Can't See a Thing
"You're going to clear us a path?"
Jo An-na gave a small, timid nod.
She was offering to open a way through the zombie swarm, and yet for someone making that offer she looked remarkably unsure of herself.
"How were you planning to do it?"
She fumbled a throwing knife free.
Throw it and make a noise, was that the idea? Drawing zombies off with the sound of a throw, then running while they were pulled the other way — that was the oldest trick there was. But everyday noise like that could only lure so many. With a swarm this size scattered across the ground, that method alone was no answer at all.
"What are you talking about, out of nowhere? This isn't your place to step up."
Jo Shin-hye hauled her sister's arm down, and the throwing knife sagged with it, limp.
"Don't mind her. I think the stress has just gotten to her."
I minded. A great deal. This wasn't just anyone. It was Jo An-na, and I had never once seen her volunteer to do something herself.
"Let's at least hear her out."
"Ah, I was going to throw the knives and—"
"We don't need to hear it."
Jo Shin-hye planted herself in the way, immovable. Hocheol, who had been watching, tried to join the fight.
"Still, maybe we ought to listen just the once!"
"I told you there's no need. Didn't you hear me?"
"Yes, ma'am... I heard you..."
He collapsed on the spot.
Beside them Jo An-na hunched in on herself and couldn't get a word out.
Figures.
Just as I'd thought, the reason Jo An-na had all the presence of a speck of dust was her sister's smothering care. I understood it. More than ten years separated them, and unlike the older sister, who had become a soldier, the younger had been a civilian her whole life. Under those conditions it would have been stranger if she hadn't turned out like this. For all I knew, the only reason Jo An-na was still alive and in one piece was that very protection.
But that was a story from inside a settlement, where a sister's shelter was enough to keep you breathing. Things were different now.
"No. I'm going to hear her out."
"That sounds an awful lot like an order."
Jo Shin-hye made no effort to hide her displeasure. She might give ground on other things. Not on her sister.
"This swarm isn't the only danger between here and headquarters. If she can pull her own weight, we should use her."
"Jeongguk? Don't get the wrong idea, and listen. I'm not saying this because I look down on my sister. But she has almost no real combat experience — no, none at all — and after what happened yesterday, she isn't right. The timing is bad. That's all I'm saying."
"The world outside a settlement doesn't have the luxury of making allowances for every—"
"Let me finish. And she isn't out here alone, is she? I'm here, Hocheol's here, and above all you're here. Why does she have to pull her own weight on top of that?"
I had a reply. I could also see, clear as day, exactly what Jo Shin-hye would say to it.
Fine. Let's walk through the whole thing.
"Which is precisely why she needs real experience while there are people around to back her up. And An-na was the one who spoke up first—"
"Treating her like that—"
"Ms. Shin-hye, let me finish. You were about to say that someone who's practically a stranger has no business running An-na through training as if she were his own, and that worrying that far is sticking my nose where it doesn't belong. That was it, wasn't it?"
"...Yes. You know me too well."
She wore the look of someone thoroughly unhappy at having her thoughts read.
"This isn't someone else's business. An-na proposed it to me herself. This is between me and her."
"I'm the family. I have more right to—"
"So because you're family, you're going to butt in and meddle. Is that how I should take it?"
"Meddle? I'm her family!"
Whether it counted as meddling was not hers to decide.
"An-na?"
"...Yes."
"Tell me honestly what you want to do, and I'll help you."
"Help with what? Anna, you stay in the back and—"
"I'll do it."
"Jo An-na!"
"Shh."
I signaled Jo Shin-hye, who was bellowing at full volume, to bring her voice down. A noise at that level wasn't going to stir the swarm on the far side. Still.
"...Can't I just try it once?"
"Haa..."
Jo Shin-hye produced a sigh so long it bordered on a party trick.
"Someone has to give ground, or this doesn't end."
"...And?"
"Step back this time, and I'll step back next time. An-na, you promise to step back next time too."
"I promise."
"...Unbelievable. Seriously."
While Jo An-na unpacked and made ready, I started my own preparations.
The reason I'd decided to let her try was simple. Even if she proved no help at all, I could open a path by myself. Real combat experience, a boost of confidence — all of that was just an excuse. If she actually managed to clear the way, I wouldn't have to burn my own consumables, which was pure profit. And if it went badly and I had to step in, it was work I would have done anyway. Break even.
"What's that?"
Jo Shin-hye had come over to my side to watch whatever I was preparing. I'd expected her to be busy hovering over her sister. Unexpected.
Maybe she'd never expected anything from her sister in the first place, and only wanted to know what I meant to do.
