Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 40



Only Krnovel

30. Golf (2)

My bunker is a place I have carefully selected while traveling to numerous locations across the country.

The main bunker is located on a hillside that is closer to a hill than a mountain, but the back part along the valley has a steep slope close to a cliff, while the gentle hill on the opposite side has a seemingly gentle slope, but in reality, it is a structure with small mounds that obscure the view.

It’s not exactly a good terrain for defense, but it’s the best terrain for deceiving your opponent.

The presence of a hill also provides an advantage in securing a clear view.

In short, it emphasized stealth and reconnaissance over defensive capabilities.

It is only natural that the people brought by Jo Seong-yong did not approach this way.

You can see everything at a glance, but there’s nothing that really catches your interest.

They focused their search around the US military base where the airport is located, then spread out to the west and south.

A day has passed.

People pitched tents and lit fires.

There wasn’t much to eat, but unlike Seoul, there were plenty of things to eat around, so they seemed to like it.

But overnight the temperature dropped to minus 18 degrees Celsius.

The next day they searched the village.

A group of two or three middle-aged women were loitering around my area, but they found nothing.

I wandered around the entrance to the bunker, but it was blocked with dirt and rocks.

I would have had to dig with a shovel to find the entrance, but the cold, windy wind that blew over the hill, unique to my domain, drove them out of my domain.

“Oh my. Is this a grave? Why is the atmosphere like this? Why is the wind so divided?”

This is a woman’s impression heard through a wiretapping device.

Another day has passed.

This time, the people that Jo Seong-yong brought made a complete mistake.

Aside from my own territory, I began to advance into the vast rice paddies and mountains of the eastern region.

Coincidentally, Jo Seong-yong’s truck visited the golf course again that day.

People began to complain and grumble.

Their voices didn’t reach here, but it wasn’t hard to tell what they were trying to say.

It seems that he has requested that this meaningless mission be stopped.

The speakers attached to Jo Seong-yong’s truck blared loudly.

“Calm down, citizens. The buses will be here soon. Just wait a little longer. Warm homes and food await you!”

The truck carrying Jo Seong-yong left the scene, and the light armored vehicle that had been standing in the middle of the golf course left the scene with a loud noise.

All that was left were the hundred or so ordinary people he had brought with him.

Until then, I didn’t understand Jo Seong-yong’s intentions.

Why did he release nearly a hundred people?

Why on earth do you go to so much trouble to catch just me?

Paranoid schizophrenia may be one reason, but there may be other reasons.

Four days have passed since then.

The bus didn’t come and there wasn’t a single radio call.

Jo Seong-yong and his group literally evaporated.

People who waited in poor tents, relying on a thin fire, in the hope that a bus would come, slowly but surely learned their fate.

They are abandoned people.

Jo Seong-yong brought him here for a change of pace and then left him in the wilderness.

In the frozen ground, people looked at each other’s faces, not knowing what to do.

*

Their first reaction was anger.

“Yaaaaaaah! Jo Sung-yoooooooooong!!!!!!!”

Someone’s furious echo echoed across the golf course.

A group of men with guns gathered and looked north.

I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but it seemed like some of them were strongly suggesting that we go north and take care of Jo Seong-yong.

While the men vented their anger, the women sat around the dying campfire, talking or linking arms with the men and listening.

In the afternoon, the people split into two.

It seemed like he was probably someone who wanted to stay here and wait for Jo Seong-yong.

Loud shouts erupted from both sides.

I connected to the community while they were fighting fiercely.

There’s something I’ve always wondered about.

Pioneer, pioneer party, pioneer group.

At first, they all seemed to be in the same boat, but there was a hierarchy and directionality among them.

SKELTON: What on earth is a Pioneer Corps? Does anyone know?

I posted a question on the bulletin board to make sure.

Since I am an unpopular user who doesn’t get many comments, I spent some time doing something else.

beep—

The battery tester tells me the charge is complete.

After much difficulty, I finally succeeded in charging the Javelin’s battery.

I’ll have to go to the sniper’s hideout to check if it’s working properly though.

It’s not enough to just be able to use it right away, you have to keep it mounted on the Javelin and watch to make sure it doesn’t discharge and the voltage is maintained.

I put the charged battery back in my bag and checked my laptop.

There were several comments.

Roka_hun: Isn’t that the organization that manages pioneers?

keystone: Those bastards? The ones who manage the pioneers. They’re just a bunch of fucking bastards.

unicorn18: What is your SUNBI ID?

“······I told you I’m not a scholar.”

It was the reporter who gave me the accurate information.

