Chapter 6

6. Guests

My shelter is a quiet and secluded place, but it’s not an uninhabited island, so there are occasionally things that wander around the area.

The first type is the scavenger.

Unlike raiders, scavengers are people who only target ownerless items, rummaging through ruins and taking everything they can get their hands on.

The group that appeared in my territory was a group of twenty scavengers who arrived in a green bus.

They focused their search on the air force base, but some of them wandered toward my hiding place.

The scavengers briefly inspected the industrial waste piled up in my territory, then turned back toward the air force base, angry with each other.

The second type is the nomad.

These are people who have left Seoul to find a new home. Unlike scavengers, they are more interested in real estate than items.

Nomads rarely came to the area around my shelter.

After all, no one would want to live on a desolate and grotesque land like an ancient tomb.

Sometimes, things that are not human also come.

Mutants.

Animals infected with the mutation factor maintain their pre-infection habits and behaviors. The one that came to my territory was a mutant dog.

To ensure they were indeed dogs, they came in a pack.

Each mutant dog is as big as a lion.

They are not easy opponents.

With jaw strength that can crush concrete walls, the ability to chase a running car, and toughness that can withstand multiple rifle shots without dying.

There is always a leader in a pack, and the group that came to my place had a leader.

A mutant dog named Gold, with fur that shone golden.

It was a very cunning and cruel creature, a headache so severe that the city of Seoul had put a bounty on it, but no one could hunt it down.

Of course, I have no intention of hunting it either.

It’s dangerous, but in a sense, it’s like an honorary guardian of my home, so why bother?

While the mutants wandered around my shelter, I hid inside and waited for them to pass.

Mutants don’t just bring advantages.

Mutant dogs have a significantly reduced sense of smell compared to before their mutation.

They followed the faint human and living odors but couldn’t find me.

The immediate crisis passed, but they defecated and urinated all over my shelter, and for three days, I had to endure the horrific experience of only drinking water from the purifier and eating biscuits while they were above my head.

Sometimes, zombie groups also came.

Zombies are human corpses that have mutated. They act just as everyone imagines, unintelligent and moving in groups, trying to increase their numbers by infecting anyone they can.

While mutant dogs have a reduced sense of smell after mutation, humans become more sensitive to smell when they turn into zombies.

They must have been drawn by the delicious smell of my cooking.

But what can be done?

My shelter’s entrance is hidden and protected by reinforced alloy.

The zombies wandered around the ventilation shaft where the smell was coming from and then moved on to nearby cities in search of other prey.

The gunfire that echoed throughout the night suggested they had entered a village controlled by a crazy sniper in the lower town.

The above cases are rare, and most of the time, I spent peaceful and leisurely days.

I always kept the radio and walkie-talkie on while sunbathing, grilling barbecue, or sometimes boldly wading into the nearby stream to catch bullfrogs and minnows.

While the north is constantly at war with the monsters and mutants flooding in from the collapsed North Korea, and the south is struggling with local governments that have lost government support, living with meager finances and resources, it all sounds like a story from another world to me.

It’s so peaceful and beautiful here.

After hanging laundry out to dry and disinfecting it in the sun, I lay on the ground for a while, gazing at the sky.

Lying on the ground with my arms under my head, watching the clouds drift by, I feel like a celestial being.

After the war broke out, I think I enjoyed about a year and a half of such peace.

But nothing lasts forever.

Around late spring, when the mist rises, drones began to appear in the sky one by one.

Called quad drones because they have four wings, these drones are the reason I don’t use the convenient and common solar power.

No matter how well you hide, if you have visible solar panels, it’s like advertising, "I’m here, come and kill me and take everything."

A community user I knew was a fanatical solar power enthusiast.

Sunpower: Solar power is convenient, efficient, and cheap. Why don’t you use it? (He really didn’t understand.)

I’m sure that friend found the answer to that question when raiders invaded his shelter.

There are two main types of people who launch drones in the desolate hinterlands, not on the front lines.

One is government agencies looking for mutants, monsters, and criminals.

The other is raiders looking for prey.

As we watched the cheerful friends of "Viva! Apocalypse!" disappear one by one, we could clearly see our own objectification.

We may be better prepared than others, but in the eyes of others, we are nothing more than treasure goblins.

Naturally, large-scale group survivalists became dominant in the community.

Anonymous424: Individuals or families might survive for a while, but in the long run, you need to form a group.

Dies_irae69: We’ve increased our combatants to fifteen. It’s a bit tight with my stockpile, but otherwise, we can’t survive.

I don’t agree with their thinking.

You might be able to fend off a few attacks.

But your opponents are human.

Hungry and envious humans.

They will likely return with a larger and stronger group.

With food, clothing, and all the conveniences of life, would they leave you alone?

The most important thing is to remain unseen.

Even the human hunter I recently unblocked acted rationally in his killings.

The dead don’t talk.

