Permafrost (6)
(Brigadier General Wee, what are you doing? Fire. Now!)
At the minister's transmission, delivered like a blade pressed against her own weakness, something flickered in Brigadier General Wee's eyes. She turned away and gave her report to Assemblyman Kook.
"...The negotiation is over."
"Wee, wait—!"
She raised her fist beside her face. All around the plaza, muzzles swung toward the crowd of protesters.
Kim Myung-woo and Yoo Hyun pulled frightened civilians back behind them, and the rebels raised their guns as well, as if to say they would not die alone. Ignoring his aides' pleas to retreat, Kook Min-han stepped forward to stand beside Kim Myung-woo. A few of the braver citizens linked arms with one another and made themselves shields.
"No way... this isn't really happening, is it?"
"Mr. Park. Eyes on your work. Help me, quickly."
"Professor, how can you— in a situation like this?!"
Professor Im and Mr. Park knelt before rows of the wounded, government soldiers and rebels laid out side by side. The injured were all the same to them; there was no picking sides on the pavement. Professor Im's white coat, stained black with blood, was already soaked through as she worked. The moment Brigadier General Wee's fist began to fall—
A siren split the air: a monster had appeared nearby. And then, from far away—thud. Thud. The heavy tread of the creature could be felt drawing closer with every beat.
"Th-that's..."
Having spotted the people, the monster let out a skin-crawling shriek and lumbered toward them to attack.
"Run— RUN!"
"Get clear!"
Antarctica. The base, ringed by monsters. Twenty-three minutes remained until the rescue helicopter arrived.
The route to the helipad was bad. Monsters crawled and swarmed everywhere along it.
"Grr... guooorgh..."
"Zombies?"
"Wait a second— that's our military gear..."
Every eye turned to Jin Young-do. The teammates who had been attacked by the monster five years ago—now zombified—were wandering the halls, still wearing what they had died in.
And among them, Jin Young-do found the one face he could not miss. A subordinate. A friend. Professor Im's husband.
"...Kim Yong-taek."
"You know him?"
Jin Young-do nodded, his face frozen. He stole a glance at Chae Seol-hwan.
If the cure is finished... could those boys come back too?
But he could not save them. Not now. They had to pass straight through to reach the helipad.
"...I'm sorry."
Knife in hand, moving quietly so as not to stir the horde, Jin Young-do walked steadily toward the zombies.
As he cut down his former comrades without mercy, a single tear dropped from his eye.
"I told you, didn't I. Survival—that's all that matters here."
Presently, the very monster that had turned his old team into these things revealed itself in the distance—thud, thud.
Breathing shallow, Jin Young-do looked back at the soldiers frozen in terror behind him.
"Don't let them use you all the way to the grave. Not here. Not like this."
The soldiers remembered the words he'd said before. Jin Young-do had been shoved toward death by the men above him—and the soldiers standing here were no different from him. Expendable, all of them.
"We break through there, or none of us goes home alive."
"Well, that's..."
"What did your higher-ups tell you? Kill the researchers and take the data? Or was it—everyone dies here?"
The eyes of soldiers who had each been bought by a different side began to waver.
"If you die, it's over. Everything. You get that?"
"..."
"Fight."
Jin Young-do charged at the monster first. He spun back and roared.
"FIGHT!"
"Uwaaaaaagh!"
Moved by his words, the soldiers raised their guns and followed him in.
Bang, tatatat—the crack of gunfire rolled through the base. The muzzle flashes lit up the dark, throwing the monster into even more grotesque relief.
"This way!"
One soldier shepherded Chae Seol-hwan and Jung Yu-na out of the line of fire and into cover.
"Wait here. We'll come back for you."
Then he turned and ran back toward Jin Young-do and the others, gun raised, ready to fight for the people he'd left behind.
Jung Yu-na slumped against the wall, panting hard, and stared at the water bottle Chae Seol-hwan was holding out to her.
Does he know? That I almost wiped the data? And even if he knows—will he still be this kind to me?
"Seol-hwan."
"Yeah?"
"Hey, so... about that."
Her conscience stung knowing what kind of heart it had taken for the timid Chae Seol-hwan to come all this way. So she decided to confess first.
