Konkuk University Station Is a Transfer Station
"Hah. Hah..."
Park Jihoon's shoulders jerked as he hauled in ragged breaths.
"Officer. Had you pegged for a real soft touch, but that just now was downright vicious, I tell you. That fella's jaw's gotta be nothin' but powder. Hoo."
"Th-that was self-defense... hah. Hah."
Park Jihoon forced the answer out, bearing down on a breath that refused to settle.
I pressed him and Han Dongsu both.
"Self-defense or otherwise, it doesn't matter. Get your packs on. We move now."
"Already?"
"We get clear of here first. Hurry."
I snatched up the bag and flashlight sprawled on the floor and took the lead. Seeing me rush, the other two hastily slung their packs and followed.
Sweat streaming, we cut across the corridor—air so thick and steaming it seemed to press in—and drove into the maze behind Guui Station. Past the stairs, into the restricted zone only station staff were allowed to enter, and deeper still, at intervals along the way, I worked the master key and forced two more iron doors. Only then could we set foot in a space where every last trace of people had been cut away.
Click.
STANDBY ROOM
Tools of every kind lay strewn across the floor, and steel cabinets stood in a row along one wall: a storeroom that doubled as a waiting room. Only after we had thrown the bolt on even this door did Han Dongsu plant himself on the floor and blow his breath out as if he were spitting it free.
"Lord. Bones are shot. Ain't a place a man can set his heart at ease. Whew."
"Hah. Hah. You've had a hard time of it."
Han Dongsu rounded on me while I was still dragging in air, his voice jumping.
"Now hold on, Engineer! Hard time, my ass! Why in the hell'd you flip that cart and raise a racket at the very last second and set us runnin' hell for leather? Weren't we gonna hush 'em down quiet at the start? We even laid a plan for it, didn't we?"
"Then, we needed time to deal with them. After that, we needed bait to pin everyone's eyes that way while we ran. Thanks to it, we didn't meet a soul coming over here. They'll all have piled into the corridor where those men went down."
"Well, I'll be."
Struck speechless, Han Dongsu dug a bottle from his pack and drank in great gulps, then spoke again with a face gone a little clearer.
"However it shook out. Whew. Reckon I might live a while now. Anyhow, this place looks sturdy, and a fair bit safer, so let's wait till the sun drops and move come night."
"We rest exactly ten minutes here."
At that he stopped halfway through capping the bottle and nearly jumped.
"Aw, now what! Didn't you tell me back at Gangbyeon Station? Said we'd wait at Guui till the sun went down—wait till night—and then go out? It's sixty out there right this minute, sixty Celsius!"
"Th-that's right. Going out now is suicide. You know that better than anyone, Engineer. This is an elevated station."
I drew a half-drunk bottle of water from my bag and shook my head, firm.
"No. We have to go now. Square your gear and just catch your breath."
"Come on. Why in blazes go out in this scorcher."
"Because if we stay here, we keep ending up in blood."
"Then what. We crack 'em with the crowbar like before and swing the butt of the gun and—"
"People?"
"Huh...?"
"Those people. Their brains may be cooked and they've gone mad, but they aren't zombies. They're human. Keep tangling with them and all we do is burn stamina. Nothing good comes of it for us. Staying clear is the better play."
"Th-the Engineer's right about this..."
Park Jihoon agreed, his face gone stiff.
"Going outside scares me too, and my body's at its limit... but w-we can't keep hitting people, or k-killing them, just so we can live..."
Han Dongsu rolled his eyes, fed up.
"Give me a break. And what, we get to Konkuk University Station and the folks there are angels? This is the same damn talk we had at Gangbyeon Station, word for word."
I tipped the last of the bottle into my mouth in one swallow and went on, calm.
"Mr. Han."
"Aw, what!"
"Konkuk University Station is a transfer station, isn't it."
"What? And how's that change a damn—!"
Han Dongsu's mouth, lifted to argue, fell open. At the same instant a light snapped alive in Park Jihoon's eyes.