"Noise rounds. One magazine's worth. That'll be plenty."
Good thing I'd brought several magazines.
Unlike the army, hunters usually went out in small teams of three or four. They assembled some combination of abilities before they left, but with so few bodies it was hard to answer every situation. That was why hunter handguns existed — tools designed so the situations that came up most often could be handled with the bare minimum of gear. Load the right ammunition and most minor problems could be solved.
Now and then a special round wasn't enough and you needed a particular firing mode. Meeting a zombie swarm was one of those times. Then you fired noise rounds in noise-suppression mode. The function choked the pistol's report as far as it could. Without it, the crack of the gun would draw the dead straight onto the hunter, and you might as well not have used the rounds at all.
Even in suppression mode the report never vanished completely, so a noise round had to strike somewhere that wasn't too far off. Close enough that the zombies nearby ignored the gunshot and went for the sound of the round instead. The mode's drawback — a slower bullet and a shorter range — stopped being a problem.
"Don't tell me this is... what do you even call it?"
"A hunter's handgun."
"That's just what people call it for convenience. There's a proper name, isn't there?"
"There is. I call it Backscratcher."
"The kind you scratch your back with?"
"It's pretty satisfying. Want me to scratch yours?"
"...I'm good."
"Sorry. Truth is, I don't scratch other people's backs."
"And what am I supposed to do with that?"
Tick. Tick.
The face of a noise round had a circular recess cut into it. That was the dial. You turned it with a fingernail until the volume sat where you wanted it. Louder meant you could gather more zombies at once, and it also meant a better chance of catching raiders' attention.
Clack.
Magazine seated.
A hunter's handgun was not a cure-all. The only place that could manufacture special rounds was, of course, the state, which meant they were issued gear. Issued to match the operation, and so, naturally, not unlimited. They were handed out with some generosity, since the things were tied directly to a hunter's hideously precious life. Someone in my position, though, who had no choice but to buy them under the table, had to hoard every last one.
If Jo An-na punched through that swarm, it would be an enormous gain. I'd come out this time thoroughly prepared, with consumables to spare, but this was a world where you never knew what would happen next. When the crisis hit, it was all too common to find you didn't have the right thing on hand.
"Shouldn't you be watching your sister get ready?"
"I know what she's trying to do. Right before we escaped I went through her pack to see what she'd brought."
So the sister who read her sibling's diary was standing right here.
"There were throwing knives with little mechanical devices and batteries on them. More than one."
"Noise-makers, you mean?"
"I didn't know exactly what they were then. Seeing her like this, that's probably it."
She had the skill to build something like that? Batteries weren't easy to come by, either.
"They were batteries the settlement made itself. Small, flat things, small enough to mount on a throwing knife. Anna was born with a gift in her hands."
True enough. Captain Choi and Jo An-na had spent a long time preparing for the escape. They would have planned for a zombie swarm. They had to have.
"Oh, and don't misunderstand what happened earlier."
"A misunderstanding. Something like, you tried to stop her because you hated the thought of An-na burning valuable consumables. That kind of misunderstanding?"
"...Can you see what I'm about to say?"
I wasn't misunderstanding. I'd known from the start why she'd blocked An-na. She simply couldn't stand her sister shouldering even a little risk.
Everything was ready.
"So... it'll be all right, sir, won't it?"
"Want to bet?"
"Then I'll take 'she'll be fine'!"
"Not betting."
All of us set our feet lightly into Incheon Grand Park.
The best course was to use the same shortest route as last time and punch straight through. What lay in front of us, though, was packed solid with zombies frozen like statues, and it was hard to see past them. No need to worry. I'd memorized the landmarks on the way down. There was a map in my head.
"An-na, I'll guide. You just clear the zombies."
In the end the formation was exactly what we'd settled on at the start. I led from the front, and Jo An-na threw from just behind me. Jo Shin-hye was, of course, glued to her sister, and Hocheol kept the rear watch the whole way.
"Then... I'll start?"
The knife flew clean and buried itself in the forehead of a zombie far ahead. At the same moment her eyes flashed. The fighter's face, back again. Put a throwing knife in her hand and Jo An-na became someone else.
A crackling buzz burst from the device on the knife, and the zombies came pounding in a rush. Things that had stood frozen like statues the whole time suddenly sprinting at full speed — it was grotesque no matter how often you saw it. Unless you'd been shot full of Combat Stimulant or something like it, no human running speed was ever going to shake a zombie, not if you died and came back. Eyeless as they were, they crashed into one another, went down, got up, and did it again, and still they caught you. Their speed was on another plane entirely. They ran at a pace no living person could have managed. Whatever virus the monsters had pumped into them to make them like that, it was something to wonder at. The monsters themselves only ran about as fast as a human.
