Delirium
Park Jihoon gaped wide and lunged straight at me.
"Graaaaah!"
His reason was gone completely, and still one target stayed perfectly clear: the half-empty water bottle in my hand.
I yanked my right hand back on reflex. The instant he crashed in close enough to breathe on me, I twisted my torso and slipped past him by a hair.
"Guh—!"
The miss stole his balance, and he went down hard on the machine-room floor. Something else slid into his vision then. The IV line he'd torn apart thrashing a moment ago. The five-hundred-milliliter saline pack, burst where it had slammed into the concrete. Between them they'd already spread a small puddle.
Park Jihoon's eyes rolled all the way back. He dropped to all fours like an animal and pressed himself flat to the floor, desperate to lick up the water pooled there. He was just about to drive his face into it when—
"Hiek! What's gotten into this fella!"
Han Dongsu, still dazed from the slap Jihoon had landed across his cheek, snapped to and came running.
A hand like a pot lid shot out and seized Jihoon by the scruff as he panted and charged the water.
"Urgh!"
But with his reason gone, Jihoon thrashed arms and legs like a madman trying to tear free of that grip. Crash! Kim Jeyeon's medic bag, sitting right beside them, took a kick.
"Ah—no!"
The bag flipped, and everything inside poured out across the floor.
Of all things, the silver packets she'd called the most important. Dozens of oral rehydration salts—the powder that turned a liter of water into the equivalent of an IV drip—spilled, split open, and in an instant sucked the filthy water off the concrete.
"Agh! Officer, would you hold still a second! Swear to God, you're floppin' like a damn fish!"
In the end Han Dongsu grabbed him by the collar once more and flung him down. Jihoon flopped like a live fish on a market slab. At the sight of it, Kim Jeyeon rushed in to stop him.
"Don't press on his chest. He'll suffocate, and his heart will stop. Just hold his arms and legs."
She moved with an ER nurse's speed. With Dongsu pinning Jihoon hard to the floor, she caught his jaw and opened his airway.
"Operator. My bag, over there. Please take out one saline pack that didn't burst. And my shirt."
In no time she had soaked her already ragged shirt in saline.
"Hold him tight."
"Aye."
She worked the wet cloth into the back of his neck and under his arms.
They had him laid out on the machine room's concrete to bring his temperature down, and it wasn't long before the animal panting and the fight began to ebb.
"Hak—kahk—hak—hak."
Pupils that had been completely unfocused shrank back to their proper size.
"Hak. Haa. Ha—"
His rough breathing settled by degrees. At the same time, light came back into those pale brown eyes.
The hazel irises moved from Han Dongsu, crushing both his arms, to Kim Jeyeon, still gasping, to me standing quietly in front of him. Then to the saline pack he'd knocked across the floor a moment ago. The water bottle. The dozens of rehydration packets smeared into muddy slurry. Last of all, slowly, the small puddle on the concrete.
"Hah—hek!"
As each thing he'd done registered, one by one, Park Jihoon's face went white.
The instant he understood perfectly what had happened, his face twisted as if he might scream on the spot.
And then—
"I—I—I... just now... khhk—!"
The heatstroke delirium cases he'd seen at Guui Station. People he'd watched as if they were someone else's problem. People he'd even found disgusting.
To think he himself had gone to all fours and tried to lick water off the floor. The fact seemed to have carved his dignity to pieces.
Great round tears dropped from Park Jihoon's eyes.
"I—I'm sorry... I went out of my mind... the IV... the drinking water... hhk... hhhk..."
Shame. Self-loathing. And guilt. In the end he buried his face in the floor and broke into sobs.
His gaunt shoulders wouldn't stop heaving. From his hunched back a wretched, miserable sound leaked out—keuk, keuk.
Kim Jeyeon and Han Dongsu only watched that back in silence.
I watched him too.
And at the same time, I started calculating. No. I had to.
Shotgun or not, his stamina was weak, and worse, his mind was at the bottom. A brain that had already blown once into heatstroke delirium was a time bomb. No telling when its temperature control would fail again and it would run wild.
Coldly put, Park Jihoon as he was now was a clear burden, a threat to our survival.
Was it right to leave him in this machine room and go? Or right to carry, all the way to the end, a man I'd known for only a few hours?
My head was a tangle.
And then—
Bang!
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The machine room's inner iron door, the one that opened onto the building, slammed into something and set up a racket.
"There's people in here!"
"Hey! We heard every fucking sound! Get out here!"
The beast-howl Jihoon had let out a moment ago, and all that crashing, had drawn the attention of people roaming outside in search of water.
Bang!
Bang! Bang!
"What do we do? If we run into them, they'll take everything."
Kim Jeyeon asked it as she quickly gathered her things and slung the bag onto her back.
I swept the machine room fast with the flashlight. The iron door we'd just come running through and barred led to the outside. In front of the door that opened into the building, people I couldn't count had dug in. Aside from those two doors, this was a sealed room without a single window.
Which meant the floor.
I played the light across the concrete until I found a square steel-plate cover.
"We go down to Line 7."
"Huh? Line 7?"
"We came over from Guui Station along the elevated inspection walkway and crossed onto the surface line. So this is Konkuk University Station, Line 2. We're up on the viaduct, about three stories off the ground."
I moved toward the plate in the floor and kept on, fast.
"But the Line 7 platform is underground, on the second basement level. The temperature down there ought to be much lower."
