Help Remaining on the Surface (1)
“So… Engineer, mind if I ask what you’re working on right now?”
“A stretcher. Something we can carry the wounded on.”
“Ah.”
Click, click.
Carlos and Cole fed freshly made rounds into magazines, tapping each one hard against their palms to seat the cartridges, then tore open the Velcro on their chest rigs and slotted the mags home one by one.
Meanwhile, James was tapping out Morse code—that we had found people safely, and that we were bringing them back.
“…By the way, you memorize powder charges or something? You were loading rounds without a scale.”
“You saw the slugs. They’re not going to blow up in our faces.”
“Doesn’t look like a redneck face to me.”
“Pfft.”
James barely managed to hold in a laugh, then cleared his throat, gave a little full-body shiver, and went back to writing the signal out on paper.
“…Guess everyone’s thinking the same thing.”
“Right? But no way he’s a redneck.”
“Korean.”
“Ahh—yeah, that country where everyone gets dragged into the army. Is that why? Nah—even Rangers like us don’t know how much powder goes into a single round.”
“Maybe they teach that stuff because they’re always butting heads with North Korea?”
As if they wanted me to overhear every word of it.
I snapped two steel poles—each as long as I was tall—open with a sharp crack. I scraped a fingernail hard across the thick fabric, then slapped it with my palm a couple of times.
Stretcher: ready.
“Your hands really are something else. You still won’t tell us what you used to do?”
“…You want me to?”
“We’re not moving until the sun’s up anyway. Might as well kill time. Fill our stomachs, have some coffee.”
Carlos dug through a big pack and pulled out a handful of military ration pouches—biscuits, chili con carne so salty it stung, and macaroni and cheese that was basically paste you squeezed out of a bag.
Still better than that red, fishy-smelling sauce, at least.
Splash.
He fetched cold water from the bathroom, mixed up a powdered lime drink, set a gas burner on the floor, brought water to a soft boil, and stirred in instant coffee.
“Sugar?”
“…Three for me.”
“BRO—Big Red One—gets three. How about you, Engineer?”
“I’ve never actually had powdered coffee, but…”
“Then three it is. Sweet enough that it goes down easy.”
Pour. Soft scrape of powder dissolving.
Before long the room filled with a coffee aroma sharp enough to slap you awake—and a sweetness so thick it made your nose prickle.
I took the cup he handed me and sipped. Energy flooded through me in a clean, electric rush.
“Uwaaah.”
“Khhh… army coffee.”
“Heh. Once you drink this stuff, a café latte doesn’t even register.”
Warmth settled into every corner of my body, and my drooping eyelids snapped wide open, sharp and clear.
Cole watched me shudder for a moment, scratched his nose, then snapped his fingers like he’d remembered something and rummaged in his pack.
“Here—let’s give our hardworking Engineer a little something extra.”
A bright red steel lid. White patterns that looked like rays of sunlight.
Scho - Ko - La - De
…Schokolade?
Sounded German.
“Where the hell did you even find this?”
“When the world goes to shit, you grab a few of the things you actually like.”
Click.
Sweet chocolate scent, mixed with something close to the coffee I was drinking.
“Here.”
A dark, fan-shaped chunk landed in my palm. The odd smell made me hesitate for a second, but it still smelled like chocolate, so I was about to put it in my mouth—
Creeeak.
“Whoa, Hartwell. You okay?”
“…Do I look okay to you?”
We had to greet Angela and Hartwell as they came in wearing only their gas masks, finishing the haul of bags and gear.
I helped them unpack and was just about to portion out food so everyone could eat something when—
“…Schokolade?”
“Huh. German?”
“Yes…”
The chocolate had already started to melt a little on my hand. The sticky feeling made me shove it straight into my mouth, and Angela’s eyes went wide.
“Um, ah…”
As I chewed, I thought I caught a faint note of coffee in it—and something else, a flavor I’d never tasted layered between the chocolate.
“Slurp.”
I rinsed the pasty feel out of my mouth with the sweet coffee, and Carlos and Cole both grinned, rolling identical pieces of chocolate around on their tongues. James was only drinking coffee, but he was smiling just the same.
“…Hey, uh, are you okay?”
“Okay how?”
“That chocolate… it’s not just chocolate.”
“Then what is it?”
“Military chocolate. They’ve been making it since Nazi Germany. It’s packed with caffeine like a bomb… In Germany, mothers and fathers tell kids never to eat it. And that coffee’s military-issue too, right?”
The second she said it, my heart seemed to kick a little faster. My skin felt hypersensitive—I could almost feel Angela’s breath on my face. Even the weight of my clothes registered in a new way.
“Should we… put the coffee down for now?”
Caffeine dumped a massive buff into the sensory column. Of course, the second you got addicted, the insomnia debuff slapped on hard—but right now, objects looked razor-sharp. Every step made the floorboards creak loud and clear.