"Th-there's underground! Line 7!"
Right.
Konkuk University Station was a transfer station. You could go down from it into the underground tunnels of Line 7—leave this suffocating elevated station behind entirely and hide where direct sunlight never reached.
"Well I'll be! That's it! Konkuk University Station's a transfer station, ain't it. But hold on. Then we oughta wait here all the more. Sun drops dead, night comes on, and then we crawl over nice and easy. Not in this scorcher."
He kept trying to talk me around. I shook my head without a moment's hesitation.
"No. We go now. No exceptions. In this heat."
"Why in the hell!"
Han Dongsu clawed at his head as if it pained him.
"Hah. So you're sayin' we gotta go through that oven again. Right? No other road? We gotta take that inspection catwalk danglin' under the rail bridge? You got a flyin' carpet? A broom? How am I supposed to pull that stunt again. I'm just gonna up and die."
"Yes."
"No. Engineer. What I'm sayin' is... let's go at night. When it's cooler."
"Once it's night and the temperature drops, won't every one of them come crawling out of the shade they've been hiding in?"
Too late, the look of a man catching himself crossed Han Dongsu's face.
"Right now, step outside and you cook where you stand, so the tracks are empty. That heat is a shield for us. But when night comes."
"...they'll boil out like a pack of starvin' wild dogs and be swarmin' all over."
"Exactly. From Guui Station all the way to Konkuk University Station. Madmen, and people who've crawled out determined to live, all snarled together."
Park Jihoon nodded and took the thread up.
"...It'll be a slaughterhouse, Engineer. And we'd have to force our way through it..."
"And."
Bang!
Bang, bang!
From the corridor outside the waiting room came the sound of something blunt hammering a door. I jerked my chin at the door we'd shut fast and went on.
"That door won't hold till night either. Not a chance."
Han Dongsu and Park Jihoon looked from the clamoring iron door to my face and back again, and then they nodded. They were convinced, completely.
"This fella. Stubborn enough to be the death of a man. Sets his mind on a thing and he can't rest till it's done, I swear. Snapped my own stubborn clean in two."
Han Dongsu looked sheepish as he said it.
"All right. But now I've heard you out, you're right a hundred times over. Place got a little cool and livable and my good sense walked right off. So comfortable I went and shit in the chamber pot."
"That's right."
I answered while opening the steel cabinets in the corner of the waiting room, one after another.
"Yessir. Boss is right about every bit of it. You're somethin' else, you are. I give it up. Both hands and both feet."
Han Dongsu dropped his tail entirely and gave in. With his voice at my back, I kept digging through the cabinets.
"There ought to be some in here."
"What're you lookin' for?"
"Not a carpet. Not a broom. Something along those lines..."
"...Pardon?"
I flung a cabinet door wide.
"Ah. Found it."
Park Jihoon's eyes and Han Dongsu's locked on at once. I drew out a thick silver roll that had been jammed into the corner of the cabinet.
"What's that? Industrial foil, ain't it? The stuff you wrap pipes with when they freeze, or when you're weldin'."
"Yes."
I unrolled it long, took a utility knife from my pocket, and cut the foil into broad sheets. Foam resin like sponge, the outside coated thick with aluminum foil. Insulation.
Then I pulled a bottle of water from the pack, uncapped it, and without a moment's hesitation dumped it over my head and my shirt.
Splash.
"H-hey! What're you doin'!"
"You two as well."
I looked at the two of them, startled, threw a cut sheet of the foil insulation over my dripping shirt like a cloak, and spoke.
"Soak yourselves from head to foot. You saw them earlier. The heatstroke cases. Go out like this and inside of five minutes we'll be in the same shape."
At that, Han Dongsu swallowed hard.
"The heat water carries off as it evaporates. We'll use that. This foil reflects direct sun, and the wet clothes will cool our body temperature. A makeshift heat suit. It'll hold ten minutes. Fifteen, at least."