Not long after I posted my question, the reporter wrote about the Pioneer Corps, either because he had seen my post or because he wanted to write something unrelated to my post.

gijayangban : About the Pioneer Corps.txt

-I don’t like writing long articles and I don’t think anyone will read them, so I’ll just write a 3-line summary.

1. The country considers people as property and places a lot of people in big cities.

2. Now we don’t need those people

3. The organization that expels unnecessary people is the Pioneer Corps.

What I had vaguely thought about has now become a reality.

The Pioneers, as their name suggests, are not an enterprising group that clears wastelands and reclaims land.

They are a disposal organization that plucks out people from the city and dumps them outside.

Lieutenant Choi, who came to my territory, the pioneers I dealt with with the Defenders, and Jo Seong-yong, who came to my territory this time, can all be understood in that context.

Useless people are abandoned on useless land and made to eat each other.

Jo Seong-yong would not have thrown people away like this from the beginning.

As pin thieves become cattle thieves, they gradually started throwing people away, and now they are boldly and carelessly throwing people out into the wilderness.

There are abandoned people out there.

They are still arguing.

Should I go north or stay here and wait for the bus?

The man who insisted on staying was particularly loud and his every action was aggressive.

Perhaps overwhelmed by his momentum, the people returned to their tents without reaching an agreement.

Another day has passed.

It looks like a verb has appeared.

People carried the frozen corpses out of the tents like logs and across the ridge.

The death of someone is a powerful source of persuasion for someone else.

Those who wanted to leave gained power and most people sided with them.

There were about ten people left, but the number gradually decreased and eventually, as people started to leave for the north, only one person remained.

Yesterday, there was a man who shouted so loudly that the entire golf course resonated.

He must have been about fifty years old. He was a thin man with a broad face that looked fleshy, and his every movement seemed to be overpoweringly powerful.

He lit a fire next to his tent while swearing loudly at the people leaving.

Are you still waiting for Jo Seong-yong in this situation?

That’s a great belief.

Suddenly I got another neighbor, but I didn’t contact him.

Because we cannot rule out the possibility that it was a trap set by Jo Seong-yong.

If so, then this is an opportunity in some sense.

How would that person react if a generator was turned on at this distance?

The group of Lt. Col. Choi was too close to be of any help, and during the last cold spell, smoke was rising in broad daylight, so there is some room for leniency.

What I care about most is noise.

I could barely hear it when I was there listening, but there are people in this world who have sharper ears than I do.

We waited for bad weather to come to be cautious.

The weather was getting warmer, but the thermometer still pointed below zero.

The man held on, stubbornly, in his tent all alone.

I wonder how much food is left.

It doesn’t look that spacious.

When you see someone mixing a nutritional bar that tastes like dog food with an unidentified weed that has started to sprout in a pot and boiling it to eat it.

That evening there were thick clouds in the north.

It rained heavily mixed with sleet during the night.

The long-awaited bad weather has arrived.

I tried running the generator.

I wonder what kind of reaction he will show.

The man did not respond.

Even though Skeleton’s heart was beating so hard that it made my entire bunker shake, the man didn’t move an inch.

I went outside and checked the man’s reaction.

Swaaaah—

The sound of my generator was definitely faint in the increasingly heavier raindrops.

But that’s not all.

Bang! Ta-tang! Bang!

Distant gunfire was heard from the north.

The man heard gunshots.

I’m talking about the gunshots coming from the north, where he had passed and where the person he was with had returned.

The storm passed and a clear morning came.

The temperature rose noticeably.

The mercury was pointing to 10 degrees.

Amid the chirping of birds, a man slowly walked out of the tent.

He looked around for a long time, especially to the north, and then suddenly began to sing.

It was a song in the style of a ballad, not a common pop song.

I didn’t think I sang well. It seemed like the songs I liked to sing were of that type.

The man, who had just played a cool tune, broke a stick like a boy and climbed up the ridge to look around the golf course.

After a while, he placed a rock on the ground and assumed a golfing stance.

He put his finger to his eye to gauge the distance, then struck the stone with a gentle swing.

The swing was spectacular, but the rock only flew a few meters.

The man broke the branch himself and exclaimed, “Erai!”

He disappeared over the ridge and was not seen for a while.

It was about an hour later that the man emerged from the ridge.

He was holding a golf club and a golf ball in his hand, and he had a golf cap on his head that he had somehow gotten.

What on earth are you trying to do?

Maybe he’s trying to cheer up since this is a golf course.

After a while, he stopped in one place, bent down and pulled out some grass.

What are you trying to do?

He used his telescope to examine the area where the man had been grazing.

“Huh?”

An exclamation came out of my mouth without me realizing it.

There was a hole hidden under the uprooted weeds.

I didn’t know either.

There must be a hole there.

