The Last Days

by VEY YU
Translated by YANG EUN-MI

Dani ignored the emergency broadcast that people should immediately evacuate the area and travel at least twenty kilometers away. The first thing he did upon hearing the broadcast was to pitch the water-resistant tents over two graves in the backyard.

At first, the area to evacuate had a twenty-kilometer radius, but it gradually expanded to thirty to forty kilometers. Probably by now, it wouldn’t even be safe from over sixty kilometers away. However, to Dani, twenty or thirty kilometers didn’t even register as a safe distance.

Dani gazed down at the shoreline in the distance. A robbed tomb-like power plant stood out, the domed roof over it sunken like the muzzle of a gun that has exploded after nonstop shooting. It would appear just like a black hole if anybody above looked down inside its huge open mouth. A black hole that sucks up every bit of fresh energy.

“What a masterpiece!” Lemi approached and commented scornfully while briefly removing her facemask before hastily replacing it. She covered more than half of her face with two layered facemasks, with only her eyes revealed as she stood next to Dani, looking at the distant shore.

Not so long ago, at the end of the sea over the hill, part of the silvery dome of the huge power plant appeared like the smooth surface of a bird’s egg. In the daytime sunshine, as if coming through a chink between the torn silver foil on the roof, a cross-shaped band of light would stand out sharply. On a foggy day, the silvery fortress appeared on and off like a mirage.

Dani caught a glimpse of a mass of light reflected on the surface of the sea that turned into a shoal of anchovies before being swallowed by the black hole. It seemed as if more than a year had already passed, or it could still be yesterday.

Dani walked around the house searching for something that he might be able to work with. Crouching in the house made him feel like a mole in a tunnel. Dani moved towards the place where the graves were. He lifted up the waterproof cloth from the mounds.

Mom and Dad must have been so suffocated in the past few days.

He chose the sunlit place for his parents’ graves. He tended to the pale and sticky grasses covering the graves, then kneeled to make a deep bow.

“This too shall pass.”

Lemi mumbled to herself behind the facemask. Dani was used to the unclear sound because it was what Lemi uttered like a habitual prayer every mealtime.

“Ow!”

Dani saw blood seeping through Lemi’s facemask.

“Oh, fuck!”

Lemi staggered into the house, grabbing the blood-stained facemask with her hand. Dani took a towel from the drawer to wet it with water, and wiped around Lemi’s mouth. Dani spread a mattress in the corner of the room, and Lemi sank down onto it.

Dani looked around the dark room. Living room, kitchen, everywhere covered in litter. All the necessities had been dragged into the house. Dani tried to confine himself to the house to minimize his activity. Every crack struck by the wind had been tightly taped up.

After bidding farewell to his sister and her husband, who had joined the large-scale line of evacuees fleeing from the area, Dani went the opposite way to those escaping to collect drinking water, which had almost run out. The emergency food needed checking as well. Dani went to the storage room where there should still be some kohlrabies left over from those shipped to the wholesale markets. He opened the sack and took one out to touch the round, purple, solid vegetable. With some careful hope, Dani put it to his nose only to put it back into the sack, and tied it up, breathing out a long sigh. Among the tools hung on the wall rack, Dani grabbed a pickax, and headed towards the field beyond the fence.

Dani looked at the light chocolate-colored field with blankness. It was not a small patch. The spinach and chives that had been planted in abundance had dried up to faded whiteness. Dani hesitated for a second about whether to wear the facemask or not, deciding to just wear the gloves, and began to dig into the ground with the pickax.

A drop of sweat rolled down Dani’s cheek.

“Hey! Do you really want to dig the soil?”

Dani found Lemi waving a white towel before him. A new facemask covered her mouth.

Dani stretched his back. “Then, what should I do?”

Dani snatched the towel that Lemi was waving playfully and wiped his face.

“I’ll just keep working. I’ll plant the kohlrabi seeds. If the seeds don’t sprout, I’ll plant them again, and grow bok choy and asparagus, too.”

Lemi stiffed at Dani’s answer.

“Contaminated soil and filthy water. What could possibly grow? Even a fool knows that. Your blind optimism does no good!”

Dani put the towel around his waist, ignoring Lemi’s words, and began to dig the soil again.

“Look at this! Have you ever seen one this big?”

A huge earthworm. It was desperately wriggling on the soil, almost like a baby snake.

“Wow! It must have swallowed a mass of radioactivity!”

“Though it’s rare, it sometimes exists . . .”

But to Lemi, it was only clear evidence of radioactivity.

Dani went on.

“It’s been upgraded, of course; it’s much bigger than an average earthworm, which means it will be better at creating layers of air, ultimately making much softer soil. Now the soil can finally breathe!”

“That’s a very convenient interpretation, though not total nonsense. If your premise is right, and we keep being exposed to radiation, our bodies would battle to survive and we might eventually get a brand new immune system. Like transformers! Like X-men, you know?”

“Let’s go to the outside world to get some water and food, Lemi.”

