Hiding the House in the Apocalypse

7. cat mom

Most accidents are preventable.

The three cats I’m going to talk about – Gucci, Hermès and Jackfield – were also, in a sense, preventable talents.

“Mrs. Do not feed the cat.”

The woman was a middle-aged woman living alone in the vast wilderness between Seoul and my realm.

She always covered her face with a mask, scarf, and sunglasses, perhaps because she had suffered burns during the nuclear attack.

When she found me, a strong man, she hurriedly left with a handcart, and on her back, I felt a sense of terrifying fear and deep loneliness.

Every few times she passed by, she was feeding stray cats at the same spot, and after several observations, it seemed that neither her husband nor children were present.

It’s not that uncommon in today’s world, so I ignored it and passed by, but she didn’t leave her seat anymore when she looked at me, as if she’d gotten used to me soon.

If you look at it, it has developed between one side running away and ignoring the other.

Our relationship, which had been running parallel all along, was thrown out of balance due to an incident.

Her cats had grown to an unreasonably large size.

“excuse me. Can’t you hear me?”

Undoubtedly.

It is a precursor to mutation.

It’s unimaginable now, but when the Chinese government was still in existence, South Korea dispatched hunters to jointly cope with the monster invasion.

Seeing the collapse of India and Africa and the aftermath of it affecting neighboring countries, it is obvious that Korea will be next if we let go.

I had seen something similar in a new city in China that was built newly, big, and splendidly, but there were not many people.

At that time, mankind was more ignorant than now, so they couldn’t distinguish between mutations and monsters, but I boldly captured an overgrowth rat, claiming it to be a new hamster, despite the opposition of my colleagues, and the sample helped to create a new concept called mutation. did.

I’m not proud of it, but the existence of mutation is being revealed, and my contribution is not small.

Overgrowth beyond the growth limit determined by genes is the most representative precursor of mutation.

The three cats fed by an unknown woman had already grown to the level of gold retrievers at that time.

“Those cats. Don’t you think it’s too big, ma’am?”

“It’s a ragdoll.”

she excused herself

The Ragdoll is one of the cat breeds and is a friend who boasts a considerable body.

However, the appearance of the three cats, including that tricolor cat, reflected in my eyes was extremely Korean.

“What kind of ragdoll is that? I’d believe it even if it was Raita, a human cannibal of the desert.”

“Never mind. Who are you to order me to do this and that?”

She didn’t even look at me properly, but she gave out an angry voice.

“It’s because it hurts Mrs. Do you want to be eaten by a cat?”

“They don’t. they are angels How much do you follow me?”

She held out her hand, and the three cats competed and rubbed their heads against her hand, like old Western aristocrats trying to kiss the seal of a king.

“…”

said no more

I’m not a kid, but I’m an adult, so I’m sure you’ll figure it out.

Some kind of selfish calculation also contributed to my ignoring her and leaving.

At the time, I was thinking of cutting off contact with the Seoul side.

As long as you have received your personal identification code, the need to go directly to Seoul has decreased, and above all, there are not enough people on the battlefield.

It is said that a high-class manpower like me can be dragged out at any time with various excuses.

It didn’t look too bad having three mutants as new neighbors guarding my shelter, along with a mad sniper to the southeast and a bunch of gold to the southwest.

In the first place, that woman wouldn’t listen to anything I said.

“What are those cat names?”

I asked the woman who was leaving.

“why?”

“You look cute.”

“Hermes, Gucci, Jackfield.”

Curiously, she didn’t tell me which cat had which name, but I seemed to know what each of the three cats had.

*

“You can create a richer texture if you cross and move it like weaving a net with a floating pole.”

quiet afternoon.

Now, I am making wool felt dolls while watching the videos of the late Anonymous 337.

The creature I made was a terrible shape, closer to Lovecraft’s goat than sheep, but I am constantly revising it to look like a sheep at least by referring to Go Soo’s videos.

Like the work of Anonymous 337 on the shelf over there.

As I was concentrating, the K-walkie talkie sounded a buzzer.

beep-! beep-! beep-!

This sound pattern is a signal that a direct call has been made to the personal identification number.

In other words, it is an important contact.

just as expected.

Sender: Daram Kim

“Ha, f*ck.”

I couldn’t help but press the receive button, and a bleak voice came out as if I had been waiting for it.

“senior. I have a favor to ask of you.”

“What else do you want? You said you wouldn’t do it again?”

“I don’t want to be like this, but I have to help and live in this dark time. Besides, it’s nobody else’s business. Did you know that a lot of people died recently around the golf course where your senior lives?”

