Not You—Your Sister
One look inside the captain's office and I had the whole settlement's condition peged.
All shine on the outside.
From beyond the walls the place passed for a respectable forward base. Inside, it was a wreck. Ruined furnishings—collapsed bookshelves and the like—had simply been left where they fell. A crude purifier sat with its upper tank brimming with pitch-black water, while below, a cloudy film had gathered, no more than an ant's tear. Dried meat hung on the wall. Zombie meat, without a doubt, and they'd been so stingy with it that even that had gone old. The smell was foul.
The end is right in front of them.
At the start they could have scavenged food around the settlement. As time went on, though, the searches would have had to push farther and farther out. The trouble was that the anti-aircraft guns only covered the ground around the settlement itself—and these rebels were enemies of the state. Range out too far and you were as good as dead.
Starve, or die fighting. Either way, dead men walking.
This settlement wouldn't last. Same as most of the others.
"I heard you used to be a soldier."
The words came from beyond a wooden desk gone black with age. The captain sat in a skeletal chair that looked ready to give out at any moment, and that was his opening line.
"I was."
Mid-twenties. Three or four years younger than me. His color was bad—malnourished, by the look of him. Still, he was the one who'd let me inside the settlement. No point picking a useless fight.
"Then you ought to know better. Can't even report in with a little snap?"
"I'm a postman now. Reporting in isn't something I know how to do. We have our own way of doing things."
"Your own way?"
Been a while since I'd pulled this one. I shaped a heart with both hands and flashed him a bright little smile.
"We serve you with love, valued customer! Any piece of mail, fast and accurate! Delivered within a week—a postman of the Republic of Korea! I. Love. You."
Director Bae's masterpiece. He'd invented this godforsaken greeting and even collected a commendation for it.
"......What in the world was that disgusting display?"
Even so, this one was better than Director Bae.
"What do you think it was? Office life is disgusting, all of it."
"Well, that much......"
A stomach growled. Not mine.
"I'm on a diet."
"Didn't ask."
Captain Choi already looked thin enough. Then again, if that chair was going to keep holding him, he'd have to lose still more.
"Anyway. If you've got mail to hand over, hand it over. If not, I'll be going."
"I hear you offered to repair the anti-aircraft gun."
"Yes. Call it the entrance fee."
The captain laced his fingers and rested his chin on them.
"Word is, back in the army, you were no ordinary man."
"A little better than ordinary."
"They say you fixed things the whole unit's engineers couldn't manage, working alone."
"They were worse than ordinary."
"You're clearly no ordinary postman. Let me make you an offer."
"Can you even hear me?"
At last the captain showed his hand.
"I'll give you every bit of support I can muster from in here. In return, help me get out of this place."
Up on the wall, the broken anti-aircraft gun was waiting. I had no intention of fiddling with just that one. An opportunity like this wouldn't come twice.
"Staff Sergeant Jeong."
"Yes! Postman, sir!"
"I'll need a look at the other guns as well."
"Sir?"
"The captain asked me to inspect all of them."
"Ah...... Yes, sir! Understood!"
"This one's operational, isn't it?"
I went over the gun slowly, corner to corner, laying hands on it with care, and a blue light only I could see began to turn.
Good. One down.
Insurance. Sync this deep, and for a while I could use the ability even at a distance. Worth a test.
Probability the gun fires normally......
Normal firing — 99.8%
A fair distance off, and the number still came through. If I meant to get the captain out, the worst case was having to deal with the guns themselves. Being able to read the odds tied to them didn't hand me any clever way through. Still, nothing to lose. Cover every contingency, and you do everything you can beforehand.
Plan A had been to quietly disable every gun. The engineers, though, had latched on in a line, eager to learn how the repairs were done, and the original plan went straight in the trash.
"By the way, what were you and the captain talking about for so long?"
"I showed him the postman greeting. Said he wanted to learn it too."
"The postman greeting......? What is that, sir?"
"Classified."