Every time a knife left her hand, Jo Shin-hye flinched. She was afraid of a bad throw landing right in front of them, or of the device malfunctioning and shrieking in her sister's palm.
The old stink of zombie flesh from the captain's office rolled in from every side. The Old Man had said it was like the essence pressed out of tens of thousands of dried squid, which would have meant something if I'd ever actually seen a squid.
While we threaded the gaps in the swarm, no one could speak. So every time a knife struck home, Hocheol had to hoist both thumbs and wag them.
We were about halfway across the park when a finger poked me in the back. Jo An-na. The signal that had started with Hocheol poking Jo Shin-hye had reached me. Something had shown itself behind us.
I looked back. A band of people in rags was tiptoeing along the path we'd opened, light on their feet.
Look at these shameless bastards.
Six young men, all of them fairly solid. Well fed at a glance, and their packs looked light. People with a settlement behind them, then. Which meant their pockets probably weren't empty either.
I turned my palm to the sky and made a circle with thumb and forefinger.
You want to walk a road we swept, you pay the toll.
The one at the front of the band nodded as if he understood and grinned wide.
I wasn't about to trust them. I also couldn't raise a commotion in the middle of a zombie swarm. Getting through came first.
We had nearly crossed the park when I saw it: a burst postman's bag, scraps of uniform, and beneath them, half-buried as if hidden, fragments of bone. So the one who had led the cleared zombies back to the center of the park had been a postman.
Another poke in the back. Jo An-na again. Why wasn't I moving, that would be the question. I'd stopped for a moment to look over what the postman had left. On the off chance it was some trace of the Physiognomist, I'd checked. There was no way to know.
Even the poke felt like Jo An-na. Jo Shin-hye would have been one firm press. And not just once. Two firm presses.
I started walking again, and little by little a new smell rose. To borrow the Old Man's phrasing once more, this was the smell of something called phytoncide, and I had no idea what that was either. Some cousin of the squid, maybe.
The number of throwing knives was exactly right. The last one left her hand, and we broke out of the park.
"The young lady's not bad."
The moment we had room to breathe, the man at the head of the band that had followed us spoke up.
"Throwing knives with noise-makers stuck on them. The balance ought to be shot, and she still throws like that?"
"Because they were made with that weight in mind from the start."
When I answered him, Jo An-na looked at me with an expression that said How did you know that?
Plenty of things to be surprised by. She was the one who'd made them, a craftswoman of throwing knives. Of course she'd made them that way.
"Anyway, we got some help, postman."
"And the thanks?"
"Ah, the thanks. How about we all part ways here in peace, and call that thanks?"
Knew it. Lowlife bastards. Peace-loving, the lot of them.
Every one of them was well built, and there were more of them than us. They wouldn't truly want a fight, though. Even if they won, they'd have to swallow one or two dead. Men with a settlement to go back to had no need to gamble like that.
Still, it was plain they had the upper hand. A moment like this called for seizing the initiative.
"An-na. Those two you packed — you still have them, right?"
Chk. Chk-chk.
Good. They weren't slow.
The sisters and Hocheol read my words as the signal and had their guns out in a breath. The others were no slower, leveling their own weapons until we stood squared off.
"Whoa. Not a fan of peace?"
"I don't take cheap payment. A promise to the state is a promise. Pay properly."
"The state? Oh, because you're a postman?"
They knew we weren't going to fire. This was only a demonstration of how angry we were.
"Well, that's awkward. We live with a wall between us and the state."
"You look like you'd hop that wall just fine."
"Well, well, you've got an eye for people! Fair point. No rebuttal."
They snickered. The leader lowered his gun and took one step closer.
"Listen, postman. We don't live in fear of some civil servant. Get tangled up with us and you're the one who'll have a miserable time. We're a little famous, see. Leave quietly while we're still letting you."
A threat, was it. I was curious which settlement they belonged to.
"If you're going to threaten me, do it properly."
"Heh. Postman's got nerve. That because you've got the state at your back? Isn't it heavy?"
"Lighter than your mother."
"Whoa..."
"If you were planning to settle this with your mouth, you picked the wrong man."
"Looks that way. Fine, fine. The honorable postman wants our address, so we ought to give it to him. We're on our way back to Yeongdeungpo. Starting to get the picture?"
The famous settlement in Yeongdeungpo. Of course I knew it.
"The Human Meat Factory."
The place Gyeongsu had asked me to deliver a letter.
"People still call it that? For heaven's sake. We quit the human meat ages ago."
