PART ONE

27 January 2016

The moment the world ends, Donghae is midway through buying a loaf of bread.

Until that instant it had been a regular day; maybe slightly overcast with an odd haze he’d put down to being yellow dust (he’d shoved a face mask in his pocket just in case) and traffic had been bad but there was nothing out of the ordinary.

Nothing to hint that the end of everything was only moments away.

At the bakery Donghae chooses the bread carefully because his latest girlfriend – a nice girl called Jessica who might, possibly, really be the one this time – is coming over to meet his family for the first time. His mother’s hopes rise with every new girlfriend and she’s been preparing side dishes since morning. While her standards in prospective daughters-in-law have lowered a little over the years, her standards in bread have not so Donghae rejects about twenty not-quite-circular loaves before making his selection and heading to the counter.

The cashier asks him how he will be paying, smiles, mentions the weather and then stops mid-sentence. She coughs, just once, and a fleeting look of confusion passes over her face.

‘Are you okay?’ Donghae asks, rummaging in his wallet for the correct change.

The cashier doesn’t answer. By the time Donghae looks up, it’s already too late – her face is frozen, ashy pale, her body rigid, one hand still extended. For a moment she remains like that, a statue with a surprised expression. And then, as a draft passes through the little shop, she disintegrates into dust and is gone.

Donghae’s mouth drops open. He spins around, calling for help although help for what but suddenly he is the only one in the store. There’s an empty baby buggy, a woman’s handbag, a mobile phone still lit up mid-call but all the shoppers are gone.

He runs outside, panicking and waving his arms but there is nobody to see him. The street has come to a standstill, crowded with cars whose engines still running but there is nobody inside. The sidewalk, previously bustling with foot traffic, is empty.

But the air is filled with fine, drifting ash.

29 January 2016

Donghae has been sitting in his room for two days. He thinks he’s going crazy, he hopes he’s going crazy but deep down inside he knows he is not.

It’s been two days since he last heard a human voice. Two days since a dog barked or a bird sang. The streetlights still come on in the evening and his own lights have been blazing day and night but outside his window the neighbouring houses are dark. There’s a TV in his room but he’s afraid to try it, not because of what he might see on the news but in case there’s no news programme at all. Instead, to drown out the endless silence, he plays a dvd instead, the same movie looping over and over while he wonders.

Has there been a terrorist attack? North Korea? Some sort of hitherto unknown disease?

He doesn’t know and nobody appears with the answers. He’s still clutching the loaf of bread he’s chosen for their dinner. At some stage he has a rush of guilt realizing he never paid for it and then he has to clap his hand over his mouth to stop the hysterical laughter from bubbling up inside. He desperately wants his mother or his brother to come knock on his bedroom door but the little house is as void of people as the streets outside. There are just two little heaps of ash; one in the kitchen and one in his brother’s room in front of the still-humming computer. A third, smaller pile of grey dust is in his room in the basket where his little dog used to sleep.

Donghae doesn’t look at it.

He just grimly holds onto his loaf of bread and stares at the TV and hopes, prays and wishes that everything will magically go back to normal while the same movie plays over and over.

2 February 2016

Donghae has discovered that it’s not possible for a healthy adult male to just lie there until he dies. While his mind has temporarily given up, his body has not. Hunger is what drives him out of the house eventually. He can’t bring himself to go into the kitchen so, doing his best not to think of anything at all, he puts on boots, a coat, the thick scarf his mother always nags at him to wear, and then walks out of the house forever.

It’s early morning and feels sort of like a Sunday apart from all the empty cars scattered haphazardly over the road. Donghae goes to the local supermarket and the automatic doors slide open to welcome him. He bypasses the fruit and vege departments where everything is already starting to rot, heading for the cereal section. He grabs a box and pulls it open, sitting right there in the middle of the aisle and stuffing handfuls of sugary puffed rice into his mouth while tears drip down his cheeks. When the edge has been taken off his hunger he pulls himself together and gets a basket, filling it with packets of instant ramen, chocolate bars and energy drinks. The usual piped music is still playing and the fridges hum and he goes to the checkouts automatically, standing there awkwardly beneath the security cameras wondering how he’s supposed to pay. Eventually he holds the basket towards the camera apologetically so if anyone watches in future they can bill him for what he’s taking. Then he leaves and goes to the auto shop around the corner. He knows the owner and doesn’t think the man will mind if he borrows his old motor scooter. The roads are too crowded with abandoned cars for him to take his mother’s little Kea and although it’s cold a motorbike seems the best way to get out of town.