The captain knew the settlement's end was at the door. Not just him, either. They didn't say it aloud, but there would be others thinking the same thing—and none of them would let it show.
A place unhinged enough to gag every mouth just because one postman walked in.
Under control this extreme, side business was difficult.
"Last one. The rest of the guns are definitely sound."
Once I'd synced with every gun, I gave the broken one a rough repair. The weapon that hadn't moved worked clean as anything, and the engineers—mouths sealed—broke into applause. Their eyes, though, were asking what in the world had just happened. Fair enough. All I'd done was punch it here and there and put a boot into it.
Probability it runs if I hit it here......
Probability current flows if I kick it there......
Check a few times like that, then strike exactly where it counts. I'd tried it in a hurry, on a maybe, and luckily it took. Of course, every kick earned me the engineers' stinging looks. One of them in particular went red enough to burst and looked ready to lunge. If Staff Sergeant Jeong hadn't held him back, he really might have.
"Postman, sir? We're grateful you fixed it, but...... your repair method's changed quite a bit since your army days?"
"Since ancient times, this is how you fix a machine."
"Since ancient times, sir......?"
"Even back when they were shooting people into space. Machine won't listen, you start by hitting it."
And one more thing the repair had confirmed.
Figured as much. The shells are different.
This gun was built for old-era NATO-standard thirty-five-millimeter shells—high explosive yield, which only made sense with aircraft for a target. Use it for killing men the way these people did, though, and that yield was a waste of powder. Their guns had been modified to take smaller rounds, and what sat in the breech was crude homemade ammunition. Most likely they were throwing lumps of metal with no explosive at all, breaking targets by kinetic energy alone.
No explosive meant a shell had to actually hit before it did any damage. Homemade shells meant the accuracy was obviously garbage. Even so, a weapon that dumped dozens of rounds in an instant would connect somehow.
Fail to hit a single person with that, and that really would be one in ten thousand.
The original thirty-five-millimeter shells would all have been broken down and the powder pulled. Homemade shells out of some of it, rifle ammunition out of the rest. They'd be putting it to work wherever it was useful.
Anyway. What's left is delivering the mail and getting the captain out.
Help him escape the settlement, he'd said, and every Core in his keeping was mine. Not a valuable one among them, but the count was twenty-five. A massive fee, no question. And "offer" was only the word for it. I hadn't actually had the right to refuse. He'd let me into the settlement in the first place so he could make the proposal. Turn it down, and he'd have thrown me straight back out.
The problem is, sneaking him out is impossible......
Security here was extreme. The only safe way in or out was the single front gate. Turn it over as I might, there was only one method left.
I walk the captain out through the front gate.
Repairs finished, Staff Sergeant Jeong stayed glued to my side and played guide.
"Past the plaza, you'll come right to the house of the woman who's to receive the mail."
"Finally, the actual job."
"If I may...... how did you come to be a postman, sir?"
"Classified."
"......I had no idea postmen kept so many secrets."
"You wouldn't. That's a secret too."
On the way to the plaza I saw plenty of soldiers. All of them bent to their work, and as expected, not one of them spoke. All that carried was the rustle of cloth brushing cloth, and now and then a strained grunt of effort. So many people moving, and the quiet was unnatural.
"At this point I can't tell how these people are any different from zombies."
"Well...... if I had to say, they can see what's in front of them. So they are different, sir."
"You call that an answer."
The absurdity didn't stop there. In the middle of the plaza stood a bizarre stone statue.
"You people made this yourselves?"
"Ha! Doesn't it look exactly like the real thing?"
"......You carved it in the shape of an anti-aircraft gun."
"It's our pride, sir!"
Why build a monstrosity like that.
"Stone doesn't carry the same presence as the real article, I'll grant you...... but in exchange, the sacred feeling simply overflows!"
Aha. A totem, of a sort. The engineers' reaction when I'd put a boot into the gun finally made sense. They'd endured it because I was repairing the thing. Had I not been, I might already have been full of holes.
"So what—am I supposed to pray at it now?"
"Oh! How did you know?"