And that’s not all.

He restored hole after hole to its pre-war state as if the golf course were his own living room.

The unknown man began his own round.

widely!

The golf ball soared into the sky with a brisk swing.

I don’t know much about golf, but even I, a layman, could tell that he wasn’t average.

But the weed-filled golf course seemed ill-equipped to accommodate such a fine golfer.

The ball would often get stuck in the weeds, bounce off the bushes, or end up in a hole covered in trash from the US military base.

Every time he screamed, it did not erase the expression of joy that was firmly fixed on his face.

Looking at that exquisitely joyful face, I came to one conclusion.

This guy is not one of Jo Seong-yong’s lackeys.

It just remained.

But why did it remain?

Waiting for the bus?

No, he didn’t think the bus would come either.

The only times he looked north were when people left and when gunshots rang out.

A bold hypothesis began to sprout in my mind, somewhat persuasive, coupled with the man’s cheerful face.

Maybe the bus wasn’t really that good for him?

So maybe he lied and said he was waiting for the bus and was forced to stay?

If he had insisted on staying to play golf, people would have dragged him there by force.

As a result, the man now enjoys the luxury of a country club with a membership fee of 1.8 billion won all to himself.

It’s a luxury that even the conglomerates can’t afford.

After some trial and error, the last ball went into the last hole.

The man’s round, which was long yet short, has ended.

“Come on!”

The cheers of fighting spirit could be heard from here.

The man looked around with a relieved smile on his face.

There is no one.

The caddy who was guarding him, the gallery, and other members who were unpleasant to see.

His smile gradually faded.

It wasn’t a very pretty sight.

He must have had the same thought.

Before the smile on his face could disappear, the man suddenly took out a gun from his bosom and pulled the trigger while still smiling.

bang!

The last golfer fell.

The golf course fell into a long silence once again.

A few innocent sparrows gathered like a gallery and quickly left.

*

They say there is nothing completely useless in the world.

Even human garbage like Jo Seong-yong can sometimes be helpful.

chouchou: Someone please help me. The pioneers are outside!

Super super.

I’ve heard bad things about this guy.

After I left, he is said to have argued with Diesirae while trying to carry the girl’s body.

If his colleagues had not stopped him, he might have been burned with the other corpses.

Even though I am an unpopular low-level user in the community, I am still a full-fledged member of the community.

Chocho is no longer even treated as a colleague.

If you look at the number of views, it’s a popular post, but no one is leaving comments.

“······.”

People say I’m not good at using the Internet.

Actually, that seems to be the case.

But this time, something clicked.

SKELTON: Who are they? The ones who attacked your bunker?

This is the first time I’ve commented on a post that was collectively ignored by tacit agreement.

chouchou: It’s a guy named Jo Seong-yong!

Chocho answered immediately.

SKELTON: The 22nd Pioneer Corps Commander?

chouchou: How did you know? Yes. I think so. I’m really in a hurry right now. I’m from Gimpo. Can you come?

SKELTON: That’s close. Yeah, how did he find you?

chouchou: Sewerage! You said something about the smell of shit and that’s where you found me!

SKELTON: Did you touch any of the bodies around here?

chouchou: Oh, it’s urgent. I don’t have time to talk. Where are you? Skeleton? Is it close? Can you help me?

I deliberately took the time to do this.

As expected, he sent me a private message first.

Message from chouchou: I touched a woman’s body.

SKELTON: No, did you touch anything other than the woman’s body?

He tried to talk to me in private messages, but I posted my comment on a message board for everyone to see.

chouchou: Gun! I got the gun. But what about the woman’s body? When did I say that? Are you kidding me? Right now?

SKELTON: That’s right~

I showed everything I wanted to show.

With this, our users will get to know Jo Seong-yong’s name and method.

Also the fact that the guy has a fetish for the smell of poop.

Of course, I got cursed at by one person.

CHOUCHOU is a bastard!

In the past, getting cursed at on the internet would make my blood boil, but now they say that a dog that has been trained for three months can recite poetry, so it’s just funny.

Is that why?

SKELTON: What the hell~

I have reached a point where I can enjoy this kind of leisure.

But this high level brought about an unexpected reaction.

Message from Defender: All~

“?”

This is just the beginning.

Anonymous848: Wow, what happens when Skeleton does that?

Anonymous458: We should have been playing like this a long time ago

DragonC: Oh, you know how to have fun?

Dies_irea69: I told you, Skeleton is a healthy and solid guy in real life.

keystone: Good job on unblocking it.

…

…

There was thunderous applause.

But amidst the initial cheers, a message arrived that could not be overlooked.

Message from 183cm88kg18cm: John Nanon

“uh?”