Rust - Chapter 212



Only Krnovel

RUST-212

Ms. Kim was very. very. extremely. annoyed.

Isn’t it too much for a person to go around and around for more than a week, not just one or two days? Starting from North Town, going around to the towns in the outskirts here and there.

At this point, shouldn’t Baekjeong come over with a packed lunch, or at least have Bounce come over and help with the cleaning?

The little rat, with its back straight like a meerkat, made a noise as if mocking Ms. Kim.

Click- click-

‘Oh my – these people are so fearless.’

Not only were dogs and cats with slightly lost appetites running wild, but even rodents were running around the roads in broad daylight.

‘They’re smaller than the ones I saw in Japan.’

It was a waste to waste a 60 dollar bullet on a 12.7mm rat. Ms. Kim suppressed her discomfort and went into the village.

‘Shower. If bathing is too difficult, take a shower.’

I was stuck in my exosuit except for the occasional supply vehicle from Homeland Security, so my whole body was itchy.

[It’s a town on the right side of Route 151. We’ve lost contact with it since yesterday. Please check.]

[···Okay, I understand.]

The Homeland Security punks were apologetic at first, but yesterday and today they were like, ‘Just do it,’ so Kim Yang’s mood started to hit rock bottom.

It was neither night nor day, but there was no one.

Normally, when you go into town wearing an exosuit, people would open their windows to look, kids would come out to watch, or even the local police would come and say something, but there was no response.

Okay, then.

Kkiyungkkiyung

Miss Kim walking briskly. Why won’t you come?

Kkiyungkkiyung

Only an eerie silence greeted her.

‘this.’

Kim Yang turned up the sensitivity of the sensor to the maximum and pulled the trigger.

A village with about 70 to 80 households. If we take an average of 3 people per household, there should be 210 to 240 people in the village, but there was no trace of human warmth.

Klick- Weeeeeeeing-

Two small drones ejected from the exosuit’s shoulders began to scan the area.

[Heat detection operation]

The drone’s sensors switched to thermal mode. The town was completely blank on the HUD (head-up display). There was no one there even though we went deep inside along the main road.

Should I go into the house and search it?

Rejected

What if I crawled into a narrow space and there was a trap set? There was no reason to go in alone and struggle, even if there was a butcher.

Ting-

The sound of a grenade clip popping.

Miss Kim threw a grenade into a nearby two-story house. The sound of the grenade exploding through the window shook the quiet village.

Kim Yang, who had set the detection sensor to maximum sensitivity, looked around with her eyes wide open.

None. None. None. None.

Several minutes passed in a tense atmosphere, but no other signs of heat were detected. The village was empty. Ms. Kim contacted the Department of Homeland Security and Maru.

I asked the Department of Homeland Security to take care of the mess and asked Maru to change jobs, but as expected, he just kept going around and around.

‘If you just say it’s an empty village, they’ll tell you to go to another village right away.’

A flash of thought occurred to me. After a moment of hesitation, Kim Yang spoke.

[Cleaned out even though there are no survivors in this town?]

[Where are you now?]

Baekjeong said he was coming to change shifts.

‘I didn’t lie. To be honest, I just couldn’t find any survivors.’

Ms. Kim waited leisurely for the Department of Homeland Security and Maru.

The eyes that were directed at Ms. Kim. The eyes that were sparkling in the darkness of the sewer increased in number from two to four to six…

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Maru prepared to go out right away.

Since there are many accident-prone areas, a motorcycle is more efficient than a car. Among them, an electric motorcycle with less noise is better.

“Are you going out?”

“Uh. First, call the spies. Take them with you when you leave.”

I told them to leave nicely, but they seemed to be going crazy, so I thought, ‘Should I just separate everything and recycle it?’ But who knows what will happen in the future.

Even the Strategic Command has lost its good relationship with pharmaceutical companies and the military-industrial complex, so is there really a need to separate and collect all the waste from other organizations and get on our nerves?

If I had to describe the way things were going in one word, it would be unpleasant.

I remembered when I ran away from Japan with Ki-soon. Thinking back to when we sat on a bench outside the airport and talked about this and that, I had to assume that the signs had been there before.

