Walk Like Your Life Depends on It

I looked down at my watch. 10:58 a.m.

Barely an hour left until noon.

"Haa. Whew. We're good as dead now, I tell you. Gonna get boiled alive in our own skins! Son of a bitch."

Han Dongsu dragged a hand down his sweat-soaked face, nerves fraying in the motion.

"We have to go."

I left him where he stood and yanked open the emergency cabinet on the disaster-prevention room wall.

Even the comms were dying. I had no intention of planting myself in that room like a fool and waiting to be rescued.

Sixty degrees on the surface. Hot enough to blow out just ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠about every cooling system humanity had ever built, and then some. The ground under direct sun was a given. Any building with thin walls would be an oven even under a roof.

There was exactly one way to live. Go underground.

And not just anywhere. It had to be the third basement level of Sinseol-dong Station — the ghost platform.

No other station would do. Hot wind would pour in through the huge vents tied to the surface, and once the body heat of tens of thousands of refugees got trapped down there, the place would turn into a boiling steam room in no time. But the third basement at Sinseol-dong had been abandoned for fifty years, since 1974. A sealed zone, cut off from the outside completely. Layer on layer of soil, bedrock, and concrete, more than ten meters of it, had been blocking the heat all that time. The air down there held at fifteen degrees, year-round.

All we had to do was get there in one piece.

The route itself wasn't hard. Start at Gangbyeon, transfer onto the Seongsu Branch. Seven stops in all.

I shut my mouth and dug through the cabinet for what I needed. Two high-output flashlights for track inspection. One multipurpose folding knife, good for stripping cable sheath. A pair of insulated gloves, which I shoved into my waistband.

Ten years of subway work. I knew exactly what belonged in a man's hands under a dark tunnel.

I was reaching for the iron door handle when Han Dongsu stepped in front of me. Sitting down, I hadn't registered it. Standing, he filled my whole field of view.

"...Where you goin'?"

"Home."

"Take me with you."

"What?"

I stopped and looked up at him.

His eyes glittered. He jabbed a blunt finger at the ring of keys chiming at my waist and dropped his voice to a whisper.

"You think I can't read a room? Sharp as a damn fox, me. Mister motorman. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠How you figurin' on gettin' home right this minute? You aimin' to hole up someplace all on your lonesome? Those keys — long as you got 'em, you can open every last door down under here, can't you? Let me tag along. A man wants to live through this godforsaken mess, he sticks himself tight to somebody with a head on his shoulders."

"That won't work."

"Aw, why you gotta be like that. I'm plenty sure of myself when it comes to usin' these arms. Bring a thick-hided meat shield along."

I studied him.

He looked a little old for it. Even so, just as he'd said, he had to be a good six-foot-three, and his weight cleared three digits without any trouble at all.

As if he'd read the thought, Han Dongsu flexed one thick forearm, then pointed at the iron door of the disaster room.

"Just step outside that door and see. Those bastards with their eyes rolled back'll grab you and raise all kinds of hell. Augh, hot as sin... haa. I'm winded already. What're you chewin' on so hard?"

"I'm refusing."

He wasn't wrong. I had no idea what variables were about to come jumping out. More than that, if I meant to punch through the concourse on the first floor right now, that thick forearm might be more use than a master key.

Even so, I drew the line and held it.

"I don't have the spare to look after anyone. Survive on your own."

"Ah, damn it! Colder than a winter ditch, treatin' a man like that!"

I left him thumping around the disaster room, drew one deep breath, and threw open the iron door that led to the first-floor concourse.

The moment the heavy door opened, it hit.

Heat stabbed straight into my lungs. I'd only been inside a few minutes, and already the air outside had climbed to something vicious. The station's air-conditioning had died long ago. What was left didn't even deserve comparison to a dry sauna. It went past the feeling of being hot. Every breath was a physical pain, as if someone were holding a lump of barbecue charcoal up against my nostrils.

