Youngjae woke up at six. As he reached for the alarm and put it off, he worried because the ringing was thinning out. He doesn’t remember where he put batteries. He worries if he could find any at all. As a precaution, he takes the single double A battery off the device and places it carefully next to the alarm clock.
Nothing is working.

Youngjae worries about the water as he washes his face a bit. He left the taps open for a week, but he’s still not sure if the water is good to drink. He takes his chances nevertheless, and drinks one glass. He thanks god because they had a well dug up last year.
Then he tries not to think much of it.

He picks up his scavenger bag with a smile from the floor on his way out. Back when he was fifteen scouting was fun. He’s glad the feeling had remained. On his way, he stops by the tripod by the pantry – and inhales deeply, staring at the family photo. His mom, dad, and his brother. His brother that’s holding his fingers over Youngjaes head. He scoffs and shakes his head.

He just closes the door behind him out of habit. There was nothing to come in. Not even a bug.

Out here; quite a distance away from the town, was much better. The last time he visited the city made him throw up every time he thought about it. It sometimes felt guilty to be disgusted by so many dead people. They were everywhere. Out in the streets, pavements, on the stairs…

Youngjae had counted fifty six days since the bomb.

Before they were bombed, Youngjae was an electrical technician. (He thinks he still is?) He worked in the station at the day of the bomb, down in a drain about seven feet below the tunnel, working on a short-out wire. He felt it shaking, like nothing he had experienced before, and felt it heating up inside the tunnel he was in. It was covered in concrete, and somehow he blackened out with the temperature.

When he woke up,
everything was dead.

He’s tact enough to know that concrete absorbs nuclear radiation. It was as if he was capsuled from the nuclear bomb that evening. He had passed out for almost thirty hours, too. If he had tried to run out, the radiation still could have caused him to die. He still thinks he’s at risk of cancer, and mutation however…

It gives him chills every time he thinks about it. To be the only thing to survive.

All electronic media was dead. Houses, cities, buildings; were all flattened onto the ground. There had been quite a crowd who had survived at first, but every morning – since they all gathered to a tent they managed to put up from the ruins, Youngjae woke up to one of them dead.

They all just died.

Youngjae’s pretty sure the same things’ going to happen to him too – soon. And like the rest he couldn’t dig graves for, he too – will lie dead, on top of flattened concrete.
When he thought of this, he sang.

Just the first song he could think of, loud and clear.

“Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me,
I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed…
She was looking kinda dumb with her finger and her thumb
In the shape of an L on her forehead…!”

It made him concentrate on his feet, to keep up the rhythm and walk. When he sang, alone in the street – he gave himself a minute to think of everything the way they used to be. The streets and the trees as they used to be, before all of it burned to ash.

It worried him to eat anything dead. He wouldn’t dare pick the dead animals. Canned food worried him the most. He didn’t know if it was good to eat it or not. If he was lucky he could find patches of grass, or mushrooms by the riverside.
The dead fish washed ashore was impossible to avoid.

He boiled the bit of green he could find with salt. He’s no expert on types of grass or leaves. Basically he just ate whatever that was growing anew. Once, he remembers, he found a couple of tiny crabs by the stone ridge of the river. He prayed for them before he picked them up.
Kind of like the red Indians – right?

Youngjae wonders what India is like now. Has there been a global impact? Could there be more people? Is it only a small scale bomb, like in Hiroshima back then?
Then why isn’t anybody coming for rescue?
It’s making Youngjae think he’s the only one alive.

-

Now you know where to be to survive the world war III