WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Potter

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◈ Hiding a House in the Apocalypse ◈

Chapter 39: Golf (1)

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Defender: Proof

Everyone in Defender's kill proof, posted after a long absence, was a soldier.

Like Nazi German soldiers in World War II, they were festooned with all sorts of ribbon bars and medals.

People said they were the product of a country that claimed to have transitioned to an all-volunteer military but had no choice but to maintain conscription in practice. Still, from a third party's perspective, they weren't exactly pleasant to look at.

It was common knowledge among soldiers and civilians alike that the more extensive a soldier's ribbon rack, the more seasoned they were.

Every soldier Defender had killed had enough ribbon bars to cover their shoulders.

They must have been career soldiers who'd held the front line.

Defender: The cold wave saved me.

The soldiers in Defender's proof had no external wounds.

They had all frozen to death.

Caught in the sudden cold wave, they had fallen asleep without knowing what to do, and that had led to their deaths.

The cold wave, which had come without warning, caused enormous casualties.

Those living in harsh conditions, where they couldn't even hope for heating or proper insulation, took the full brunt of it.

Countless people died, and even more suffered from frostbite.

The mild days that had hinted at spring before the cold wave came also contributed to the damage.

Like the people who died in my territory.

They said every other house in Seoul had someone who froze to death.

Only three years ago, white steam had risen from every home's chimney in Seoul. Now black smoke rose everywhere.

Corpses were burned in heaps on every corner and in every square, and as if consoling the dead who had frozen to death, crowds warmed themselves beside the burning bodies.

Seoul's decline had been underway for a long time, but this cold wave had dealt it a fatal blow in its own way.

Fortunately, we doomsdayists endured the cold wave.

Apparently, a few users who hadn't been active much had disappeared, but no one I knew had died, and the board's population hadn't fallen by much.

Still, everyone knew things weren't going to get better.

And they didn't.

Message from Defender: Corps Faction deserters are turning into small raider groups and looting everywhere.

Message from Defender: I think it's about time to move.

In the east, Corps Faction deserters were running rampant.

Their threat was deadlier than any enemy we'd faced so far.

To make matters worse, users who had lived near the front line confessed that their territories had become half Monster and mutation territory.

lifeismagic: Since the soldiers aren't holding the front line, Monsters and mutations are getting through from North Korea with a free pass.

anon213: I'm in Sokcho, and a Monster came trudging into the outskirts. Then that whole area started changing. Gray, I guess? Nobody can do anything about it.

qwer740128: I'm in Hanam. First time I've ever seen a mutation. So this is what you people have been living with.

The western region I belonged to was relatively safe.

Military forces under the National Assembly's banner were preserving their strength around Incheon and western Seoul, and the government was functioning more or less.

But in the outskirts, an old problem reared its head.

Boss_domingo: Those Pioneer bastards are at it again?

keystone: All the ones here froze to death, so I was breathing easy. Now another whole bunch have crawled in.

Anonymous848: When it gets warmer, there'll probably be even more. They call them Pioneers, but the country just dumps them there.

If the Corps Faction weakened, that meant the National Assembly Faction had room to breathe again.

It looked like they were sending the Pioneers they'd deployed to the front back out into the field.

Before the peaceful winter had even ended, the new year presented us with a harsh bill.

My territory was no exception.

Crackle.

The walkie-talkie caught a frequency full of static.

“Park Gyu? Park Gyu?”

A familiar voice called my name.

Whose voice was that?

I definitely remembered it.

“Baek... ...here...”

There were many reasons for interference, such as radio disturbance nearby or heightened sunspot activity, but the biggest reason was distance.

When I adjusted the sensitivity for long range, the indistinct voice became clear.

“This is Baek Seunghyeon. Please respond if you can hear me.”

So it was him after all.

A senior one class above me.

He'd handled all kinds of dirty work under the NCRC. What did he want with me?

The last time I'd seen him, he'd been called mister by a junior far beneath him while doing odd jobs.

I was a little glad he was alive, but also a little worried.

Especially when he was looking for me from so far away.

“I heard it from Kim Daram. You live around here, don't you? Contact me if you're there. I have something important to tell you.”

At the name Kim Daram, something inside me lurched. But cold reason immediately stomped it down like a combat boot.

I held back and waited for what he would say next.

“Kim Daram told me you were around here. Kim Daram is in an extremely dangerous situation right now. She's asking for rescue. She can only survive if you're here. Aren't you nearby? I heard you were around here.”