The incident where a giant cockroach clung to Kisun and Maru’s backs and made a fuss. Birds were flying around the airport. And then a major earthquake occurred.

Even before the earthquake, cockroaches were larger than normal and birds were not normal either.

It is said that Japan ended up like this due to a combination of various factors, such as a series of natural disasters, radioactive contamination, the spread of mutant viruses, and the leak of laboratory specimens, but the signs were there before that.

‘It’s a sign.’

Japan collapsed quickly as its government evaporated, but not the United States. The government was still alive and the military was intact. There were even conditions in which militias and vigilante groups armed with firearms could be formed in an instant.

‘Anyway, the possibility of it collapsing as quickly as Japan is slim. So. Necessarily.’

It’s true that I’m a little annoyed at the thought of seeing the liver, but there’s no need to kill it.

Maru approached the people who were looking at each other with faces that showed they didn’t understand English.

“Do you know why I called you?”

“······.”

“······.”

Some people looked at me with a look of ‘What if?’ or ‘Did they get caught?’, but most people were like that. If they got caught as spies, they wouldn’t have been called in like this instead of dealing with them one by one. Maru said, making those thoughts seem meaningless.

“It turns out that all the people gathered here are spies sent by different organizations and corporations.”

“?”

“!”

“no!”

“No, I am not!”

At Maru’s straight line, some people jumped out with surprised expressions and others immediately objected. Regardless, the conversation continued.

“So, let’s take a good look at the faces next to us. We don’t know when or where we might meet again at the same place.”

Those who had been objecting to those words also looked to the side for a moment. As the people who had glanced at each other’s faces began to raise their voices again, one person in particular jumped forward and shouted.

“That’s a misunderstanding! Do you have any evidence?”

Swish-

Slap

A person who faints after being slapped in the face. Maru continued speaking while clenching and unclenching the hand that had slapped him.

“Hey- Do you all think I look like a retard?”

Wiggle.

A dull, blooming murderous spirit.

“Do you want to die that much?”

“If you say you’ll spare my life, I’d appreciate it. Thank you. All I have to do is bow and leave alive.”

The emotions slowly disappeared from Maru’s eyes.

“Evidence? Why do you need that?”

“······.”

“······.”

Keup-heup- one, two, the sound of gasping for breath.

“Misunderstanding? What if I misunderstood?”

A sharp sense of foreboding enveloped everyone’s bodies.

“Then what are you going to do? Do you want to die?”

The air feels heavy. It feels like it’s suffocating you.

Huh-uh-

Some people who were near the floor peed themselves and collapsed. Some people were shivering but couldn’t run away and started to cry and runny noses, while others had difficulty breathing and their faces turned pale.

“Stop talking nonsense. When you save me, go home and see my parents, and if you have children, see them and be thankful. Do you understand?”

As the will to live disappeared, all those who could not endure it collapsed on the spot.

“If you keep going like this, you’ll end up leaving one of your arms and one of your legs behind. Let’s do it moderately. Moderately.”

Despite warnings, some people still said no.

“I’m not a spy!”

“Really. I just followed my little brother.”

To someone who didn’t know the situation, it looked like they were really persecuting an innocent person. Even though he was so heartbroken and resentful, and even though he was begging for mercy, Maru didn’t even blink.

“They’re talking nonsense. You think it’s unfair? You don’t? Huh- These kids, really. How could a normal person survive? A normal person wouldn’t be able to survive, let alone endure this atmosphere. Right?”

“······.”

“······.”

I don’t know if it was because I was nervous about living and my brain was stiff, or if I was just acting reflexively, but it wasn’t even funny.

“Even if the atmosphere is like that, would a normal person want to stay here because they’re scared? They’d want to go home.”

Where are you going to smoke? Then I should leave it as promised?

Srrrrrrrr-

“Okay… sleep….”

“Ahhh- no···.”

Swish-

Those who tried to fight until the end were kicked out, leaving behind limbs. They said they came with their families, or followed their siblings, and so on, and so on, and even their families were kicked out as a set. Even though they showed such generosity, if they kept complaining until the end, there was nothing they could do.

“There are a lot of really bad kids out there.”

Are those kids who can throw away their arms and legs at any time doing spies? Are the Americans this vicious? After cleaning up the spies, Maru headed straight to the village where Ms. Kim was.

