad couldn't even lift it. This thing is probably made of stainless steel; it's very heavy. We can only continue searching after the crane comes and lifts the upper part of the truck away. But I also think there's probably no one inside. With such a small space, even if someone were there, they would be crushed to death."

Chen Shu nodded and agreed, "You're professionals, so you should be right."

Upon hearing this, the fire squad leader sighed deeply and said dejectedly, "The authoritarian mindset is unacceptable; it can kill people."

Upon hearing this and seeing the squad leader's sudden dejected state, Chen Shu knew that the other person must have a story to tell, but given the current situation, it was not appropriate to ask anyone for information.

He comforted us, saying, "We've done our best and left the rest to fate. We have a clear conscience."

(End of this chapter)