Stagnant Water of Apocalypse

“How did the negotiation go?” Da-jeong asked as soon as she saw me entering the time shelter.

“Of course it’s a success. I don’t know about other factions, but Goo Myung-hoon’s faction would not enter this place anytime soon.”

“A pity… I was hoping for them to refuse so I can step on them.”

“They won’t come for five days, so let’s just finish what we need to do here.”

“Those words…” Da-jeong wrapped her hands around my neck. Not in a sweet, romantic way, but in a violent way. “I wonder what kind of thing we have to do here…”

However, since the smell from our body–which was a mix of sweat and blood–was too strong, Da-jeong couldn’t stand hugging me for a long time and began to gag.

“Are you having morning sickness?” I asked with a playful tone.

She wiped her lips gently and looked at me. “Be careful about what you say. I can suddenly show you two lines someday.”

“In the apocalypse, pregnancy is a disaster.”

“So, why are you c*mming ins-mmphmpph”

I blocked her mouth before she finished her sentence. In my defense, it wasn’t like I wanted to do it, I was forced to do that because at ‘that’ time, she held my hips with her legs.

I calmed her down and opened the portal before dragging her inside. As I was pouring water into the large basin, Da-jeong threw her clothes off and entered the basin.

“What are you doing? Come in.”

I hesitated a little at her invitation.

“We are washing together?”

“Why are you embarrassed when you already saw everything? Come in quickly.”

Well, she’s right… I dragged my body and entered the basin. Once we finished, we laid down on the mattress and discussed our future plans. While we were doing so in our birthday suit, the stag beetles trembled, unlike the scarabs who were fine. It was as if they had seen something they shouldn’t see, they locked themselves in their tree house and didn’t want to get out.

Why are they like that, I wonder?

“For the next five days, we should focus on expanding the shelter.” I said as I drew a circle around the shelter in the map. It was already planned that we were going to expand the shelter using a mini fork crane in advance. However, the problem we faced was the lack of barbed wire in our plan.

As I was explaining the countermeasures, Da-jeong sneaked up to me and poked her head over my shoulder.

“It’s so nice to be able to live side by side like this…”

“…You’re heavy.”

I didn’t realize it when I just looked at her body, but when she was leaning on me, I could feel her weight.

“Who made me like this? Who made me fat?” Da-jeong hissed.

“I mean, the only thing I did was give you what you asked.” I shrugged. “But don’t worry. Even if you’re fat, you’re still pretty. You can be whatever you want.”

“Well, it’s true..” She smiled and hugged me.

Putting aside our idle talk, we continue to make the shelter expansion plan.

“There will be no barriers or fences on our new shelter. The ghouls will be the ones who protect the boundary.”

“But, if we proceed like that, my fighting power will decrease.”

“It should be fine because I don’t plan on fighting for a while.”

“Hmm… are you sure your plan would go without any sidetracks?”

To be honest, I’m not sure either. However, in any case, I decided to put a lot of Da-jeong’s ghouls into shelter defense. If Seokhyun was with us, there would be no problem in our defense, but it was a pity, he was not with us right now.

“We are going to put a barrier along the border like this… and then leave to farm other things.. What should be secured first was…” I jotted down a list of building materials such as cements, bricks, paints, and insulations on a piece of paper in front of us.

“Shouldn’t we secure food first?” Da-jeong quirk her brows.

“You can find a lot of things to eat in the forest. At the very least, we can just go to the valley and fish some salmon. However, these things are different.” Just like I said, food was plentiful here in this forest. Not only that, all the things I had looted until now wouldn’t even run out even after being consumed for several years. In other words, we no longer have to worry about starving.

Da-jeong stared at the list I was writing down and then said something. “You said we don’t need food… so why did you write so much?”

“We have to secure it first. It’s a waste to leave things like military rations alone since it has a very long shelf life.”

“Those people are currently ecstatic because they know that the time shelter will be theirs in five days. If they know that you would only leave them with just a few things, they will be livid.”

“We will take enough and leave a good amount for them.” I assure Da-jeong. After all, there’s a lot of military ration in the time shelter to the point it was impossible for me to take them all.

As soon as we finalized the list, we decided to sleep lightly. At first, we were hugging each other, but since it was too hot in the cave, we started to push each other away.

After we woke up and had a quick meal, I started working in earnest. But suddenly, Da-jeong gestured to me. “It’s hell out there right now! It’s as if people from all over Gwangju came here.”

