Chapter 5 – Human Will
30 minutes to move forward, avoiding the active infected and killing the hibernating ones. Sometimes there was a guy who had an early bird wake up. Like this guy now.
“Kueek-!”
The infected, whose lower jaw had been blown off with one blow from the axe, could only let out a limp scream.
It stretched out like Don Quixote in the middle of the connecting bridge between factories, and when I approached, it immediately stood up and attacked. It was in an area without sensors, so there was no way to identify it other than that it was lying down, so it might not be hibernating.
[There are no objects approaching. Concentrate only on the enemy in front of you.]
I was adjusting my distance to avoid the guy who was waving his hand in the air, and then I was aiming for a gap and dug in. After pushing him against the railing of the bridge with a headbutt, he grabbed the ax head and handle and pressed his neck with the hilt.
“Khehe, kekek-!”
His back was pressed against the railing of the connecting bridge and his neck was pressed against the ax handle, bending it backwards at a 90-degree angle and shaking his head frantically. In the meantime, dirty spittle splashed on my face, but was blocked by the visor of my helmet.
“Bye.”
When most of his upper body was gone, he grabbed the pants dance and threw it out of the bridge. It descended with his head down, then quieted down after a dull sound. Only occasional small convulsions.
Crossing the connecting bridge and approaching the central control room revealed a badly damaged interior.
“Can you see this?”
He stood in front of a large hole in the wall.
Artemis was sharing the view through the shoulder cam mounted on the riot gear.
[As a result of the analysis of the cross-sectional pattern of the wreckage, it seems that a gas bomb was used.]
Reinforced concrete and wire bundles filled inside the hole in the wall were pouring down into the passage, and the exhaust duct above it was torn to pieces.
“Looks like you were being chased.”
[Scanning.]
Light emitted from the shoulder cam.
I went through the dried blood and footprints on the ground, and even the storage cabinets that seemed to have been knocked over at random, hoping for a little time delay while running away.
Afterwards, a hologram image was projected in the hallway, but a blurry human phenomenon ran away in a hurry.
Guided by the arm that stirred randomly, the surrounding objects fell here and there, blocking the path, but immediately something passed by and pushed the fallen objects away. There were, of course, scratches on the floor there.
The fleeing person collapsed at the end of the hallway and the video playback ended.
There are bone fragments with clothes and shoes on. There is not a single point left.
[During the initial spread of infection, personnel in the central region would have evacuated inside the building rather than outside the open area.]
“Some people may have run to the upper area entrance, but it must have been locked.”
The emergency containment protocol automatically executed by the shelter operating system isolated each of the three areas, but it was not possible to deal with it because Artemis was less active.
“There must have been quarrels at the gates of each region that were firmly closed.”
When I checked the video recorded on the surveillance camera at the main gate of the upper area, it was really a big deal. Until the last moment, there were pictures of people screaming for the door to be opened.
Even at the point where they could feel the breath of the infected that had come close to them, they didn’t look back. Just knocking on the door and begging for the security camera installed above.
It was a sheep hunt for the infected.
“Maybe it was a sheep hunt of hope.”
As long, sharp teeth and nails slit their throats and split their backs, their eyes reflected on the camera were a mixture of resignation, despair, and regret.
Can the look in the eyes of a priest who realized that the religion he believed in all his life was a lie can be compared to that?
[Judgment is the difference between life and death in extreme situations. Don’t be swayed by human emotions.]
“I may look like an idiot compared to you, but I’m not stupid enough to commit suicide out of fear. This one is also a pro at survival.”
Even so, I am a veteran with multiple criminal convictions in real combat. I have never made a wrong choice out of fear.
In the so-called Dalgo’s first real battle, I was the one who cut and connected the wires and lowered the bridge without a single hand shaking even though a bullet grazed the bridge of my nose and blood flowed.
[I’m not just talking about fear. There are many substances that cloud human judgment, such as sexual desire, sympathy, anger, and affection.]