Dani and Lemi went down the mountain by 1.5-ton truck, leaving their farmhouse.

As expected, not even a shadow was seen on the street, at the bus stops, or in nearby villages. A door left ajar displayed some messy belongings in the room beyond, indicating that people had left in a hurry. The empty beerhouses and shops remained desolate like a habitat for ghosts. On the deserted street, a scrawny dog was staggering around, close to collapse at any minute; others lay dead here and there, while lost cows were blankly wandering through the field. The wind swept through the dense leaves of a bamboo grove. Even from a distance, it was evident the leaves had turned dry and crispy.

“Dani, why didn’t you evacuate?”

“This is where my parents are buried. Where else could I go?”

“What an excuse!”

Dani didn’t respond but managed a faint smile, indicating the kind of loneliness that Lemi had never seen from him so far.

On their way to the safety zone, looking down the empty street, Dani secretly fell into an abyss of fantasy where everything was already extinct on earth and it was the beginning of a new world, while Lemi sat uncomfortably in protective clothing.

“I feel my heart burning.”

She mostly sat blankly, muttering on and off, “This will be over soon,” or “‘This too shall pass.” She created a sudden melody to a series of words she uttered randomly. “Iodine, xenon, cesium, plutonium, strontium, they are with us, oh, yeah, within the thirty-kilometer radius, swarming with each other in extreme joy, what a wonderful world . . . so proud of themselves, full of virus, radiation, poison, bacteria, disease, germs, toxins, oh, yeah, isn’t it a perfect world? Here finally comes the world that we’ve been dreaming about . . . a fantastic place where we’ve been dying to live . . .”

Dani’s truck passed the barricaded boundary and into the safety zone, which meant people could lead a normal life free of worries about radioactivity, according to the broadcast. The truck drove all the way to the northern outskirts of the city, over forty kilometers away.

Life in this place didn’t seem that different; it was also messy and unstable. People looked dismal, with facemasks tight on their faces. The lives of the original inhabitants seemed threatened by the overwhelming inflow of evacuees to the emergency shelters. The refugees looked extremely exhausted. There were even some people who returned to their houses within the hazardous area.

It was obvious to Dani that life here was no better than the one in the area that people had been desperately escaping from. Some of them cast a furtive glance at Lemi, who wore protective clothing. Dani purchased drinking water, portable cans, and emergency medicine, and filled up the car with petrol.

On their way back home, Lemi showed clear signs of illness. Dani turned around towards the temporary medical center to confirm the state of radiation exposure with the radiation detector. Lemi’s condition was much more serious, although both of them were in the at-risk group.

Lemi was hospitalized right away. Dani stayed there for one night. The medicine didn’t work anyway. He felt frustrated to see so many people lying there helpless. The boundary of ten kilometers, twenty kilometers . . . What did it really mean? The latch had already been unlocked. The radioactive monster snatched away its bridle, to fly limitlessly into the air. This is the security area. It seemed total nonsense to Dani.

“Dani, do you really have to go?”

“I’ll come back.”

“Don’t expect you will ever see me again. Look at the state I’m in! I cannot guarantee anything.”

Dani was determined to leave, though. He knew that he couldn’t stand life here, just feeling blank, waiting to die, without any basis for life. He would rather be working, sweating, and dreaming, even though it was nothing but a fantasy that he had hypnotized himself about.

Eventually Lemi got into the car with Dani.

Thirty kilometers, twenty kilometers, and ten kilometers, driving back close to the barricaded boundary, Dani’s truck was stopped. In front of the temporary checkpoint, there were two vehicles and several people with protective clothing. They looked like foreign reporters, and the apparent broadcasting vehicles had an English logo on them. They looked like they were going to shoot a disaster scene.

Two men wearing facemasks stopped Dani’s truck, waving their glow sticks.

“This area is a radioactive disaster zone. You are not allowed to approach.”

Dani persuaded them that he had to get his elderly mom out of the area as quickly as possible. Their investigating eyes swept over their clothing, and they handed over facemasks that were specially designed for radioactive materials. Those who hurriedly escaped from the area now looked so responsible, and strict, under the watching eyes of the foreign press.

Lemi sat on a chair in the greenhouse. Looking blankly at the green leaves densely spreading their force, she asked them, “You seem okay, don’t you?”

She felt something crumpling inside her body. She spent more and more time in the greenhouse. As soon as she had put on the protective clothing, she took it off the very next moment, feeling muddled. As days went by, she barely moved at all. She mainly lay down. She suffered from diarrhea, chronic fatigue, and a scorching thirst. Her skin became swollen and red, and her hair fell out in clumps.

Dani came into the greenhouse with two kohlrabies and peeled the tough shell to reveal the radish-like white soft fruit inside. Lemi was sitting back on the sofa with no strength.

“This could probably purify us.”

Dani munched it with a loud chewing noise. It was crispy, but tougher than a radish. It was Dani’s dream to cultivate a kind of kohlrabi that was high in sugar without the tough stringiness. One or two more attempts might pay off.

