The Disaster Tourist

by Yun Ko-Eun

  Around sunset, the writer closed the curtains in his bungalow. He lowered the bungalow’s eyelids and checked that he hadn’t forgotten anything. A child who was familiar with the island’s geography waited for him outside the gate. The writer had decided that on Sunday morning—when the sun rose in a few hours—he would escape on a private boat. If things had gone to plan, the boat would have had two passengers. But last night, the writer had learned, Yona died in a car crash. He didn’t believe that Yona’s death was an accident. He hadn’t included her death in his script, and there were no plans to use Yona’s body as a mannequin. The story was racing ahead of the writer, moving of its own accord. Yona had died, and when Luck found out he would be heartbroken. Paul seemed to have come up with an end to the tragic love story it desired, but without the writer’s cooperation. He’d only written a scene where the two lovers parted in the desert.

  In the quiet, early hours of morning, Luck and Yona gazed up at a sky full of stars shooting in all different directions, as endless desert cactuses stood sentry around them. Luck looked at Yona with eyes full of tears. As the sun peeked over the horizon, he murmured that he’d miss her.

  In fact, the writer didn’t know it, but Yona had veered off script. She and Luck had met once more after the intended farewell. He’d come to her bungalow before he left for Vietnam, and told her that he would wait for her in Ho Chi Minh City after he finished his work for the manager. That he’d see her off on her way home. That they wouldn’t be apart for long.

  After Luck made these promises to Yona and they kissed for what truly did seem like the last time, he ran off in a hurry. Yona called after him. She needed to tell him something, something other than confessions of love. She needed to tell him because of her love.

  The writer couldn’t know how much Yona had told Luck, or why she’d decided to reveal the plans for Mui Sunday. But he was certain that the person who’d divulged this secret was dead, and her death threatened him. He needed to leave the island as soon as possible.

  * * *

  The Sunday Mui had prepared for arrived. Man 1 loaded the correct number of airtight sacks on to each of the truck beds. He didn’t know what they contained. He didn’t really want to check. Not checking was probably better. Anyway, now that Woman 7 had delivered the cargo, all Man 1 had to do was hand it over to the drivers.

  Man 12 boarded one of the five trucks. Each vehicle had a slightly different destination. Man 12 would be driving to the red sand desert’s first hole. He had no idea what his truck carried in its bed. He was just happy to have work in the off-season. His job was to pour his cargo into Hole 1. He didn’t know where Hole 1 was, but he’d been told that when he reached the desert’s entrance, he’d be guided to the right spot. Two thirty in the morning. On the way to the red sand desert, the gleam of the white sand desert acted as streetlights. The moon shone with unusual intensity.

  Man 16 drove behind Man 12. He was headed towards the red sand desert, too, but unlike Man 12, Man 16 felt deeply uncomfortable. He’d been paid too much. The compensation for this job transporting a load to a construction site was far larger than normal, and that made him uneasy. He didn’t know what lay in his truck bed. He’d just climbed into the designated truck at the designated time, to carry the cargo to its destination. He wasn’t calmed by the other trucks on the road headed in the same direction; instead, they heightened his unease. All sorts of thoughts ran through his head. Is a war breaking out? he wondered. Man 12 and Man 16 appeared to have the same destination. But then Man 12, who’d been ahead, suddenly disappeared off the road. His truck flew into the air before crashing down on top of Man 16’s truck. The road stretched like a piece of toffee. An ear-shattering din erupted in all four directions. It was the alarm, sounding for the first time. Before Man 16 closed his eyes, he saw a waterfall of bodies cascading out of one of the truck’s beds—maybe from Man 12’s truck, maybe from his. In that moment, he noticed the expressions on the bodies’ faces. Bodies of people he’d seen before, people he knew well, people he’d never met, fell like rocks. Several of them shattered his truck’s windscreen and fell on top of him.

  These two trucks, headed in the same direction, plummeted forwards together. The road they were driving over had diverged from its course. Back in the still-slumbering village, the warning alarm surprised Man 2. He looked at the clock on the wall. Three in the morning. The event wouldn’t start for several hours. Man 2 had been trying to sleep, but couldn’t. Nervous anxiety flooded his body.

