Crossroads
Mr. Curtis dotted and dashed the signals, and Mr. James wrote out the letters beneath them.
What came through was —
"Distress call. This is 75, position Concord Hotel… is what it says. How should we reply?"
There were several ways to make contact with Spearhead personnel.
You could pick up a contact frequency in a city where Spearhead operators were active.
You could set up a beacon and wait for Spearhead teams to find it on their sweeps.
Or you could do it like this — reach out directly, right from the start, through a channel they could already use.
"At the very least, we need to hold them before they switch frequencies."
"…Are you saying we should give them a settlement name?"
"That works too."
I hadn't expected to suddenly have to invent a settlement name.
And the way everyone just stared at me instead of offering ideas of their own —
"No good ideas… anyone?"
"We're all here because of you. You decide."
"I'm one of the people you brought in too."
"We have no objections either."
Sarah.
Ms. Angela.
The entire Newman family — all of them just nodded.
Not a single person volunteered a name.
Normally the system would just spit out an auto-generated one, and that was usually good enough…
"As long as they're broadcasting a distress signal, there's no telling how long they'll keep transmitting. Best to hurry."
Even so, a decent name didn't come easily.
I had never been much good at naming things to begin with.
"If you're truly stuck — what about Werkstatt?"
The one who carefully raised her hand and stepped forward from among the others was Ms. Angela.
"It means workshop. You are someone who knocks things together out of whatever's at hand, and everything we've done so far has been about building something."
"Workshop…"
But Werkstatt — the name was too hard.
And just calling it Workshop felt a little… how to put it.
Like a company retreat?
"The name's a bit complicated. Is there another word for —"
"There's atelier, isn't there?"
Ms. Lisa raised her hand, but the others only looked more troubled.
"You're not wrong, but… hmm, the word…"
"It's a little too pretty, isn't it? Sure, we'll be farming soon enough, but… atelier. Sounds like a flower shop."
She gave a slightly sheepish smile and lowered her hand — and that seemed to exhaust the pool of suggestions.
Still, the proposals so far had given us a skeleton to work with.
Back when I'd been hunting for jobs, the production facilities of companies that had sprung up all over the countryside —
The word for those was —
"Factory."
"Factory?"
"They called themselves 75 —"
My eyes were drawn, almost automatically, to the marking stamped onto the gun Mr. James was holding.
The number painted on in red: [01].
"So if we answer as F01, it'll be clear enough, won't it?"
"Factory, factory… Bleak, sure. But in a way, it suits you."
"Suits me?"
And why was everyone else nodding like they agreed?
"Mechanical. Yeah."
"And you crank out goods just fine."
"Making things is pretty much all you know how to do, so."
Before I could even get a word in, Mr. James was already scratching dots and dashes across the paper.
Reading them off, Mr. Curtis clacked away at the Morse key, and before anyone could cancel it the message was already going out.
"Latitude… longitude… Sarah, the map."
The Omen family clustered together, tracing their fingers across the broad map to mark the position, then turned toward me.
"About where was the hatch?"
"The location?"
"The point where we entered… is here."
Sarah tapped a spot on the map, then pointed to a newly marked red dot.
"And these two points aren't that far apart. About three hours on foot."
"Describe the surrounding terrain."
"Well…"
I blinked, trying to dredge up the scene from earlier.
"In front of us was flat ground — a downward slope, actually — and if you crossed the flatland below it there were buildings. Behind us was an open empty lot —"
"Flatland? A slope? Buildings…"
She swept her hand across the map where buildings were marked, then shook her head.
"There's no flatland with buildings around it anywhere nearby. Are you sure it was flat? Because —"
"If you're looking toward buildings, you should be able to see the river."
Mr. Curtis stepped past Sarah and pointed to the Omen family's entry point.
"No matter how much we wandered underground, I don't believe we strayed far from this area. And it's winter now — the river will be frozen. Therefore."
Mr. Curtis hummed under his breath for a moment, then circled three or four spots on the map.
"I think it was roughly one of these points. If so — with luck, two hours. At worst, about four."
"Two to four hours? Is this location accurate?"
"We can't pin down the surface position with any real precision, and we don't have GPS either."
Mr. Curtis let out a breath and took the last signal Mr. James had recorded behind him.
"Ammunition, medical supplies, and food all exhausted. One wounded, one dead, two uninjured."
"Only four people…"
"The fact that they haven't said anything else suggests they're assuming we'll come to the hotel."
"…The surface is thick with radiation."
"They're people who scavenge supplies from the outside, so they probably figure that if we can receive their transmission, we've got the mobility to match. Or —"
"We're their last hope."
I looked down at the hazmat suit I was wearing.
No tears. No unusual symptoms after going up to the surface and coming back.
Still. Two hours on the surface.
Four, if luck ran out.
We had no idea how high the contamination was. If the route was badly irradiated, we might not even be able to pass through.
Under those conditions, was going to rescue the Spearhead personnel the right call?
— Beep-beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep…
Mr. James had taken off his headset a long time ago.