“Seriously?” It seems that the news about the time shelter had spread all over Gwangju. It was concerning because in Gwangju, this place isn’t the only time shelter around. They should just drill through the time shelter in their area…

When we got to the entrance of the time shelter, the outside was even more messy than when we first came.

“Open the door, please!”

“Give us something to eat!”

While many people were shouting, the zombie raid happened around them. It was chaotic beyond words. In the meantime, arrows and stones hit the reinforced plastic door that the bulky ghoul was holding.

It’s going to be tough to hold them back for a long time…

“Just like the famous saying goes… a plan will go awry as soon as it was made…”

We rushed to work at that moment.

.

.

.

When Seongho and Da-jeong started to expand the shelter, the news that Chonnam University’s time shelter had been breached spread throughout Gwangju.

Even though the leader of Gwangju’s number one clan Goo Myung-hoon made sure that nobody talked about it in his clan, it was of no use. After all, the information was spread by the Chinese as they fled.

As the day dawned, the area around the department store was reminiscent of rush hour back in the old world due to the crowds of survivors. They were seen fighting monsters here and there. Of course, death among them was imminent and some of the Auction House addicts started to work their tongues.

-It’s better to starve than to die like that. What are those guys doing?

-It’s really hard to bear being cold and hungry! I’d rather die fighting…

-If you don’t force the entrance open, you won’t be able to get in anyway…

Of course, the place where the eyes of the survivors focused on was none other than the entrance to the time shelter. There, a gigantic ghoul was blocking the entrance with a door which was made of reinforced plastic. And it looked like it was almost impossible for them to break through it. After all, no matter how many arrows or molotov cocktails were thrown, the guy still stood firm.

After some time passed, other regions also became interested in the chaos happening in front of the time shelter. Naturally, the government shelter also found out about the severity of the situation. After hearing the detailed report from Lee Beom-seok, Jang Won-taek massaged his temple and sighed.

“Is it those friends again?”

It’s not like they were dragon or tiger, so why did chaos always follow along their way?

“After analyzing all the information, the situation was not their fault. The Chinese did it first.”

“…but the power balance was broken because their fighting power was too high?”

“That’s right. It’s like a whale intervening in a fight between shrimps. It was something which was bound to happen one day.”

‘Something which was bound to happen someday, huh?’ Jang Won-taek had no choice but to nod his head at his aide’s analysis. The time shelter incident in Gwangju was indeed something which could be seen as a microcosm of what will happen in the future. The cold wave that hit Seoul and Northern Gyeonggi Province was now also spreading across the country. It was clear that the survivors would quickly run out of supplies and eventually become interested in the time shelter near their area. The one-year time limit which the government set had become useless now.

The problem was, the administration officials, including Jang Won-taek, did not have a system in place to efficiently distribute the materials after the time shelter opened. After all, it was difficult enough to think about who might have survived at that time so it was unreasonable to plan such a plan in advance.

Fortunately, the entrance of Gwangju time shelter was recently blocked by a ghoul. If it was opened wide unguarded, there would be an incomparable level of confusion. The real big problem was that there was no way to rectify the situation. People who would have been able to live if they just dispersed were gathering and dying in real time. As a former president of the Republic of Korea, Jang Won-taek felt most sorry for that.

After much deliberation, Jang Won-taek headed out of his office to meet Seokhyun and Geom-in.

“Is there any way I can contact Seongho? Please, I beg you…”

As soon as Seokhyun heard the situation, he stretched out his palm towards the former president.

“If you have something to ask from Seongho, you have to give something.”

“I will give Seongho a sufficient price.”

“Deal”

Meanwhile, Geom-in could only wonder what the two of them would be talking about.

.

.

.

Hmm… This is another strange thing. Jang Won-taek contacted me through Seok-hyun and asked me to do one thing for him; calming the chaos in front of the time shelter.

However, was it possible to do so?

I cut his offer short, saying it was impossible. I think at least 200 people came. So how in the world should I calm them down? If I say one word to them, at least dozens of words would pour out towards me.

Jang Won-taek heard my side of the story and made a real offer. However, he was also asking more of me. On top of his earlier request, he also asked me to distribute supplies from the time shelter to the survivors.

-Only Seongho and Da-jeong can distribute the things while maintaining the minimum order. Please, I beg you.

I don’t know about that…

Initially, we planned to expand the shelter and leave Gwangju with only supplies as soon as we finished. It doesn’t matter what they would do with the rest of the material.

