Danger Filling the Surface (2)
“….”
We walked past the wild dog carcasses, cutting beneath the buildings, walking on and on.
Something white touched the lens of my gas mask and melted into a droplet in an instant.
— Crunch. Crunch-crunch. Crunch…
Snow was falling from the sky.
Snow that carried a faint trace of radiation with every flake.
“We made a hell of a lot of noise. I don’t know if that’s going to be okay.”
James kept his gun raised, scanning the surroundings as he spoke between rough breaths. White vapor leaked slowly past the edges of his mask.
“A pack of wild dogs that’s already backed off will probably try hunting somewhere else. With their leader dead… hell, they might even turn on each other. Or start chewing on their own dead.”
“And the chance they come after us?”
“…Whether they’d jump people reeking of gunpowder is doubtful. But people… people are the problem now.”
“The Church.”
Once night fell, the Rebirth Church would start moving in earnest. Most animals that still roamed the surface would have their vision narrowed or would simply settle in to sleep.
I checked my watch, then watched the shadows in front of us deepen by the second. The sun was dropping fast.
“…Our position?”
“Still a long way from the rendezvous… even if we hurry, an hour and a half…”
His voice held no certainty, but turning back was no longer an option. Wind knifed between the buildings like swinging blades.
“We move.”
“….”
“If they’re really waiting for us, they’re in just as much danger. If it’s a trap, they would’ve pulled out the second they saw the weather.”
“If they’re desperate enough, they’ll risk it…”
“Then we use the situation. As far as we can without drawing the Church’s attention.”
Once the short exchange ended and the decision was made, Angela simply clutched her shotgun tighter and trembled. Maybe she felt pity for the dog corpses surrounding us. Or maybe she hadn’t expected a rescue op to turn this dangerous.
“We move.”
There was no room left for questions. Snow poured down harder, and the cold pressed deeper through the radiation suit. We couldn’t light a fire. If hypothermia set in on top of everything else…
— Crunch. Crunch-crunch.
Footprints left in the snow. Out in the open, erasing your trail was supposed to be priority one. Of course, with snow falling like this the tracks would vanish soon enough. Still, as we hurried forward, I could only hope these prints wouldn’t become the Church’s invitation to follow.
…And even if they did, could we answer the way we had with the dogs? The snow would muffle footsteps, sure—but a single tear in a radiation suit and the fight was already lost. In a situation this fragile, one wounded man meant the whole group dying.
“There.”
I had been walking with one ear tuned to the wind when Angela’s voice suddenly brightened. I looked up. Her yellow rubber glove pointed toward the distant, faint letters of a freestanding sign.
CONCORD HOTEL
The road we had to take. If we crossed the iron graveyard of cars that had piled into one another and collapsed in each other’s paths, the destination waited on the other side. The distance was still considerable, but simply seeing the place we had to reach was enough to let out a breath of relief.
But—
“At least we didn’t get lost.”
“….”
Even with the positive turn, James waved us behind a bus. He opened his pack, pulled out binoculars, and raised them. How long he stared, I couldn’t say. Then his breath caught for a beat and escaped as one long, heavy sigh.
“Fountain in front of the Concord Hotel. Check it.”
“…?”
“Aim for the light.”
“Light—?”
“Orange dot. You see it?”
I focused on the distance and found the flickering orange point. Taking the binoculars, I adjusted the focus carefully.
— Whoooosh…
A freezing winter city under snow that fell harder by the minute. And still, in front of the fountain, crosses of wood and sheet metal had sprouted like weeds. On the tallest of them—
A soldier hung with nails through both arms, the skin of his upper body scraped completely raw.
“Jesus Christ.”
“Church bastards, right?”
“…Not just a camp. That’s a ritual site.”
“Ritual?”
“Left and up from the orange light. Check it.”
James took the binoculars back, turned his head a fraction—
“Fuck.”
The curse came out flat and hard. Angela flinched hard enough that her whole body shook.
“Give them here again.”
“….”
Through the magnification the hotel name was unmistakably the Concord Hotel. At the ritual ground, several figures already showed red, flayed skin as they knelt bare-kneed on the ground. Cultists fought to keep a dying fire alive—and then—
“Haa…”
I watched one of them hold someone down and cut their throat in plain view. The victim didn’t look military; the beard was thick and wild. Was that the man we were supposed to meet?
“Best-case scenario, it’s still a trap, Hyunwoo.”
“…Wait.”
The man was dragged out next. Nails started going through his wrists. As the cross rose, I could at least see the pants weren’t military issue. The sacrifice after him was a woman.
“….”
I passed the binoculars to Angela without a word and pointed to the direction she needed to look. A moment of silence. Then the trembling in her hands told me everything about the expression behind her mask.
“….”
The two of them looked ready to abandon any thought of pushing forward.
But—
— Whoooosh…
The snow only grew heavier. A thin layer had already piled on my head; I had to brush it off. Our breath grew denser and whiter.
“….”
I couldn’t check the road ahead with the binoculars any longer. The way back was sealed by white. Time: 17:20. Filter change due in thirty minutes.
“Hey.”
Angela’s voice cut hollowly through the faint tick of the Geiger counter.
“…It’s okay if we give up.”
“Finally—”
“Hold it.”
I stopped James with a hand before the sneering edge in his voice could go further, and locked eyes with Angela through our masks. Neither of us could actually see the other’s eyes. Still—
“…It’s snowing. Trying to backtrack by map like this is dangerous, and we could walk straight into a place where starving dogs are already eating their own.”
“Ah…”
“Want me to lay out the realistic options left to us?”
“There are only two anyway, right?”
“…There are more.”
James tilted his head hard, not understanding.