Baek Seunghyeon kept talking.

But the longer he spoke, the more his sincerity, or perhaps the effort in his words, seemed to rapidly fade.

Then a faint grumbling voice that seemed to come from far away echoed through the speaker.

“I don't think this is the place.”

It wasn't Baek Seunghyeon's voice.

It was another unidentified man's voice.

There were at least two of them.

The transmission soon cut out, but I heard the long, familiar sound of a motorcycle engine in the distance.

Baek Seunghyeon was leaving.

Leaving behind a chilling unease and a disturbing question.

“...”

I'd read in a book once that when collapse reached a certain stage, an age would come when people ate people.

It seemed we'd entered that age.

* * *

It happened three days after the mass freezing deaths at the golf course.

“This is the 22nd Pioneer Corps headquarters. This is the 22nd Pioneer Corps headquarters. Any survivors from the 333rd Pioneer Unit, respond. I repeat. Any survivors from the 333rd Pioneer Unit, respond.”

The Pioneers had appeared in my territory again.

[ 22nd Pioneer Corps ]

The flag flying from the five-ton truck in the distance was familiar.

Had I seen it at Cat Mom's apartment?

The place where elderly people had been abandoned and killed in groups.

“It appears they're all dead. My condolences. We'll take good care of the bodies and equipment.”

Even after driving so many people to their deaths, the voice over the radio sounded remarkably cheerful.

“Ooooh?”

The walkie-talkie fell silent after that bizarre rolling of the tongue.

A moment later, a man's clear voice spread darkly through the radio along with a mocking laugh.

“There's someone around here, right? Huh? Some little human bastard around here? You only took the firing pins out of the crappy guns, but took every one in good condition?”

Human insight wasn't all that remarkable.

In the end, people could only judge things from a first-person perspective.

I'd made the best decision I could at the time.

I collected the usable firearms and removed the firing pins from those I couldn't carry.

If another refugee or raider got their hands on those assault rifles, they would pose a direct threat to the person closest to them, me.

But who could have known that the moment the cold wave eased up, the Pioneer Corps would come swarming in so quickly?

The people who died at the golf course hadn't had a flag.

Or perhaps they had thrown away that useless thing called a flag amid the deadly cold wave.

“I'll give you one minute.”

The man over the radio demanded that I show myself in a low voice.

“You picked on the wrong person. I'm Colonel Jo Seongyong, commander of the 22nd Pioneer Corps. Chihuahua Jo Seongyong. Once I bite, I never let go!”

Several drones rose into the sky above the golf course ridge, and the Pioneers who had arrived in separate trucks spread out in every direction to search the area.

Naturally, no one came to my territory, which looked like a desolate field of ancient burial mounds.

One drone approached at low altitude, but soon flew elsewhere.

I shut off all the power, sealed every pipe, and left only the walkie-talkie on as I listened in on their transmissions.

“Colonel. This is Go Min-su. We combed the U.S. military base area, but there's nothing there.”

“This is Ha Chung-su. We've searched every unit in Shinhwa Apartments. Nothing unusual.”

“Victory! Sergeant Kang Min-jae reporting. Search of the Dongil-ri ruins is complete, but we found no survivors. Shall we continue the search?”

This group of Pioneers was well armed and well equipped.

They had brought three trucks, an SUV, and even a new lightweight armored vehicle. Each vehicle seemed to have its own team, because they exchanged radio messages constantly.

Maybe that was why.

They didn't seem concerned about security.

Then again, I couldn't rule out the possibility that they were deliberately talking on a public frequency.

When you were being forced into silence, countless transmissions blasting through a walkie-talkie could be violence in themselves.

Jo Seongyong was good at using his advantage to psychologically pressure people.

“Search the nearby streams. If someone's hiding somewhere, there'll be a place that smells like shit and piss. I've never seen a single one of those doomsdayist bastards with a septic tank. They're goddamn bastards whose nature is to care only about themselves, so they'll tell the environment to fuck off and let it all run straight out. Find a sewage pipe with shit residue on it.”

Any doomsdayist fitting Jo Seongyong's description might have felt the ground beneath their feet collapse after hearing that transmission.

But it didn't apply to me.

I'd watched countless survivors while operating in China, and while building my bunker, I had meticulously studied cases from other countries to prepare for the worst.

One of them was the shit-smelling sewage pipe Jo Seongyong was looking for.

