WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 413: Wind from High Places (11)
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The battalion-sized force that had vanished before the Rangers arrived had left behind only bloodstains and bullet marks throughout the airport. There were no bodies. Not even scraps of flesh or chips of bone, human or variant. The missing soldiers had either become new hosts for the plague, or else all of them had ended up in the variants' stomachs.
Variants in the past had at least left bones behind after sucking out the marrow, but lately, they often swallowed even those. Their strengthened stomach acid dissolved everything.
Considering the appearance of variants like Hunters and Whippers, it was a natural change.
Thanks to that, though, it had become harder to trace the shape of the attack that had swept through this place.
"Scamper."
The other officers looked back at Gyeoul. Gyeoul pointed at the scattered bloodstains and said,
"There was an enhanced variant Scamper here. A small, agile special mutant. Judging by the amount of bleeding, the range, and the spray pattern, these are traces of someone struggling with a relatively small, light variant hanging off their arm. Around here..."
Gyeoul estimated the path death had taken.
"...they were bitten, fought with it, lost their balance, and fell backward. The radius of the blood spray narrowed, you see. At the same time, the distribution shifted to one side and grew denser. That means the bleeding point dropped lower. You can also tell because the rounder bloodstains, the ones with lots of tiny droplets scattered around them, are concentrated in one spot. That was caused by the impact of landing on their backside. The spray gathered in one direction because their own body probably blocked the other side."
"How did you know it was an enhanced variant?"
When the commander of the 217th Regiment showed restrained interest, Gyeoul took hold of his own sleeve and showed it.
"An ordinary one's teeth can't bite into the new combat uniform. In animal terms, they're about on the level of an average hound. I decided it wasn't an immature regular variant for the same reason."
"Hmm. I was uneasy about taking the manufacturer's catalog specs at face value, but hearing you say that much, Lieutenant Colonel, I suppose they've been proven in the field."
"Yes. Anyway, the smeared blood marks were probably made while they shoved with their feet, trying to back away... They did manage to shake it off in the end. They turned over, tried to brace themselves with their hands and get up, but the Scamper lunged again and bit them on the back of the neck. Then they fell again, and this is where they struggled until the moment they died."
Gyeoul stamped his foot where he now stood. It was the center of a dark-red, dried pool. Half a step behind him, a handprint of the same color remained.
"Looks plausible to me as well. Were either of your parents police officers, by any chance?"
At the question from Colonel Davydov, commander of the 331st Regiment, Gyeoul paused, then answered no.
"I just picked it up from experience."
"That's the surprising part."
Letting the colonel's words pass by, Gyeoul looked around. Everywhere his gaze fell, there were traces of death. Here, at the center of the airport building, it seemed more than just one or two soldiers had been attacked.
Gyeoul sighed.
"I don't understand."
"What do you mean?"
"I understand that multiple Scampers broke through the perimeter. They don't act alone. If there had been only one, the troops would never have been pushed this far, and the bullet marks on the walls are too low for them to have been fighting other variants."
"And?"
"The gap between the fighting at the outer defensive line and this place is too wide. There are too few traces in between. Rather than being pushed inward from outside, it feels like separate battles happened inside and outside..."
"There may have been a time gap as large as the physical one. The variants might have attacked twice, and the troops who abandoned the outer defensive line during the first engagement could have re-formed here. The bloodstains left in between were probably from the wounded."
"That makes sense, but the traces of fighting here are too chaotic. It doesn't sit right with me. Too many bullets were fired in strange directions for this to have been a fight against enemies outside. It's also strange that more than half the glass at the front and back of the building is intact. Variants usually spread their attack front wide."
If they clustered together and rushed through a narrow front, they would only be ground up by machine guns and grenades. Since the priority was for even a few of them to leap into the defensive line somehow, when there was an individual with command ability, variants pushed in at low density across as wide a front and from as many directions as possible. That made it harder to concentrate firepower and reduced the effect of concentrated fire.
This time, Captain Graf asked,
"Then are you saying there was likely an attack from inside?"
"There's a high probability."
"An infection outbreak after an incubation period... wouldn't be convincing."
The captain revised the guess and sank into thought. If it had been an infection caused by a Whipper, there would be an incubation period, so that could explain fighting inside the base, but it could not explain how so many of the infected had mutated into Scampers. The captain spoke without much confidence.
"Could a Whipper that gained a new trait have been hiding in ambush? Something like, anyone infected by it always becomes a Scamper."
Gyeoul was skeptical.
"I don't know. Even so, they're transforming from a human body, so it would be hard to ignore mass, wouldn't it? If they changed gradually over time, it might be possible, but that doesn't fit this scene."
"That's true."
Seeing the captain back down easily, Brusilov, commander of the 217th Regiment, offered an opinion next. He pointed at the floor with a finger.
"If they dug a tunnel, everything lines up."
Colonel Davydov frowned at that.
"Are you joking? Everything under here should be reinforced concrete. Even if we say they crammed something like Grumble in and somehow dug it up, what about the noise? The vibration? Were all the troops stationed here deaf?"
"Well, that..."
Gyeoul cut in.
"I think it's worth checking. There's nothing to lose by being careful. While we're at it, we can check the terrain and objects again for places where a Whipper might have camouflaged itself."
"Hmm, if Lieutenant Colonel Han says so."
Davydov shrugged. It was a gesture that said he would not stop them.