This much was fairly normal. Better than the ones who'd told me to pray at a tower built out of collected toenail clippings.
"Let's get it over with. What do I do?"
The motion was both index fingers stabbed at the sky again and again while the hips shook. I was fairly sure some ancient dance had looked about the same. Ask what it meant, and he said it represented the gun's rapid fire. I was convinced on the spot.
Prayer done, a little more walking brought the woman's quarters into view—a building of red brick, raised as neatly as the captain's.
"This is officer-grade housing. You called her 'the woman,' so I figured she wasn't anyone important."
"Ah, she's the only doctor in the headquarters, sir. She is important."
"Then she's a medical officer, isn't she?"
"One of exactly two civilians in our headquarters. Our rule is to speak down to civilians."
"That rule's nationwide these days."
"And she wasn't a medical officer. She was a veterinary officer."
A veterinary officer—specialty in looking after military dogs and the other animals. Treating people was well within reach, of course. They say that in the previous era doctors sorted their patients out one specialty at a time. That was back when doctors lay as thick as corpses in the street. A doctor, then, and one of the few civilians in a settlement crawling with soldiers. Unusual, I'll give her that.
"Brought in from outside?"
"An insider from the start. She belonged to our unit all along, but once the headquarters was built she gave up her status as a soldier of her own accord."
"Isn't that what they call a discharge?"
Staff Sergeant Jeong grinned toward the woman's quarters as he answered.
"In our army, sir, there is no discharge."
In short, the woman had been discharged in disgrace. Some nobody whining about quitting the army would have caught a bullet in the skull. They couldn't kill their only doctor, though. A delicate arrangement, no doubt.
"A civilian, so she isn't under the communication controls?"
"Correct. You may speak with her freely, Postman, sir."
"Better than a zombie."
"But that is......"
Staff Sergeant Jeong's brow creased.
"She may not say a single word of her own accord......"
"Hm?"
"She's the sort who does that often. Her personality is, well...... rather something. And she already said she would refuse every piece of mail, yet here you are visiting anyway, sir."
Then he leaned in by my ear and went on, quiet.
"The younger sister, though—good personality, and pretty, sir."
"The other one of those two civilians?"
"Yes, sir. That woman and her younger sister are the only civilians."
What relation could Explanation Fetishist Jo Yong-han—the man who'd sent a letter to a house like this—possibly have to them?
"So how old is the doctor?"
"Mid to late thirties? Somewhere around there, I'd say."
"And the younger sister?"
"Quite a gap, I believe. Early twenties."
The next moment, the face that had been answering so smoothly went hard.
"Don't take an interest, sir."
"I like older women."
Staff Sergeant Jeong's expression turned mild at once. Beaming, he knocked on the wooden door set between the red bricks. No answer at all.
"Ah, Postman, sir. If you want the mail to go over smoothly, please be careful not to rub her the wrong way. Her temper is absolute hell."
"She isn't even opening the door."
"She will. The captain put in a word."
Right—the captain had promised every bit of support he could manage if I got him out.
"How'd he put in a word?"
From the description, she didn't sound like an easy woman. Would the captain's pull even take?
"I heard he gave her a bag of beef jerky. They say it's a treasure the captain cherishes, sir."
That door was opening. No question.
It flew open, and a woman stood beyond it.
"......"
She stared at me without a word.
"What are you staring at?"
At that first line, the muscles of her face twitched.
"What did you just......?"
The flustered sergeant bent straight to my ear.
"P-Postman, sir? I told you, if you rub that woman the wrong way......!"
She opened her mouth to speak, and I cut in first.
"Save it."
"You...... you......!"
Her face cycled red and pale. Even so—
"Hurry up and bring your sister."
"......?"
While she froze, I added the rest, quick.
"Look at that skin, smooth as anything. Grew up without a day of hardship, didn't you. I don't feel like talking to a child. Go get your older sister."
She clapped both hands over her mouth and fought to hold in the gasp trying to escape. It was the first time, since she had come to the settlement, that she had been moved by anything at all.