However, Jang Won-taek seems to have felt sorry for the survivors who were going to die in the midst of the chaos. After all, it’s impossible for him and his subordinates to control time shelters all over the country like us.

Well, that’s a matter for you to figure out and how to do it, not our problem…

I took a peek at Da-jeong, who was doing expansion work with a fork crane, and then entered a comment.

-If you bring a request like this, I think you already have something to offer to us.

-What do you want? As you may have heard from people, shelters prepared by government shelters are surprisingly few. Most of the items inside also can only be taken out after the corrosive disease is gone.

-Wait.

I wandered around my warehouse and found what I was lacking. On top of those items, I also want guns and ammunition. Currently, there were 10 guns and thousands of live ammunition in my shelter, but that much was far from enough. Afterall, it takes one magazine to catch one wyvern. So, in order to fight countless monsters which would pour out in the future, I wanted to secure as many guns and ammunition as possible.

“There should be some guns and ammo at the spare shelter we are going to, but it’s not certain…”

If I was the president, I would have spread all the supplies in several places. No, maybe not only the president, but the army would also think so. After all, in the apocalypse, theoretically, army forces would be the one who moved the most.

When I mentioned that point, Jang Won-taek was silent for a long time. Without giving him any more time to think, I took the reins.

– It’s okay if you don’t want to talk.

– Oh no. No. Wait a minute. I’ll discuss it first with my staff.

All of a sudden, Da-jeong came to my side. “Are you threatening someone again?”

“Threatening? Please… this is a fair deal.”

When I explained the details to her, she shook her head and sighed. “Seems like I have to move the ghouls again. What a pain in the ass.”

“If things went well, we’ll have about 10,000 bullets, you know?”

“10,000 bullets? Then there really is nothing I can do.” Actually, I expected we would get more than that, but it was wise to not tell her at this point. The amount of live ammunition stockpiled by the ROK Armed Forces should have been beyond the imagination of a person like me. It would be great to have just a part of it.

Some time after his last comment, Jang Won-taek entered another comment.

-There is an ammunition company in Daejeon. And the army had stockpiled ammunition in their base’s bunker. I’ll give you one of the bunkers.

This is a big fish… If it was in Daejeon, it was natural to stockpile ammunition in the nearby army base bunker. Afterall, the army base in Daejeon boasted an enormous scale and facilities as it was the unified headquarters of the 3rd Army of the Republic of Korea. So, it’s not strange for it to have a few bunkers.

(T/N Correct me if I’m wrong…)

-However, it is impossible to open the bunker, no matter how strong you are. That’s why, Seongho. Why don’t you take this opportunity to come into our shelter? There is something I want to entrust to you.

-I will decline. I want to be free.

-Just because you belong to a government shelter doesn’t mean your freedom will be limited…

-I just hate to be under someone. Please just tell me where the bunker is.

-Then, this negotiations stop here,

What a pity…

Then, I informed him.

-You do know that since you already told me the location, I can find it and loot it, right?

-The bunker doesn’t just open that easily. It has several layers of security doors which are incomparable to the door of time shelter. It was the masterpiece of engineering in Korea.

Jang Won-taek’s comments showed his pride that it was impossible to open it even if he found it. I’m sorry, but no matter how smart the engineers in Korea are, I have much smarter guys than them: the scarabs. Those guys could extract metal from ore and easily break through reinforced plastic. It will take some time, but it’s worth the wait.

-Alright, but I’m just saying, if we were to bet whether I can open the bunker or not, I’m very confident that I will win.

I left the Auction House and continued to work. However, at that moment, Da-jeong stopped the fork crane and laughed out loud.

“That old geezer is still calling you, Seongho!”

“What?”

“He said, ‘I was wrong, so please hear me out’”

“Tell him I have nothing to say.”

It seems that Jang Won-taek finally declared surrender after going out hard. When I entered the Auction House, I saw the comments.

―I lost. I will give you the location, so please, at least take care of the chaos in Gwangju time shelter. We’ll take care of the rest.

If it’s like this, It should be fine. To be honest, it was hard to find the bunker location in Daejeon Army Base, which was an extremely wide place.

I put my hand on Da-jeong’s shoulder at that moment.

“Sorry, for the time being, you’ll need to take care of the expansion work alone.”

“What will you do?”

“I will have to supervise the distribution of the materials. I will focus on distributing food first because they must be hungry.”

“Will the people listen?”

“Is that a question?” As I raised my fist, Da-jeong laughed out loud again.

“Hahahaha!”