Hearing the plan, Han Dongsu and Park Jihoon looked at each other.
"It's the same principle as the nomads of the Sahara wrapping themselves in thick wool under a sixty-degree sun."
"Evaporative cooling, and reflecting radiant heat..."
Park Jihoon murmured it.
"I-it's exactly the principle of the special proximity suits the fire department uses on a blaze. How do you know that, Engineer?"
Subway engineers, too, drilled disaster response and emergency first aid every year until it was driven into the bone. When a heat casualty turned up, the first measure was to wet the clothing and drop core temperature through the cooling of evaporation. And there was the foil blanket, said to throw back more than ninety-seven percent of radiant heat. My own stopgap was those two rescue protocols bolted together.
On top of that, the industrial foil insulation I had just taken from the cabinet was far thicker and tougher than an emergency blanket. The effect would be that much more certain.
"We get disaster training too. It won't last long, though. Fifteen minutes at the outside. The moment the water we've soaked into ourselves evaporates completely and we dry out, this foil becomes a steamer that cooks us alive. We have to run like death is on us and reach Konkuk University Station before the water's gone."
"Damn it all!"
Han Dongsu shouted once, then immediately upended a bottle over his own head. Park Jihoon hastily doused himself as well and hurried to wrap the foil insulation around his body.
The moment they were ready, I opened the door without delay.
Screee—
I opened the emergency door that joined the waiting room to the outside inspection passage, and the choking air I had expected crashed over us. But with our clothes soaked through and foil wound tight around our bodies, the hideous pain of skin searing away did not come.
We broke into a dead run along the narrow inspection catwalk beneath the elevated rail bridge. Under our feet the melted asphalt of the Konkuk University intersection blurred past, and hot air whipped our faces. Still, the strange cool of wet cloth taking the wind and shedding its heat as it evaporated was enough, just, to keep our minds fastened on.
Guui Station to Konkuk University Station was about three-quarters of a mile. We must have run like madmen for something like ten minutes.
Then the limit found us.
The water that had been dripping from our clothes began to evaporate, and inside the foil that had been throwing the heat back, it started slowly to warm. At first it heated by degrees. Then, second by second, breath jammed hard in the throat and it felt as if our lungs were scorching. Body temperature climbed, and sweat poured off us like rain.
"Hah. Hah... th-the water's dryin' up..."
Han Dongsu, running out in front, barely got the words out.
"Hah. A little farther. Hah. Hah. Around that corner and we're right under Konkuk University Station. Hah."
At last the straight passage ended. Concrete columns came into view beneath the tracks at Konkuk University Station, and between them a familiar red iron door.
Gasping like animals, we ran for the iron door, none of us waiting to see who would reach it first. I was just reaching into my pocket for the master key when I saw the lock—smashed to pieces, as if someone had torn it off by force.
Click.
Bang!
The door opened, and cool concrete air pushed out at us. It was the machine-room corridor beneath Line 2 at Konkuk University Station.
"Gah. Hah. Whew. Gaaah!"
Han Dongsu ripped away the foil wrapped around his body as if he could not bear another second of it.
"Hah. Hah. Hah."
I threw off the foil constricting my own breath and dropped onto the cold concrete floor.
"Hah. Hah... we made it, hah. We made it..."
Han Dongsu lay spread-eagled, hauling in air like a madman. I lay on the floor as well, fighting to quiet a heartbeat that felt ready to burst.
"Hah. Hah. Hah..."
Fifteen minutes. Exactly. We had scraped through safe, a breath short of being steamed alive. And in the very instant that relief came washing in—
"...Engi— Engineer. What's wrong with the officer..."
Something was wrong with Park Jihoon.
"Stay with us!"
I rushed in, and the moment I seized his shoulder—
Thud.
Park Jihoon's eyes rolled up white, and he toppled straight to the floor.
Mouth shut tight, I looked down at him where he lay, and slowly got to my feet.