The Most Beautiful Hour to Die

I shouted into the pitch-black dark.

"Go ahead and pull it. Try firing where the fan's dead and the air's packed solid with dust and gas. If you want every one of us roasted alive."

Silence followed. In that stillness I felt, whole and undiluted, the tremor of the muzzle against my right temple. The finger on the trigger was shaking like an aspen leaf.

"...Please stop. Is this any way to treat a civilian?"

"Hah. Haa... D-don't move. B-back up..."

A badly hoarse voice came out of the dark. I had guessed he was young. Hearing him, he sounded younger still—early twenties at the outside, if that.

And Han Dongsu, the moment he heard that trembling voice—

Whump!

—hurled his huge body straight through the dark.

"...Guh!"

"You rotten little bastard, where'd you get off playin' with a gun!"

Something long and metal went skittering, and the dull thunder of two bodies rolling across the floor filled the machine room.

I fumbled fast through my pockets, pulled out the spare flashlight I had kept in reserve, and thumbed the switch.

A hard click.

A stark white beam cut into a corner of the room. Han Dongsu had a knee driven into the other man's chest, wrenching a long shotgun free and flinging it well clear.

"Let's see what kinda lunatic—lemme get a look at that face... huh?"

Han Dongsu, panting with rage, went suddenly still. The moment I made out who it was, my own eyes narrowed.

The man the light revealed wore a blue uniform shirt wrecked with sweat and grit. The nape of his neck was streaked with blood, as if someone had clawed him. A silver nameplate swung from his chest.

"A co— nah. Police? Lord almighty. What's an officer doin' in here?"

Dumbfounded, Han Dongsu took his knee off and stood. The young-faced man stayed curled on the floor even after he stepped aside, both hands clamped over his face, sobbing like a child.

"Hk... huhk..."

Public authority, the thing meant to protect citizens, shaking and weeping in a miserable, helpless heap. What that meant was all too clear.

I swallowed the sourness of it and ran the flashlight over the shotgun that had rolled off a ways.

"Come to think of it, mister engineer. Didn't you call yourself a civilian just now? You knew this fella was police?"

"When the flashlight went flying, the beam clipped it. I saw the nameplate flash."

"Well I'll be. That fast? You got eyes like a hawk? No wonder you kept your nerve with a muzzle in your face."

Han Dongsu clicked his tongue, stooped, and picked up the shotgun a couple of steps from his feet. He cracked the breech, checked it, and let out a disbelieving little laugh.

"Huh? Will you look at this? Live shells in it and everything. This here's one of them civilian huntin' shotguns they keep locked in the precinct armory, ain't it? You busted a seized one out? Police allowed to do that?"

"You ran from the substation."

At my cold question, Patrol Officer Park Jihoon lifted a face smeared with tears and snot and screamed.

"Ran? Then what was I supposed to do! Hundreds of them came smashing through the substation glass like zombies! The senior officer who tried to hold them was crushed right there and died! The chief was beaten to a pulp and passed out! How was I supposed to handle all those people with a pistol that had three live rounds in it! I tried to call for backup, and the patrol car's tires had melted—it wouldn't even move—so what exactly did you want me to do!"

It was closer to a howl than a confession, and at the same time a shout that made ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠painfully plain how the world outside was turning.

"Riot police? Armored cars? Riot-control buses? Step outside and the sun burns you to death! A hundred riot officers holed up in a vehicle with a blown air conditioner and suffocated in there!"

To commit the army or the riot police, you needed armored vehicles or buses to keep the troops alive. But under a ground-level heat of 60°C, the moment suppression teams—loaded with tens of kilograms of riot gear, stab vests, helmets, and field packs—stepped onto asphalt with no shade, every one of them would be dead inside five minutes. A living chain of command wouldn't have meant a thing. A state whose hands and feet had melted away collapsed like a sandcastle before the most primitive violence there is.

Kssht—! Chk—!

That was when it came. Sound leaked from the radio that had flown far off Park Jihoon in the scuffle with Han Dongsu. The public networks were all dead, but like the operators' system, the police-only TRS terminal net still seemed to be clinging to a weak signal through a nearby base station. Screams poured out with the static.

The horrible screams rang through the machine room, and then, with a last crackle, the radio went completely dead.

Han Dongsu dropped onto the floor and muttered.

"...Damn it all. What them cops said—that true? Is it really all over? Seoul really gone and turned into a burnin' hell?"

I didn't answer.

Without a word I picked up the radio and handed it to Patrol Officer Park Jihoon, then hauled the curled man to his feet with my other hand.

"Drink first."

I gave him the last of the water in my bottle. Park Jihoon seized it like an animal starved for ten days and sucked it down in desperate pulls.

While he drank, I lifted the flashlight and ran a quick eye over the room. Where we had come in was the lower air-handling machine room, set directly beneath the elevated second-floor platform. Concrete boxed us in on every side, steel pipes of differing thickness tangled along the walls. The only window was a single narrow pane that barely showed the ground-floor road outside.

"Haa. Haa. Haa... But... this place is heatin' up mighty fast too."

Han Dongsu, sunk on the floor, wiped at the sweat pouring off him. We had escaped the direct sun, but heat leaking through that little window had the machine room climbing toward a steam bath in no time.

I moved toward the window. My watch read 11:59 a.m.

"It's noon."

"Eek. Already? Hold on, that news from before..."