“…was it Rupert Cibral Palace?”

“Look at that. you know?”

The incident in which three road angels raised by an unknown woman became monsters and turned the residents of the apartment complex into real angels was a good thing to me, but the central administration seemed to see it as a serious issue.

A death order has been issued for Hermes, Gucci and Jackfield in the country.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t hunt mutations anymore. I don’t have the skills and I don’t want to. First of all, I have no equipment.”

“It’s not what seniors do. I will send someone.”

“person?”

“Freelance Hunter.”

The freelance hunter appeared in front of me on a vintage motorcycle that was difficult to see even before the war.

“hello?”

Wearing a tight-fitting leather coat and leather pants, he was not very tall, but had a solid image like a marble, and his face was youthful yet aged.

“I’m Baek Seung-hyun.”

From the first meeting, he scanned my whole body up and down as if he was searching for me, and then made a snorting noise with a strange smile as if he knew something.

I didn’t want to get too close to him, so I kept my words as low as possible and only talked about what I wanted to say.

I had three conditions.

“I will not join the battle and I will not help. And I will accompany you until sunset today.”

Seunghyun Baek laughed.

As he was silent, he suddenly opened his mouth.

“Isn’t that Park Gyu who came out of school? From the legendary 13th period.”

“What are you talking about all of a sudden?”

“Because I went to the same school. 12th period.”

“…”

“The fortress of trials that stands tall and bright~ We sharpen ourselves like brilliant jade~ Receive the energy of Samgaksan Mountain and become reborn as masters of the times~”

Suddenly, this person sings a song.

It is a melody in memory, a school song.

I don’t think I’m just talking nonsense, seeing as I know the school song that was used for about half a year and then disappeared due to protests that it was unfashionable.

Looking closely, it is a vaguely memorable face.

You may have encountered them on campus at least a few times.

Of course, at that time, I and this person would have been a little more immature and less dirty.

“That Park Gyu-ssi is in a place like this. You are surprised.”

“Let’s not talk about the past.”

“I knew what was going to happen to an inferior student like me. An honor student like you…”

It gave a strong signal that he didn’t want to hear it anymore.

Baek Seung-hyun made a slightly surprised expression at the harsh eyes and apologized soon after.

“Sorry. No comment.”

He rode a motorcycle and I rode a bicycle to the operation site.

However, the smell of blood was already strong even before I got close to it, and when I arrived at the scene, the fallen flesh and hair, blood and messy footprints were mixed in a chaotic mess.

“This?”

Seunghyun Baek laughed.

“Actually, I had a blast with them before I met you.”

Baek Seung-hyun tapped the heavy weapon on the bike with his hand.

Type 21 large caliber hunter rifle.

It is literally a hunter’s equipment for monster-mutation hunting.

“Maybe he had tasted human blood before, but he aggressively ran at it, but he was extremely stubborn. It’s just a few abrasions.”

To be honest, I laughed at him because he was a freelance hunter.

I will correct it.

Baek Seung-hyun is strong.

Without analysis and observation, it would be impossible without a fair amount of guts and skill to stick to and destroy 3 mutants with only a slow and slow bolt action rifle in the wild.

At least grade A.

If it were me, I would give it an A grade.

“I don’t like meeting other people either. I couldn’t help it, so I contacted you. As for the beast, do you have the skills to wipe out the blood and move to the ditch?”

He had one purpose for finding me.

Help find the injured cat.

But how do I know

I’m not even a cat detective.

Wait, there is one face that comes to mind.

An unknown woman who fed Gucci, Hermes, and Jackfield passed by before my eyes like old homework.

*

The abandoned private apartment was covered with garbage and fallen leaves, creating a dreary atmosphere.

All the windows called glass windows were broken, and the red water that flowed from the old-fashioned veranda was terrifyingly decorating every corner of the apartment like bloody tears.

“It’s a cheap apartment. Even if it’s not a year old, 40 years must have passed.”

Baek Seung-hyun looked around with sharp eyes.

“There are no supermarkets or shopping malls around. It’s all rice fields. It doesn’t look like the surrounding farmland is wide enough for everyone who lives here to farm.”

He made a show of his unsolicited impressions and looked up at the apartment with narrow eyes.

“Still, this is the only place where people can live around here.”

Indeed, there was a woman hiding in the apartment with her face covered.

Baek Seung-hyun handled people well.

To be precise, he had a knack for driving people like cattle.

“Madame.”

Baek Seung-hyun held out the screen of his cell phone.

“You know these, right?”

“…”

“Madame. Don’t keep your mouth shut and tell me. Do you know how many people these have killed?”

“It can’t be.”

