Chapter 35: Preliminary Inspection (2)

No matter how deep in the mountains it was, there was no way a shelter of this size could stay hidden forever.

Maybe if everything had been buried underground and they could more or less avoid going outside, there would have been a chance. But since it had been built aboveground, sooner or later other people were bound to find it.

That was why Junho had treated contact with other survivor groups as a constant from the very beginning.

“Brother, have you ever thought this? Why Namyangju of all places? Why not just buy an uninhabited island off the south coast and live there instead?”

“Damn... did you crawl into my head or something?”

“You said that exact thing to me once.”

“Ah... the prophetic dream.”

Junho nodded and continued.

“Yes. The reason I ruled out islands like that from the shelter candidate list was this: first of all, uninhabited islands where you can actually get water are extremely rare.”

“Ah... right.”

“And even if an island does have groundwater, the salinity’s usually high, so using it as drinking water is a huge pain in the ass. On top of that, development restrictions are stricter than on the mainland. But there’s an even bigger problem.”

“There’s something bigger than that?”

“Yes. Do you think other people wouldn’t have the same idea about heading to islands? Especially people living on the coast or near the sea?”

“......!”

“After the apocalypse broke out, for the first few months, a lot of people living by the coast took boats out to islands in the Yellow Sea and the South Sea. I lived in Bucheon, so I heard some of what was happening in Incheon. Any island with a bit of size to it, inhabited or uninhabited, was packed to hell.”

“Good God...”

“Let’s say we found one uninhabited island with groundwater and built a shelter there about the same size as this one. I guarantee that within a year, dozens of people would’ve been trying to come in by boat. Complete strangers. People we know nothing about.”

“Ha... right. If I’d stayed in Busan, I probably would’ve grabbed a boat from somebody I knew over in Myeongji and headed for some island too.”

As he followed Baek Hail, who was shaking his head, out of the freezer warehouse, Junho continued.

“We can’t entrust our fate to something that unstable and uncertain, right? It’d be a gamble with less than a fifty-percent chance of winning. That’s why I chose this place. At least here, no one came for more than two years after the apocalypse started. And more importantly.”

Stepping out of the ultra-low-temperature freezer warehouse, which had been built by cutting into the mountain, Junho pointed toward the distant mountains across from the shelter where a valley stream ran.

“Gahyeon-ri, over the other side of that mountain. I know the survivors there.”

“......!”

“I know roughly how many people survive. How many survivor groups there are. Which one ends up the strongest. Who’s leading which group, whether they’re raiders or survivors. What kind of people they are... We’re starting this already knowing the people most likely to come into contact with us.”

“Hoya... th-then what you mean is...”

As if he had guessed something, Baek Hail looked at him, and Junho nodded with a calm face.

“Yes, brother. After the apocalypse starts, I’m going to use those people.”

“......!”

“With some of them, we’ll provide support and cooperate. We’ll use those people as our shelter’s first line of defense. But some others...”

Junho’s voice turned flat.

“We’ll deal with them without mercy.”

He meant it.

This was not some idea he had just come up with now. He had been thinking this way from the moment he regressed.

But this was not the kind of thing he could say to just anyone. He could not even tell Junhyeok yet.

Even so, Baek Hail had to know at least this much.

Among the shelter members, he was one of the very few genuine adults Junho acknowledged—someone who understood what responsibility really meant.

If something ever happened to Junho, the shelter would have to keep surviving with Baek Hail at its center.

That was why, aside from his own flesh and blood in Junhyeok, Baek Hail had been the very first person Junho sought out and told the truth about the coming apocalypse.

“.......”

At the sudden shift in Junho’s presence, Baek Hail swallowed dryly without realizing it.

For a moment, it did not feel like the Junho he knew.

And yet, something had definitely been conveyed.

And whatever that something was, he felt he understood it without needing to hear it spelled out.

The young man standing in front of him would put Our Shelter and the people living there above everything else.

“Fine. No matter what anybody says, I’m with you, Hoya. Whatever road you take... I’ll follow without saying a word.”

“Thank you, brother.”

“Don’t thank me. I’m the one who should be thanking you.”

Only then did Baek Hail let out a faint smile, and Junho said with quiet certainty,

“Either way, brother, Gahyeon-ri is going to become our shelter’s shield. I’m going to make sure of it. That’s how we become truly safe.”

Even with the same people, a great deal changes depending on when, under what circumstances, and in what way the first relationship is formed.

And Junho knew the survivor groups in Gahyeon-ri well.

That meant both the information and the initiative were in Our Shelter’s hands.

You can know the depths of a thousand fathoms of water and still not know what’s in a person’s heart?

Even so, if all you do is hide without doing anything, you will never survive long in the apocalypse.

Survival in the apocalypse is one continuous struggle, and to win that struggle, they had to be the ones deciding the time, the place, and the circumstances.

“Running your mouth and throwing yourself around recklessly is dangerous, but when it’s time to move, we have to move. And the ones who decide when that is... will be us, brother. Us, the people who prepared for everything in advance.”

***

After looking through even the ordinary storage buildings converted from the teachers’ housing, Junho returned to the main building.

Then, after one last check of the basement level—with its public bath large enough for more than ten people to use at once and a gym outfitted with most kinds of exercise equipment and even space for combat training—he inspected the sewage and wastewater purification facility, which had been built with a fully automatic system.

“So this place handles even the sludge too?”

“Up to solid-sludge discharge, yeah. After that, you just haul it out and burn it. You know the incinerator site by the entrance to the mountain road? We’re gonna build it next to that. Put in one hundred-kilo double-combustion incinerator and it’ll burn clean, barely any smoke.”

“And legally, there won’t be any real issue with that?”