In any case, it’s clear that my territory is under threat.

I sealed off my sunbathing, sun disinfection, and outdoor cooking, and observed the situation from inside my shelter.

Drones are definitely flying around my territory.

Reconnaissance was concentrated between noon and one o'clock for a week, but occasionally, drones were launched in the late afternoon with a time delay.

The drones came from the north-northwest and disappeared in the north. This suggests the drone operator might be moving in a vehicle over a wide area.

However, there were no night flights.

The drones’ performance, especially the camera, is not suitable for shooting in the dark, and there’s a risk of losing them, so they seem to be minimizing the risk.

I love doing calisthenics on moonlit nights, so I banned daytime outings and spent peaceful days coming out at night to breathe the fresh air.

One day, a popular post appeared on the community.

Dongtanmom: It was fun while it lasted.

I clicked on it.

There was something floating in the sky, and it turned out to be a drone.

I only saw it once, and unfortunately, it was a raider’s drone.

I don’t have time to write a long post; they’re welding my door open.

Thank you all for the great posts and for making my time enjoyable.

P.S. If you hear an explosion from the Dongtan area, it’s me. It’s a 10-ton TNT blast.

Not long after reading that post, a dull explosion and a faint tremor were detected from a distance.

That was his last post.

Many users asked about his well-being, but he never responded.

Only one person, the self-proclaimed psychopath human hunter, left a sarcastic comment.

Defender: A post without any proof, believe it? They have time to type and take photos while welding the door open? And the nickname? Dongtanmom? Clearly a troll.

*

I found a battered truck two days later.

There were about ten people in the truck, half of them lying in the cargo area with severe injuries, groaning, and the rest following the truck with lifeless faces.

It wasn’t hard to recognize them.

Raiders.

People who kill others to survive and steal their belongings.

I thought of the last post by Dongtanmom that I saw yesterday.

Could these be the ones who attacked Dongtanmom?

A faint killing intent began to rise within me.

They are definitely easy prey.

There are plenty of reasons to kill them.

But I didn’t touch them.

Because this is my territory.

To claim a region as your territory, you must know everything about it.

I know.

That the road they are walking on is the hunting ground of the mutant dog pack led by Gold.

The slowly moving, injured humans are the perfect prey for the mutant dogs.

Soon, the Gold pack, sensing the smell of blood, began to appear from the south.

Gold, a formidable and grotesque mutant dog with golden fur, let out a roar that sounded like a mix between a wolf and a bear, announcing their arrival.

“Aaaah!”

“M, monsters!”

The end of the raiders, who couldn’t distinguish between mutants and monsters, was as obvious as the sun.

Bang!

The raiders fired their guns, but the massive mutant dogs either dodged the bullets or took them with their muscular bodies, turning the humans into mere prey.

The sound of惨叫声和骨头被咬碎的声音传来，很快就平息了。

当这一群劫掠者全灭的那一刻。

东潭妈的灵魂是否在注视着这一切？

如果她在看，她会是什么表情？

她会不会笑得很灿烂？

然而，人类的世界。

并不那么简单。

*

Dongtanmom: 喳喳！

东潭妈还活着！

不久前，他还在用悲壮的语气紧急地宣布自己的最后时刻，现在却完好无损地发出“喳喳！”的声音。

担心他的用户们纷纷留言。

Anonymous848: 什么？这是钓鱼？

Kyle_Dos: 哇，这种地方还在钓鱼。这家伙真是个奇葩。

Anonymous458: 这里又不是市场，这样做合适吗？在被封禁前向大家道歉吧。

SKELTON: 真的很生气。

在用户的强烈抗议下，东潭妈发布了道歉声明。

Dongtanmom: 对不起。因为抑郁症发作，我不自觉地写下了与事实不符的内容。

东潭妈之后还经常钓鱼，他之所以到现在没有这样做，是因为他不知道如何设置卫星天线。

然而，所有的事情都有个尽头。

Dongtanmom: 这次不是开玩笑，是真的！很危险！这里其实不是东潭，而是光教。外面有五个人！请附近的任何人来帮忙！哪怕放个鞭炮也行。拜托了！

这次他甚至附上了照片。

第一张照片是闭路电视上模糊的五个人影，第二张是混乱的防空洞内部，通风管道中冒出黑烟，第三张是堆成山的标有TNT的箱子。

这是东潭妈的最后一篇帖子。

但这次会不会也是他的谎言呢？

包括我在内的大多数用户都认为东潭妈这次又在撒谎。

因为用蜡笔在纸箱上写TNT太明显了。

真相只能等待时间来揭晓。

因为我们的智者，人类猎人，留下了这样一句话。

Defender: 光教那边传来了巨大的爆炸声，像是10吨TNT的威力。东潭妈这个骗子终于完蛋了吗？

话说回来，这个人类猎人住在光教附近。

最好不要靠近他。