  Since the day he was assigned his role, Man 2 had wondered whether it was a curse or a gift to know the time of his death. His father had passed away after suffering from an illness his entire life. His mother had fallen sick soon after. The family tradition of dying from lack of medicine was passed from generation to generation. In a few hours, Man 2 might be buried in sand, but he didn’t know if such a death was his true fate, or just the destiny he had decided for himself. He’d volunteered to become a casualty, but for a reason. Since he was doomed to an early death even if he didn’t volunteer, maybe this was his fate. Once today’s events began, four thousand dollars would be deposited into his bank account. That was far more money than the amount usually exchanged after a fatal car accident. Apparently, Man 2’s role paid better than any of the others. With the money he’d earn today, the rest of his family could finally afford medicine when they were sick. The rest of his family was his mother and two children. His wife had emigrated to a foreign country years ago, and he hadn’t heard from her since. If they were still together, maybe he would have made a different choice, but it was fruitless to imagine such things.

  Man 2 began to shave. He needed acting skills for his part, because right before he died, he had to show himself to the CCTV camera near the tower. Because of that, this job felt more like a game than it did death. Man 2 had a lot on his mind. Pain shot through his chest. But the environment around him proved that his choice was the right one. He stopped shaving, and as he looked in the mirror, he remembered what he would have to do soon. He would drive his SUV into the first hole in the red sand desert. The hole was tremendously large and deep, so the people throwing themselves into it, especially those in large vehicles, had a high chance of dying. But maybe he’d live. If he had really good luck, he’d get his four thousand dollars and still survive. He’d been assigned lines to recite if he did make it. He practised them once more, and grew frustrated that he couldn’t remember them precisely. It was an upsetting prospect, forgetting the lines he’d have to say if he survived.

  This job was an opportunity. He wouldn’t have even heard about it if he wasn’t acquainted with Belle Époque’s manager. He’d chosen to go down this path, so he didn’t know why he felt resentful. The warning alarm in the distance continued to blare without stopping. The event was planned for 8 a.m. This was strange. His front door creaked open slightly, so Man 2 grabbed the handle to push it closed, but in vain. As the door opened, so did his eyes and nose and mouth and every orifice in his body. Earth, or maybe water, poured into the holes. The overpowering shriek of metal, or maybe waves, or maybe wind, swallowed his screams.

  The screams repeated inside each home like an echo. As roofs caved in and floors collapsed, the houses were sucked over the horizon.

  Woman 5 was vacuuming. A strange thing to be doing at three in the morning, but today was strange. Today, she had decided to let her comatose son go. Their last conversation had been four years ago, when he told her, ‘I’m leaving,’ as he set off for school, and she replied with, ‘See you later!’ She saw him next at the hospital, after he’d suffered a terrible accident and wouldn’t wake up. She had been told to remove her son’s respirator long ago. The hospital was requesting the unpaid balance, as it had done all it could. Today, the woman would hug her son before throwing both of them into the second hole. She’d been told that the moment they went into the sinkhole, money would be deposited into her bank account. The woman had written down the account of a friend who lived next do
or instead, to pay the overdue hospital bills after she and her son had died. She couldn’t exactly grasp why she’d decided to vacuum at the moment she was about to end everything.

  The dust bags usually bulged with debris, but today the vacuum cleaner didn’t suck anything up. Woman 5 couldn’t hear the sounds outside. As she turned the vacuum to its highest setting and wheeled it into the living room, the windows shattered into what looked like moonbeams and flew inside. For a moment, Woman 5 thought they were rays of light, but she couldn’t see for much longer. The intruder was grey, with a hulking frame, and Woman 5’s neck snapped easily in his presence. Only the vacuum cleaner survived, groaning through its wide-open mouth.

