Inside the Warehouse
“Do you know what a flamethrower really is?”
“A pretty cruel weapon that burns people alive…”
“That’s what people think. They’re wrong.”
“Then…”
“It’s a thing that burns the air itself. In the Pacific, they poured fire into the tunnels the Japs dug into. In Europe, where I was, we did the same to Nazi bunkers. You know what happens after that?”
“….”
“Here. The windpipe cooks first, whole. When the flame hits before you can even brace for it, your lungs suck in oxygen heated white-hot and you steam from the inside out.”
“I… see.”
“Whether that meat-pile thing is breathing or not, I couldn’t say… but one thing I do know.”
Mr. Curtis ran a hand along the portable mounted flamethrower I’d built for him and grinned.
From the thick steel barrel facing forward down to the massive fuel tank mounted underneath.
He shoved the thing forward and back a few times for practice, still smiling, that old combat veteran, until at last he turned from the weapon to me.
“With this thing you made, we won’t be making bunker-Nazi stew. We’ll be making Nazi barbecue.”
— Fwoooosh. Fwoosh.
A stream of flame speared out like a lance and began punching holes through meat that had no way to fight back.
Hands and feet that had fallen to the floor writhed and tried to crawl, but even those slowly cooked and sizzled under Mr. James’s flamethrower as he walked steadily forward.
The blood that had been everywhere on the floor boiled and seared into the concrete, and the meat-mass that had been squirming toward us crumbled into ash.
“Hahahaha! Ahahahaha!!!”
Unlike Mr. Curtis, who was having the time of his life, all I could do was stare blankly at the burning flesh.
It had been a sinister, grotesque monster.
Now it was nothing more than a giant lump of charcoal.
So empty it almost hurt.
“Kieeeeeek…”
I had no idea how big the thing really was, but the roar traveled along the walls and filled the space.
There had to be faces on the “tails,” too.
Otherwise there was no way those screams could be coming from the parts the fire was swallowing.
“Reload.”
“Reload!”
I pulled a spare fuel can off the cart and lowered the one Mr. James was carrying.
— Squeak, squeak. Scrape. Ssshhk. Click.
With a wrench from my pocket I disconnected the hose linking the tank to the projector, shook it out clean, fitted it to the new can, and cranked it down tight before hoisting the whole thing back onto Mr. James’s back.
He waved me off, shoved me aside with a hand, and aimed the projector at the floor again.
— Fwoooooosh.
Once more a sun-bright torrent of fire erupted right in front of us.
Red hands and feet that had somehow climbed the walls and tried to smother the source of the flame from a blind angle took the full stream and dropped straight to the ground.
Until now I’d only ever seen him as a father who doted on his daughter to a frightening degree.
Unlike Mr. Curtis, laughing like a man drunk on fire, he regulated the spray in silence, scanned the surroundings, and crushed any thrashing arm or leg underfoot to finish the job for certain.
It was a sight that drove the fact that he was a former soldier into my skull all over again, and I just stood there staring, mind blank—
“…Hyunwoo!”
The sudden voice calling my name snapped me back. Mr. James was gesturing with his head.
The tape that had been wound tight around his arms had long since melted and fallen away in the heat.
But the direction his chin pointed… was a corridor.
And not just any corridor—the one with the wiring running through it.
“The generator you were looking for.”
He tossed the words out and went right back to clearing the path for Mr. Curtis’s flame tank.
Sparks fell from the ceiling in a shower, a fireworks display.
Come to think of it—how many days had it been since I’d last seen the sky?
Even in the real world, fine dust and pollution had already made finding the stars a lost cause…
“Hyunwoo!”
Something grabbed my back and shook me. I turned. Sarah was pressed right up against me, shoving me toward the corridor.
Mr. Dietrich came right after her.
“…Haa. Haa.”
Mr. James and Mr. Curtis had pushed far enough ahead that the distance had opened up.
I cracked my gas mask open and sweat poured off me.
Sarah set the oxygen tank on the floor, and a sharp ringing filled my ears again.
While I wiped my face with a sleeve soaked through with sweat, both Sarah and Mr. Dietrich fanned themselves with their hands and gulped for air.
“Phew.”
“You can really tell they used to be soldiers. Incredible, all of them. Even in fire-resistant gear, to look that unfazed…”
His voice was a little high, a little excited—then Mr. Dietrich suddenly fixed his eyes on me.
“You want me to dissect that thing, don’t you? Find its weak points? Honestly, I’m curious. It goes against everything we know. Meat masses fusing into something that size? Where does it even get the calories? The digestive tract? Does each individual keep using its own? Or—”
And then, eyes slightly unfocused, the words poured out of him in a flood.