The hour when the sun stands highest, and radiant heat drives straight down. Han Dongsu and Park Jihoon, sprawled on the floor, crawled over and peered past my shoulder at the world outside.

Twelve o'clock sharp. The instant the sun seated itself squarely on Seoul's crown. Through the glass, we witnessed the most grotesque and wretched death a human being can suffer.

Bang! Crunch!

On the ground-floor road outside Guui Station, the concourse could no longer hold its own pressure. People were flung out through shattered glass. The moment their skin met the superheated asphalt, they thrashed madly and tried to rise. The way they flailed and looked back made it plain they had not run out on their own feet. The crush behind them had shoved them through. And right on their heels, dozens more, backs driven forward, tangled together and poured onto the asphalt in a rush.

"Uh... uhh...?"

Han Dongsu, watching, startled into open horror.

Above the crowns of the people rolling on the asphalt, noon sunlight stabbed straight down, without a single shadow.

In that instant the sweat and blood beaded on their skin—every scrap of moisture in their bodies—seemed to flash to vapor in the superheat. White steam lifted, and the salts left on the dried flesh crusted over white. Direct sun struck that surface, and their whole bodies threw a lucid brilliance, as if they had been rolled in diamond dust. It was deeply grotesque, and beautiful. It glittered so fiercely it was hard to believe any of it was happening inside a hellish heat wave. The man flung out first even looked, for a moment, like an angel made of light. A bizarre beauty you could not pull your eyes from.

But the strange vision did not survive two seconds.

Crack—crackle!

Once every bit of moisture had boiled off, organs that could no longer bear the swelling pressure of seething blood and gas shattered and burst, and the skin shriveled in an instant to a mummy's husk.

"Guh...!"

They could not even raise a proper scream before they turned, in a flash, to lumps of black charcoal. What was left of them crumbled onto the asphalt with a dry, brittle rustle.

"Huk...!"

"U-urgh...!"

Having seen it clear, Han Dongsu and Park Jihoon gagged and fell back. I clamped a hand over my own mouth to hold the nausea down.

This was violence.

Plain, unmistakable violence. The kind no paltry human will or survival instinct could even dare resist. The overwhelming, absolute violence of nature itself.

And then—

Tikk—! Snap.

A minute sound of glass splitting stabbed into my right ear, already wound tight.

"No..."

Cracks began to run through the machine-room window we had just been looking out of. The sun's angle shifted by a fraction, and direct light struck the pane head-on. Even the thick, layered ballistic glass could not hold the heat, and it split. The cracked window began to gather light like an enormous magnifying lens, and a single column of it drove down onto the floor.

Whoosh!

The floor was coated in green epoxy waterproof paint. Where the light touched, it boiled up in an ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠instant, as if lava had been poured across it, and a sharp black toxic fume burst outward at the same time.

"Move!"

I shouted and threw myself into a corner. Han Dongsu and Park Jihoon, stunned, heard the yell and flung themselves into the corners as well.

A hiss.

By a hair, the thick column of light swept across the spot where we had been lying. The cuff of Han Dongsu's work pants, barely kissed by the edge of it, charred in an instant and caught flame.

"Ah, hot! Shit! I'm on fire!"

Han Dongsu yelped and beat the pants out with his palms.

As the sun's angle kept moving, the column that had pierced the window swept the floor like a laser. Touch that light, and you burned where you stood. We pressed our backs flat to three separate faces of concrete and held our breath.

"Wh-what'd we do!"

"The window! Drop the fire shutter! Keep the light out!"

A heavy steel shutter hung above the glass, meant to cut off flame in a fire.

"Mister! Find the shutter lever!"

"Huh? Wh-where'm I supposed to find that..."

"The handle, goddamn it! There! Right there!"

Beside Park Jihoon, whipping his head around in panic, a red handle as thick as a forearm came into view.

"There! The red handle next to the fire alarm! That's the switch! Pull it!"

"Wh-what? H-how do I get over there!"

"Get over there and pull it, you son of a bitch!"

"Get flat on the floor and crawl!"

The column crept another handspan toward the wall Park Jihoon was pressed against. Heat boiling off the floor looked as if it were making it hard for him even to breathe.

"Pull the handle! If you don't want to die, you bastard!"

My shout seemed to snap him back. He dropped flat to the floor, then, dodging the beam as it swept, crawled two steps and came up in front of the red lever. He seized the handle in both hands, put his weight into it, and hauled down hard.

"Uu... uwaaaaah!"

A grinding screech. A bang. With the racket, the thick shutter dropped from above the window.

Clank!

The light pouring into the machine room was cut off completely. All that remained was the flashlight's thin beam, and the acrid smoke rising off the floor.

"Cough! Haa. Haa. Haa... I-I'm sorry..."

"Haa. Haa. Nah. You did good, Officer. Real good. Haa... cough!"

Park Jihoon and Han Dongsu collapsed onto the floor and dragged in ragged breaths.

We had stopped the direct strike of the sun. But with the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠window shutter sealed, the machine room ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had become a perfect closed oven, without a single hole for the heat to escape. The acrid smoke off the floor, and the radiant heat now trapped inside, clamped down on our throats in an instant.

"It's not over yet."

I picked up the shotgun lying on the floor.

A metallic click.

And then—

"Hold your breath. Cover your ears."

I pulled the trigger without hesitation.