"I, actually..."
"I know."
At the flat answer, Jung Yu-na looked up. Chae Seol-hwan's expression was simply calm. No disappointment in it. No reproach either.
"What?"
"I said I knew."
Her attempt to erase the data—everything, down to the preliminary schematics of the vaccine he'd been building—Chae Seol-hwan had known all along. He knew what she had done at the corporate lab, the things done in the name of the company's profits. He knew she had been used by her sponsor, Park Chul-moon. As she heard it, Jung Yu-na's eyes went damp.
"You knew, and you're still like this with me? Are you an idiot? I nearly wrecked everything!"
She struck the bottle from his hand with the back of her fist. One careless move, and the vaccine, the cure, all of it would have been worthless. She had nearly destroyed Chae Seol-hwan's cause—the one he carried for the sake of world peace.
"I figured you'd press the button."
"...Why?"
"Because you're a good person."
Jung Yu-na's breath caught. In that moment, Chae Seol-hwan looked more trustworthy than he ever had in his life.
"And... there's something I never told you either."
"Huh?"
With that loaded remark, the screen cut to the data hard drive gripped tight in Chae Seol-hwan's hand.
By now the commotion behind them had quieted. Soldiers, their uniforms streaked with blood, came into view.
"Let's go."
But two of them were missing. Could they be dead? Jung Yu-na took Chae Seol-hwan's hand, stood, and looked back.
"What about the others?"
"It's just us. Run!"
Gwanghwamun had become a hellscape in an instant. The building-sized monster slaughtered rebels and government soldiers and ordinary citizens alike, without discrimination.
"A mutant—!"
A tank fired its missile, but the monster only swayed a little. Enraged, it charged straight at Brigadier General Wee.
She shoved a terrified soldier in the back, spent him as bait, and ducked behind the tank herself.
"What are you doing! Get in there and shoot!"
"B-but, ma'am..."
"You gutless piece of trash!"
Again and again she threw her own men out as decoys and fled. The exact opposite of Jin Young-do, who had charged the monster head-on.
Gasping—hah, hah—as she ran, a familiar voice drifted out from behind her.
"Hi there, sweetheart."
Kim Myung-woo, leader of the rebels, waved cheerfully. What on earth was the relationship between these two?
"...You!"
"Miss me?"
"Captain Kim... !"
BANG!
The bullet Kim Myung-woo fired punched through Brigadier General Wee's temple.
The film never made their history explicit. But Captain Jin Young-do, framed by Brigadier General Wee—and Wee, calling a rebel leader "Captain Kim"—left the audience plenty of room to imagine the rest.
"Kyaaaagh!"
"Move! Get out of the way!"
Brigadier General Wee's corpse was trampled back and forth by the fleeing crowd. Such was the end of a woman who had used her own subordinates however she pleased.
His revenge complete, Kim Myung-woo climbed atop a tank, and every eye in the plaza turned to him. The monster that hadn't even fallen to a tank missile had the soldiers in a full panic.
SCREEECH—a megaphone howled to life.
"Attention, soldiers! Brigadier General Wee is dead."
The soldiers, their chain of command gone, looked up at the tank.
"Take up your weapons. There is no one left to face that thing—except us."
Screams rose from all around. The monster was closing in, and people were going down under its blows.
"Fight!"
Kim Myung-woo screamed until his voice tore—just as Jin Young-do had screamed in Antarctica.
"FIGHT!"
The grenade he hurled struck the monster's shoulder and went off with a bang! It was the signal.
The rebels opened up on the monster. Soon the government soldiers joined in. Young protesters who had come for the rally helped one another raise barricades and toppled the creature over them. Men who had been aiming muzzles at each other minutes before now emptied their guns into a common enemy called the monster.
"Fire!"
"Hold the line!"
And the screen cut back to Jin Young-do's team, fighting for their lives in Antarctica. The data hard drive clutched in Chae Seol-hwan's fist gleamed like a sacred flame.
"Why on earth was this classified as a riot?!"
"You're pointing guns at your own citizens? Are you out of your mind? If your approval rating tanks over this, you'll answer for it!"
"You weren't long for the office anyway. Not planning on running in the next election, are you?"
