WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 161: A Bridge Too Far (9)

──────

Bzzzt......... bzzzzzzzt......... bzzzt.........

Gyeoul was about to leave the day care center when the familiar static made him step back. Tan Guosheng, who had been following close behind, ran into him and landed on his backside. His groan of “Aiya” sounded oddly similar to Korean. He quickly got back up and pressed himself against the inside of the wall. Keeping watch outside, he asked in a cracked voice,

“What is it? Is something out there?”

“There’s static on the radio. It’s probably a Dianxing. Since it isn’t a randomly repeated transmission, it’s a directional radio wave. If we go out like this, there’s a good chance we’ll be detected.”

“Dianxing... I see. Considering the terrain, it must be fairly close.”

Just as Grumble was called Taowu, Tricksters were called Dianxing. Literally translated, it meant electric orangutan. It was a funny name, but this too was actually taken from myth.

The monster called xing was said to resemble a human and speak human language. It was cunning too. A fitting name for a Trickster.

Tan Guosheng understood Gyeoul right away thanks to America’s disaster broadcasts.

‘As long as it doesn’t cause social unrest, there’s no reason to hide information about mutants.’

It would be especially useful for civilian disaster preparedness. If people knew the signs of mutant appearances, faster reports could be expected too. There was no guarantee that the other side of the blockade would always remain a safe zone. According to Joanna, the FBI was plagued by false reports, but Gyeoul thought there would have been even more if the information had been treated as classified. Ignorance was the mother of fear.

Why were people afraid of the dark?

Gyeoul checked the exits in other directions. Static could be heard there too. Two subtly different noises overlapped. At least two Tricksters, or three or more that Gyeoul could not distinguish. This many special mutants. Was this what should be expected from the origin point of the North American infection?

“Ha. Avoiding a pit only to fall into a well. I almost want to burn a banknote or two...”

Lamenting that one hardship only led to another, Tan Guosheng muttered something superstitious. During the ominous seventh month of the lunar calendar, quite a few Chinese people burned at least one banknote. The idea was to appease ghosts with money and drive away misfortune. Gyeoul remembered a Hong Kong noir film he had seen long ago. A scene where a man in sunglasses lit a cigarette with a banknote. He had not known it then, but looking back, it must have been a bit of direction steeped in a uniquely Chinese sentiment.

“A living radar had to show up at a time like this. We really must be cursed with bad luck.”

Gyeoul put the brakes on that downward spiral.

“Stop that. The fact that neither of us has been hurt yet is rare good fortune. If Lieutenant Colonel Tan were fated to die, you would never have made it this far. Heaven is on our side.”

After the goddess of face came the goddess of fate, was it? Tan Guosheng swallowed a sigh.

“If only we knew what direction they were in, we could move using cover.”

Then he stared at the facility entrance where the children’s bodies were strewn about. More precisely, at the hallway beyond it.

“Do you think there might be something like tinfoil in there?”

Gyeoul immediately realized what he was thinking. It was a decent idea. As Tan Guosheng mocked himself, saying he was indulging in useless fantasies, Gyeoul said,

“Let’s look. It’s a facility for children. It wouldn’t be strange for it to have a simple kitchen.”

Day care center. That was clearly what the sign said. The playground alone made it obvious, though.

What they wanted was cooking foil. It was also the simplest material for making a Faraday cage. If they made a concave dish with it and fitted it over the radio antenna, they could limit the receiving direction. Then it would be possible to find the bearing from which the Trickster was firing radio waves.

Gyeoul was surprised this was his first time encountering the idea. It seemed like something that belonged in an anti-epidemic combat manual. New material was being added every week, wasn’t it? What had started as a thin booklet was now as thick as a decent dictionary. But after thinking it over, there was no reason the U.S. military would need this kind of response plan.

‘They have air superiority...’

The U.S. military ruled the sky. During Christmas, hadn’t Camp Roberts detected the Trickster’s radio emissions in real time too? An airborne electronic warfare aircraft must have located it through triangulation.

Gyeoul was the special case. The field on Christmas Eve, the rainy night by the lake, and the escape through a foggy city. For most U.S. troops, these were rare battles they would never have anything to do with in their lives.

Still, it was an improvised response worth putting in a manual. Even obvious and simple ideas did not come easily in tense situations. It followed the same logic as the importance of standard procedure. Unless something was carved into the body to the point of mechanical reaction, it was hard to use in actual combat.

