Chapter 5: Anonymous337
“First, you need to roll the wool with your hands to make it round. Beginners might find it hard to get the amount right, but you’ll get used to it as you go.”
Filling the dark bunker are the light from the monitor and the warm voice of a man flowing out.
This video is not from before the war.
It was filmed at the current point in time, one year after the war began.
The source is none other than our community, ‘Viva! Apocalypse!’.
This miraculous site continued to operate even after the nukes fell.
Watching $100 being deducted every month, not counting the satellite equipment, made me feel half-scammed, but our founder Melon Musk, contrary to his reputation, was a man of responsibility and technical prowess.
The city he lived in was destroyed by a barrage of nuclear missiles, and he probably burned to death within it, but the legacy he left behind became a star along with the servers mounted on satellites beyond the sky, remaining with humanity forever.
Viva! Apocalypse! is one of the few internet communities remaining at this point.
Although my mentor John Lennon disappeared, the community still maintained a level where Koreans alone could generate enough discussion topics.
Of course, not everyone there is normal.
I put four fellow users on my block list.
A pseudo-religious nutjob rambling about the rapture or whatever, an attention seeker posting their unwanted diary every minute, a schizophrenic picking fights with everyone, and a psychopath who enjoys hunting humans and proudly posts about it.
On the other hand, there were decent people too.
Anonymous337, who made the video “Making a Needle Felt Doll for My Daughter (3)” that I am playing now, is one of them.
Anonymous337 was a caring and warm man, an adult figure possessing the fatherhood I never had.
Instead of relieving the boredom inside the bunker with alcohol or drugs, he relieved it by making toys for his son and daughter, uploading the process as videos with sweet music and witty editing to the board.
He was incredibly dexterous; the wooden robot model he made for his son was of high enough quality to be sold on the market.
I wanted to see his son rejoicing at the gift, but he silently uploaded only the work logs.
Perhaps he was reluctant to reveal his family due to security issues.
In fact, no other voice besides his could be heard in his videos, which also seemed to reveal how meticulous Anonymous337’s personality was.
I also tried to mimic Anonymous337’s work and make a robot, but with my clumsy hands, I ended up creating a hideous object you’d see in some phallus-worshipping village, let alone a robot.
Recently, he is serializing the making of a sheep doll using wool felt for his seven-year-old daughter.
Since the quality is as high as the robot made for his son, I was inwardly looking forward to its completion.
“You make the ears like this. It might look difficult, but it’s easy once you get the knack.”
His doll wasn’t finished yet, but it was so cute and adorable that I wanted to get wool felt and tools the next time I visited Seoul.
One year has passed since the war began.
The world has become harder to live in than when the war started.
There are no more nuclear missiles or air raids, but the monsters’ demonic claws are reaching not only near the ceasefire line but also into the southern regions, and trade has been cut off. The government had already lost control, and recovery seemed distant.
An ominous wind blew through the community as well.
KaosGate: The number of refugees has increased significantly lately. They keep glancing at my bunker.
Anonymous121: I’m in the south, and refugees started wandering around here a long time ago. Everyone be careful. If you help refugees out of pity, they’ll come back as robbers.
Recently, posts about refugees have surged.
It might be because there are actually more refugees, but several board users have disappeared recently.
Among them was the mentally ill person I had blocked who uploaded their diary every day.
The community concluded that the recent disappearances of users were the work of refugees.
Qwer1234: It’s the refugees. Those bastards killed them and took their bunkers. They probably killed the families too.
RealKorean: Just let those refugee bastards come into my sight. I’ll blow their heads off with a shotgun.
Some users have already declared refugees as enemies.
Well.
I am skeptical.
Refugees are just refugees.
There might be some professionals trained in search operations among them, but how many such people would there be in Korea?
Maybe they were just terribly unlucky.
There were not a few people who shared a similar perspective to mine.
Coincidentally, it was a blocked human.
Watching a keyboard battle, I realized that the human on my block list had similar thoughts to mine.
His nickname is Defender.
He is a scum of humanity called a “human hunter” in the community.
Since the war started, the human hunter periodically posted proof of his murders.
He irregularly reported his deeds with two photos: one capturing the victim’s body from afar. The other was a photo where he put a black plastic bag over the victim’s face and placed the victim’s inked fingerprint next to the black bag as if to show it off.
He killed different people every time.
The methods were diverse too.
Sometimes he used a gun, and other times he beat them to death with a blunt instrument.
When killing women and children, he used only black plastic bags.
He didn’t kill for fun.
There was only one reason.
He claimed it was because they intruded on his territory.