"Assemblyman Park, get out!"
And so, while all hell broke loose outside, the film cut back and forth inside the Blue House bunker—where the Prime Minister, the ministers, and Assemblyman Park Chul-moon tore into each other, shoving blame back and forth, veins standing out on their necks.
The scene left the audience thinking. Which one was the real monster? The mutant slaughtering people at Gwanghwamun? Or the entrenched powers waging their petty turf war in the comfort of a bomb shelter?
The people gathered at Gwanghwamun, and the Antarctic expedition team that had begun on opposing sides, both fought to destroy the monster—the one enemy they shared.
"Watch out!"
"Here! Get over here, quick!"
Even amid the chaos, people took each other's hands and helped each other up. Perhaps it meant that hope still existed.
"Staff Sergeant! Over here!"
"Don't look back! Keep running!"
Back in Antarctica, the soldier who had gotten the two researchers to safety went down under the monster's blow.
Jin Young-do grabbed the faltering pair and ran. The helipad was coming into view at last.
And right on cue, a helicopter was descending slowly through the empty sky.
In Seoul, meanwhile, Professor Im dragged the wounded rebel Yoo Hyun behind cover and worked on him. The monster reached a hand toward her—only for a soju bottle hurled by Assemblyman Kook Min-han to bounce off the back of its skull.
"Right here, you son of a bitch!"
As the monster charged at Kook, the rebels and government soldiers concentrated their fire on it.
A soldier scooped up a fallen child and ran. Citizens carried a wounded soldier to safety. Professor Im and the other doctors fought to save every life they could, and the citizens guarded their flanks—holding the guns taken from the hands of dead soldiers and dead rebels.
"The wound at its flank—that's the weak spot!"
"Concentrate fire!"
After several exchanges, Kim Myung-woo found the weakness and shouted it to everyone.
Under the concentrated assault, the monster shrieked, staggered—and then, with a mighty CRASH, it fell. For one moment, silence hung over the plaza...
"We... we did it..."
"WE DID IT!"
People who, mere minutes before, had been pointing rifles at each other's chests threw their arms around one another and cheered.
Antarctica. Three people reached the foot of the helipad—Chae Seol-hwan, Jung Yu-na, and Jin Young-do. Everyone else had died along the way.
But there was no time to breathe easy. The great monster, drawn by the whine of the helicopter's rotors, was already blocking their path.
Jin Young-do looked back at the two of them. His expression was no different from usual.
He had come here prepared to die. The monster that had slaughtered his men and turned them into walking corpses—he had already killed them all and settled that score.
"Researcher Chae Seol-hwan. I hope your work saves the world."
"Captain Jin. You can come with us. If we lure it with something else—"
This was unmistakably a goodbye. Tenderhearted Chae Seol-hwan grabbed Jin Young-do's forearm.
But Jin Young-do shook his head and gently peeled the hand away.
"And you."
"...What."
"Survive it. All the way to the end."
Jung Yu-na turned her head away to escape his gaze. Looking into those eyes that seemed to see straight through her would only weaken her resolve.
"Honestly? I'd rather it was you who develops the vaccine, Jung Yu-na—not that guy with the glasses over there."
"Because I figure you're the one of you two who'll outlive her."
The memory overlapped with the present. What is this man trying to say to me?
"When I signal—run for the helicopter. Full speed."
Clack. He picked up the grenade launcher left behind five years ago, slung it over his shoulder, and fired a round straight into the monster.
"GO!"
Chae Seol-hwan and Jung Yu-na sprinted for the helicopter. The monster started after them, caught the round, and wheeled toward the man who had fired it.
The two made it aboard the unmanned helicopter, and the moment Chae Seol-hwan worked the controls, it lifted off. Together they looked down.
Refusing to die quietly, Jin Young-do emptied magazine after magazine into the monster, lured it onto a barricade, and brought it crashing down. And when the last bullet was spent, the monster's hand swept toward him at terrible speed.
"Gahk—!"
Slammed into the wall, Jin Young-do watched the helicopter carrying Chae Seol-hwan and Jung Yu-na dwindle into the distance. Across his blood-and-sweat-soaked face, a smile spread.