He should suggest it when he got back.

“You can see a country’s future by looking at how it feeds its children. Damn it, those stupid Americans would have collapsed eventually even without the Corpse Plague, Morgellons.”

Tan Guosheng disparaged America all over again because of the shabby kitchen. They could not find basic cooking tools, let alone cooking foil. What they found instead were countless frozen food wrappers. And empty plastic bottles. Even the infamous public school lunches had to be better than this.

It was a place stained with the sorrows of poor Americans. Gyeoul knew America before his death had not been any better than this. Why had inequality only deepened?

‘But is that really something a Chinese person should be saying...?’

Thinking that, Gyeoul fiddled with an empty plastic bottle. Combined with the children’s clothes, it seemed like he could improve the suppressor he already had. If portability and accuracy were not factors, a gun’s noise could be reduced to an extreme degree.

After thinking a little longer, though, he decided to give up. They did not know how many more times they would have to go in and out of puddles. It would be a problem if the gun became cumbersome.

Tan Guosheng was trying to stick the radio’s antenna through the gap of a small window. Bzzzt... Bzzzt... Static leaked out at regular intervals. Unlike Gyeoul, the officer did not have a bone-conduction receiver.

“What do we do? Wait until they disappear?”

It was the officer’s anxious suggestion.

The surrounding terrain was complicated. Abandoned vehicles, fallen trees, collapsed houses, and the like were obstacles to radio waves traveling in a straight line. So the fact that the radio waves reached them directly meant the source was close enough that nothing blocked the path. Since their small party was the one being hunted, there would be no need for jamming.

“The fog clearing or the darkness lifting would work against us. We should avoid wasting time. If we don’t reach the inland waterway before sunrise, we’ll be trapped with no way to move.”

And staying in one place all day would be suicide. Around here, there were only stores, factories, and company buildings. There was no guarantee things would go as well as they had in the store they passed through.

The green view through the night vision goggles was narrower than the naked eye. Naturally, his searching gaze flicked around. Then Gyeoul noticed a TV with no power. It was an outdated analog TV.

When he checked the connected set-top box, a brand name was stamped on it. Dish Line. At the very least, it did not seem to be terrestrial broadcast. Judging by the name, there was a good chance it was satellite TV. Gyeoul followed the wiring.

“Did you find something?”

“It might be connected to a satellite antenna.”

The wire passed naturally through the wall and went outside. When Gyeoul leaned his upper body out the window, sure enough, a dish antenna was attached at a height he could not reach.

He stepped onto the window frame and climbed up to inspect it. Thankfully, it was not welded on. Gyeoul used the spine of his Bayonet as a substitute screwdriver. During that time, the static repeated like a slow pulse. It was fine. As long as he stayed against the building, the Trickster would not be able to distinguish him.

Clank. The metal dish came loose. After climbing down, Gyeoul held out his hand to Tan Guosheng. The officer hesitated for a moment, then handed over his radio. Gyeoul took it and tied it to the receiving part of the dish antenna.

“I didn’t know it would turn out like this. I should have brought Jiaying’s.”

The corpse that had been their first milestone had no ammunition left, but its radio was still properly attached.

“It was useless at the time. Unless a rescue team came.”

That was hardly a possibility.

Holding the hastily made detector, Gyeoul left the building once more. The warnings from 「Crisis Detection」 and 「Combat Sense」 sent chills down his spine. In truth, he could even tell the moment the Trickster’s detection brushed past. The problem was that calculating the exact direction was difficult.

Bzzztbzzzzzzzt!

Thanks to the metal dish gathering the radio waves, the static at the moment the Trickster’s surveillance brushed past became far more violent. After several repetitions, Gyeoul was able to calculate a rough bearing.

Visibility was still terrible. From time to time, the fog stirred in the wind. It was a murky darkness. Seen through night vision goggles, it looked like a writhing, shapeless monster. The beam extending from the laser sight attached to the rifle was painfully clear as it pushed through the fog.

After several minutes of detection while turning the antenna, the final number of identified Tricksters came to a staggering five. In the middle of it, there came one distant tremor through the ground. Boom. Gyeoul did not miss it. It seemed there was even a Grumble nearby.

‘Have they been staying still all this time, thinking of it as an ambush?’

At last, Gyeoul decided on a direction.

“I think we should give up on securing weapons and go through the east parking lot. It’s close to our destination, and there’s a lot of cover.”

