I'm Going Home

I thought I might have heard a scream from the left. Something being crushed.

No.

Maybe I hadn't heard a thing.

When a person is locked onto one task, a voice calling from beside them never lands. I have moments like that. The one mercy of a single working ear is that it makes them easier.

Was it raw survival instinct, or a defense mechanism, forcing the switch in my head down so I could turn my face completely from what I had just done?

I couldn't tell whether the sound had been real. In the end, I never looked down.

Instead I wrung out what strength I had left, hauled Kim Jeyeon up, and flung her into car 7. Then I rolled in after her and drove the steel door shut with my back.

"Haa. Haa. Hk—"

I sat against the searing door and dragged in air like an animal.

"Haa. Let's go, Engineer."

Kim Jeyeon, sprawled beside me, lurched to her feet and let it fall, dry as a stone dropped on concrete. I clenched my teeth, stood, and snatched the radio off my shoulder.

"...Control, 2001. In car 7. Moving to the rear cab."

We ran like mad again. Mercifully, the stretch from car 7 through car 10 gave us no real trouble. The cold had held on at the rear until the very last, and the people back there had not yet turned into monsters.

At last we cleared car 10. The moment I reached the rear cab, I slammed the door and locked it.

The bolt shot home, and the noise outside cut off. There was no time for relief. I swept the panel at once.

Normal was 5.0. Air was sneaking out through the mangled angle cock between cars 6 and 7.

"Control, 2001. Rear cab. Brake pipe 4.2."

"I know."

"I don't mean to use all the pressure."

"I'll time it."

Through the radio, Senior Park Cheolhun let out something like an empty laugh.

"Yes."

"Then I'll have to come in from behind and hit her."

"Worst case."

"Copy."

Through the glass I stared down eight hundred meters of falling rail, set my grip, and hauled on the master controller.

The brakes that had been holding four hundred tons began to ease, and the four cars bound to the rear cab slid first. I left the six-car set where it stood. Heavy wheels rolled. We had dropped only a few meters down the grade when the lower coupler—still barely bitten together in the torn gangway between cars 6 and 7—drew tight as wire.

It tore free with a bang.

The six cars, control gone, poured down the grade after us. From behind came a sound like lightning striking the earth. They had hit us.

"Ghk—!"

The whole cab lunged forward, and Kim Jeyeon went sprawling across the floor. In the same instant the ceiling fluorescents died, the panel went dark, and the hum of the air-conditioning cut out all at once.

"I know."

No power now, and no light. Whatever could still move four hundred tons had left the reach of human hands. The pull of the earth. And inertia. Nothing else.

The coupler was broken, but the four cars—with the six-car set rammed up onto them—took on speed at once. Feeding on their own enormous weight, they began to run, and the pace turned vicious.

Senior Cheolhun was shouting. I couldn't answer. The panel was dead—how was I supposed to know the speed? Ten years in my hands would have to be enough.

Do it the way he'd called obvious, and I might save hundreds. Miss, and I would be remembered as a butcher of historic scale, the man who crushed the train ahead of him flat. A moment too late and the acceleration would win: derailment. Grab too early, too hard, and I would stall us in the wrong place entirely.

The die was cast.

I clamped the master controller until the blood couldn't reach my hand. Then, the way you stab and release the brakes in a car, I worked the brake valve in broken pulses, squeezing what I could from the last 4.2 of air.

Hiss—lurch. Hiiiss—lurch.

Eight hundred meters vanished. Through the glass came the enormous rear of Train 2003, standing inside the Gangbyeon platform.

Fifty meters.

Thirty.

Ten.

I watched the distance collapse, fast enough to turn the stomach, and dumped every bit of air left in the brake pipe.

Hiiiiiss—!

It was nowhere near enough to stop four hundred tons that had taken the downgrade's inertia into themselves.

I glared at Train 2003 as it swallowed my view, as if I meant to kill it, locked both arms around the console, and set my teeth.

"Nngh—!"

And then it came. A shriek of steel, a scream of flanges fit to split an eardrum, and the heavy slam of impact.

Train 2001 drove its weight into the tail of Train 2003 and, at last, came to a dead stop at Gangbyeon Station.

The doors did not open. The power was gone entirely, so the air that should have opened them was dead, and so was the circuit that should have given the order.

I used the emergency capacitor, threw the broadcast switch, and took the microphone.

Beyond the glass, the platform was already a slaughterhouse.

I cut the switch and opened the cab door. Heat rolled in and stopped the breath in my throat.

Through the cabin door I had forced ajar, people poured.

Kim Jeyeon, catching her breath outside the cab, gave me one short dip of the chin and then moved, no hesitation in it, and was gone. Whether she was going home or somewhere else, I couldn't say. The steps had a destination, and it was certain.