“Is there a limit to what kind of living things it can absorb? No—how do the organs even connect in the first place? Do the brains stay intact? Are those brains wired in series or in parallel? The more knowledge it absorbs, the smarter it— mmmph?!”
“Get a grip. Snap out of it.”
Before I could say anything, Sarah’s hands clamped onto both of Mr. Dietrich’s cheeks and stretched them out wide.
“Mmmph. Mmmfff.”
“You can see the adrenaline’s fried him, right? It’s got the doctor completely loopy.”
“Yeah.”
“Mmmph. Mmmph.”
Watching him flap his stretched lips with his cheeks pulled long finally cracked a laugh out of me.
Of course, the reek of rotting flesh flooding my nose and the foul stench of filth that made my head heavy forced me to pull the gas mask back on.
“Khhhuuuh.”
I took a deep breath in, let it out, and checked our surroundings.
The roar of the flamethrower went on without pause.
At the same time, black smoke crawled along the ceiling and left soot in a continuous trail.
We had to get the ventilation running before the oxygen got any more contaminated.
And that meant the generator, which should be just a little farther ahead…
“…Ugh. This.”
Of course.
A creature like that didn’t just spring out of the floor for no reason.
Traces of a survivor group covered the ground.
Rotten food. A burned-out pot.
Blood soaked into the floor and bandages scattered around.
Blades with dried blood caked on them.
“There were people here… weren’t there. At first… they were people.”
I shook an oil can in the corner and felt the sloshing weight of fuel still inside.
I popped the lid and groped through the dark for the generator’s tank while Sarah snapped her flashlight on and lit the opening for me.
— Grrrk. Gdrdrdrk. Gddddd…
I yanked the cord hard three times. With a rattling cough, the ceiling lights began to come on one by one.
But the room didn’t get as bright as I’d expected.
“…What a mess.”
Traces the flashlight alone hadn’t shown.
The room was painted in blood in every direction—past grotesque and into outright nauseating.
“I figured as much, but heh… yeah. A little more than a little.”
Until now, still riding the drug, Mr. Dietrich had been bouncing up and looking around with something like excitement—but that look of his wasn’t going to last much longer.
“For now, let’s head back and open the bunker door together. Heat and smoke should keep anything from coming near, but. Mr. Dietrich?”
“Y-yes! Heard you. Let’s hurry back and watch the fire. Ah—could I take a sample?”
“…The small ones, maybe, but the big grown one? Honestly, I don’t want to touch it. Something that size could swallow a pig whole.”
“But how often are you going to find people fused together like that again? I’m genuinely curious, too. A creature that works like glue, bonding multiple living things into one…”
Even with adrenaline scrambling his brain, this was something else.
Was this really the same man who’d carefully said he might be able to dissect a corpse?
“Let’s go already. We’ve got to learn whatever we can about what we don’t know!”
Before anyone could stop him, he yanked the shotgun from his belt, gripped it in both hands, and bolted.
I stared after him, blank.
And then—
“Was he always like that…?”
Sarah turned to me with the question.
“How would I know?”
“You’re the one who brought him here.”
“Just because I brought him doesn’t mean I have some way of knowing he’d turn into that.”
“…If I inject him with adrenaline, will he come at me a little more like a man?”
“What?”
“Hm?”
This damn gas mask.
The fogging was bad enough, but the way it muffled everything…
“Just catch up already. I want a shower.”
> Enter password.
> Enter password: Red Cross
> System access granted.
“Got it.”
— Pshhh.
The sound of air escaping, and beyond it the whir of an electric motor kicking in.
Rusted steel wheels slowly pushed the iron door open, revealing the space inside.
“After all that work, there’d better be something in there.”
The moment Mr. James peeled off his gloves, sweat hit the floor by the fistful. He leaned against the wall as he spoke.
At the far end of the corridor, with a sound like a balloon deflating, the monster lay crushed under the ash of what had once been its own body, breathing its last.
“Well then. Shall we take a look?”
As the lights came up, the narrow warehouse finally showed itself.
The cold hit the instant I stepped through the door—so cold it was hard to believe the power had been off.
How could it still be this cold with no electricity—
“…Whoa. Ah…”
Before anyone could stop them, the Omens and Mr. Dietrich shoved into the warehouse in a rush.
They stripped off a layer each and threw themselves straight onto the cold floor.
“I feel alive agaiiin—”
The chill was welcome, sure, but instead of resting I went straight for the storage crates.
I fitted a makeshift key into a box with its own lock, turned it.
— Crack.
The key snapped—but the box opened anyway.
And inside—
“…This.”
Unidentified injectables, packed to the brim.