WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Potter

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◈ Hiding a House in the Apocalypse ◈

Chapter 38: Cold Wave

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When systems collapse, it means losing services we had taken for granted.

Weather forecasts were one of them.

They were always cursed at for getting things wrong, but who else was there to analyze and judge the weather?

The past three days had been warm.

By both the seasonal calendar and the regular calendar, it had been perfect spring weather.

Then the world changed in a single day.

An unannounced north wind swept in overnight and began freezing everything.

The outdoor thermometer read minus 32 degrees Celsius.

The bunker had become a giant refrigerator. The water in the toilet at the exact center of the first floor had frozen solid.

If Duchamp, famous for displaying a urinal, saw this, wouldn't he have called it Frozen Fountain[1]?

I waited for the sun to rise, then went outside.

Despite the cold, not a single snowflake had fallen.

The sky was absurdly clear, and the air was painfully clean.

“...Hoo.”

What was I supposed to do?

There was not much charge left in the storage batteries.

Beginning of Spring had already passed, and the temperature had been climbing lately, so there had been plenty of chances to run the generator. I hadn't.

The oil depot's fuel had dropped below half, so it was time to start conserving. It had seemed like spring was here, so I hadn't run it, and now a brutal cold snap had arrived.

I needed to run the generator even during the day.

The benefits were clear. It could keep the pipes from freezing, reduce my chances of frostbite, and cut the risk of freezing to death in this cold wave by 99 percent.

But running the generator at full power during the day would inevitably produce exhaust.

I had complete emission-reduction equipment, so it would not be visible from too far away.

At night, unless the moon was exceptionally bright, it was almost impossible to spot.

But it was daytime now. And the air quality was excellent.

If a faint plume of smoke rose into the sky from this desolate abandoned land, it would look much larger than I thought.

The choice was simple.

Would I hide and endure the cold, or run the generator while risking discovery by some hostile presence I didn't know about?

I didn't consider lighting a fire inside the bunker. That was just another way of saying suicide.

“...”

My first choice was to endure the cold.

I thought I would survive it without electricity, like some primitive man, using only cold-weather gear and my own body heat.

But primitive people hadn't survived winters naked.

They had fire.

I did have hand warmers, little fires of a sort, but a campfire burns at 1,300 degrees while a hand warmer reaches 40 degrees...

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

The storage battery died.

The heated water mat laid inside my heating tent cooled with heartbreaking speed, and every moment, the whip of cold lashed at my mind.

I considered drinking to endure it, but alcohol only made the blood circulate faster. Drinking wouldn't light the furnace inside me needed to fight the cold.

Even before the war, plenty of people had drunk themselves to death by freezing.

“...Fuck.”

I wiped my runny nose and cursed without meaning to.

At this rate, I would freeze to death.

Monsters, raiders, whatever. I would die of hypothermia before any of them got me.

Around eleven in the morning, I finally decided to run the generator.

It was the only conclusion that let me survive.

But I wouldn't do it normally.

I threw open the bunker door, faced the blade-like cold, and headed for the fields beyond my territory.

The field was thick with last year's unchecked weeds, now withered like dried radish greens.

I threw down scraps of rags soaked in synthetic oil Ji Younghee had given me and lit them with a match.

The strong wind snuffed the fire out again and again.

When did people curse?

Everyone had their reasons, but for me, it was when my body was suffering.

“Fuck! Shit! They call this oil?”

I kept repeating the task, spitting curses that came out on their own.

Just as the feeling in my hands and feet nearly vanished, the field caught fire.

The flames raced fiercely on the wind, threatening to burn me too, but I stood there for a while, warming myself by the violently surging blaze.

By the time I returned to the bunker, the flames had grown, setting the field ablaze.

Watching black smoke rise endlessly into the sky, I started the generator.

Whiiiiirrrr.

My greatest asset beat like a heart as it ran. I climbed the ladder to the first floor.

The bunker was still an icy cavern, but I already felt warmer.

The heating setup I used most was a heating tent and heated water mat, a combination that gave maximum efficiency at minimum cost.

But there was one more thing.

Ssssss.

The radiators installed throughout the bunker received hot water heated and circulated by a boiler drawing heavily on the generator's power. They released fine steam throughout the rooms, delivering warmth.

This was Park Gyu's true hidden heating system.

Luxurious heating that warmed the entire air, not just the floor.

You could call it my trump card, only activated on special days like Christmas or Lunar New Year.

The fact that these radiators were working properly meant more than warm air. It meant the plumbing had endured this savage cold wave.

I took off my tightly bundled parka and watched the thermometer rise.