Now that was a threat worthy of the name. These were men to be careful of, no question.
Their settlement had excellent production facilities. They bought resources cheap, turned them into finished goods, and put them back on the market. They'd piled up a great deal of wealth that way, and even at odds with the state the settlement ran just fine. Rich men, and their combat gear was in good shape — better than your average army unit. Under those rags there would certainly be body armor.
"So you were strutting around on the strength of that armor."
"What's with you? You know neither of us is actually going to shoot."
"Still, it must have been comforting, having something to fall back on."
"Ha. Look at this postman, picking a fight. Fine. Then how about this."
He stripped off the rags. Just as expected, body armor showed itself. Sectioned so it covered him head to toe, and better made than military issue. How did they produce gear of that quality?
Then he shucked the armor too and threw it aside.
"How's this? Bare fists, and nobody has to die."
Look at this bastard.
"You want to go?"
"What, nothing in you but running your mouth?"
"Hardly."
At that, Jo An-na scurried over and timidly caught my sleeve. I thought she meant to stop me. Then Jo Shin-hye and Hocheol came up, clapped a hand over her mouth, and dragged her off.
"Then here's how we'll do it. I win, and I take the six sets of armor you're wearing as the payment from earlier."
Six sets of armor made like that would be worth a considerable sum. Three small Cores a suit, easy.
"Well, well, looking to make a haul? And if I win?"
"We end it with that peace of yours, or whatever you called it."
"Pfft. I like it. But that's a little thin on its own. How about you throw in a magazine?"
Feeling out whether we had ammunition to spare. I needed to show him we had more than enough, or he'd try something stupid.
"We've got enough to turn every one of you into a beehive. Fine. You win, I'll throw in a magazine."
I glanced at Jo Shin-hye and Hocheol. Both of them were nodding over and over. Only Jo An-na, still caught, shook her head.
Cheering section of two, assembled. Time to observe the courtesies of a martial artist.
I stepped up to him and held out my hand.
"What's this?"
"A handshake. Let's do it fair and square."
He snorted and took it.
"Once a civil servant, always a civil servant. Let's see... no eye-poking, no kicks to the jewels?"
"And no changing your story after you lose."
"Sure, sure."
Still holding my hand, he turned to the men behind him and roared. His cheering section roared with him, delighted. Five of them. I envied him.
A blue light spread slowly out of his body. The handshake was taking effect.
"Shall we start, Mr. Civil Servant?"
"Fine by me."
"Then hurry up and put that bag down. That's when we start."
"What's the use of a postman who takes off his mailbag?"
I'd keep it on, just in case. I might need a Core. Even hauling this much weight, winning would be easy as pie.
"Ha... Fine, whatever. Just don't whine later that you lost because of the bag."
He set his stance. A man who'd learned to box.
My odds of winning in a bare-handed fight...
...What is this guy?
Better than thirty percent against me? Not even the veterans of the Heart Unit had ever posted a double-digit win rate on me. Decent hunters, in a bare-handed fight, barely scraped into the tens. And some nobody like this?
He was pulling something. No question. He'd had an angle, and that was why he'd proposed fists.
"You coming, or should I come to you?"
The five-man cheering section swelled with confidence. Meanwhile Jo Shin-hye and Hocheol—
"Take the bag off!"
"Postman, sir! The bag is really not the move, sir!"
Not helpful. Was the bag the reason the odds looked like this? Better to just take it off.
"What, taking it off now? Knew you couldn't hack it."
...Bastard.
"Just resettling the strap. Come on."
"All talk. Don't regret it."
Win rate, 65.1 percent. I had the edge. Not a number you could call a sure thing. The evolved ability was useless too. Flip the probability and I'd be the one at a disadvantage.
Probability reversal is worthless unless the task is overwhelmingly difficult. In a gray area like this, it doesn't help...
...Wait.
Then I just had to make it that way.
"Now what?"
"You called one bag on my shoulder bluster. Let me show you what a real handicap looks like."
Time to make the probability mine.
I hauled the sack of Cores out of the bag and started ripping it apart.
"...What are you doing?"
"Watch."
And at what followed, both cheering sections began to stir.
"Uh, Mr. Jeongguk? Mr. Jeongguk? Mr. Jeongguk??"
"Jeongguk? That is really not—"
"Postman, sir, what are you doing! Don't do that, sir!"
"What the hell is that bastard doing?"
"Is he insane? He's actually going to fight like that?"
"He knows he's going to lose, so he's clowning. What else."
Let them talk.
I covered my eyes with the torn strips of sack and tied a knot at the back of my head.