34. Daily Life
"Twenty-seven!"
A tall, sturdy dark-skinned man held a silver zinc-plated iron club and counted while striking madmen's heads rushing toward him with roars. Men watching from the side cheered and enjoyed watching heads burst. Though they were madmen rushing to bite them, they fell so helplessly before the men that they seemed rather pitiful.
"Twenty-eight! Twenty-nine! Last one!"
Herman rushed at a madman, grabbed its head and vaulted over like a vault horse, then blew off the head of the madman bewildered behind him.
"Thirty!"
The men watching him cheered and clapped. Herman swung the club from top to bottom, shaking off the red blood.
"Hey, give me a beer!"
A man watching from afar opened an ice box, took out a bottled beer, and threw it to Herman.
"Beer after hard work is the best after all!"
Herman opened the beer and drank it refreshingly. Then his phone in his back pocket rang.
"Hey! Who's this!"
"Herman! You came to Murmansk! You should've told me first! You disloyal bastard!"
"Hey, mom! Stop nagging!"
"How about tonight?"
"Good!"
Herman hung up the phone and said to a man sitting in one corner with red swollen eyes.
"Hey! Platoon leader! I'm on leave tonight! Don't look for me!"
Herman left him behind and went somewhere with the men.
***
In the smoky underground club, female bartenders in revealing clothes busily came and went carrying drinks. Herman's gang settled in one club corner watching women passing by. When a woman approached them with a menu asking if they wanted to order, Herman firmly grabbed the woman's buttocks and pulled her toward him. The woman was startled and ran away forgetting to take orders, shaking Herman off, and the men laughed finding it funny.
"Herman!"
A man who saw them from afar raised his hand. He was Bess, a thug running a club in Golden Tower.
"You've gotten even bigger since I last saw you? Now you stand out even from far away."
"You've become a more greedy pig."
"Hahaha, such harsh words."
Bess laughed heartily.
"So. Is madman hunting worth it?"
"I came thinking there might be something since many people died, but it's a piece of cake. Come to think of it, northern guys are all weaklings."
When Herman sneered, his group laughed along.
"Herman, how about trying another job?"
"Another job?"
"I know some people at city hall. Victor's looking for someone."
When Herman showed interested eyes, Bess moved his finger from left to right putting information about a man into his satellite.
"They say he's the culprit of this madman incident. Put $30,000 on this guy's head."
Herman looked carefully at the man's face in the hologram.
"Looks like a minnow?"
"Don't know if he's the ringleader, but they want him captured alive if possible. As you know, police manpower is quite short here due to the madman situation. They're secretly informing only trustworthy people."
Bess glanced at Herman as if reading his thoughts while downing liquor.
"When they're offering $30,000, is there reason to refuse? I'll really make a killing this time, right? Hahaha."
When Herman laughed heartily, Bess laughed along.
***
"That man yesterday apparently escaped."
Feng handed coffee to Sid who was looking out the window from a fourth-floor building with broken exterior walls.
"..."
Sid looked carefully at steam rising from the coffee Feng handed him, then took a sip.
"First time there've been this many madmen, but it's not exactly pleasant."
"Did you feel thrilled before?"
"When something's difficult, competitive spirit arises, right? Here it's like... hunting field mice."
"Hunting field mice?"
"When I was young, my uncle farmed corn near Zhengzhou. Around July-August, corn would grow this tall and field mice would always appear eating the corn. We'd smoke them out everywhere, and the ones rushing out in droves were quite a spectacle. Mice scrambling desperately to live. That was the first time. That feeling of massacring living things..."
Sid said while drinking coffee.
"Definitely doesn't seem like a good experience."
"Right? Haha."
Feng turned his eyes to look outside as if ventilating. Between collapsed buildings, green weeds seemed to gradually raise their heads. Weeds were organisms that somehow came and took root and sprouted in places where people disappeared even without sowing seeds. That tenacious vitality was like people's anger that revived no matter how many times it was killed.
"Jeff. What are you doing?"
Feng radioed.
"As you can see, faithfully performing my mission."
"Ah~ what an excellent soldier."
"It's quiet here without even a rat—someone already swept through."
"Really? Then should I tell you some very interesting information?"
"Suit yourself."
"I'm touring the neighborhood with a 4x telescope right now. This telescope performance is really good. I can see clearly even the veins protruding on Jeff's head."
"You want to die."
"No way. But I see a very familiar-looking man about five blocks from where Jeff is. Red hair. Seems to be on a date with a lady he came with?"
"..."
"But on the rooftop of the building he's entering, let's see~ one, two, three, four... there are four madmen."
"What are you trying to say?"
Sid asked Feng curiously. Feng picked up the sniper rifle leaning against the wall, attached the scope, and brought his finger to the trigger.