"Now hold on, how's we supposed to get down! Crazy bastards crawlin' all over that door, and the doors and the stairs are all jammed shut besides!"
"Through the floor."
"The floor?"
"Inside this concrete column there's a shaft cut straight down to the basement, so they can move heavy machinery up and down."
Ordinary passengers would know nothing but the transfer escalators.
"At Konkuk University Station, elevated Line 2 and underground Line 7 cross in the shape of a plus sign. There's always a vertical ladder tying the two lines together directly. It's hidden in the column."
And this floor cover would be the hatch to a passage that could reach the second basement.
"Mr. Han. Hold that door while I get the floor lock open."
"Aigo. Playin' the meat shield again? All right! Make it quick!"
Han Dongsu answered and, in the same breath, plugged the iron door with that huge body of his.
I couldn't tell how many were stuck to the other side. Whatever they were beating and shoving with, even a man his size was jolted back, thud after thud.
"Medical supplies and personal gear, all secured."
Somehow Kim Jeyeon was already at my right, her own medic bag on her back and my pack—the one that had been rolling on the floor—hugged against her front.
And then—
Clack.
Park Jihoon, who had been sitting on the floor wailing, had wiped his tears. Shotgun gripped tight, he stepped out in front of me.
"I—I'll hold them too."
The aftermath of the delirium still had both his legs shaking, and his face was a wreck of sweat and tears. But the eyes he turned on that door, standing with his back to me as it shuddered like it might break—those were full of a cold, venomous light.
It looked like a desperate flailing to clean up, somehow, the mess he'd made.
I found the lock on the floor cover fast and drove the master key in.
Click!
The stiff lock gave. I heaved the heavy steel cover up, and there it was: a black vertical ladder dropping away into the dark, all the way down to the second basement.
"Grab the ladder and go down in order!"
Kim Jeyeon moved first. Flashlight clamped in her mouth, both hands locked around the steel rungs, she went down into the black one careful step at a time.
"Aye. Officer, you're next! Hurry!"
Han Dongsu, pouring sweat as he held the door, still looked after Jihoon. Jihoon slung the shotgun and set a foot on the ladder. His legs shook so badly that even the first step looked ready to fail.
"Mr. Park. Don't let your hands go slack. If you fall, you take Kim Jeyeon down with you."
At that he clenched his teeth and gave a single nod. Then he seized the ladder with everything he had and started down.
Meanwhile the machine room's inner door was a breath from bursting.
Crash!
Bang!
Bang! Bang!
"You got water in there or not! Open the fucking door!"
"There's people in there! You got water?!"
Han Dongsu was bracing the buckling slab with that huge shoulder, but it looked ready to blow any second.
"Mr. Han. Get in."
"Aye! Ugh. Those rotten bastards."
The moment he came off the door he threw himself at the floor. That body, big as a door itself, slid quick as anything into the hatch.
And in the same instant—
Bang!
Craaash!
The machine-room door finally crumpled inward, and people with bloodshot eyes poured through in a heap.
"Aaaagh!"
Right before the ones who'd piled over each other got their wits back and reached for me, I dropped through, hauled the cover shut, and slammed the inner latch home without mercy.
Wham!
Overhead, feet stomping the plate and something hammering it rang out, terrifying.
"Haa. Haa..."
Flashlight in my mouth, I worked my way down the ladder through the dark, rung by careful rung.
From three stories above ground to the second basement. A vertical drop of about twenty meters.
The one mercy was this: with every rung, the killing heat that had felt like it would sear flesh thinned away, as if the whole thing had been a lie.
It wasn't like stairs or a transfer passage, where the sun's radiant heat got trapped. This was space inside a thick concrete column, and the difference in temperature was stark.
From below came the rough breathing of the three people stepping down the ladder.
We descended for a long while.
At last, solid concrete met my toes.
Behind the Line 7 underground platform. A staff-only corridor, where ordinary passengers were strictly barred.
"Haa. Haa. Haa..."
"Honest to God... haa. I damn near died."
Han Dongsu sank onto the floor and wiped his face with a shirt soaked through.
"But this place... how's it so damp? Smells like ditch water, too."
Leaning on the wall and glancing around, he asked it.
"Down here used to be where Seongsu Stream ran. They roofed the creek over with concrete, so cold groundwater keeps seeping out between the walls."
"That so? Anyhow, feels like I might live now. Next to that mess up top, this here's pure heaven."
No wonder. The felt temperature had plunged into the high twenties Celsius. Once the heat let go, though, all of them sagged, limp as melted slimes.
"Pull yourselves together and get up. We can't just hold out here."
We followed the wall deeper, into the farthest reach of a corridor no ordinary person could enter.
And at last, the end of it. A dark-gray fire door stood shut fast.
Track Maintenance Night-Duty Room and Shower
Authorized Personnel Only
I had the master key off my belt and was about to jam it into the lock when—
"What? A shower? A duty room?"
Han Dongsu's small eyes went wide as coins. Park Jihoon and Kim Jeyeon, still dazed, looked from the sign to me and back, as if they couldn't believe it.
"Yes. It's where the night track crews stay. It'll probably be empty."
"Now hold on. Power's all dead, pumps won't be turnin', so how's water gonna come out?"
Click. Thunk.
Shoving the stiff door open, I said,
"Gravity, instead."
"Wh—what'd you say?"
I stepped inside, threw the bolt home behind us, and turned to the others.
"Get ready to wash. No telling when we'll next get the chance to wash like human beings."