This time, Dani picked asparagus and bok choy. He put them in the full basket and handed them to Lemi.

“Let’s eat these too. These greens might save us.”

“Stop it! Without your input, I feel nauseous enough already!”

However, Lemi brought the greens to her mouth and chewed like an old goat.

There seemed no boundary between today and yesterday. Scales of bleached time kept falling, and falling, to form meaningless sedimentary layers.

Dani walked along the waterway pipeline and looked into the broken pump. When he tried to bend his body more deeply into it, suddenly a green bird soared up high, fluttering. There was an egg, still warm, while another looked rotten, hollow in parts as if the liquid inside had become solidified. Dani took a closer look at the warm egg, and there was a fine crack in it. For a brief moment, he was afraid that a two-headed bird would poke its monstrous face out at any moment. He wrapped some straw around the egg and took it into the greenhouse, without any genuine hope in mind.

Dani kept resisting his sinking body, trying to pull himself together. He looked down at the dry soil, with a spade stuck into the ground. He couldn’t help but think back to the rich field that had once been covered with the dark green leaves of kohlrabi. Those were happy days, when he crouched among the shiny green leaves, harvesting the healthy purple bulbs. Though it was not a distant memory, it felt like so much time had passed.

The field with its waving green leaves was almost tangible. Dani closed his eyes, then opened them and grabbed the spade again to dig. There wasn’t the merest hint of sprouting from the seeds that he had planted last time. Dani gathered all his anger, sadness, and hopelessness to dig all around in the ground. He moved fast in his own way, but in fact, he was damn slow. Soon, he flopped down to the ground, exhausted. The top of Dani’s foot that had been touched by the spade was bleeding and wouldn’t stop. He had a gut feeling that there wasn’t much time left.

“Oh, look at your face!”

Lemi groaned at Dani, who was staggering into the greenhouse.

“You’ve lost your eyebrows!”

Dani touched his face, unsurprised.

Lemi touched her own face.

“Same as me, eh?”

Dani tried to look indifferent. He had removed all the mirrors from places where Lemi might have encountered them only to become surprised and depressed.

“Where is the mirror? You hid all of them, right? Give me the mirror! I need to look at my face!”

Dani turned around without a word, and began to water the kohlrabies which were growing in the back corner of the greenhouse. Lemi started to lose her temper. She rushed to Dani with full force, kicked the bucket, and snatched away the watering can that Dani held in his hand.

“Stop it! You, idiot! What’s all this? Look at yourself! Your skin! You’re losing hair!”

Lemi turned over the seedbed of kohlrabies, and plucked out all the green leaves she could grab and kicked them.

“What a waste of time! Just do nothing! Lie dead! Be honest with yourself! You’re dying! I’m dying! We’re now going to hell!”

Dani embraced Lemi from behind, tightly holding her arms. Lemi was breathing hard, her shoulders heaving up and down severely.

“I cannot take this anymore! Who turned us into this? When did we become monsters? I cannot go on like this anymore!”

Lemi cried out like a lost baby bird.

The storage room was cold and dark. Dani took a step towards the back corner, where the mirrors were tightly wrapped in newspaper. Dani picked one up, unwrapped it, and lifted it before his face. It was shadowy. He hesitated to go on, to finally witness his real face, only to wail loudly. He left the storage room, bringing the mirror with him. Under the sunshine, he put the mirror right in front of his face and almost dropped it.

Is this real?

A tiny slit under his drooping eyelids. That was an eye. The overall shape of his face was warped and twisted. He could not even call it a face.

Dani wanted to burst into laughter, or to sneer at himself, but just let out a faint groan.

Dani fell upon the grave, and embraced the mounds one by one, caressing them with his fingers while whispering. He inhaled the smell of the soil, rubbing his face into it as if he missed someone badly. He just wanted to sleep as soon as possible. But also in his mind, there was a voice saying that now was the last time that he should pull himself together, to finish something he had been holding back.

Dani got in the truck. He drove in the opposite direction of the village. To the core of where the disaster began. The essence of the vast darkness.

The closer Dani got to the epicenter, the more goosebumps he felt down his spine. His truck reached the seaside road. In the distance, the remains of gray ruins were revealed. Dani’s truck kept running past the seawall, like it was determined to go as far as possible. Finally, he reached the end. Dani stopped the truck and got out.

Like a massive chimney, the power plant opened its mouth towards the sky.

This is the core of the darkness.

Dani stayed put, staring at the crushing outcome of great civilization. Then, he found something weird up in the air. Patches of cloud passing overhead disappeared without a trace, like cotton candy melting in the heat.

Dani felt his neck stiffen and a pain in his chest. Below his nose, something lukewarm was streaming down. Scarlet blood oozed through the white surface of his protective clothing. A surviving shiny piece of the caved-in roof reflected the sunlight, blinding him. Everything around him was refracted and distorted in a silvery light. All the white woods covering the earth filled his eyes.