Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 5
Chapter 5: Anonymous337
“At first, you need to roll the wool with your hands to make it round. It might be hard for beginners to get the right amount, but you’ll get used to it with practice.”
The only lights filling the dark bunker are the brightness from a monitor and the warm voice of a man coming from it.
This video isn’t from before the war.
It’s recorded at the current time, one year after the war started.
Its source is none other than our community ‘Viva! Apocalypse!’.
This miraculous site continues to operate even after the nuclear bombs fell.
I felt like I was being scammed being charged $100 a month without even including the satellite communications equipment. But our founder, Melon Musk, contrary to his reputation, turned out to be a responsible and technically skilled person.
His city was destroyed by nuclear missile attacks, and he probably burned to death along with it, but the legacy he left behind became a star, forever illuminating humanity, in the form of servers installed in satellites beyond the sky.
Viva! Apocalypse! is one of the few remaining internet communities at this time.
Although my mentor John Nenon has disappeared, the community still maintains a level of activity, buzzing with Korean netizens.
Of course, not everyone is sane.
I have blocked four fellow users.
A cultist babbling about the rapture, an attention-seeker who posts their diary entries every minute, a schizophrenic who picks fights with anyone, and a psychopath who enjoys hunting humans and posts about it proudly.
On the other hand, there are a few good people.
Anonymous337, who created the “Making a Wool Felt Doll for My Daughter (3)” video I’m currently watching, is one of them.
Anonymous337 is a kind and warm man, the kind of father figure I never had.
Instead of resorting to alcohol or drugs to alleviate the boredom of the shelter, he makes toys for his son and daughter, uploading the process as videos with sweet music and witty editing to the forum.
He’s incredibly skillful with his hands; the wooden robot model he made for his son was of such high quality it could be sold in stores.
I wanted to see his son’s happy face receiving the gift, but he only silently posted the making process.
Perhaps he’s reluctant to expose his family for security reasons.
Indeed, no other voices are heard in his videos, which also seem to reflect Anonymous337’s meticulous nature.
I tried to imitate Anonymous337’s work and make a robot, but with my clumsy hands, I ended up creating something that looked more like a disgusting object from a p*nis worshipping village than a robot.
Recently, he’s been serializing a series on making a sheep doll using wool felt for his seven-year-old daughter.
Just like the robot for his son, the quality is high, and I am eagerly anticipating its completion.
“This is how you make the ears. It might look difficult, but it’s easy once you get the hang of it.”
His doll isn’t finished yet, but it’s so cute and charming that I want to buy wool felt and tools the next time I visit Seoul.
A year has passed since the war started.
The world has become harder to live in than when the war began.
There are no more nuclear missiles or air raids, but monsters stretch their claws not only near the demilitarized zones but also in the southern regions, and trade has been cut off. The government has lost control, and recovery seems distant.
There’s also a sinister wind blowing in the community.
KaosGate: There’s been a recent increase in refugees. They keep glancing around my bunker.
Anonymous121: I’m in the south, and refugees have been roaming around here for a while. Be careful, everyone. If you help them out of pity, they’ll return as robbers.
There has been a recent surge in posts about refugees.
Indeed, the number of refugees has increased and several community users have also disappeared recently.
Among them was the attention-seeker who posted his diary every day.
The community has concluded that the disappearances of the users are the doing of the refugees.
Qwer1234: It’s the refugees. They killed them and took over their shelters. Probably killed their families too.
RealKorean: If I see a refugee, I’ll blow their head off with a shotgun.
Some users have already declared refugees as enemies.
Well.
I’m skeptical.
Refugees are just refugees.
Some might be professionals trained in searching, but how many such people could there be in South Korea?
It must be just bad luck.
There are others who share my view.
After seeing a keyboard battle, I realize that the person I blocked shares my opinion.
His name is Defender.
He’s known as the human hunter in the community.
Since the war started, this human hunter regularly posted murder confirmations.
He reported his deeds irregularly with two types of photos: one taken from a distance of the victim’s corpse, and the other with a black plastic bag over the victim’s head and the victim’s fingerprints inked on paper, placed next to the bag.
He killed different people each time.
His methods varied.
Sometimes he used a gun, other times he killed with a blunt object.
When killing women and children, he only used the black plastic bags.
