This Is Self-Defense
"This door won't open with my key."
"What? Th-then what do we do?"
The storeroom's back door was a steel fire door. Once things had spun out of control, the convenience-store owner must have thrown the lock in a panic as he fled, trying to keep whatever was inside from walking off with the rest of the world.
I didn't answer. I looked at Han Dongsu.
He caught the meaning at once, snorted a short laugh, and turned away.
"Hold on a minute. There was a crowbar around here a bit ago."
He came back from the corner of the storeroom with a steel bar in his hand.
"Hah— the door's way too thick... If you swing that at it, I think the bar's what breaks..."
"Aigoo. Officer, sir. Why go beatin' on some poor door like a fool? Come on out here a minute."
Han Dongsu grinned and worked the pointed tip into the narrow gap between the door and the frame.
"Heh. Right here's the sweet spot."
He set his feet shoulder-width, dropped his stance, and—
"Hup!"
With that short grunt he put his weight behind the bar and drove it down at a precise angle.
Crack.
The thin steel plate holding the latch crumpled and gave.
"Whoa..."
Park Jihoon let out a small breath of awe.
"You're seriously strong..."
"Heh. This ain't strength. Try to rip it open on muscle alone and you'll grind your bones to dust. It's all knack, and years on the job. Cargo holds on a plane freeze solid in the winter, and we pop 'em just like this. Anyway. Let's get outta here quick."
Looking thoroughly pleased with himself, Han Dongsu swung the crowbar up onto his shoulder.
We opened the storeroom's back door and stepped out into the first-floor emergency corridor. It was a staff passage hidden behind the wall of the central concourse, where ordinary passengers walked, and a sign was fixed to it.
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
With the power out, the corridor was dark and quiet. Even the screaming from the concourse reached us only as a muffled hum through the wall.
But the moment we were through the door, it was nothing like the windowless storeroom, where the insulation had held. Radiant heat off the sun-blasted concrete exterior packed the narrow passage, and the air slammed into us again, thick enough to choke on, closing around our throats.
We were dragging ourselves across it, hauling in breath after breath, when—
Rattle.
Rattle.
From around the bend ahead came the sound of wheels.
"Quiet."
I threw up a hand and stopped the two behind me.
We killed the flashlights at once and pressed into the blind spot beside a vending machine. Holding our breath in the dark, we watched the figures come around the corner.
"Hah. It's fucking hot. Hey, push it straight! The cart keeps drifting into the wall!"
"It's not me—these shitty wheels keep spinning out. Hah. This thing's heavy as hell."
"Hyung. How far are we even going? That side was a total shitshow. God, it's hot."
"That's why we came this way, you dumb fuck. Push straight. Shove it in over there and we can rest."
Four of them were pushing the cart. The two in front used their phone lights. The two behind came on with a knife and a steel pipe, raking the dark as they walked, and the faces that flashed through the beams looked like men in their late twenties.
I'd been catching something acrid on the air. There it was: a cigarette in the hand of the man at the front.
"Hah. Hah. That filthy son of a bitch... Day hot enough to steam a man dead, and he's got a fire goin', suckin' on it with his mouth hangin' open."
"Y-yeah. If that starts a fire... Hah. Hah. Where'd they even get a cart that big?"
"It's a roll cage. What they use for moving stock out of a storeroom. Hah."
The cage stood nearly as tall as a grown man. Inside it, bottled water, sports drinks, and cans were piled in the hundreds, dumped in without order, and on top of that, cartons of cigarettes and bottles of liquor—swept off the shelves wholesale—rose in a heap.
I studied their faces. No sign of the delirium that came with heatstroke, no hallucinations. If anything their eyes were clear and their minds intact. But that clarity looked wholly owned by greed.
"Hah. Fuck, if we'd had one more cart back there, we could've cleaned out every can. Hurts like hell."
"Tell me about it. Hah. Hah. But hyung—why haul this much cigarettes and liquor? That stuff's heavy."
"You fucking thick in the head? This right here is our power. Guys who drink and smoke every day—you think they won't hit withdrawal in a mess like this? Bet they're dying for it. Look at this idiot. Can't even breathe, and he's still puffing away. Heh heh."
"Whew. You're my friend, but you're a goddamn genius. Hah. Hah. Still, it's seriously fucking hot."
Then one of them grabbed a 1.5-liter bottle and dumped the whole thing over his head. He shook side to side like a dog, flinging the water off, and when that wasn't enough he pulled two more bottles and started pouring them over himself, clothes and all.
"Whoa! You crazy bastard! Puhaha."
"Ahh. That's nice."
The other three clutched their stomachs and cackled.
Watching it, I saw the afterimage of people with not a mouthful of water, reduced to something worse than animals, licking the floor. And here a man was showering in drinking water. A dull pull started at the base of my skull.
I wasn't the only one. Han Dongsu's jaw and Park Jihoon's ground. Both of them had their mouths shut tight, staring at the men with eyes that wanted them dead.
"Hah. Both of you. Calm down."
I whispered it.
The world had only been paralyzed for three or four hours at most. And yet that had been more than enough time for a devil to find a mask that fit. Into the gap where control had collapsed, looters had come. They wouldn't be the only ones—people who had grasped, by instinct, that water and food were power now. Nothing frightened them.