  Man 4 heard the warning alarm and started his motorcycle. Strange: it was earlier than planned. He called the woman in charge, but she didn’t answer. Woman 21: she must have been sleeping. He heard the warning alarm once again. He was supposed to be waiting for a truck. At around eight in the morning, he’d been told, the truck would arrive from some distant place, then the alarm would sound. His job was to flip a switch after the truck arrived and the alarm began to ring. But the sequence of events had come undone. The truck’s tardiness and the unexpected alarm aroused Man 4’s suspicions, but on an island where alarms never went off, the signal was clear. Man 4 had to flip the switch connected to Hole 2. He didn’t exactly know what would happen when he flipped it. But for simply doing this so early in the morning, he would be compensated. Man 4 didn’t know where Hole 2 was. All he had to do was flip the switch labelled number two, under the tower. It wasn’t a difficult job. Something seemed a bit off, but he didn’t need to indulge his curiosity.

  Several people had already gathered beneath the tower. They wore similar expressions on their faces. The alarm rang for a third time, befuddling the group. Should they interpret this as an order or a mistake? The alarm was supposed to go off at 8.11. They didn’t trust such an early alarm, but as the sirens blared over an increasingly wide area, their bodies moved instinctively. They ran about in bewilderment, pulling ropes, pressing buttons, waiting for the designated time. Woman 8 stuck her head out from the top of the tower. She looked confused, too. When someone asked for a volunteer to go to the resort and find Woman 21, Man 20 and Man 4 raised their hands at the same time. Man 4 went to the resort, and Man 20 decided to stay where he was. They’d each been assigned a paid role, he figured, so they couldn’t just leave the site. Even though he knew what was going to happen, Man 20’s chest churned with disbelief. He felt like something was pressing down on his lower back and was seized with fear. Man 20 had volunteered because, like many others, he needed money more than he needed life. Some volunteers, it seemed, were playing less dangerous roles that didn’t put their lives at risk. They must have been offered less money. Now Man 20 wanted to live. Death didn’t seem as simple as he’d thought. He wanted to run away, to leave this place, to pretend that he was just going to the resort and would come back. He felt like he’d go crazy, standing at his future grave. Waiting.

  After Man 4 left for the resort on his motorcycle, Man 20’s legs buckled and he crumpled to the ground. Reading the expressions of the people around him only intensified his anxiety. Man 20’s pocket contained knick-knacks that would identify him, as well as a photo of his wife to bolster his emotional backstory. The photo was fake. Woman 10, who played his wife, hadn’t arrived yet. They were a tragic couple, killed three months after getting married. But Man 20 didn’t actually know his supposed wife. Since being assigned the parts Man 20 and Woman 10, they’d spoken perhaps three times. He’d only been able to converse with her during rehearsal time at the volunteer meetings. Quickly, though, he had begun to think of Woman 10 as his real wife. Of course, this was just how he felt, but Man 20 wanted to hold Woman 10’s hand and kiss her, to tell her stories and make promises to her. They had so many similarities: the environment they’d grown up in, the choice they’d made, their future stories.

  Man 20 grew increasingly uneasy that Woman 10 hadn’t arrived. As the alarm sounded again, someone moved forwards with the plan. Man 4 wasn’t back from the resort, but someone activated the switch. Hole 1 began to collapse. At the same time, another sound came from the direction of Hole 2. The stalls and wheelbarrows stacked up in preparation—sets for a festival that would never happen—were washed away by the sand, spouting clouds of dust as they fell into the holes, throwing grains of sand as they struggled. Man 20 was supposed to run across the bog-like land between Hole 1 and Hole 2, land that would certainly collapse the moment he stepped on to it, but he couldn’t lift his feet. Before he could decide what to do, his body began to run in what he thought was the direction opposite the disturbance, but the disturbance seemed to be coming from every direction. Hole 1 was supposed to collapse, and then a bit later Hole 2 would collapse, but now the sky was falling, not the sinkholes. The tower crumbled in the direction he was running, its debris following him like a shadow. Or maybe this had happened: the desert palpitated, surging upwards before the tower’s stones began to fall. The tower, the desert—everything—collapsed and tangled together.