“…There are.”
I raised one finger.
“First: duck into any building and wait out the snow. Safest option on paper—except we might run into other animals that took the same shelter, or walk into a nest that’s already claimed.”
“Earlier we—”
“We got lucky. No power, interior pitch black. It could just as easily have been a Land Bat den.”
“…Fuck.”
First time I’d heard James swear like that, maybe. I ignored it and raised a second finger.
“Second: resume the search once the snow stops. By then we’ve burned more resources, and the man who may have been waiting since the moment we left might give up on rescue—or get caught and killed by the cultists ahead. So third: pull out after the snow stops. Problem is, we have no idea when that’ll be.”
By the third finger, James had both hands in his hair. Angela looked ready to sway and drop where she stood. I raised a fourth.
“Fourth: push through the snow and run the rescue as planned.”
“…No. That’s far too reckless.”
“Didn’t expect to hear that from you, Angela—but aren’t all the options reckless?”
We could freeze to death. We could burn through every filter canister and get ambushed while I scavenged materials for a thirty-minute improvised one on the spot. Even the rescue itself meant that a single wound forced us to accept radiation exposure. Prussian Blue could bind and flush radioactive isotopes, but without proper facilities the exposure itself was already a massive risk.
“…But the path to the extraction is clear. Keep walking forward and the bastards have kindly lit the whole place up for their ritual. There’s a pastor or high priest screaming prayers at the top of his lungs, so gauging distance will be easy. And in this weather the snow becomes our cover.”
“….”
“Anyone who can punch Morse code this cleanly in an apocalypse isn’t likely to be sending a fake distress call. People you can just grab off the street for sacrifice don’t usually put that much effort into a radio. Probability it’s fake isn’t zero—but it’s low.”
Once you start, you finish. Walking away empty-handed after I had gone bald for the first time in my life would have been too bitter. This was the surface. After burning this many resources, we had to come back with something—even if it was only a scrap of straw.
“We already threw the dice. Same as the Romans who crossed the river—or us crossing a frozen one.”
The contents of our packs were getting lighter, but the weight I felt only grew.
“The rendezvous isn’t far from the fountain. If he’s still alive… we can reach him before we’re spotted.”
We had to force the decision before it was too late.
“The Lord said: Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish. But they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved! What, then, does that mean?”
“Amen!”
“A new age calls for new people. Pour old wine into a new age and everything is ruined. That God has shaped us this way can only be according to His great design…!”
“Amen!”
“An angel is a being that makes all men tremble and fear. Look at yourselves! Even you who once wore the same husks as them—do you not now fear and feel shame at that old shape?”
“Amen!”
The booming voice made it easy to judge our position. We kept low, slipping behind cars, following the faint orange light toward the marked rendezvous. Thankfully the whiteout had eased just enough that we could see a few paces again.
“Haa… haa…”
Even so, the white snow still blanked vision enough that finding the exact meeting point felt almost pointless. Even the zealous pastor’s voice cut out now and then. Yet the orange fire—oil-fed, maybe—clung stubbornly to life against the gale.
— Slip. Scrape.
Following the hand signals, I changed direction, planted a palm on a car roof for balance. The huge frame moving so quickly between vehicles was almost uncanny; I simply matched it.
— Ssshk.
I drove hard off my legs and dropped into cover beside the next car. Last was Angela.
“Ss-hhh…”
She was already gasping like her stamina was nearly gone, but she had kept up this far. As long as no one made a mistake—
— Thunk.
Her hand found a door. Somehow the car door had been left open. The useless slam that followed was dull and clean.
“….”
For one heartbeat, silence fell. The wind still howled, but not loud enough to bury the prayer.
“…I will continue. Therefore, what attitude and what faith must you hold fast in these hard times—”
Maybe they decided the wind had closed it. The ritual seemed ready to resume as planned…
— Crunch. Crunch-crunch.
Behind James. Figures in black robes and sloppy body armor, flashlights on, started working the gaps between the cars.
Nothing ever just passed us by, did it.
Oh, for God’s sake.
“….”
Without a word James brought the shotgun up. I had no choice but to do the same. The problem was Angela.
“…!!!”
Still leaning against the car. Panic had locked every joint. At this rate she would become a hostage before she ever got a shot off.
“…Hey, what the—”
But the one they spotted first was James.
— BOOM.
No order to open fire had been given, but the thin layer of snow on the body armor exploded into the air with a wet slap.
“Enemy!!”
“Brothers and sisters! Heretics have dared set foot in the sacred ground!!”
Thunderous voices rolled out; footsteps multiplied in an instant. At least it was winter—we could still hear them. At least.
“Angela!”
The gunshot seemed to jolt her; I shoved the shotgun into her hands. But could she actually fire it?
“Count misfortune as opportunity. Count every sorrow as a trial. Satan delights in testing us as he tested Jesus—”
— BOOM.
A second blast took a head, but the next round punched through sheet metal and spat sparks. I ducked hard—and of all times, the snow began to thin.
— Bang. Bang. Bang.
Pistol rounds now found our position with precision. Fast footsteps closed from the fountain.
“We are His angels!!!”
The pastor’s roar shook the air. Answering it—
“Amen!!!”
Chaos. Air tightening around the throat. If the ones with blades reached us, it would be lethal. The moment had come to accept wounds if necessary.
So I stepped into the open.
“We are His will—”
I faced the orange muzzle flashes and started to squeeze the trigger on a black robe charging me—
— Phut.
The suppressed crack of a rifle.
— Crack.
A skull caving in.
And with it, the prayer cut off mid-sentence.
“…Pastor? Pastor!”
There was someone else out here besides us.