And looking at them, the three of us thought the same thing.
Let those pieces of trash not be the ones to strike a spark to our anger.
But they seemed determined to pour the oil on anyway.
"Hah. Hah. Thinking about how all this turns into money later—I'm already drooling."
"Earlier some crazy old bastard was screaming for just one bottle of water. Fuck. I got so pissed I kicked him once, and he dropped without a sound. Dead, right?"
"He died?"
"Course he died. I hit him that hard."
Hearing them confess to a killing, Park Jihoon's breathing went visibly rough. He was gripping so hard the shotgun's stock creaked.
Then—
Clunk!
"Ah, fuck! What's wrong with this wheel!"
The cart wheel started to wobble, and the man in front swept his phone light back and forth across the floor.
"Huh?"
All four of them stopped at once.
"Three little rats hiding over there, and one of 'em's got a bag with a mouse on it?"
We'd been made.
"Well, look at that bag, stuffed full. Found ourselves some comrades, huh? Except this is our turf. Set it down nice and quiet and get lost."
"Huh? That's a cop."
"What?"
At that, the man in front flicked the cigarette from his mouth and came closer, tapping the steel pipe against his palm.
"Those bastards...!"
Park Jihoon clenched his teeth.
Click.
In an instant he had the shotgun stock seated between his shoulder and his cheek. I grabbed the barrel and dragged it down toward the floor.
"What are you doing. Hah."
"...You heard them. Wh-what those bastards said."
"Hah. Hold still."
Watching us struggle, the man with the pipe jeered.
"Whoa! You gonna shoot?"
Park Jihoon's eyes had gone blood-red. I leaned in and spoke at his ear.
"Still—if you made the national team, your reflexes must be excellent."
"Th-that's obvious, isn't it?"
"Then instead of a bullet, you can wreck him with the stock. Right?"
"Wh-what?"
"Quietly, if you would."
At that his gaze went sharp in an instant. He nodded once without a word, turned the shotgun, and took a firm grip on it like a bat.
"Huh? We runnin' a plan? What's my part?"
Han Dongsu, crowbar still across his shoulder, shoved his face in between us.
"Mr. Han... use your judgment."
"Ha! You want it done on muscle? Lord. There goes my belly again."
"It has to end without a sound."
The plan was set.
We stayed low and waited as they came toward us.
"Hey. Cop. Go on, shoot. Huh? Or hand over the bag."
The one with the pipe stepped inside our reach and snatched at Park Jihoon's bag.
"What'd you hide in there. Hand it over, you son of a bitch."
Then he slapped him across the face.
Crack!
There had been more than enough distance and time to dodge. Park Jihoon didn't. He took the slap, slowly turned his head, and spoke. The gentle, over-tame look of a puppy was gone. What looked back was full of killing intent.
"Confession of murder. Aggravated obstruction of an officer. Attempted armed robbery. Aggravated assault—caught in the act. The world's already gone to hell, so there's no holding cell to throw you in, and no patrol car either."
He reset his grip on the barrel.
He drove it up on a diagonal and slammed the stock into the man's jaw.
Crack.
The man didn't manage a single scream. His eyes rolled white, and he dropped where he stood.
"...!"
"Hyung. Those bastards just hit our guy."
Seeing it, the man behind charged in with his pipe.
"Th-this bastard—my little brother—!"
"Where you goin'! This one's my partner, boy!"
Han Dongsu, who'd been curled tight into a ball, surged up and rolled his shoulders out. In an instant he was the size of a door. He knocked the pipe aside with the crowbar and smashed it into the man's thigh.
Crunch.
The man folded to the floor with the sound.
"Where I come from, a grown man picks up a club, he says he was wrong and he begs."
Two of them were down in a blink. The other two drew knives.
I slipped the flashlight bulging from Han Dongsu's back pocket. With mine as well—one in each hand—I cranked them to full output and drove the beams straight into their eyes. There was no need to sweat a fight against men holding knives.
"Guh—!"
"You son of a bitch. You gonna get that out of my face?"
Hit point-blank by high-output light out of the dark, the two clutched their eyes and staggered. And in the space even I didn't catch, Park Jihoon had already darted in behind them and cracked one across the back of the skull with the stock.
"Agh!"
The startled one spun and flailed the knife in every direction, but his vision still hadn't come back from taking the light full in the face, and the blade sank, absurdly, into his own man's shoulder.
"Aaaagh! Where are you stabbing! You crazy bastard!"
Watching them flail and stab at each other, I kicked the wheel lock off the roll cage standing right in front of me, put my weight into it, and tipped the cart over onto them. Hundreds of bottles of water came down all at once.
Crash!
With several hundred kilograms pouring down on top of them, the two made no further sound.
What came instead was the clatter and roar of everything spilling, a thunder filling the corridor that had been silent.
I waited, still, for the sound that would get us out.
And sure enough, from the concourse came a stir of voices, and then footsteps.
"Hah. Hah. Now. Move!"
We turned our backs on the corridor as the howling rolled in and made for the stairs.
© Sediva#1dn3e