“Don’t just stand there. Sit. Easy, now.”
Even the soft crumple of fabric when she gently took my arm—
And the beat of wings—
Wings?
“Just a second—sorry.”
I carefully peeled her hand off my arm. Carlos and Cole, who’d been sitting near the window, must have heard it too; they were already on their feet.
Winter dawn, or morning—still no real light yet.
“Caw, caw, cak.”
“Aaak, cak, caaaaw.”
Flap. Flutter.
“Ah, shit…”
Of course. Things that had come hunting for blood and meat. And not small ones—house-sized crows.
Screechers.
Peck, peck.
They jabbed at flesh, swallowed, grabbed a corpse by the head and legs, shook it until it tore in half, and gulped down half-frozen bodies like it was nothing.
I could count them at a glance.
Five.
“…Please tell me the radiation made them defective.”
Wishful thinking from a veterinarian’s mouth. Sadly, these weren’t defective scrap. They were one of the hard limits on surface activity for a reason.
“No. They’re smart, and their hearing’s good. Eyesight too. Sonic weapons and heavy machine guns will drop them pretty easily, but—”
“Doesn’t help if we don’t have any. Right now all we can do is sit tight and hope those things fill up and leave.”
At least with five of them claiming the area, no other flock would work the same zone—but if they caught our trail, we were finished. We had no choice but to wait for them to feed and fly off. Quietly slipping away with wounded and gear to move simply wasn’t an option.
“So we just sit here and wait together? Watching those birds? Goddamn it, I’d really like to get underground already.”
“It’d be nice if those dinosaur-sized lunatics filled up on the corpses, but they came down because they were hungry—so they’ll raise hell until they’re full. With their boosted strength and oversized beaks they’ll flip cars, gulp down frozen bodies, and anywhere there’s noise—”
Before I could finish, a gloved hand clamped over my mouth. A finger carefully pointed out one of them.
One bird had cocked its head and was turning this way and that.
…They should have had a much shorter detection range while feeding.
Had one of them already switched into alert mode?
“…Tap, tap.”
It clacked its beak a couple of times, shook its head hard, and started preening. Mutation had progressed far enough that its right side had two eyes. Watching them move independently, I figured its field of vision had expanded rather than narrowed.
“Plan…?”
If they spotted us while we dithered, they’d start pecking the building itself to pieces. Or perch on the roof and wait until exhaustion forced us out.
So we had to shake them.
And no matter how hard this game liked to screw you, it hadn’t gotten popular for no reason. Every situation had a counter. Even for house-sized birds.
“Let’s start by getting ready to move.”
With every piece of gear and comms equipment broken down and strapped to our backs, we stood on the ground floor.
We’d risked our lives getting this far; I wanted to squeeze every scrap of advantage out of it. Carlos, Cole, and James—our strongest—were going to be slowed by the wounded anyway.
“Hooo.”
Overloading on caffeine raised the chance of addiction. In exchange, it slammed enormous buffs into stamina and senses. I intended to use that. After all, I was the one who knew these things’ behavior patterns down to the bone.
“How is it? Comfortable?”
“Worry about yourselves. Unless you want to end up as a group meal.”
Hartwell was wrapped tight in extra straps so she wouldn’t bounce loose even if they had to run hard. Put another way: if my lure failed, she was the first one who would die. They had an assault rifle and a designated marksman’s rifle, sure—but trying to put precise headshots into things that flew and weren’t exactly sluggish… that wasn’t going to be easy. Their hides had toughened right along with their size. A heavy machine gun could shred a wing, but the most anyone could put out right now was maybe three rounds from James. The only real option was to put as much distance between us and them as possible.
“Hyunwoo.”
Angela held out the lightest pack—just a filter canister and spare ammo, contingency gear—and then stopped short of handing it over. The gas mask hid her face, but unlike last time, when we’d clashed, she hesitated hard.
“Wouldn’t it be safer to just… stay quiet and wait it out?”
“You said yourself it’s hard to recover properly in a place like this. Healing wounds means eating a lot.”
“….”
“Once we chose to save people, we have to see it through.”
I reached for the pack. She didn’t give it to me. She took a step back instead.
“…It’s reckless.”
The others were already moving—two of them waddling off with the stretcher, James following while he watched them. That left the two of us.
“I learned the hard way how reckless I’ve been. And those things—if you’d just told me earlier—”
“You didn’t exactly leave room to talk.”
I could still see her hair being sheared off in wet chunks. And the threats about walking out.
“There’s room to talk now. So…”
“Angela.”
“…I’m being difficult again, aren’t I? Then and now.”