It wasn’t for fun.
There was only one reason: they invaded his territory.
Though, in my view, he’s no different from a psychopath who kills for fun.
I unblock him and search for his posts.
Defender: It’s not the refugees’ doing.
Defender: Everyone called construction companies for building air-raid shelters, right?
Defender: Be careful of those construction company bastards. They know your locations.
In his last post, the human hunter posted his usual murder confirmation.
But this time, he didn’t cover the corpse with a black bag.
The corpse’s bulging, pale, rigid face is laid bare, with a construction contract and ID card displayed alongside the usual seal.
Undoubtedly, they are employees of the construction company he contracted with.
The community users ignored his words.
Was it because they didn’t want to hear what the human hunter had to say?
Or because the human hunter revealed an uncomfortable reality?
That’s left to imagination.
More pressing issues have arisen.
My favorite community user, Anonymous337, has disappeared.
His disappearance, a family-oriented and skillful man, is a huge shock to me.
Time flows from autumn to winter.
The temperature dropped below freezing, and toxic fallout-laden winds blew from west to east.
The atmosphere in the community grew colder.
Anonymous231: Is Anonymous423 alive? Haven’t seen posts from them in a while. If you’re alive, just like this post. I’ll do the same next time.
Lone_wolf: Could Kaos_Gate been hit too?
The disappearance of colleagues is no longer rare.
Many users have vanished.
Despite preparing and bracing for the apocalypse, they couldn’t withstand the harsh world and disappeared from the community.
No one posted condolences.
No one knew when their turn would come.
I never imagined I would be next.
They appeared when snow, lightly laced with radiation, thickly blanketed the golf course and my territory.
A group in a truck appeared on the golf course and headed straight through my territory.
Through a telescope, I observed them and recognized a familiar face.
“Look at this guy…”
It’s Chief Hong.
He was one of the workers who helped build my first air-raid shelter.
He was Kim Wangsu’s boss, not very talkative, always alone, and not well-regarded.
He did his work half-heartedly and never joined in the social gatherings.
The construction company boss often badmouthed Chief Hong when he wasn’t around.
“Chief Hong, I’ve known that bastard for over ten years, but he never changes. If you work in construction that long, you should at least become a foreman, but with his personality of a child, he’s stuck being a laborer.”
He always left gatherings early, citing family reasons. His return to my territory meant nothing good, especially with four armed men.
I remember the human hunter’s post.
Defender: Be careful of the construction company bastards. They know your locations.
The culprit is often closer than you think.
The construction workers who helped build the air-raid shelters remembered the locations and revisited their former clients.
A kind of deathly after-service.
Their voices transmit through the surveillance devices scattered around, into my earphones.
“Is this the place?”
“Yes, it’s here. There’s the golf course, and there was the air force base right over there. Right between them. We built an air-raid shelter under that small hill.”
“Are you sure it’s an air-raid shelter?”
“That guy said it was an underground concert hall, but who would come to such a remote place with no roads? We bid on a few more jobs after that, and I’m certain. It’s an air-raid shelter. Definitely.”
“How many people are there?”
“As far as I know, just one. At most, a family.”
The short conversation succinctly sums up everything.
Chief Hong.
He has come to kill me.
To kill me and take everything I have.
“…”
I turn off the lights and open the air-raid shelter entrance, waiting in the darkness.
I don’t carry a gun.
Instead, I hold two axes.
Thud-
Two men appear at the wide-open entrance of the air-raid shelter.
The leader is armed with a riot shield and baton, followed by another man armed with an M16.
“The entrance! It’s open!”
The man with the gun turns on a lantern and scans inside the shelter.
Both men simultaneously let out a cry of excitement.
“Jackpot! Cigarettes! Cigarettes! How many packs are there?”
The cigarettes were placed by me.
To lure them inside.
But these looters are not ordinary.
Even upon discovering the loot, they don’t move a muscle.
They move with thorough teamwork.
Especially Chief Hong, he’s not an easy one.
“Does it smell like a corpse inside?”
The men at the front shake their heads.
“No, there’s no smell.”
“There’s no such stench.”
Chief Hong’s voice follows.
“Check inside for any people. Every corner.”
Definitely, this isn’t their first rodeo.
“Don’t rush in. Set up the shield and move carefully. There might be someone hiding inside.”