"I'm now going to give freedom to the poor madmen trapped on that rooftop. As soon as they taste liberation, they'll see a hunter with far superior skills and fuller hair than Jeff."
Jeff seemed to catch on to what Feng was trying to do and raised his lips.
"For such a performance, I should watch live on site."
"Of course. Performances are best live."
"Hey. What if something goes wrong?"
Sid wasn't pleased with Feng's playfulness.
"Don't worry. For a hunter, this level of surprise is worth trying, right? If worst comes to worst, our veteran Jeff will rescue him, so."
Sid turned his back on Feng shaking his head.
"Hmm. When a full-grown man and woman enter one room, when will they reach climax?"
Feng aimed the scope at the barely visible rooftop door among the madmen.
[Gunshot]
The bullet leaving the gun barrel cut through air at high speed, completely shattering the rooftop door handle. Startled by the gunshot, madmen looked around and began shrieking. The door with the handle blown off slowly opened. Madmen screamed then began jumping into the rooftop door one by one. Shortly after, male and female screams came from the building, then naked man and woman rushed out the building entrance. Behind them madmen chased them. Jeff was so satisfied by the sight that his laughter wouldn't stop.
***
"Supplies have arrived! Everyone come this way!"
When the man shouted, people began showing their faces one by one from seemingly empty ruin-like buildings. People glancing outside from windows turned their bodies and rushed out of buildings seeing supplies. A middle-aged woman with thick arms carrying a large basket, an old man in a brown vest walking weakly as if starving for days, a child's mother holding a baby to her chest with a small bundle, a young girl supporting a staggering woman heading toward supplies, a tall man whose face was hard to see with bushy beard. People glanced at hunters nearby once each but returned attention to the man distributing supplies.
"Wow, so many people—how did they hide and live all this time?"
A hunter with a headband said as if curious looking at gathered people.
"Camouflage is a survival ability everyone has. Like how chameleons change their body color similar to surrounding environments to protect from predators. Predators too. Even lions hunting prey can't catch alert deer without hiding their presence."
A hunter said while pushing up black sunglasses fully.
"When placed at the crossroads of life and death, you instinctively realize how to act. So great adventures impossible normally become possible, like drinking urine or sleeping in basements crawling with roaches."
"Ugh, isn't that too dirty to talk about in front of people?"
"I merely mentioned survival cases from the past."
The hunter spoke cynically looking at moving people beyond black sunglasses.
"If you have strength to stand and chat like that, help deliver supplies."
A man in red bullfighter outfit rolled up both sleeves, placed a large box on one shoulder, and spoke while passing by. The hunter with headband and sunglasses man nodded once as if agreeing and began carrying supplies together.
"Sister, look at this. So much bread. One, two, three, four, five..."
A girl who received supplies was excitedly counting bread in the box. The woman who seemed to be the girl's sister smiled faintly watching the child enjoying herself.
"Wow, water I'm drinking after days. This is water of life."
As soon as the man tore open a water bottle, he gulped water down. Among people too, talk naturally circulated that infection cause was probably in drainage pipes, so they didn't use tap water. Some people who believed boiling water was fine drank boiled water, got infected, and entire families died miserably. People needed drinking water—some went to mountains bringing valley water, others collected rainwater when it rained and boiled it to drink. But since movement was greatly restricted, water wasn't sufficient, and everyone had to live regulated lives drawing lines on water bottles.
"Give me a little more. There are many people where we are."
"If you want to receive other people's portions, bring those people's ID cards."
Many people made pleading sounds trying to get more supplies, but hunters confirmed ID cards as instructed by headquarters before distributing supplies. Some were disappointed opening supplies, others asked if this was food for how many days. Most people were absorbed in receiving supplies and checking contents, and fled back to hiding places as soon as receiving to avoid being robbed. Some hunters carried boxes of food walking around building corners, other hunters followed where people went to monitor if anyone stole or fought over supplies.
"How long will people here continue living like this?"
A man appearing to be an armored unit member asked a headquarters person.
"We don't know exactly either, but I heard they're building separate shelters for civilians."
"Shelters?"
"This place is dangerous with many unsearched areas around. And until the situation completely ends, nothing—electricity, water, anything—will operate properly normally, so shelters will be better for people."
The armored unit member nodded and looked at people's faces. Watching faces frantically gathering supplies and returning, he thought these people were quite unlucky. Surely before the accident occurred, they too were well-fed city people with culture. Among them were probably rich people who looked down on those poorer than themselves and worked them like slaves, and probably smart intellectuals who treated those less educated as inferior beings and mocked them as ignorant. When the world became chaotic, the wealth, honor, and social status they built believing they obtained fairly became completely useless, becoming a more equal world than the socialism Marx so desired—that is, a perfect horizontal world where everyone became proletariat unable to do anything—he felt bitterness thinking they'd become nothing but refugees living dependent only on supplies.