I had a septic tank.

I'd gotten the idea from a case in India.

I'd heard of rioting raiders finding wealthy people's bunkers based on the smell of excrement, then dragging them out and killing them.

Installing a septic tank wasn't an easy decision.

Not only was it expensive, since I had to buy equipment to clean the sludge for construction that seemed unnecessary, but as an individual survivalist, I also had to accept the trouble of scooping out the sediment myself.

That labor paid off handsomely.

“Nothing, Colonel. It's very clean. We found some intake pipes used for agriculture, but there are no traces of human waste.”

The group searching the stream reached the valley directly below the hill where my main bunker was located, but they found nothing.

“Really?”

Jo Seongyong sighed over the radio.

“Were there raiders around here?”

“No. The only things reported in this area are remnants of the U.S. military occupying a town and a pack of mutation dogs. I've heard that a group of wandering raiders is running rampant to the southeast. Could they be responsible?”

“Retrieve the drones, charge them, and search every accessible road. If those bastards are moving by vehicle, there'll be traces. Call everyone back.”

The Pioneers who had been searching everywhere gathered at the golf course again.

Even if I hadn't heard their transmissions, I could tell from the way they were gathering like a motley crew.

The enemy hadn't found me and was leaving my territory empty-handed.

It was my victory.

No, wouldn't it be better to call it a victory for individual survivalism?

Collective survivalism, led by Dies Irae, had been gaining ground on the board lately, but that was probably because they hadn't faced enemies this powerful.

Once the deserters from the east came down here, wouldn't they change their minds too?

Maybe because the tension had eased, I was starting to get hungry.

I took out a piece of hardtack, with a texture like a brick, put it in a bowl, and poured lukewarm water from the purifier over it.

It was one of the kinds of human feed you ate to survive.

As I mashed the softened hardtack with a spoon until it became thick like porridge, the walkie-talkie crackled again.

“Go Min-su, take the men and clear the bodies.”

“Yes. On my way.”

“Sergeant Kang, pick out the worst of the remaining guns and hand them to the new arrivals.”

“Yes, understood.”

“Pil-jae, contact headquarters and tell them to send the dogs.”

The final transmission in the endless stream of radio chatter ended with Jo Seongyong's cold threat.

“Hey, thief. You're listening, right? I know everything. Just wait. We'll unleash the dogs soon. It'll take about three days. Before then, carefully prepare the guns you stole and compensation for the damages, then leave them somewhere visible from the golf course. This isn't a warning. It's a notice.”

When the truck at the golf course sounded its horn, fully armed men climbed into its covered cargo bed.

Jo Seongyong seemed to have remained inside a vehicle from beginning to end, because I never saw him.

Soon, the truck carrying people vanished beyond the ridge with a roar.

“...Whew.”

It looked like I'd managed to get through the crisis somehow.

But it was too early to relax.

Pretending to leave while keeping surveillance behind was a fairly classic tactic.

Sure enough, around evening, the sound of a drone flew so close above my bunker that it seemed to graze it before heading north.

They really had left a drone behind.

They must have kept it high enough that its sound could barely be heard and used it to watch this entire area.

Of course, this wouldn't be the end.

Jo Seongyong had said he would unleash the dogs in three days.

I made my own preparations.

I erased scents, sprayed dog repellent imported from the United States all over the place, and blocked every bunker entrance with dirt and rocks.

Preparing for the worst, I moved the household supplies from the first floor of the main bunker into the generator room, then installed the Claymore mines Rebecca had given me at intervals in their place.

Since people attacking bunkers seemed to favor tear gas, I made sure the ventilation controls worked properly.

Finally, I inspected every bullet one by one and sharpened two axes.

Three days later, two buses arrived at the golf course.

“?”

Had they brought enough search dogs to fill two buses?

That was ridiculous.

But reality was stranger than I imagined.

The dogs Jo Seongyong had mentioned were ordinary people.

They looked like neighborhood men and women, the sort of people you might see anywhere. Without knowing why, they appeared in the wilderness, looking around in the bitter wind at minus twelve degrees Celsius.

A loudspeaker boomed from beyond the golf course.

“Dear citizens. A criminal who has killed dozens of people is here. Your job is to find that bad man. Whoever finds him will receive a first-class family ticket aboard a refugee ship to Jeju Island!”

To find one person, Park Gyu, more than a hundred people were moving.

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