  A man standing at the top of the tower called out, saying that everything was okay, not to worry. He held a camera in his hands. His job was to take photos, but the camera got swept away, followed by his body. Everyone saw it. A man’s body, pulled under the earth. The top part of the tower—which wasn’t supposed to collapse—broke in two and fell into the sand, dissolving like salt.

  Before Man 4’s motorcycle reached the resort, before he’d made it out of the desert, he saw the tower and sand crumbling behind him. He couldn’t tell up from down. His motorcycle soon veered off the road. Man 4 and his motorcycle didn’t reach the resort, but wind and wave did. The resort was pretending to sleep; beneath the surface, it was a hive of activity. One bungalow was sending wire transfers, another was checking a CCTV camera, and in a third bungalow, people waited to be called to work. The alarm began to shriek, and the enormous wave that had already engulfed other parts of the island began to swallow bodies and houses and books. Letters from the books came off their pages, overwhelmed by the waves, and bounced in the water like fish.

  The wave reached the manager’s office, an uninvited, very powerful guest.

  The manager raised his head and looked at this guest that was the size of a mountain, who’d used the entire ocean as a stepping stone, waiting in the sea before coming for the manager. It stretched its arms above him and then came crashing down. The manager ran down the emergency stairs. But the Earth was dancing. Thick tree roots appeared between the gaps in the ground, and the oldest of them coiled around the manager’s ankle. Centuries of destruction occurred in a single second, and then all was quiet.

  The wave embraced the trash island as it passed over the backbone of the desert and approached the village. Foreign trash, debris that had wandered across borders: it all flowed over Mui at three o’clock in the morning, and completely devastated the island in four minutes. Luckily, today was the first Sunday of August. Some people had erroneously believed that the day’s events were occurring early, and they’d stuck to their roles faithfully. Others recognised that this wave had no relation to the plan, but that didn’t help them survive.

  At 8 a.m., the schedule disaster time, the sun rose over the horizon and revealed the aftermath. People lay on the desert and road and resort and shore, their eyes closed. There was no distinction between tribe or class. Tangled together, the people with closed eyes said nothing. Those who were still standing found the scene so unbearable they closed their eyes, too.

  If you looked down at Mui from high above, you wouldn’t be able to distinguish between the people and the trash. The resort, adjacent to the beach, had been hit hardest. Lines from the script that would never be performed fluttered in the wind and scattered around the resort. The wind blew forcefully, like it wanted to rub the words off the script, and the waves descended like they wanted to dissolve them.

  Most of the survivors were discovered
in the mangrove forest. After sunset the night before, those paying attention might have noticed the many crocodiles on the move. Houses on boats, houses with and without motors, houses that couldn’t pay taxes, houses that couldn’t live in Mui, and most importantly houses that would collapse at dawn if they didn’t leave, crossing the sea one after another.

  The houseboats had headed for the mangrove forest. That was Yona’s idea. The forest could hide many things.

  The morning after parting with Yona, Luck had run to the crocodile caution zone. He’d told the crocodiles that their new residence permits were a trap: if they wanted to live, on Saturday night, they would have to secretly move to the mangrove forest. Some crocodiles were suspicious of Luck. Others didn’t believe him. But that was the best Luck could do.

  Luck spent three days in Vietnam. He had accepted the abrupt travel assignment because he thought he would see Yona in Ho Chi Minh City, on her way back to Korea. Before leaving for the dock, he’d looked silently at the inside of his parents’ crumbled home for the last time. On Saturday, some crocodiles migrated according to Luck’s instruction, and others didn’t. The houses that decided to move hid their bodies just above the water, like real crocodiles, and crossed the sea. They floated to the mangrove forest, where they survived the night. These people understood the danger of the resident permits and had fled in order to survive. But then the tsunami hit Mui, and everything changed. When the wave hit, the ancient trees of the mangrove forest wrapped their roots around the crocodiles to protect them, and as dawn came, the crocodiles realised they constituted the majority of the island’s survivors. The survivors didn’t have lines to remember. They didn’t have lines to practise. They didn’t have special alibis. They had no rehearsals and no compensation, but their stories flowed to the ocean like blood from a head wound.