Mr. Curtis sighed.
Sarah didn't look particularly cheerful either.
"If you're even thinking of going to save these people right now — no. Just… take that off."
"…"
"Listen to Sarah. This is a completely different matter from when we rescued you."
I was thinking the same thing.
There were too many risks.
If we'd had more spare hazmat suits, if our decontamination gear had been more solid, maybe.
But going outside — where you could, if you were unlucky, run into flying monstrosities — to rescue wounded whose position we couldn't even pinpoint properly… there was no realism in that.
"Even so."
Just as I was starting to undo the sealed fastenings of the suit, Ms. Angela raised her hand again.
Her eyes shone with something like resolve.
"We can't just leave them. They're still… sending us transmissions right now."
She was right. The signal set kept spitting out its beeping.
The electronic cry, clinging desperately to us in the face of our silence, showed no intention of stopping.
"You said the more people we have, the better."
"…We're talking about people contaminated with radiation, Ms. Angela."
"— Here."
What she pulled from her coat and held up to me were… blue pills.
Medicine for treating radiation exposure.
"Prussian Blue I found while sorting the medical supply boxes. If the exposure is too severe, ending their lives on the spot would be far more humane. But if it's something they can recover from, we can save them. We'll have to monitor them for a long time, though."
"The problem is we could get irradiated ourselves, Doctor. And we can't even be sure this is a one-day rescue. Even a modest increase in exposure means shaving your head clean."
At Mr. Curtis's warning, Ms. Angela briefly clutched her own hair.
Even now it was soft and lustrous — a magnificent field of golden wheat.
But her hesitation didn't last long.
"If it's to save people, I can give up a head of hair anytime."
"Hair aside — are you going alone? No. Don't even think about taking Hyunwoo with you."
"This is for the community. More capable people. More —"
"People you can't handle are better off abandoned. And what if someone gets hurt or killed going after them? What if this is all a lie? Is staking your life on these unknowns calling themselves 75 worth that much?"
"…They were even hurt by something we don't know about."
Sarah and Mr. James cast their votes against as well.
The Newman family, of course, only looked at me with worry.
But Ms. Lisa, at last, slowly parted her lips.
"We… we owe our lives to kindness. It's dangerous, and maybe I shouldn't say this, but… the people who are saved will be grateful. I… think so."
With that, Ms. Lisa quietly bowed her head.
Mr. Matthew said nothing either, only stroking her shoulder.
The opinions seemed evenly split.
Which meant the choice was mine.
— Beep-beep. Beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep.
Do we risk part of the community's people to go rescue those still calling for help?
Or do we secure our own safety for the time being?
The choice was already clear.
So I opened my mouth.
"Tell them our situation is too difficult to attempt a rescue. That if they can make it here themselves, we can provide the supplies they need —"
"What? No. You can't."
Ms. Angela lunged forward and seized Mr. James's hand just as he was about to convert the words into Morse.
"There's no way those people can get this far. Making that kind of impossible demand —"
"And us? Are we living in abundance? We made it this far thanks to Hyunwoo, but we're still surviving on preserved food every day without a single proper bullet."
Sarah was right.
"The last time we were outside, at least we never saw a monster. Now we have. Do you understand what that means?"
"…Ms. Angela."
The surface was that dangerous a place.
Zombies, Land Bats, Rebirth Church members, raiders, other hostile people, monsters too massive to even enter a bunker —
All of them lived on the surface and nowhere else.
So we had to stop her —
"What the hell are you — !?"
At the sudden cry I looked up, and there stood Ms. Angela with a fistful of her long hair already cut away.
"I am here because of your kindness, Mr. Hyunwoo. In other words, the reason I abandoned everything that day and bet my hope on you — the reason I am standing in front of you right now — is all because of that heart of yours."
Lifeless strands of hair scattered across the floor.
"If you won't go, I will leave you. But at the same time — even if I go up there and die, I will not ask you for help."
"Are you insane? That's completely irresponsible. If you leave, what happens when the people who stay get hurt!"
She wrenched free of Sarah's grip on her wrist with all her strength and sheared off another handful of hair.
"I am here because kindness was shown to me! And the same is true of every one of you. People with more humanity than anyone. People who refused to give up being human more than anyone. People who tried to hold each other up — wasn't that who we were?"
…There had been nothing so noble about it.
Honestly.
We had only been gathering a safe community according to each other's needs.
Everyone here had done their part, that was all.
"The Omen family, who risked their lives to save me. Mr. Hyunwoo, who gambled his life on me. The Newman family, who willingly entrusted their wounds to a stranger — a veterinarian. I was only answering that trust."
In the end, all that remained before me was a German doctor who had lost her beautiful hair and her beauty both.
The knife settled softly atop the heap of golden blond.
"So please. Now that I've heard their distress signal… I have to go."
Ms. Angela looked at me with desperate eyes.
Sarah did the same.
Someone nodding and someone shaking their head stood right in front of me.
"Help me."
— Beep-beep. Beep-beep.
The distress signal kept ringing.