Though in my view, the psychopaths who kill for fun and this guy are pretty much the same.
I unblocked him and searched for his posts.
Defender: It’s not the refugees.
Defender: You all called construction companies when building your bunkers, right?
Defender: Watch out for those bunker construction company bastards. Those bastards know your locations.
At the end, the human hunter uploaded the murder proof he always posted.
But this time, he didn’t put a black bag over the corpse.
Beside the pale, stiff face with eyes wide open, along with the usual fingerprint, a construction contract and an ID card were displayed.
There was no mistake.
They were employees of the construction company he contracted with.
Community users ignored his words.
Was it because they didn’t want to listen to a human hunter?
Or was it because that human hunter exposed a reality that was hard to accept?
That is left to imagination.
Because a more important problem arose.
Anonymous337, the community user I liked the most, disappeared.
The disappearance of someone who was more family-oriented than anyone, a caring father, and incredibly skilled, gave me a huge shock.
Time flowed again, turning from autumn to winter.
Temperatures dropped below zero, and winds laden with toxic fallout blew from west to east.
The situation in the community grew colder as well.
Anonymous231: Anonymous423, are you alive? It’s been a while since this friend posted. If you’re alive, just click ‘like’ once. I’ll click it for you next time too.
Lone_wolf: Did Kaos_Gate get hit too?
Now, the disappearance of colleagues is not that rare.
Numerous users vanished.
They prepared and braced for the apocalypse, but unable to withstand the harsh waves of the world, they disappeared from the community.
No one posted words of mourning.
Because no one knows when they might be next.
But I never imagined that I would be next.
They appeared around the time when dandruff-like snow, finely laced with radiation, softly covered the golf course area and my territory.
A group in a truck appeared at the golf course and came straight toward me through my territory.
I observed them through binoculars and discovered a familiar face among them.
“…Look at this bastard?”
It must have been Manager Hong.
He was an employee of the construction company who participated in building my first bunker.
He was Kim Wang-su’s superior, a man of few words who always went around alone, and his reputation wasn’t great.
He did his work half-heartedly and didn’t join drinking gatherings.
The construction company president frequently badmouthed Manager Hong when he wasn’t around.
“Manager Hong. I’ve known that bastard for over ten years, and he never changes. If you do manual labor for that long, you should at least be a foreman, but with a personality like a child, he’s just an eternal assistant.”
That man, who used to leave gatherings with family excuses even when offered drinks, returning to my territory can only be interpreted in a bad way.
Especially seeing that he brought four armed strong men, not just himself.
I recalled the human hunter’s post.
Defender: Watch out for those bunker construction company bastards. Those bastards know your locations.
The culprit is usually close by.
People from the construction companies who helped build the bunkers remembered them and were revisiting their old customers.
Call it a deadly after-sales service.
Their voices were transmitted to my earphones through listening devices installed everywhere.
“Is this the place?”
“Yeah. This is right. That’s the golf course, and over there was the air base. Between them. I built a bunker under that low hill over there.”
“Are you sure it’s a bunker?”
“That guy said he was building an underground performance hall, but who would come to a rural place like this with no roads? I later bid on and built a few more places, and I’m sure. It’s a bunker. A bunker.”
“How many people are there?”
“As far as I know, one. At most, a family unit.”
The short conversation summarized the entire situation concisely.
Manager Hong.
He came to kill me.
To kill me and take everything I have.
“…”
I turned off the lights, threw open the bunker entrance, and waited for them in the darkness.
I didn’t carry a gun.
Instead, I held only two axes.
Stomp-
Two men appeared at the wide-open bunker entrance.
The one in the lead was armed with a riot-control reinforced plastic shield and a baton, followed by a man armed with an M16.
“It’s the entrance! It’s open!”
The man with the gun turned on a lantern and scanned inside the bunker.
Cheers burst from both men’s mouths simultaneously.
“Jackpot! It’s cigarettes! Cigarettes! Look how many cartons there are!”
I had placed the cigarettes there.
To lure them inside.
However, these raiders were certainly not ordinary.
Even after discovering the loot, they didn’t budge.
They were moving with thorough teamwork.
Especially Manager Hong, this guy is tough.
“Do you smell a dead body inside?”
The men in the lead shook their heads.
“No. I don’t.”
“There’s no stench like that.”
Manager Hong’s voice followed.
“Check if there’s anyone inside. Every corner.”
No doubt about it.
It’s not the skill of someone who’s only raided once or twice.
“Don’t go in rashly; keep the shield up and go step by step. Someone might be hiding inside.”
However.
Whish-
They messed with the wrong person.