The temperature was going up.

I began preparing a meal.

I suddenly wanted curry.

My kitchen was beside the toilet.

People were always surprised that the toilet was in the middle, but it couldn't be helped.

It was installed there for the most efficient arrangement of the water supply and drainage pipes.

If I had wanted, I could have made it feel like an apartment, with three rooms, two bathrooms, walls between them, and everything neatly decorated.

But I was the only one using it. What did the location matter?

More importantly, there was a ventilation duct over the toilet.

It meant odors could be cleared out quickest without installing an extra exhaust vent.

Thock. Thock. Thock.

I cut half-frozen carrots, onions, and potatoes into measured portions.

Water was boiling in a wok on the induction cooktop across from me, and beside it, an unwrapped block of Japanese curry roux waited to charge in like a kamikaze.

Naturally, the temperature inside the bunker rose quickly.

Even with the outside temperature at minus 28 degrees, the thermometer kept rising, nearing 15 degrees above zero.

That was practically spring.

I could have turned off the generator then, but the storage batteries hadn't fully charged yet.

I had taken the risk of turning it on, so I had to get my money's worth.

I filled the wheeled bathtub beneath the shower beside the toilet with the hot water I had so generously secured.

After washing up and shaving properly, I climbed into the tub.

“...Wow.”

I felt alive again.

I was already alive, but it felt as though new life had entered my body.

The hot bath had the power to thaw not only my frozen body, but my mind as well.

I relaxed languidly as thick steam escaped through the ventilation duct above the toilet.

Who could enjoy such luxury in this age of ruin?

A warm smile naturally spread across my lips, and I let this rare, satisfying time pass.

In the kitchen, the curry simmered down and grew more flavorful.

Yes. There had to be days like this too.

Before the sun set, I checked the surroundings.

The western field had burned black, releasing only white smoke.

There were no people nearby, and the air was still cold.

The outside temperature was minus 28 degrees.

Cold enough to freeze even zombies to death.

* * *

For the second day in a row, I checked in on the sniper.

“Ugh, cold. So damn cold. Fucking Korea!”

The sniper mother and daughter probably didn't need worrying about.

Posting on the boards without fail even in this weather was proof they were doing well enough.

In fact, few posts had appeared in the community over the past two days.

There were a few posts saying they were freezing to death, but that was all.

Few of us doomsdayists would have frozen to death.

Still, typing in a bunker turned into a refrigerator by this bitter cold couldn't have been easy.

No one wanted to lose fingers to frostbite while browsing the community.

After filling my stomach with curry I had made the day before, I went on my morning scout.

The air was still cold, but it was minus 18 degrees.

Definitely better than yesterday.

The air was still clear, and there was no snow.

I breathed white vapor and looked toward the golf course.

I noticed a tiny change.

There was a black dot I hadn't seen before beneath the golf course's gently sloping mound that faced my way.

It looked like a person, but it didn't move.

I grabbed a weapon, left the bunker, and approached carefully.

As expected, it was someone who had frozen to death.

The man had died kneeling, head bowed. Cruelly enough, he was facing my bunker.

I recovered the firearm slung over him.

A K2 rifle. It was Korean-made, and its magazine was full of ammunition.

His pockets held condoms, cold medicine, and, for some reason, mosquito-bite ointment. I took them all.

His clothes were about my size, and his parka was an expensive imported one. I was tempted to take it, but left it alone.

After taking his things, I considered what to do with the body.

Burn it or bury it.

Neither appealed to me.

Fire would stand out, while burial meant the labor of digging through frozen ground.

Throwing it somewhere out of sight would be better.

When the weather warmed a little later, I could decide whether to bury or cremate it.

I grabbed the corpse by its feet and dragged it up the mound.

I had never played golf and had no interest in it, but this golf course was called a country club.

Unlike a public golf course, where anyone could play, only members with expensive memberships could enter.

Old Man Kim had once told me memberships here traded for around 1.8 billion won.

Well, expensive cars had passed through often enough.

When I was worn out from building the bunker, I would look toward the golf course and often see cute little carts puttering over that mound.

Every time, I wondered.

What was beyond that mound?

What other world lay inside a country club with memberships worth 1.8 billion won?

After the war began, I crossed the mound through the empty golf course.

There was nothing there.

Only closely cut, burnt grass, trash from who knew where, and collapsed bungalows faintly showed that this had once been a gathering place for South Korea's upper class.

I was crossing that mound again.

Holding the feet of a corpse belonging to someone I didn't know.

My intention was to throw this body beyond the mound.

If I moved it there for now, I wouldn't be able to see it from my bunker.