He decides to go to the nearest major city. If nobody is coming to explain what’s happening then he’s going to have to go find out for himself.

3 February 2016

Busan is empty.

If anything, it’s worse than his hometown.

The stillness is unnatural and frightening. Traffic lights change and advertisements play on big screens overhead. He can hear generators and the hum of air conditioners and a few alarms but not one single voice. No dogs bark, no birds fluff their feathers in the cold air. Snow falls, muffling everything, slowly burying the pavements, the cars, the drifts of grey dust.

Donghae’s fingers are numb. He needs gloves and a proper jacket. It’s getting dark early because of the gloomy weather and he heads for the nearest hotel. It’s probably more expensive a place than he could afford and he feels guilty just walking in and looking for a card key behind the front counter.

His room is large and clean and there’s a minibar. Belatedly he realizes he should have gone to a motel or something so he could use a kettle for his ramen but he sits on the bed anyway and eats chocolate for dinner and plugs his phone into the wall charger in the hopes someone will call.

He’s in the shower when the lights go out.

Panicking he grabs a towel and heads for the window.

The whole city is black.

He finds his bed in the dark and huddles under the blankets. All his carefully maintained disbelief is unravelling as it becomes harder and harder to pretend that everything is going to be okay. Apart from the creaks and sighs from the building as it cools, the only other sound is his breath, shaky and ragged as he shivers in the expensive sheets, eyes closed tightly against the darkness.

He knows that he’s alone.

20 February 2016

Donghae has moved into the Park Hyatt hotel. It’s one of the few places still running on unseen generators, lighting up like a Christmas tree at night. He’s taken the executive suite for himself and studies the menu, drinking the most expensive champagne for breakfast and eating caviar and truffles with his instant noodles. His borrowed motor scooter is parked in the lobby and he’s tracked snow and dirt all over the floor. He finds a box of Cuban cigars and smokes his way through the equivalent of half a year’s wages while sitting in a purple-lit jacuzzi, then jerks off in his king-sized bed with his eyes closed, himself and pretending his hands belong to someone else. There’s a high end department store nearby and he tries on designer suits and takes selfies even though there’s nowhere to post them. There’s no wifi, no reception on his phone but he does his best to pretend it’s only a matter of time before the service is restored. Meanwhile he rollerblades over the marble floors, plays ice hockey by himself in the ballroom, talks to the mannequins in the gift shop and takes a handful of sleeping pills every night.

He almost convinces himself he’s having the time of his life – but then he catches a glimpse of his own reflection. Pale, unshaven and hollow-eyed he looks like a ghost in an Armani suit.

That night the city seems even more silent than usual.

He sits on the side of his bed, every light in the building blazing, and doesn’t dare to sleep because of the nightmares.

8 March 2016

Donghae decides to leave Busan. The endless empty blackness of the apartment building windows overhead is starting to get to him. At first he hopes and prays that he’ll see something move within; now he’s getting a weird sort of terror that something actually will. It feels like the gloomy buildings are watching him and he doesn’t rollerblade in the big empty malls anymore. Once, for fun, he tries driving one of the big city buses, plowing through rows of abandoned cars and laughing as the vehicle bounces over the curb. But when the engine stalls the silence of the city seemed to press in, smothering and disproving. Donghae hurries back to the hotel and stays in his room for the next two days, surrounded by empty ramen containers, expensive watches and accessories he doesn’t want to wear anymore.

Once he makes up his mind to leave he is filled with a sense of relief. Hope is hard to extinguish and yeah, Busan is as empty as a grave but surely there will be other people in Seoul. Someone will be able to explain what is going on and things will get back to normal and Donghae’s mom will ring him and nag at him for leaving without locking the door.