Spinning the axes in both hands like a dance, I waited for the light to shine on me.
The moment the light hit me, I sprang out like a flying tiger and kicked the lead shield with all my weight.
“Ugh!”
The shield man toppled backward, pushing the gunman along with him.
Bang!
Amidst the deafening gunshot and flashing light ringing through the bunker, I locked eyes on the two enemies.
As the shield in the collapsing man’s hand slowly lowered, looking like slow motion, I counted inwardly.
Three, two, one.
And throw.
Whish-
The axe flew in a parabola toward the man holding the gun.
The man who fired the wild shot tried to regain his stance and aim at me, but the axe pierced his brow and penetrated his brainstem first.
“Aaaaargh!”
The scream burst from the shield man’s mouth.
Seeing his comrade die before his eyes, he wobbled and tried to stand up, but my foot stomping on him, shield and all, was faster.
Pulling the axe from the falling gunman, I simultaneously struck the shield man’s head with it and the other spinning axe.
Crack!
“Cheol-ho! Hyeong-sik!”
The raiders’ urgent voices can be heard.
I quietly slipped into the darkness and waited for the next victim.
Manager Hong was indeed no ordinary foe.
“Yeong-sik. Calm down! If you go in, you die.”
He calms his panicked colleague.
“Cheol-ho is dead!”
“You have tear gas, right? Throw it in. Don’t go into the raccoon’s den yourself; make him come out.”
Suggesting an appropriate alternative immediately.
A faint smile rose on my lips.
As expected, Manager Hong is no amateur.
I answered by closing the heavy bunker door, and,
“The door is closed!”
“Ignore it. There must be a vent.”
Manager Hong also responded immediately.
“That’s the only entrance. I built it, so I know. You can tell just by looking at the blueprints. Everywhere else is blocked by concrete. Find the vent. Let’s see how he comes out when we flood it with gas.”
Truly a game of check and checkmate.
I never thought I’d have a fight like this with some petty raider.
But there is one thing he doesn’t know.
After Manager Hong and his crew finished the bunker and left, I expanded my bunker using the knowledge I learned from them.
The emergency exit I made by tearing down a wall is one of those additions.
Manager Hong wouldn’t dream of this fact.
Because he is an incompetent carpenter.
He would never imagine that I had become a better carpenter.
Carrying a single gun, I leisurely exited through the second bunker and looked toward the main bunker.
I saw the raiders prowling around looking for the vent.
Bang!
A gunshot rang out, and one man fell.
Bang!
Without giving them a break, I took down the second one too.
The last one left is Manager Hong.
Without a gun, he raised his hands to signal surrender.
Approaching him with the gun aimed, I asked.
“How many have you hit?”
At this, Manager Hong shrugged lightly with a bitter smile.
“This is the first time.”
I roughly pressed the muzzle against his forehead.
Manager Hong answered with a distorted face.
“…Four.”
“You hit quite a few.”
I ordered him to load the bodies onto the truck they arrived in.
As the bodies were stacked one by one in the cargo bed, I discovered a familiar object.
“…”
It was a sheep doll made of wool felt.
The moment I saw it, I felt something inside me snap.
“Where did you get this?”
“From another bunker.”
Manager Hong answered, gasping for breath.
“What about the people inside?”
“One man.”
“He must have had a family?”
“…”
“Did you kill them all?”
Thwack!
The rifle butt struck Manager Hong’s temple.
Manager Hong screamed in agony, but I soothed that pain with another pain.
After I kicked him in the stomach a couple of times, he hurriedly knelt and opened his mouth.
“It’s true! He was alone! Alone! Fuck! He was alone! I didn’t even kill him. He was already dead when we got there!”
“Where is it?”
The distance was surprisingly close.
A 30-minute ride by truck.
With Manager Hong in front, we entered the looted bunker.
It’s exact.
This is it.
It’s the place from the video.
In the center of the thoroughly looted bunker was a workbench.
On the desk with the familiar warm texture, a man lay face down, half-decomposed.
The blood splattered on the workshop suggested he had committed suicide.
I looked around.
It was a very small bunker.
Too cramped even for one person to live in.
“Y-You’re letting me go now, right? I kept my promise?”
I added one more corpse, returned home, and checked the video.
Come to think of it, children’s voices had never appeared in his videos, not even once.
It was truly so.
A comment I hadn’t seen before caught my eye.
Defender: About this guy’s videos. It’s all good, but I’ve never heard a kid’s voice. He keeps talking about kids, but aren’t they already dead?
Why did I only notice this now?
Ah, I had blocked him.