“Isn’t that what you call emotion? Material?”
To be honest, her life with her, who does everything perfectly, is sometimes burdensome. That’s why I valued the human ‘sensibility’ even more. Should I say that she makes a difference between her and me and empowers us to stand on equal footing?
[Anyway, all of those are electrical signals and chemical reactions. It’s just a shipment of receptors that deliver it. Based on my standards, the emotions humans feel are material.]
I was a little resentful of her words, but I don’t dispute her words at all.
Arguing with her with her logic is like fighting Soviet soldiers. No matter how you defeat the troops right in front of you, twice as many standby troops are running behind you, and even if you overcome them, 5-fold or 10-fold reinforcements will be waiting for you. That’s what she fights with her logic.
[Wouldn’t it be better to find a bathroom instead of talking about this?]
“I went to the bathroom before leaving.”
[Currently, your mattress is 15%. There are still 5 hours left before reaching the breaking point. But what I’m talking about is the 225-gram mass of organisms bubbling in your small intestine. Remember how many times I advised you to cut back on your fried foods? Did you ignore it and pour it into your mouth as you please? As a result, your digestive system has succumbed to the massive oil content. Soon the entire digestive system will declare a free pass. It has lost its shape and thickened, and will run through the large intestine at 55 km/h, eventually escaping your anus like a spray. 40 minutes left until there. Ah! How imperfect and miserable this is.]
It must be an accurate diagnosis because it is checking the hormonal changes that occur in my body in real time.
Isn’t this a huge support to prepare for sudden poop? Of course, complimenting her with this would make her displeased, so she shut her mouth.
It must have been her intention to shoot me, who doesn’t listen to her own advice, especially when it comes to meals, ignoring her words and taking whatever I want.
As I approached only 20 meters from the control room, the most disastrous mayhem I had ever seen awaited me.
“Here is the final battle.”
It was a clear sign of what the maximum resistance that civilian engineers without weapons could do was.
[Sitting inside the control room would have resulted in the bulkhead being breached and massacred, so they seem to have chosen to build a large number of barricades in the outer aisle and mobilize heavy equipment to resist. It was the best choice, but the situation was so bad.]
The barricades were built in quadruple layers, and the scale was at the level of a small fortress.
The connection part has reinforced durability through welding, and a kind of machine gun seat has been installed by leaving a small space in some places.
The ones placed there are priestly flamethrowers. It was made by attaching a fuel tank for a car after connecting a torch and an industrial compressed air injector.
“None of them have any fuel left. You fought to the death.”
When I picked up a flamethrower rolling on the ground, I found that the fuel tank was empty, and the muzzle had melted from being scorched. That goes for other things too.
Those without flamethrowers seemed to have fought with spearmen.
“I didn’t see any in the workshop, so I brought them all here.”
Thermal lance. It is a spear-shaped industrial cutting machine, also called an oxygen spear in Korea. The high heat reaching 4000 degrees at the tip of the spear cracks even steel or concrete.
[Putting the excavator behind the barricade was also a good choice. You can attack from both the front and the top without overlapping lines, and it’s also a good way to block large infectious agents.]
The last bastion is two small excavators placed in the back.
It was a strategy to block the approach of the flamethrower and pierce the guy who penetrated it with a hot spear, crushing it with the bucket of the excavator or pushing it out.
I have come to respect the Engineers who put up a last stand here.
Even if he was defeated and died in the end, he fought to the best of his abilities even in a hopeless situation by mobilizing all the knowledge and skills he had cultivated throughout his life.
The traces of this place, where the fighting spirit and courage were engraved, were more solemn than miserable.
I arrived at the door of the control room, carefully passing by the safety helmets and bloody overalls scattered everywhere so as not to step on them.
[There are no vital signs inside the control room. Open it.]
At her words, she took out a hacking tool. It’s time to tell who is the owner of this place.