I pulled the wet shirt she had left me over my head and looked around. People crawling out of the train. People walking out. People running, though they had been told not to. And people who never came out at all.

I had to move too. I pushed through the suffocating heat of the open air and hurried down to the level below.

The concourse at Gangbyeon Station was already packed to bursting.

The fare gates stood wide open. When the power fails, they release on their own, for safety.

I picked my way around the people slumped on the floor, staggering, one hand on the wall, until I found the disaster-prevention room.

That room gathers everything: the station's fire-watch panel, the fire-equipment receiver, the CCTV, the emergency broadcast and the communications gear. I judged it the only place I could get a read on the world outside.

The thick, soundproof steel door will not open without a master key. My hands, slick with blood, shook as I picked the master key off the ring and fitted it in.

Clack.

I pulled the door open, and the hot air trapped inside rolled out over me.

"Koff. Hk. Hah."

Thick concrete would beat the boiling concourse, but only just. I could barely breathe.

I had expected the room to be empty. Something like fifteen people were strewn across the floor, every one of them soaked, mouths working like fish. In a corner a man in a station-staff vest lay with foam on his lips. The staffer, I guessed, had opened the door for them and then gone down himself.

A few looked, relatively speaking, all right. They paid no mind to the people on the floor, or to me coming through the door. Hollow-eyed, they stared at one thing only: a small box on the desk.

An old radio. The kind that ran on AA batteries.

The reason a phone could no longer hold a signal was spilling out of that radio. I stood to its left and listened.

"Transformers?"

I had muttered it without meaning to. A man with his head down in front of the radio answered without turning.

"Sun threw up, that's what they're sayin'! Earth took a beatin' all night, and every last scrap of electricity burned clean up!"

"Ha! Those bastards, I swear..."

He lifted his head and let out an incredulous little laugh. Then, abruptly, he glanced me over. His eyes stuck on the radio at my shoulder and the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ring of keys at my waist.

He shifted aside and opened a wide space.

"...You the engineer, sir?"

"Yes."

"Ayy. Han Dongsu. Incheon Airport ground ops. You know the work—under the plane while she's sittin' on the ground. Pump the fuel, load the bags."

"Yoon Seowook."

I stepped past the room he had made, sat on the floor facing him, and gave him that. He wore a fluorescent vest. Salt had gone white across the shoulders, and a few marks like burns showed on the backs of his hands.

"Dawn yesterday was no small fuss, I'll tell you. Power for the whole airport went out in one go. Ever seen the runway guidance lights snap off all ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠at once? Place that big, pitch-black in a heartbeat."

I said nothing.

"I'd just come in from clampin' the chemical tanks under the wings and sprayin'. Twelve of those birds at Incheon alone, y'hear? That's our job."

"Spraying sulfuric acid into the stratosphere to make an artificial shade?"

It was a project more than ten years old. A vast artificial roof: sulfuric-acid aerosol scattered through the sky to throw the sunlight back. Every time the National Assembly fought over it as a budget bill, the noise got loud.

"The sprayers have been down a measly thirty-seven hours. Temperature can climb twenty degrees in a day?"

"Didn't climb in a day."

"What?"

"This damned heat was the real temperature from the start. More'n ten years they forced the stuff up there, hung a shade in the sky, and we lived gettin' lied to, pretendin' it wasn't hot. Ain't that so? Heat that steams a person dead—you think that was a day or two?"

I had nothing to say to that.

"But we caught the solar wind square, so the planes, the power, the satellites—all of it up and died."

Han Dongsu scraped a hand down his sweat-soaked face, irritable.

"Haa. Hoo. We're good as dead now. Gonna get simmered alive, nice and thorough! Goddamn."

Then he looked up.

"Say, Engineer. What time you make it?"

He was staring straight at me. I looked down at my watch.

10:58 in the morning.

The real hell hadn't even started.

For ten years there had been a moment I imagined. Someday the world would simply end, and if no one came outside anymore, what would I need?

More, it turned out, than I had thought. I was a man who needed a great deal. I also learned that whether one person is living or two, they still keep one washing machine, one refrigerator, one microwave.

Back then it was only amusement. An idle fantasy of the kind a salaried man indulges—never clocking in again, loafing out the rest of a life down there. A game. A hobby.

In a dark that no one knew, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠carrying things in one by one so that no one would know, I had built my fortress.

The next destination was set.

Sinseol-dong Station. The third basement level.

My own secret base.

Leave Gangbyeon, pass Seongsu, count the transfer, and it came to seven stops in all.

I closed my hand around the key ring at my waist and stood. Han Dongsu stared at me.

"...Where you goin'?"

I turned toward the steel door of the disaster-prevention room.

"Home. Before it gets any hotter."

© Sediva #1dn3e