“If it’s not industrial use, it should be fine. Just burning shit however you want is illegal, but a setup like that costs damn near a hundred million won, so not just anybody can install one. Hell, the officials would probably like it. When they came to look at our wastewater purification setup, they were practically moved to tears.”

Just as Baek Hail said, the shelter’s wastewater purification system was damn near perfect.

Exactly as Junho had planned back at his Bucheon apartment, they had poured in an absurd amount of money and ended up with a cutting-edge automated setup where all a person had to do was periodically burn the solid sludge after the system automatically dehydrated and dried it.

And the first-stage treated water produced there did not flow directly into the stream. Instead, it went to an artificial wetland in the form of a pond outside the shelter perimeter, where it underwent a second round of natural purification before finally being discharged.

A system like this was beyond anything any lodging facility in Namyangju could realistically install, and even the environmental department officials who came to inspect it had not merely been satisfied. They had been genuinely impressed.

“Brother, when did the environmental department come by again?”

“Let’s see... feels like about two weeks ago. Why?”

“They said there’d be an in-person inspection once a year, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then let’s get the inspection done next year and remove the pond after that.”

“Huh? Why?”

At the suggestion that they tear out the artificial wetland they had put real effort into building, Baek Hail’s eyes widened.

But Junho had a firm reason for it.

“That pond’s going to attract mosquitoes and animals with one-hundred-percent certainty. It’s only about a hundred meters from here, so that means it’ll affect us too. Guaranteed.”

He felt a little sorry toward the officials who had been so impressed, but for Junho, shelter sanitation came first.

So before the apocalypse arrived, he planned to wait for an opportunity, remove the artificial wetland, and discharge the water directly into the valley stream instead.

“Ah... right. Yeah, that makes sense.”

Baek Hail nodded.

“It’ll be fine even if we discharge it straight into the stream out front. From there to Gahyeon-ri it runs for more than two kilometers anyway. In the end, it’s still the same grade-two water.”

And once the apocalypse hit, there would not be any idiot with enough guts to drink that water straight as it was.

At minimum, people would filter it once and boil it, and if they did that, it did not matter at all.

“Yeah, fair enough. Anyway, let’s have the official’s son inspect it next year and deal with it then.”

“Yes. Then as for anything else to look at...”

“Nah, we’ve seen it all. We can take our time with the soundproofing work for the underground shooting range in the workshop. Everything else is minor. Even if I did it alone, it wouldn’t take six months.”

“All right. But hasn’t Mr. Suho said anything? You’ve been staying here the whole time.”

Though he still went back down to Busan on weekends, Baek Hail had spent most of the last half year in Namyangju.

For Baek Suho, suddenly left home alone, it had to feel strange and worrying.

“What’s he gonna say? Hell, the little bastard loves it. No old man at home, so he’s been dragging friends over every damn day and raising hell. Christ, when’s that punk ever gonna grow up? God, what a life.”

“Haha. Still, that just means he can act like that because he’s healthy.”

“You’re right about that. Ah, but what the hell am I supposed to do about Suho’s military service?”

In Baek Suho’s case, he had to enlist next year.

That meant there was a chance he might still be on active duty when the apocalypse started, and Baek Hail clearly could not stop worrying about it.

“Just leave it alone. He’ll probably get his enlistment notice pretty soon and go in around January or February next year. That means by the time the apocalypse hits, he’ll either already be discharged or at least be out on terminal leave, so there’s no need to worry.”

As far as Junho remembered, aside from pancreatic cancer being discovered while he was on terminal leave, Baek Suho’s military service itself had been uneventful.

If that was the case, then the right move was to let things proceed as they originally had.

“That’s probably true, right? Whew... the more time passes, the more I keep worrying. That’s all this is, Hoya, so try to understand.”

“I do understand. More than enough, brother.”

To Baek Hail, who let out a long sigh, Junho spoke sincerely.

“You’ll probably get more anxious as time goes on. Anyone would. The future’s supposedly fixed, and on top of that the world’s going to collapse. Who wouldn’t be anxious? It’ll get harder to face people you know, and I know your heart’s going to waver. But brother, if you remember just one thing, remember this.”

“......?”

“Mr. Suho and Ms. Sua. Your children.”

“......!”

For a moment, Baek Hail’s eyes flew wide open.

But almost immediately, a hard resolve settled into his expression and gaze.

“Right. You’re absolutely right, Hoya. If I don’t look after my own kids, who the hell will? I can’t afford to go soft as their father. Damn right. You’re right a hundred times over.”

Before the regression, the reason Baek Hail had managed to hold out inside that cult had been those two children.

It was not the will of Baek Hail the survivor that kept him alive. It was the will of Baek Hail the father.

But that iron will had snapped when Baek Suho was murdered.

If that was the case, then as long as the children—the source of that will—remained safe, Baek Hail would not change.

Even if he collapsed or fell into despair, the will of a father would pull him back to his feet.

“That should be enough for the preliminary inspection, so let’s head out.”

“Let’s do that. But when are you planning to move in?”

“For now, I’ll come in by myself next month. Not permanently. I’ll be going back and forth between here and Bucheon. Oh, and I think I’ll need to get a few houses in Gahyeon-ri too.”

“Huh? A few houses? Why?”

Junho grinned at the puzzled look on Baek Hail’s face.

“We need one or two places outside to use as guard posts and safe houses. I’ll rent a place on a high floor in an apartment building, install surveillance cameras there, and stash emergency food too.”

Just looking down on Gahyeon-ri from the mountain trail guard post they would use as a secret bypass route was not quite enough.

If they set up a few safe houses right in the middle of the village and installed CCTV alone, they should be able to get a decent read on what was happening there. And if a situation arose where they had to enter Gahyeon-ri, those places would be a huge help.

And Junho had a strong feeling that, sooner or later, something like that was very likely to happen.