“It can’t be.”

“There’s no way our babies would do that!”

Baek Seung-hyun sniffed.

He went back to the back of the apartment and came out with a bloodstained piece of clothing.

“My wife was among the dead.”

The clothes he was carrying were men’s clothes for some reason, but at that point the conversation was interrupted because the woman burst into tears.

what wind would blow

When I came to my senses, I was standing next to her.

“Are you okay?”

I even held out the canned coffee I had brought to eat.

A gift seems to be the key to unlocking a woman’s heart regardless of the era.

Sobbing, she held the coffee with both hands and opened her mouth.

“······On that day, the people in the apartment went into the air-raid shelter by themselves, excluding me. It was built during the Saemaul Undong.”

She pointed toward the air-raid shelter.

“When I arrived late, the door was closed. I knocked and shouted, but they wouldn’t open the door. I was told to die outside. I had a bad relationship with him because he usually gave me cat food. But then Jackfield meowed! and appeared.”

She took off her sunglasses and wiped away her tears.

“He went ahead as if guiding me to the basement.”

Even her eyebrows had melted, and her eyes were so ugly that I couldn’t look at them properly, but those eyes had a warmth that made me follow animals.

“Thanks to those children, my life was saved. The children also saved their lives thanks to me.”

“What happened to the person in the shelter?”

It seems obvious without looking at it.

If you look at the black soot engraved like a specter on the side of the ventilation shaft.

“I think there was a fire inside. There was smoke and screams. all day long.”

The secret of this woman’s survival has been revealed.

All the residents of the small apartment died.

It’s a small apartment, but it’s 60 units.

It is said that the goods for 60 generations belonged to one person.

As Baek Seung-hyeon said, it seems that the looters didn’t even look at the apartment because it was a tumbledown apartment located in a remote place.

“Aren’t you feeding me now?”

“yes. It’s too big now… get rid of it…”

“Do you think you know where it is? Maybe next time there will be someone more outgoing than that person.”

At my urging, she tried to open the coffee can I had received as if she was determined.

She couldn’t even open the can, perhaps because of the alcoholic epilepsy, so when I opened it for her, she lowered her head and accepted the coffee.

As she drank a coffee soaked in my body temperature, she looked into the distance, perhaps trying to make up some kind of resolution.

“I have a place to guess.”

She led us to a ditch leading to an abandoned rice field.

She guided and briefly introduced the meaning of this place.

“I found them here. I took care of him who was abandoned by his mother.”

Her senses were correct.

There are bloodstains.

“Hermes~ Gucci~ Jackfield~!”

she called her beasts anxiously.

Baek Seung-hyun and I were standing in the back far away.

I didn’t want to see Baek Seung-hyeon if possible, so I asked the woman coldly, fixing my eyes on her.

“Do I really have to do it this way?”

Baek Seung-hyun put a vest on the woman.

bomb vest.

I agree with him that this side is less painful than being torn apart alive by a mutation, but this is humanly bad.

“That’s something even dead people want to ask that lady.”

Huge beasts bleeding profusely appeared in the ditch.

It is a mutation.

Baek Seung-hyun put his finger on the detonation switch.

I have nothing to say.

Because his judgment is valid beyond the realm of heart.

Scholars say

Mutations are too smart to be tamed.

It attacks humans because it knows how humans think and treat itself.

Just as humans, who were God’s most docile sheep, became God’s fiercest critics, mutations choose humans to hate them.

This is the conventional wisdom about the aggression of mutations.

however.

“Meow.”

An unbelievable sight unfolded.

Mutations were following her.

As if before she changed, like the cats of those days that were competing for her touch, they competitively pushed their lion-sized heads in and rubbed their bodies against her body wrapped in a bomb vest.

“see. How nice are our babies. Even if it’s like this…”

“…”

The undeniable conventional wisdom was refuted by an unknown woman and her cats.

However, that brief miracle was quickly erased at the fingertips of a man buried in reality.

click

Immediately after the monotonous sound of a switch, an explosion occurred, and the light and roar swallowed everything.

“You’re working like a dick.”

maybe it’s the first time

The one who looked at Baek Seung-hyun seriously.

Baek Seung-hyun, who had been staring at me the whole time, avoided my gaze at that time.

“Because it’s a f*cking world.”

After uttering a muffled voice, he fled the scene as if running away.

The woman’s body had disappeared without a trace.

Only one mutant was gasping for its last breath with its lower body blown off.

I looked down at the cat.

He looked up at me helplessly with his cooling eyes.

“You are Jackfield.”

The ugliest of the three nodded like a human and stopped breathing.