I pushed through it, past the booth, and swung around a pillar into the first-floor concourse of Gangbyeon Station. The stink of hundreds — thousands — of sweating bodies met me there, sour sweat and the sharp reek of piss.

In the middle of it, someone had a phone hoisted high, straining after a signal that refused to connect. None of them understood what had just happened. They were waiting, vaguely, for someone to show up like a hero and save them. The Gangbyeon staff who should have been holding the concourse were nowhere in sight. Swallowed by the crowd, or already gone. Not so much as a nose.

That was when it started.

Beeeep—! Beep—!

Alert tones went off in pockets all at once. The network was down, but a national disaster message had forced its way through the emergency channel. I pulled out my phone too.

Later?

The time was 11:02 a.m. Sixty-odd minutes left until noon. Promising word at some later date was a declaration of surrender. No will to restore the system right now — or no ability.

At the same moment, reason went with it.

Crash!

In front of a vending machine already smashed open and stripped to nothing, a man in a dress shirt and a man in a sleeveless shirt rolled on the floor like animals over a single lukewarm bottle of water.

"I grabbed it first!"

"Hand it over, you son of a bitch!"

"Just drop dead already!"

Blood poured from them — glass shards, by the look of the cuts — and they didn't care. They went for each other's throats, stabbed at eyes, kept attacking.

"Goddamn animals. Even the yellow mutt out back don't scrap like that. They not hot? Energy to spare, just like that."

Han Dongsu had caught up at some point. He clicked his tongue, sounding sick of the sight.

I pulled my eyes off the tangle and walked, steady, toward the staff-only area on the far side of the vending machine.

"Mister, where you goin'!"

He hurried after me, shouting.

A hundred bottles in that machine, if that. The crowd packed into the station had to be two thousand at a low guess. Those bottles were going to become a pretext for slaughter before long. Only a matter of time. I meant to find water somewhere else.

Then, all at once—

"Haa. Haa... huh? The motorman! Hey, you!"

"Mister! Where's the shelter!"

"Hey! Hehk... hek. Where's the water, the water!"

"When's the train leaving? Why isn't it going?"

Someone had spotted the radio on my shoulder and the sweat-soaked motorman's uniform, and shouted. Dozens of eyes swung onto me at once.

"I don't know either."

I didn't even get a second to gather myself. A rough hand seized me by the collar.

"Then what the hell! If you don't know, who in here does!"

More hands shot out at the same time, pawing at my pants pocket and the bundle of keys. Eyes lit with something like madness.

"You little shits."

Han Dongsu, who'd been stuck to my back the whole way, bulled through the crowd like a machine and planted himself in front of me.

"I'll split your mouths ear to ear and hang 'em off your ears! Why you gotta hound a man like this!"

Every time that thick forearm swept through, people dropped like leaves.

"You all right?"

He turned to me, still breathing hard. I straightened the uniform they'd crumpled all to hell and looked at him.

"..."

I had to admit it. The use of that brute force.

I gave Han Dongsu one short nod. Permission to come along, without a word.

Scanning the area, I caught a sign off to the left.

With Han Dongsu's solid bulk for an escort, I found the right key and got it into the lock before the crowd could pile in.

Clack.

The door opened on a quiet room, cut clean away from the hell outside. I threw the inner latch at once and went straight for the commercial refrigerator in the corner.

The power hadn't been out long, and the inside was already lukewarm. In the freezer, though, five or six half-liter bottles of water sat in a neat row — frozen by the staff for their own drinking.

"Drink."

I tossed Han Dongsu a bottle of half-melted ice water and took one myself, dumping ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it straight down my throat. Cold enough to ache in the bones, it slid the length of my esophagus, and the organs and brain that had been boiling seemed to cool all at once.

"Haa... hwaa... kh! This gentleman ain't the type to go hungry, I'll give him that."

Han Dongsu wiped his mouth and stared at me as if I were some kind of wonder.

I studied what lay beyond the window. Past the second-floor platform, enormous heat shimmer writhed over the steel rails left bare to the brutal sun.

"From here, we walk the tracks."

"What? The tracks? That griddle out in the sun?"

"Sixty degrees in direct sun right now. The rails and the ballast will be past eighty."

"Then how we supposed to go out there? You askin' us to die together, or what?"

Instead of answering, I shifted my eyes to the route map on the wall.

Gangbyeon, Guui, Konkuk University, Seongsu. From there onto the branch: Yongdap, Sindap, Yongdu, Sinseol-dong.

The problem was that everything except Yongdu and Sinseol-dong ran aboveground. About 6.8 kilometers still lay between us and the underground tunnel. Which meant that for the next five stations, we would have to force our ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠way across that superheated viaduct.

"We won't make it all today."

"Huh?"

"It's over six kilometers from here to the mouth of the underground tunnel at Yongdu. Walk that in one go and you'll be dead before you're halfway."

Han Dongsu gaped at me.

"Then what you figurin' on doin'?"

"The target is Guui Station. That's it."

I traced the map with a fingertip as I went on.

"Nine hundred meters from here. We move as far as Guui, hide, and walk again after the sun's down."

"Hit it and duck out?"

"Three days like that, and we ought to arrive."

Three days. Said out loud, the number felt like a hand on my throat. Even with a transfer wait, a train would have covered it in twenty minutes. And we were going to crawl it over three days.

"But you said a man dies in three minutes out there."

"We don't step on the track."

"Huh? Then what?"

"We go under it."

"Under?"

"There's an inspection walkway beneath the elevated rail bridge. The path they use when they check the structure."

"..."

"Steel grating. You know it. Iron mesh underfoot, steel railings. Wide enough for one person. Not many people even know it's there."

Han Dongsu blinked those hollow eyes, slow.

"Under the bridge deck. The concrete overhead will work as a shade."

Only then did his mouth come open, gradually.

"We go with wet cloth over our heads. It can't be allowed to dry, so we keep it soaked."

I rummaged the lounge cabinet, pulled out two spare shirts that belonged to someone, split the bottled water over them, and handed one to Han Dongsu.

"We got water to spare?"

"No. We drink it sparingly."

"This little ant-piss bottle, and you want me soakin' clothes and drinkin' both!"

"Can't be helped. Fifteen minutes. That's the target."

"Fifteen? In this sweatbox? That even possible?"

On an ordinary day, fifteen minutes would have been right. On a narrow inspection catwalk with an eighty-degree gale boiling up under our feet, it could take more than thirty. And at this temperature, thirty minutes was something we absolutely would not survive. So there was no other option. Somehow, we had to cut it down to the pace we kept on a normal day.

"And if my legs quit on the way and I go down!"

"Either way, we arrive before the water in these shirts dries."

"So you're sayin'..."

"I'm saying we walk like our lives depend on it."

"Nngh."

Han Dongsu had no answer left. He nodded.

I wound the wet shirt tight around my head. We split what remained of the half-liter ice water, one bottle each, and I stood before the iron door in the lounge's inner wall.

I put the key in and turned it. The door opened with a grating creak, and a wind leaked through the gap, exhaust fumes mixed with the smell of concrete. We pushed it wide and set our first steps onto the perforated steel tread.

Kree-eek.

The comfort of shade shattered in an instant. The deck overhead did block the direct sun, sure enough. But ten meters under our feet, radiant heat off the asphalt of the eight-lane road came slamming up as the pavement boiled. It felt like walking across a gas range.

"Hakk. Haa... they lightin' a fire down there?"

"Haa. Haa."

At the same moment—

Thud! Crash!

A dull shock rang through the track deck on the level above our heads, and then a horrible scream broke loose.

"Aaaah! Hot!"

"S-save—"

"Aaaaaagh!!"

Tssssss—!

From overhead, vivid and close, came the awful sound of raw meat searing onto a hot plate. Blood pattered down from the ceiling and soaked me. Without a word, I drew the knife from my waist.

© Sediva #1dn3e