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OMG-

The low electric motor noise. The electric motorcycle was quieter than the gasoline motorcycle. The atmosphere changed completely as we left downtown Detroit, where the National Guard and police patrolled in small groups. The ruins, which clearly showed the fin-de-siècle sensibility.

Whoosh whoosh-

An empty house was burning down. It was a traditional game in this neighborhood, so I guess that’s normal, but the scale was different. About 10 houses along the road were burning down at the same time, so much so that you could feel the heat as you passed by.

They used to have campfires mostly at night, but now it was daytime. They were saying that they were going around setting fire to empty houses in broad daylight.

More than 10 empty houses were set ablaze at once. Black smoke rose into the sky, but the fact that no fire trucks were visible was even more serious. This meant that there were so many places on fire that they didn’t have the capacity to pay attention to them.

While downtown and densely populated areas are managed, slums and less densely populated areas in the outskirts seem to have been neglected as they are now.

This wasn’t good.

With the empty house burning brightly behind, Maru’s motorcycle picked up speed.

As Kim said, there were sections of the road where accidents had occurred. Traces of cars passing by roughly pushing the accident vehicles off the road and moving on remained.

The scene of the accident, which seemed to have happened not long ago, left the dead as they were. It was said that the ambulance could not reach the outskirts. It meant that there was a shortage of fire trucks and ambulance personnel.

It definitely wasn’t good.

It would seem that everyday life would go on. Whether it was a war, a volcano erupting, or an earthquake, it was something that happened overseas, and the riots were something that happened in another city.

Those who could not control their anger were isolated, and the city’s subways were running on time as usual. Security actually improved with the military and police patrolling.

The daily routine of going to work and drinking a cold beer and eating pizza or chicken after work. It feels like an accident or incident is just a step away. Many people will feel that way.

You might think that you were making a fuss about something that didn’t need to be made a fuss. But that wasn’t the reality that Maru was seeing. Little by little, the noose was definitely tightening.

As we entered the remote village, Miss Kim came running from afar.

Kkiyungkkiyungkkiyung

The sound of welcome, light footsteps. The exosuit helmet goggles, which were a bit worn out after being rolled around outside for over a week, were pushed up.

[Are you here?]

You wouldn’t know it if you saw it. The greeting is also really good.

Sigh- Maru nodded his head as he smiled.

“No survivors?”

[None.]

“Any traces? Like bloodstains or signs of a fight. Did they evacuate as a village?”

[I didn’t search the house.]

Did you decide that it was dangerous to go in alone without backup? After all, Ms. Kim was good at taking care of her own safety. It wasn’t strange for her to make that decision.

“How did you know if there were any survivors or not if you didn’t go inside?”

[Grenade exploded.]

Oh? Okay. Maru nodded. If there was no reaction even after throwing the grenade, then that’s acceptable.

“What about the Homeland Security guys?”

[I called. He said he’d be there soon.]

Kim Yang’s bright voice.

A look that says, ‘Can I go when the kids come?’, ‘Is it a shift change?’

I wondered why he had opened his goggles. Peek- Maru answered with a laugh.

“Really? Let’s take a look around when they come.”

No way. Where.

[···Okay, I understand.]

Kkieyouuuung- Kkieyouuuung-

Not long after, a Homeland Security vehicle pulled into town.

“Ah- Mr. Vladimir Kalin, it’s been a while. How have you been, Miss Kim?”

He was an agent who assisted Maru and his party in Japan.

“Didn’t you say you had work to do in Japan?”

“Yes. The situation in Japan is somewhat like that. I’ll sort things out here first and then tell you later.”

“Yeah.”

[······.]

The Homeland Security agents, along with Kim Yang and Maru, began searching the empty houses one by one.

[Chijik- There’s nobody.]

[Beep- This house is empty too.]

Did everyone run away? What’s the point of saying that?

A trace caught Maru’s eye. It was a piece of carpet.

‘A piece of carpet?’

A metal belt decoration fell nearby. The leather belt had disappeared, leaving only the metal belt decoration. A strong sense of foreboding.

I’ve seen something like this somewhere. Only the metal part remained···