Yeah, if he only gets to Seoul things will be okay.

13 March 2016

It actually takes Donghae a few days to get ready to leave. He’s upgraded his motorbike to a Bugatti and the unexpected power of the thing means he comes off, rolling over and over on the tarmac while the bike skids along the road and ends up in a shop window.

He’s lucky – apart from a few bumps and bruises he’s okay but it’s enough to shake him.

If anything happens, he’s alone.

He leaves the Bugatti lying there in the street and replaces it with a delivery motorbike he finds out back of a cold and silent pizza place. The new bike is slow but easy to manoeuvre and has big side panniers. He visits a supermarket, carefully avoiding the heaps of grey dust, wheeling his bike through the aisles and filling up the panniers with whatever catches his fancy. The meat and vege sections are rotten despite the cold and he wears a face mask, choosing cookies and cereal and ramen with the air of a connessoir. Afterwards he returns to the Park Hyatt only long enough to get the scarf his mother gave him. He gets panicky when he is unable to find it, digging through the fancy suits and designer brands before finding it under the bed. It’s a bit dusty but he wraps it firmly around his neck before he walks out into the cold spring afternoon, leaving all the expensive clothing he’s taken from the mall discarded in a heap on the bed.

It’s not like he’s got anyone to impress, is it?

14 March 2016

It has to be about 3.00am and Donghae has made all kinds of mistakes. The first is that he assumed he’d be able to get petrol from the numerous gas stations between Busan and Seoul. It turns out that he can’t because there’s no power to operate the pumps. Perhaps, he thinks belatedly, he should have packed fuel in the panniers as well as ramen and cereal. He checks the gauge on the bike and decides to press on anyway. This is his second mistake. The third, fourth, fifth (and all the rest) are a mixture of bad luck and bad judgement. It’s unseasonably cold for spring and starts snowing before he’s even halfway there and because the highway is so clogged with empty, crumpled vehicles he decides to take another route.

He gets lost almost immediately.

The bike headlight is dim, barely illuminating anything, and the countryside is blacker and darker than the city ever was. He’s forced to slow to practically a crawl, the road slippery and treacherous. It’s too easy to miss seeing road signs – at times, with the bike revving and struggling in mounds of snow, he’s not even sure he’s still on the road. When the bike engine finally splutters and dies, it sounds like a death knell. Donghae feels his heart sink. He takes what he can carry and starts to walk but the thin beam of his flashlight is next to useless in the vast and empty countryside. Within minutes his boots are sodden, his jacket’s a wet weight on his shoulders and his jeans offer so little protection he thinks he might as well just give up and walk along .

He knows if he can’t find shelter and a way to warm up he’s probably got less than an hour left. He’s exhausted and he’s somehow lost the road altogether and it’s getting harder and harder just to put one foot in front of the other. He doesn’t even know why he’s fighting so hard to stay alive because wouldn’t it just be so easy to give up? Finally, he’s so tired he just stands there, swaying, knee deep in a snow drift. He’ll only sit down for a minute, he tells himself, just rest for a little while.
He drops the bag he’s carrying and sinks down beside it, looking up at the sky.

It would have been nice to fall asleep beneath the stars, he thinks to himself, and one lonely tear trickles down his cheek because the sky is low and overcast and he can’t even have that. He sighs and his eyelids grow heavy.

In the distance, one star twinkles.

Sleepily, he stares at it. The light is yellow and uneven and weak. In fact, it’s far too low to be a star. His numb brain takes a moment to process it.

Could it possibly be…

Is there someone else out there?

He’s on his feet and running, suddenly finding a last burst of energy.

Is someone else still alive?

Clambering over fences and struggling through unseen ditches it takes longer than it should to reach the source of the light. The whole time he’s trying to tell himself it’s probably an automatic security light or something but he’s breathless and shaking when he finds himself in front of an old rundown cottage. He hammers on the heavy wooden door, tries the handle and out of desperation is about to try breaking it down when it opens.

Light and warmth spill out into the snow and Donghae finds himself face to face with a shotgun.

But behind