That was not simply for appearances. It also meant that wild animals drawn to the corpse would not clutter my view.

“Hoo.”

I reached the crest of the mound, feeling as if I had climbed a mountain summit.

I shut my mouth.

I couldn't help it.

There were more corpses.

Not one, but more than a dozen.

Every one of them had frozen to death.

Some held guns, but some looked like civilians.

The man I had dragged here was not wearing a military uniform either.

Refugees?

Or Pioneers?

I wanted to believe they were raiders, but there were too many elderly people, children, and women for that.

Their frozen bodies, scattered here and there, formed a single straight line. Horribly, that line pointed directly toward my bunker territory.

“...”

I stopped and thought for a moment.

The man I had dragged here had also been looking toward my bunker.

Could they have seen the smoke I made and come here?

In cold that dipped below minus 30 degrees?

There had been smoke from the field too. Why had they come this way?

Could my smoke really have been visible that far away?

Had the smoke from my generator somehow looked prettier than the rough black-and-red smoke from the field, like something out of hell?

Feeling an irritation I couldn't explain, I looked over the corpses.

“Why did you come here...?”

I wished I had the ability to speak with the dead.

I wanted to seize their spirits and ask why they had stubbornly come toward me in such cold weather.

I wanted to ask why they had ruined my rare good mood like this.

My anger did not lead to fire.

Leaving the would-be unwelcome visitors behind, I left the golf course.

There were unfamiliar footprints inside my territory.

I remembered the armed corpses at the golf course.

They had all frozen miserably to death, but they had been well armed.

There were seven automatic rifles alone.

I couldn't take them all, so I took only the ammunition and removed the firing pins.

Could there have been more than that?

Had there been another group, one that found my bunker after the others failed to reach it?

“...”

Feeling my blood turn cold, I set down the rifle I had taken and slowly approached the bunker.

Halfway there, the footprints disappeared, replaced by a dragging trail that looked as though someone had crawled.

There was a firearm abandoned beside the fourth dummy bunker.

The crawling trail became increasingly messy and shallower.

It continued all the way to my main bunker.

At the entrance to my well-concealed main bunker, a man had collapsed on his knees.

There was no sign of life.

The burrs clinging to his clothes like tumors suggested that he had crossed the mountain.

Was that why our paths had split?

Between throwing away his gun and crawling along without care, it looked as though he had reached the entrance to my territory on vague impulse and instinct, without any particular awareness that my main bunker was here.

Looking at the face of the man, who appeared to be only in his early twenties, I let out a cold remark without meaning to.

“Hole in one.”

It seemed this cold wave had frozen more than the sky, the earth, and nameless people.

* * *

Defender: Why are you so down?

Defender: The cold wave kept you safe, didn't it?

SKELTON: (SKELTON suddenly beams) Really?

Defender: Want to join up with us?

Just as I was about to type:

“YES!”

“...”

My joy cooled at once.

I realized halfway through that what I was seeing was a dream.

Ten days had passed since Defender stopped contacting me.

People murmured that even Defender of all people had failed to survive this apocalypse.

“...”

When I opened my eyes, familiar darkness greeted me.

The kind of pitch-black darkness where nothing could be seen.

Without thinking, like a blind man, I felt around by remembering where everything was and turned on the computer.

There was no reason.

I just wanted to see people.

I wanted to pour something out.

Even if no one responded to me, I wanted to see that they were alive and moving.

There was a message.

A message from Defender: SKELTON, did you miss me? You didn't freeze to death, did you?

A few simple sentences could stir a person's emotions.

“...Fuck.”

I felt something hot running down both cheeks.

It was both joyful and irritating.

For Park Gyu to get teary-eyed over someone like that.

But the heat running down my cheeks was real, not a dream.

Tap tap.

I moved my frozen fingers and typed.

SKELTON: It's been a while.

A message from Defender: Is that all? Don't you have anything else to say? You waited for me, didn't you? Right?

“Ha.”

Why was this bastard acting so smug?

Was there not some clever expression that could show the joy of our reunion without hurting my pride?

Ah, a sentence I had seen somewhere flashed through my mind as if I had seen it in a dream.

Tap tap.

“Hoo.”

Blowing on my fingers, I sent a reply.

SKELTON: (SKELTON denies it) I-I didn't miss you or anything, okay?

A message from Defender: Wow...

A message from Defender: I've thought this before, but aren't you terrible at the internet?

SKELTON: !

Footnotes:

[1] Duchamp's Fountain displayed a urinal as art. The frozen toilet makes it a “Frozen Fountain.”

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