I took the pack gently and strapped it tight across my back. Then I carefully lifted her face—she’d dropped her head toward the floor, unable to say anything. Rest and warm coffee weren’t going to restore all of her mental strength. Her idealist creed had cracked, and me volunteering to draw them off with my life on the line wasn’t helping.
“Setting foot on the surface is something that takes that kind of resolve. Did you learn that?”
“It wasn’t something resolve alone could cover.”
Most of the group were soldiers and had been toughing it out on almost no sleep, building up their endurance—but Angela, once we got back, was going to need rest as the priority. As for the threats she’d made… she seemed to be reflecting hard enough. Cutting her rations or putting her on restriction could wait; stripping choice out of decisions was something I could handle later.
“Hyunwoo—”
Flap, flap.
Even heading for the back door, the wingbeats carried all the way in—those bodies were just that big. The second I stepped outside they’d go on alert, and a few would take off. I had to move fast.
“We can talk later.”
“And if there is no later?”
“Then we make one.”
Thinking about how to do something was always easier on the mind than deciding it couldn’t be done.
I slung the shotgun across my back and accelerated hard toward the rear exit.
Creeeak.
The plan: cut through the alleys, put two blocks between us, then trigger the alarm on the most intact vehicle I could find. If luck held, nearby mutants would come after me, get spotted by the Screechers, and pull the flock into a chase. In that window, everyone else could slip out in the building’s shadow and make it clear.
“Hoo. Hoo.”
I ran hard and checked the sky. No shadows yet. No birds perched on any of the nearby rooftops either. I closed on the first decent-looking car, smashed the window with the shotgun butt, and wrenched the door open.
No alarm.
Straight to the next one. Glass shattered.
Crash.
Time to open the door—
“Car key.”
There it was, lying on the driver’s seat. The door hadn’t even been locked. Someone who’d followed the emergency broadcast instructions carefully. Rare, but not unheard of. And in cases like this, you didn’t even need to mess with the anti-theft system.
Click.
The key fob could hit the horn.
I ducked into the alley between the buildings we’d come from and jammed the button down.
BEEEEEEP…
The horn blasted loud enough to hurt, and almost immediately wingbeats rose from not far away. I saw the crow-shapes in the sky, but it still wasn’t time to move.
“Caw, caaaw.”
They were dropping in to check the source of the noise.
BEEEEEEP…
“Cak—KEEEEK! KEEK!”
I hit it again and deafened them properly. Watching them thrash and panic in the air was satisfying—as long as the method actually worked.
“Looks like… we got lucky.”
I swapped filters and caught my breath. With Screechers on the scene, nothing else was dumb enough to show itself on the streets.
“I’m glad… you’re safe.”
“Ditches house-sized mutant crows on foot. At this point I’m not sure we need to worry about him at all.”
Angela’s grip on her rifle was completely different from before. James, tension finally bleeding off, was chuckling.
“You two. Still good to carry?”
“Is Hartwell good to carry? That woman’s a damn pig—not many people can handle her.”
“Hey.”
“See how swollen my arms are? Nice and solid, huh?”
He flexed muscles you couldn’t even see under the clothes. Still had the energy for jokes. In a way, that was a good sign.
“…There. The frozen river.”
A road buried under soft snow. On the far side, the concrete structure we’d crossed from was just barely visible. I pulled out binoculars so Carlos and Cole could each confirm the position.
“Good… just get that far and we’re set.”
“You sure you don’t need more rest? You were sprinting like a maniac a minute ago.”
“We can rest when we get there.”
Easy to say. We still had a long stretch of ice ahead. The cold was so brutal I wasn’t too worried about the ice giving way, at least.
“Alright then… move!”
With a short bark of effort they lifted Hartwell again and started forward.
Crunch, crunch.
We picked our way carefully down the snowy slope. The moment our boots hit the river ice—
“…Oh, you son of a—back, back!”
Hartwell’s panicked voice, finger stabbing. I spun. A crow.
On a rooftop we never would have seen from below the street line—one Screecher, wings already beating like it was about to launch.
“Combat ready, ready! It’s only one!”
“No!”
I stopped the two of them from setting the stretcher down. The bird was flapping as if it meant to take off—but it wasn’t flying, and it was alone. It just watched us, shifting its stance this way and that, testing.
In other words.
“…If it decides it’s outmatched, it’s going to call the rest.”
“So we just leave it?”
“Gunshots bring them. Its call brings them. Same difference…”
We could not take a hit while we were mid-crossing. The second the ice broke, everything fell apart. Decision had to be fast.
“…Get back to the bunker. Don’t follow me.”
“What?”
“Wait, wait—”
One of us had to peel off as bait. Ignoring the shouts behind me, I sprinted straight back into the city.
The bird must have wanted exactly that. It spread its wings hard and dropped onto the ground near me—then hopped a couple of times toward the river, like a threat: if you don’t walk into my mouth yourself, I hit the group.