Contrary to the discussion, however, no tunnel was found. The soldiers checked the floor twice, knocking on it section by section, but found nothing. They could not find a Whipper either. Whippers often changed the color and texture of their skin and twisted their bones to mimic rocks, mounds of dirt, bushes, large tree trunks, and the like, but an airport was a strange place for those things to be.
As Gyeoul went around checking, he stopped briefly in front of one wall. In a corner, on a wall cracked in branching lines, there was graffiti he had seen once long ago. It was a drawing of a character with no eyes and a long nose, peeking this way with only half its face above a wall.
Beside it, in crooked letters, it said this.
「Kilroy was here.」
Gyeoul smiled faintly. The writing must have been such a mess because it had been written so high up. When he had seen the same graffiti at Atascadero State Hospital, he had asked Jeffrey and the platoon members with him who this Kilroy person was.
He could not smile for long.
Because of the other graffiti and old bloodstains underneath it.
'No, rather than graffiti...'
It was closer to a record of fear and despair. Cries to God had been written countless times, over and over. Though they were written in Mexican Spanish, many of the sentences were clear enough for Gyeoul to recognize even without correction.
「God, have mercy on me! (¡Que Dios se apiade de mí!)」
From left to right, every wall visible along that long stretch looked the same. Someone had drawn crosses, and someone else had drawn red X marks over them, along with sentences cursing God.
At the spot where Gyeoul stood facing the wall, rough skid marks remained. For whatever reason, someone had driven a car all the way in here and rammed the wall. If it had happened during the early spread of Morgellons, it might have been a desperate attempt to enter the sealed airport. To leave for some country safe from the plague. If people saw passenger planes taking off and landing from an airport under controlled entry, how many of them must have lost their minds?
Or it could have happened after Mexico collapsed. Maybe it was the result left behind by people trying to break through the variants, find a plane, and escape.
When he stopped imagining and looked at the wall again, it felt bleak.
Clatter. Fallen concrete fragments were crushed under hard military boots. Gyeoul turned his head. The person approaching was the Ranger company commander, accompanied by a signalman.
"Have you finished looking around?"
"For now."
"There really isn't much here after all, is there?"
"No."
At Gyeoul's confirmation, Captain Graf showed faint relief.
"I thought so. If there had been a clue, there's no way we would have missed it."
"You are Rangers, after all. Just in case, I'll say this, but I wasn't doubting your ability. I only wanted to be careful."
"Please don't say that. I think it was a necessary procedure."
The captain puffed out his chest.
After a day so silent that the only sound was the driving of barbed wire stakes, rain began falling again over the streets of Oaxaca around sunset.
Gyeoul took a thermos and went to find the officers and soldiers on guard duty.
"A hot drink on a day this hot and humid?"
At the question from Alpha Company's 1st Platoon leader, Ensign Song Jeong-hun, who sounded appalled, Gyeoul smiled.
"No rule says you can only put hot things in a thermos, does it? They said it's mezcal that's been in the freezer all afternoon."
"Mezcal?"
"Alcohol. A local specialty."
Ensign Song brightened and accepted a cup. The soldiers on the same vehicle also showed all the anticipation they could.
Mezcal was a distilled liquor made from agave stems. The Rangers and airborne command all shared the same opinion: it would be a shame to come all the way to its place of origin and leave without even tasting it.
But they were on duty now. Gyeoul truly intended to give them only a taste.
"I'm not giving you much. It's strong liquor."
"Ah..."
"Captain Park will be angry if you smell like alcohol, you know?"
Thinking of a disappointed Jin-seok, Jeong-hun grew gloomy, and Gyeoul poured him exactly about half a hop of Beneva mezcal. Since the cup was large, the amount looked even smaller. Jeong-hun made his disappointment obvious and swallowed it in one gulp. The way his face twisted with a rough groan made it look quite strong.
After the cup went around to the soldiers too, Jeong-hun looked up at the sky and said,
"The weather feels just like Korea's rainy season."
"Do you miss it?"
"What was so good about it that I'd miss it? Now we have to build a new home. I don't think there's much time left."
Gyeoul had no good reply to that wistfulness, so he turned his eyes in another direction.
"...?"
Gyeoul pointed at the stones scattered outside the wire.
"Do you see that?"
"What do you mean?"
"Those concrete pieces."
"Ah. Is there a problem with those? We confirmed there were no Whippers during the day."
"...Stay here. I'll go take a closer look."
After setting down the thermos, Gyeoul went out through the entrance opened for armored vehicles and into the open field beside the airport. In the farmland where the soundproofing forest had been completely cleared, there were no obstacles blocking the view.
'Kilroy?'
Part of Kilroy was drawn on a piece of concrete lying in a furrow. Gyeoul gathered nearby fragments with his foot and pieced the outline together. The picture was completed. Other graffiti and bloodstains could be seen as well. After staring at it, Gyeoul turned around.
A short while later, Gyeoul entered the airport and faced that cracked wall from a distance. He was accompanied by a full platoon of Rangers, ready for anything.
"Is that it?"
At the tense platoon leader's question, Gyeoul answered,
"We can find out now."
Click. Gyeoul adjusted his grip on his rifle, aimed at the wall, and emptied a whole magazine into it on automatic fire. Kakakakakakang! The gunshots rang even sharper because they were indoors.
As a result, discolored blood flowed from the hole-riddled wall.
Kilroy, dyed red, opened its eyes.
Footnotes:
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