"What?"
I'd let myself wonder if maybe only this area had been hit. But that hope shattered completely.
Still, something didn't add up. Under normal conditions, Seoul to here takes at least four hours with no traffic. So how had she made it all the way out here in a situation like this?
I studied her face. Was she lying? Hard to say. But why would she?
"So what happened?"
I decided to keep pressing. I still had nothing to go on. She stared at me for a moment, then spoke.
"I was on an express bus. We'd barely passed Yangjae on the Gyeongbu Expressway — traffic was really bad — "
I listened without a word.
"And then I saw it, and I thought I was going to die… I don't remember anything after that."
"What?"
Her expression was dead serious.
"When I came to, I was driving. I didn't even know whose car it was. But I knew the road — I knew it was the way here."
I couldn't wrap my head around it. A blackout? Amnesia? Some kind of teleportation? What was going on? She didn't seem like she was making it up.
"So you don't know what happened to Seoul?"
I wanted to know what it looked like there. But she'd apparently blacked out right before one of those massive fireballs hit the ground. She shook her head — she didn't know anything either.
I sat with that for a moment. Then the bigger question settled in. The capital had been hit too. Was it just Korea? Probably not.
Even with a camper van that refueled itself, how long could I really survive out here? And even if I could — would it mean anything?
"Let's go."
I climbed into the driver's seat.
"Buckle up."
She felt around beside the bench seat and managed to dig out the seatbelt.
I reached for the ignition.
"Huh?"
I startled — and she startled at the sound of me startling.
There was no key. No keyhole.
Then I noticed the [START] button. Push-button ignition. That was new. Okay then.
But what about the key? Didn't you need a smart key or something?
I didn't see anything like that anywhere.
*Does it just recognize who's inside?*
I pressed the button. A faint vibration ran through the van — like an engine turning over. And then a sound I couldn't quite place.
I switched on the headlights and pressed the accelerator. The van moved — heavy and smooth.
Now that I looked, the dashboard had lighting controls I'd only seen on the main panel before. Every interior and exterior light could be toggled from the driver's seat.
I eased forward carefully, watching the road ahead. That's when I noticed the map on the center display. A navigation screen.
*Oh.*
Nothing fancy — just a rough layout of the roads and a marker for my position.
*Is it GPS? All the electronics are fried, but the satellites are still up?*
Reasonable questions, all of them. Also completely useless right now. This wasn't a world where things needed scientific explanations anymore.
Full dark had settled in. No lights from civilization anywhere beyond the windows. Only the headlights cutting a partial path through the black road ahead.
The darkness past the reach of the headlights felt worse than the dark itself.
The country road that had taken me an hour on foot didn't take long at all, even driving slow. The edge of the town center. It was dark enough that I only recognized where I was once we were almost on top of it.
"Where's the store? Didn't you say you went there earlier?"
No answer. I stopped the van and turned around.
Her face had gone white. She was staring out the window, trembling. I followed her gaze.
She was looking out the left side of the van — toward the center of town.
Giant spider monsters. Like the one that had taken the dog.
And there wasn't just one.
Dozens. Maybe hundreds. It was too dark to see clearly — only silhouettes — but the sheer number of long, spindly legs moving slowly through the town center looked like rainfall. A forest of legs.
And these ones looked twice the size of the spider creature I'd seen yesterday.
I turned off the headlights.
Then I walked back and sat down across from her on the bench seat. I kept watching out the window.
Too many.
*God, I'm terrified.*
She still couldn't look away from the shapes moving in the distance.
"Where's the store?"
I kept my voice steady. She'd gone blank, staring at nothing — but my question pulled her back.
"Over… over there."
She pointed straight into the heart of the town center. Right where the giant spider monsters were swarming.
"Damn it."
I stared out the window for a moment, then pulled a beer from the fridge and set it in front of her. Then I opened the fridge again and grabbed one for myself.
I needed to conserve the van's supplies. But right now, one beer felt like the bare minimum.
She sat completely still, not moving, just staring out the window. Her trembling traveled through the table and reached me on the other side.
I cracked her beer open and held it out. My hand hung there for an awkward beat, no response.
"Fine, never mind."
I started to pull it back.
"Give it."