As if I was going to let that happen.
Clack.
I raised the shotgun and put a round straight into the ground at its feet. It startled and thrash-flew upward—but by now it would have understood three things.
First: what I was holding was a weapon, and the group I’d left was full of the same fire-spitting sticks.
Second: I was fresh meat that had just made noise, and its plan to quietly monopolize the meal had failed.
Third: for a starving bird that wanted even one whole, fresh piece of prey, there was only one real option left.
“What are you standing there thinking about, you dumb bastard!”
I pointed the gun at the sky and fired the remaining shell. The shot rolled across the whole city.
“Over here!”
That did it. The Screecher spun fully toward me, wings hammering, house-sized beak yawning open.
“CAAAAW!!!”
I slung the gun and ran. I had to shake it—and at the same time make sure it never gave up on me. Kill it, and the rest would go wary and start hunting the others not far away. In short, I had to keep flicking the tail in front of its face. Like a video I’d once seen on a gallery board.
“Caw, caw!”
I wove between cars, baiting it into trying to spear through the steel.
Flap, thrash, flap-flap-flap.
First reason: every time its beak snagged on a car, it got angrier. Second: it got the “fun” of a hunt with almost no real risk. Third—
Beep, beep, beep, beeeep, beeeep…
—every lucky impact that set off a car alarm.
“Hoo. Hoo.”
CRASH.
I listened to it stomp a hood flat and kept a deliberately unhurried pace toward the commercial building so it could track my direction. I took the stairs at a run, reached the second floor, and smashed out a corridor window with the stock.
“Getting mad yet? You stupid birdbrain!”
BANG.
Another shell wasted into empty air—just to gather more noise. Right on cue, more crows started showing up, drawn toward the sound of me.
“Hah—hup—hhuh.”
I turned toward the side with a view of the riverbank and slammed the binoculars to my eyes. Good. Good—exactly as planned, they were all pouring my way. And the group’s speed wasn’t bad at all. They were already halfway across the ice—
“CAAAW!”
CRASH.
A huge black beak punched through the window. Glass exploded inward.
“…Ugh.”
The impact put me flat on the floor, and the first thing I felt was simple.
“Oh… shit.”
The shielding suit was torn. The binoculars beside me were shattered.
“Caw! CWAWW!”
They thrash-flapped and started hammering the window frame.
Bang. CRASH.
Watching the steel frame crumple in seconds—and watching them force their heads into the broken gap without caring about the glass—was pure horror. I had to get out of here fast. Going up to a mid floor was out; if they climbed and looked toward the river, we were done. Down to the basement, then? But the others still hadn’t finished the crossing. I needed more time—
Bang. CRASH.
“Urgh!”
The distance they were forcing closed was shrinking too fast. I had to get up. Blood was running from the scrape, but that wasn’t a problem I could solve right now.
“I’ve stirred the whole damn pot—now what…!”
Two shells left in the gun. I could fire if I had to, but I still needed to buy time. Kill one and the rest would bolt and reassess—I couldn’t kill them either…
Crash. Shatter.
The windows kept going. At this rate those heads were going to force fully onto the second floor.
“Shit, where the hell did that one even pick that up?”
One of them had a long piece of rebar in its beak. I had to dodge whatever it was about to jab with that.
“Kh…!”
I thought I’d slipped the thrust as it drove deep into the corridor.
Whoosh.
The rebar whipped straight for my legs.
“Hup?!”
It caught me. I went down hard, and my head slammed into the wall.
“…!”
My body tumbled toward the emergency stairwell. The rebar kept thrashing. I couldn’t go down. If I went down—
“There you go, Teacher. It really was a person after all.”
Voices, faint. People.
“Where do you even get a shielding suit like that… Government, maybe?”
“Urgh…”
I forced my eyes open. Faces wrapped tight in layers of cloth swam into blurry view.
“He’s conscious! Hey—stay with me. Can you hear me?”
“Doesn’t look like anything critical—careful with that rebar.”
“Were birds always this smart?”
My ears were ringing so hard I couldn’t make out the words properly, and I couldn’t piece the situation together either. I understood one thing: my body was being dragged across the floor.
“Damn. The suit’s torn.”
“There’s a little blood coming through from inside. What do we do?”
“…We take him with us. A lost lamb in need of help is a lost lamb, no matter how it started.”
“You’re going to give a chance even to the one who caused this whole mess? Because of him the children nearly—”
“In the end we were all of the same shepherd’s flock. When He sees us tending a sheep that has gone astray, what do you suppose our Lord the Shepherd will think?”
A hand brushed my gas mask, then checked the wound. It passed right in front of my eyes.
“Move him underground. Once the birds realize we’re taking him, they’ll give up soon enough.”
That hand was red.