That also meant it would be a good place for mutants to hide, but Gyeoul decided to trust sensory correction. At the very least, 「Survival Instinct」 was in the realm of genius. When several overlapping senses were at work, it was fair to expect a synergy effect.

The officer, who had been agonizing while looking toward the direction where the tank should be, agreed with difficulty.

“It... can’t be helped. We don’t know how much ammunition is left there either. Understood.”

Even so, the way he looked regretful reminded Gyeoul of the fox in Aesop’s fable.

“I’ll count to three. When I give the signal, be ready to drop and crawl at any time.”

The distance to the shrubbery they would use as their first cover was forty meters. They could not just run blindly. The city that had become civilization’s grave marker was silent. The surviving citizens did not draw the mutants’ attention. Even the mutants did not scream for no reason. On a dark, wet night, the sound of combat boots on asphalt spread shockingly far. If there had not been so many pools of water, he would have wrapped their boots in clothing.

Gyeoul raised his hand.

“Go. Three, two, one!”

A low shout filled with force. The two ran with their posture low, muffling their footfalls.

It was fine until they passed several vehicles.

They had crossed the parking lot and were about to enter the main road.

Rush.

The sharp static rang out, and Gyeoul immediately flattened himself to the ground. The officer was half a breath late. While lying prone, Gyeoul adjusted the antenna with tiny movements. Which direction had it come from?

The radio waves were being fired from high above. The rooftop of a building at two o’clock. By bad luck, it was a point they had to pass if they wanted to reach the old pier, their final destination.

As if the monster had the feeling it had seen something, the directional radio waves it fired created frequent bursts of static. An invisible gaze kept sweeping over the place where the two were holding their breath.

‘How clearly can it see?’

The ground had been made uneven by dirt and sand. If the Trickster’s third eye, its sense for reflected radio waves, could distinguish a prone person from the ground, things would be quite difficult from here on too.

The static that had lingered for a long time vanished. Even after that, they did not move for a while. What if a group of mutants approached? How long were the Trickster’s surveillance intervals? Gyeoul realized the static came in bursts roughly three seconds apart.

Small footfalls also approached from the direction of the main road. It seemed some of them still had clumsy remains of shoe soles. Dragging sounds were mixed in. From left to right, from right to left. They repeatedly grew louder and softer. It seemed they were patrolling on a set cycle.

When Gyeoul informed the officer of the locations of the Trickster and the mutant group with hand signals, the officer’s face crumpled.

“Still, considering it hasn’t found us, its resolution must be rather low.”

The officer whispered while panting. Gyeoul wondered about the choice of the word “resolution,” but the judgment itself was correct.

“Ugh... there are only about two hundred meters left, and we’re blocked here. How do we get past?”

Gyeoul had no answer for the moment either.

============================ Author’s Note ============================

#My Country and My People

The famous Chinese writer mentioned in the previous chapter was Lin Yutang. The book with the passage about the goddess of face was My Country and My People. I haven’t read it myself. I came across it as a quoted passage while reading some paper a long time ago.

#Xing

The monster mentioned in the main chapter, xing, is actually more often called xingxing. It’s listed that way in Chinese character dictionaries too. Even so, the reason I wrote it as one character was... um...

If I wrote it as xingxing... the Chinese-style pronunciation would become Ssing Ssing...

Ssing Ssing...

It somehow feels like it should be all lively and excited...

#Q&A

Q. Jejak-nim: @Personally, I hope Gyeoul gets rewarded as much as he has suffered. Ah, of course, with work, haha.

A. Gyeoul will have to run until his body wears away from now on. Ah, did he already not have a body?

Q. Lee Moon-sae-nim: Accuracy is important, but rest is important too. To protect your childlike innocence, how about resting two days a week?

A. Being a full-time writer is a job with no days off by nature.

These days, daily serialization is the standard, and beyond that, uploading two chapters a day, even three or four chapters, seems common. Many readers also say, “Isn’t daily serialization obvious?”

Thanks to that, my view ratio is... hehe... ruined...

Q. Kaisses-nim: @I let out cries of admiration every chapter at author-nim’s overflowing childlike innocence. Tekeli-li!!! Tekeli-li!!! By the way, author-nim, do you have any plans to publish a physical book?

A. I think I have said this several times, but there will be a physical book. Since many people wanted it, the contract was made on the condition of releasing a physical book.

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried