Finding Transportation 4
The energy saw of the Foundation Suit was far more powerful than I had imagined.
With a sharp whirrr—, it sliced through even sizable trees as cleanly as cutting tofu, finishing the job in mere seconds.
Excited, I started felling every straight, sturdy tree suitable for spear shafts that I could find. After a while, when a decent pile of felled trees had accumulated, I sat on the ground still wearing the suit and devoted myself to the surprisingly difficult work—made harder by the suit’s excessive strength—of trimming the branches and evening out the lengths with the energy saw. I completely lost track of time.
“(Hey, Seo Yeong-chan.)”
Yeong-ju’s voice came through the communicator.
“(It’s already lunchtime. Come back soon. You need to eat.)”
Only then did I realize the sun was high overhead. I finally noticed the sweat I’d worked up carefully trimming the branches, tied the worked wood with rope, and—using the suit’s immense power—hoisted it onto my back before returning to the Shelter.
When I got back, Yeong-ju, Yang Jin-ju, and Nam Jin-ju had already gone around the Shelter and piled up a mountain of usable metal resources. To avoid repeating the mistake I’d made last time, they were thoroughly removing impurities, sorting everything by type, and moving the materials into the resource processing room.
“Oh, you’re back already? You found some pretty good stuff.”
Yeong-ju greeted me with a compliment delivered as if it were nothing.
We immediately started making spears. The wood I’d brought was processed by the machines in the resource processing room into smooth spear shafts of uniform length and thickness. Meanwhile, Yeong-ju and Yang Jin-ju used the collected metal to mass-produce sharp, triangular spearheads.
For the final assembly, the shafts and heads were piled high on the cafeteria table. When I naturally took a seat to help, Yeong-ju stopped me.
“You’re out.”
“Huh? Why?”
“You’ve been out working hard since morning. Go wash up and rest a bit. We can handle this ourselves.”
With that, she took Yang Jin-ju and Kang Po-gyeong—who had approached at some point—and sat them around the table to begin assembling. I stood there blankly for a moment before letting out a soft chuckle. I could now recognize the warm consideration hidden in her gruff tone.
That evening, dozens of sturdy spears with gleaming pointed metal tips lay neatly before us.
We stood in front of the Shelter’s entrance. Before us, the goods for our first trade—produced day and night over the past three days—were packed into several large duffel bags. Those bags were then tightly bound with sturdy rope into one enormous bundle roughly the size of a small car.
“Honestly, it still seems dangerous… Seo Yeong-chan, you know I’m only letting you go because you insisted, right?”
As I prepared to lift the massive bag bundle while wearing the Foundation Suit, Yeong-ju crossed her arms and spoke in a worried voice.
“I also think it would be better for me to stay here and patrol the area, just in case you come back with those survivors on your tail…”
She said that, then smirked at me.
“Anyway, you’re way worse than me at scouting the surroundings and dealing with anything unusual.”
I couldn’t argue with her teasing.
“So take care out there. Just act like Yang Jin-ju’s reliable pack mule and bodyguard, and keep Yang Jin-ju and Kang Po-gyeong safe. Sharp Yang Jin-ju and Kang Po-gyeong, who has experience with survivor groups, will handle the rest. Got it?”
Hearing that, I nodded once more with a sense of reassurance.
I seated Yang Jin-ju and Kang Po-gyeong—who were coming with me into downtown Daegu—on the safe spots we’d prepared atop the giant bag bundle. It was the best method we’d devised to protect them from the countless zombie threats during the journey. Yang Jin-ju and Kang Po-gyeong sat down and securely fastened their safety belts.
When I used the suit’s power to hoist the enormous bag bundle onto my back and stood up, cheers erupted from both of them at once.
“Wow! It really lifted! It feels like a ride at an amusement park!”
“Incredible, Seo Yeong-chan-nim! It’s truly stable!”
They were as excited as children.
After leaving the Shelter and moving for about ten minutes at roughly the speed of a slow-moving car, we gradually began to leave the area where, over the past two weeks, we had reduced the zombie population while searching for working vehicles. Ugly zombies started appearing one by one on the roads again.
I moved while avoiding them as much as possible, but completely avoiding them was impossible. To protect the women on my back, I held a staff-cum-iron rod I’d prepared in one hand and continued forward, striking down the ones blocking the path one by one.
Thud! Thud!
The ones hit by the iron rod powered by the suit’s strength crumpled helplessly.
Then, after about forty minutes of travel, Yang Jin-ju spoke with difficulty from atop the bag bundle above my head.
“Ugh… Oppa, I’m sorry, but… could you stop for a moment?”
Her voice was trembling as if she was severely carsick. Kang Po-gyeong beside her also looked extremely unwell, her face pale white, though she couldn’t bring herself to say anything to me.
After scanning the surroundings, I used the suit’s power to leap in one bound onto the roof of a single-story convenience store building nearby that looked like it had been looted and scorched by fire. Only after thoroughly blocking the sole access to the roof with heavy scrap materials nearby did I set down the massive load from my back.
“Ugh… We’re alive…”
The moment they got down, both of them collapsed flat on the floor. I took a water bottle from the small bag at my waist and handed it to them.
After drinking water and catching their breath for a while, they looked at me—still in the suit—with apologetic expressions.
“Oppa, you should… take off the suit and rest a bit too. Because of us…”
But I shook my head.
“No. This isn’t a place with guaranteed safety like the Shelter. I need to stay ready for any unexpected danger.”
I spoke brightly to reassure them.
“Don’t worry. Wearing the suit, I’m not tired at all.”
After about ten minutes of short rest, we set off again toward our destination. Their expressions looked much better than before.
“Where are you? Sim Geum-a! Boss!”
On the rooftop of a five-story commercial building, Sim Geum-a was lying on an old mattress, leisurely smoking a cigarette and sunbathing, when a woman who served as her lieutenant rushed over urgently.
“Outside the gate… some weirdos just showed up!”
Sim Geum-a just exhaled a long stream of cigarette smoke as if annoyed, showing little interest. The lieutenant spoke even more urgently.
“They say they want to trade… and their appearance is weird! There’s a guy wearing some kind of armor, standing there perfectly fine without looking tired at all even though he’s got two people sitting on a huge cargo bundle!”
Even then, Sim Geum-a just kept smoking without moving. But at the lieutenant’s final urgent words, she finally sprang up from her spot.
“And… those guys brought a bunch of shiny metal chopsticks and spoons, trays and stuff from who knows where! There were tools like nails and hammers too, weapons that look like spears… and even! They’ve got big stainless steel water containers full of clean water!”
Sim Geum-a tossed her cigarette to the floor and crushed it under her combat boot. Then, walking toward the lower floors, she asked the woman.
“Which gate? East or west?”
The languidness was gone from her eyes; now a sharp, greedy light like a predator’s gleamed there.
When we arrived at Sim Geum-a’s territory, we couldn’t help but be impressed.
It was like a massive fortress wall, built by using tall buildings as pillars and filling the empty spaces between them with wrecked cars, uprooted traffic lights, and all sorts of scrap metal. Armed sentries were vigilantly watching the surroundings from atop the buildings and the walls they had built themselves. Just from this, I thought she must be a truly capable and impressive woman.
When we approached shouting that we wanted to trade, a section of the wall—a gate that seemed made by linking giant car billboards—opened with a creeeak— and four men walked out with guns.
“You want to trade? No reason for us to refuse! But how are we supposed to know if what’s in that huge bag is a bomb, a useless rock, or just a bunch of cotton? If you want to trade, you’ll have to take everything out and show us before you come inside!”
The man who seemed the most senior among the four—unusually a white man—spoke to us in fluent Korean.
At that, Yang Jin-ju signaled for me to set her down. I carefully lowered her and Kang Po-gyeong to the ground.
Yang Jin-ju spoke confidently toward them.
“Understood. But we’ll open the bags ourselves. If you open them and the valuable goods inside spill out, it’d be a waste for both of us.”
With my help, she untied the ropes of the giant bag bundle we’d brought and began spreading the contents one by one on a waterproof tarp we’d laid out on the ground beforehand.
“These are cutlery sets. All made of stainless steel, so no need to worry about them breaking or rusting.”
When Yang Jin-ju opened the first bag, hundreds of metal spoons and chopsticks poured out with a pleasant metallic clatter—!
The four men tried to look nonchalant, but they couldn’t hide the greedy twitch in their eyes.
“These are trays and steel scrubbers.”
Seeing the shiny trays from the second bag, they could no longer hide their surprise.
“This bag has basic tools like nails, hammers, and pliers.”
When the third bag opened, even the gazes of the sentries up on the wall all turned this way.
“These are spears. The shafts are hard wood, the tips sharp iron. They should be pretty useful.”
And finally.
“These are four fifty-liter stainless steel water containers. Since it’s our first trade, we’ve specially filled them to the brim with clean drinking water you can drink right away.”
With that, Jin-ju finished her explanation, and the white man who seemed senior barely recovered his wits and left with “W-wait! I’ll go report to the boss!” before hurrying inside.
Ignoring the remaining people’s astonished “No way, he carried that alone…!”, Yang Jin-ju turned slightly so they couldn’t see and beamed at me with a proud, satisfied expression that said, How was that, Oppa? Did I do well?
Impressed by her confident negotiation, I quietly gave her a thumbs-up.