She took the can and drank in long, desperate gulps. I opened mine and took a sip. Cold. The bitter liquid spread through me, loosening muscles I hadn't realized were locked up. Even cells that had never tasted beer before were starting to understand the appeal.
She drained the whole can and set it down. Then her stomach let out a loud, unmistakable growl.
"Oh — hold on."
I opened the fridge and pulled out pork belly, Korean beef, and some sausages.
I felt her eyes on my back — wide with surprise. But she didn't ask anything.
I turned on the vent fan and laid the meat in the pan. Heated up some instant rice, grabbed a pack of dried seaweed. The table filled up in a messy spread, and she stood up without a word and started arranging everything into something that made sense.
Having someone else pitch in made it easier than doing it alone. Before long the table was set. I switched off the fan and the quiet rushed back in.
"Let's eat."
She looked at the food but didn't pick up her chopsticks. Her stomach kept growling. She didn't move.
"It's nothing compared to the meals I used to have at your place when we were kids."
She looked at me again. Then slowly picked up her chopsticks.
"I'll… dig in."
She said it quietly, almost shyly — and then immediately started eating like she hadn't had a meal in days. Whatever composure she'd been holding onto was gone. She was ravenous.
I picked up my chopsticks too. I'd eaten alone for most of the past ten-plus years. Sitting across from someone felt strange in a way I couldn't quite name.
I ate a piece of meat and watched her with something close to warmth. She could eat everything on this table and it still wouldn't come close to what I'd eaten at her family's house growing up. Probably dozens of bags of rice worth.
Her mom's side dishes were always so good. I used to finish two bowls every time.
On the nights Grandpa came home late, I'd often have dinner at her place. Grandpa would always return the favor by taking care of their farm equipment and truck. I still had a memory of him fixing something at their house when I was little.
The table was cleared in no time. She had a piece of dried seaweed stuck to her lip when she spoke.
"Is there any more — "
I was already up before she finished, stacking the dishes in the sink and clearing the table.
*Slow down a little…*
That's when I noticed it. The bruise on her forehead was gone.
It had been a real bruise — not small. Now there was nothing.
"Your forehead — "
She touched it.
"What?"
"The bruise is gone."
"Bruise?"
I sat back down and looked at her knees. Through the tear in her jeans, the scrape that had been there was gone. Just dried blood on the denim. The skin underneath was clean.
"Why do you keep — "
"Your injuries are all gone."
She looked herself over at that. Then stared at me, confused.
She'd fallen asleep in the bed. Was it something the bed did? Or something about her?
"Has anything else changed for you? Anything that feels different — physically, I mean?"
She thought about it, then shook her head. Nothing came to mind.
"Oh!"
Then something did.
"My memory keeps cutting out. And I end up somewhere else."
"What?"
"I have no memory of getting from Seoul to here. And on the way to the house, there are gaps. I don't even know where I got the car."
It felt like she'd developed some kind of ability, same as me. I didn't know what it was yet — but making it from Seoul to here in that short a time, with no memory of the trip, meant something unexplainable had happened.
The way time had seemed to slow down for me — that was probably the same kind of thing.
Were there others out there like us?
"So what's the deal with this van?"
She'd finally hit her limit on holding back the question. I sat down across from her and gave her the short version — just the key points.
She listened quietly. She still couldn't make sense of how she'd been able to get inside in the first place.
*Thud.*
Something landed on the roof.
*Hm.*
I'd assumed the van blocked all physical impact from monsters. When those boar creatures had slammed into it with their full weight, I hadn't felt a thing — just the rumble of the ground when they charged.
*So what was that?*
Not a monster? I felt it again — footsteps. Vibration. On the roof.
A person.
I cracked a window and called out.
"Who's there?"
No answer. The footsteps stopped.
Like whoever it was had frozen when they heard me.
"I said, who's there?"
I called out again. A small voice came back.
"Uh… where are you?"
The accent of an ordinary middle-aged man from the countryside.
"Where are you right now?"
A pause. Then:
"I'm floating in midair."
I looked out the right side of the van. There was a commercial building standing intact. He must have jumped from one of the upper floors.
*I turned off the exterior lights. Did he see us coming in? Or was it the smell from the vent fan?*
More importantly — he said he was floating in midair. Which meant he couldn't see the van. Not everyone could see it, apparently.
Then a scream came from outside. There was someone else out there besides him.