However.
Whirl-
They picked the wrong target.
I wait for the light to shine on me as I spin the axes in my hands like a dance.
The moment the light hits me, I pounce like a tiger, pushing the leading man with the shield back with a powerful kick.
“Whoa!”
The man with the shield falls backward, knocking down the man with the gun as well.
Bang!
A loud gunshot echoes inside the shelter as I take in the two enemies.
As the falling man’s shield slowly descends in slow motion, I count internally.
Three, two, one.
And then I throw.
Whirl-
The axe arcs towards the man with the gun.
The staggering man tries to aim at me, but the axe pierces his forehead first, penetrating his brain.
“Aaaah!”
A scream erupts from the man with the shield.
As he struggles to stand, my foot is quicker, crushing him and his shield.
As I pull out the axe from the fallen gunman and swing the other axe, I hit the man with the shield on the head.
Crack!
“Cheol-ho! Hyeong-sik!”
Urgent voices of the looters are heard.
I quietly hide in the darkness, waiting for the next victim.
Chief Hong is indeed not ordinary.
“Yeong-sik, calm down! If you go in, you’ll die.”
He is calming his agitated comrade.
“Cheol-ho is dead!”
“Do you have tear gas? Use it. Don’t go into the fox’s den directly, make it come out.”
He immediately suggests a viable alternative.
A faint smile crosses my lips.
Indeed, Chief Hong is not ordinary.
I respond by closing the heavy door of the shelter.
“The door’s closed!”
“Ignore it. There must be a ventilation shaft.”
Chief Hong quickly reacts.
“There’s only one entrance. I know because I built it. You can tell by the blueprint. All other places are blocked with concrete. Find the ventilation. Let’s see how he comes out once we release the gas.”
Truly a general with his soldier.
I never thought I’d be fighting such a battle with mere looters.
But what he doesn’t know is one thing.
After Chief Hong and his team finished the shelter, I learned from them and expanded the shelter.
Among them is a new emergency exit I created by tearing down a wall.
Chief Hong would never dream of it.
Because he’s a mediocre carpenter.
He would never imagine I have become a better carpenter.
I leisurely exit towards the secondary bunker with a gun and look toward the main one.
I see the looters searching for the ventilation.
Bang!
A shot rings, and one man falls.
Bang!
Without giving them a chance, I take down the second.
Only Chief Hong remains.
Unarmed, he raises his hands in surrender.
I approach him with the gun aimed and ask.
“How many have you robbed?”
Chief Hong grimaces and shrugs lightly.
“This is the first time.”
I press the gun harshly against his forehead.
Chief Hong answers, distorted with fear.
“…Four.”
“You’ve robbed quite a lot.”
I order him to load the bodies onto the truck they arrived in.
While stacking the bodies, I find a familiar object.
“…”
It’s a sheep doll made of wool felt.
Seeing it, I feel something break inside me.
“Where did you get this?”
“From another shelter.”
Chief Hong answers, panting heavily.
“What about the people inside?”
“Just one man.”
“Weren’t there any family members?”
“…”
“Did you kill them all?”
Thump!
The butt of the gun strikes Chief Hong’s temple.
He screams in pain, but I silence his agony with another kind of pain.
After a couple of kicks to the abdomen, he kneels and speaks.
“It’s true! He was alone! Alone! Damn it! He was alone! I didn’t kill him. He was already dead when I got there!”
“Where?”
The location is surprisingly close.
A 30-minute drive in the truck.
Led by Chief Hong, I enter the plundered bunker.
For sure.
This is the place.
The place from the video.
In the center of the thoroughly looted air-raid shelter is a workbench.
On the familiar, warmly textured desk lay a man, half-rotted, face down.
The blood splattered in the workspace implies he committed suicide.
I look around.
It’s a very narrow shelter.
Too cramped even for a single person to live in.
“Now, you’re going to release me, right? I kept my promise.”
After adding one more corpse and returning home, I check the videos.
Come to think of it, there never was a child’s voice in any of his videos.
Indeed, that is the case.
A previously unnoticed comment catches my eye.
Defender: About this guy’s videos. They’re all good, but there’s never been a kid’s voice. Always talking about his kids, but aren’t they all dead already?
Why have I only noticed this now?
Ah, right. I blocked him.