Ae-jung was the first to wake, but she did not wish to rouse the others. She walked through the hallway to the entrance of the building, passing the broken glass doors which were once automatic, and sat down on the stone steps to watch the sunset. Splashes of pink and purple painted the sky to her right.
Her body jumped a little, startled, when Deangelo came and sat down beside her.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to make Ki walk again tonight,” he told her. “I want you to stay here with him while I try and hunt down some food, or medicine. Both, if I can manage it. I think it’ll be easiest to do on my own.”
Ae-jung simply nodded, and watched as Deangelo stood and took out his map, compass, and flashlight before heading east. She stayed there until the sun was lost to the night, and returned to her husband in the museum.
Ki-ryong was awake, then, staring at the cart in the dark. He didn’t even flinch when Ae-jung entered the room, just asked in a husky voice, “Do you remember…” but he trailed off, unable to use his larynx further.
“Do I remember what?” Ae-jung asked, and came down to his level, looked in his eyes and tried to determine his meaning. “Anything from before the lockdown?”
He nodded, and Ae-jung took his head in her hands, and brushed his fringe out of his eyes. “I remember my mother’s calming touch,” she said, and kissed him on his forehead. “I remember how much she loved me, and wanted for me.” She took Ki-ryong’s hands in hers now. “How she wished I’d been born in another time, or another country.”
Ae-jung noticed a tear in the corner of her husband’s left eye, so she wiped it away with her thumb.
“But I think about what that would’ve meant for me, and not in a good way. I wouldn’t have met you.” She kissed him on the lips. “Or Deangelo. Maybe you two wouldn’t have even met without me.” She brushed her fingers through Ki-ryong’s hair. “Do you remember when I introduced you?”
A smirk of a smile crossed his face, and Ae-jung knew he was picturing it. It wasn’t the most sane introduction, but somehow the line, “Ki, I found you some manmeat, Deangelo,” always brought a smirk to both men’s faces. She had actually meant to say, “Ki, I found you a man, meet Deangelo,” but had stumbled over her words.
Prior to that meeting had been a discussion between Ae-jung and Ki-ryong. Ae-jung recounted her memory of it for Ki-ryong, trying to keep his brain occupied while they waited for Deangelo to return.
“At first I didn’t know what to think,” she said, “when you first told me you liked men. I felt betrayed, like you married the wrong person. I thought it meant you wanted to leave me, like it would be easy for me to move on and find someone else in what was already a small underground community by then. But then you told me it didn’t mean you loved me any less. It took me weeks to figure out you meant it, because I didn’t want to share the bed with you at first.”
Ki-ryong moved around behind her, and wrapped an arm around her waist.
“And just like that,” she said, “you did this, and I knew. You still wanted me. You just also needed to experience the touch of a man.”
Ae-jung began to remove her coat, and hoped their body heat could keep them warm. If they only had one more night together, she wanted Ki-ryong to be able to remember it into the afterlife.
§
It was near dawn when Deangelo finally returned. He’d had to scour much of what was left of the north of Old Seoul, but had managed to bring back some bags of dried noodles.
“All the drug stores have been picked clean,” he told them, looking sorrowfully at Ki-ryong.
Ki-ryong embraced the dark-skinned man and kissed him so Deangelo would know he appreciated the effort. When Ae-jung joined them, hands and fingers tore at clothes, then lips and mouths were added to the mix to explore their bodies. The temperature in the room rose, and sweat pooled on Deangelo’s back more than it did for the Koreans. Their exertion wore them out and brought them to sleep, so they wouldn’t have to worry about facing the day once the sun rose.
When it was about midday, Ae-jung began to feel restless. She grabbed her clothes and rugged up, leaving her men with Ki-ryong laying his head on Deangelo’s naked chest.
Walking out the broken glass doors, Ae-jung felt an overwhelming sense of solitude. She didn’t know why Deangelo was so worried about them wandering around in the day. There was no one left in Seoul. He might have thought he was making a stupid pun joke the night they left the military base, but he was right. There were no souls left in Seoul. Deangelo surely couldn’t have found food if there had been.
With the light of the sun on her side, she decided to let her men rest and see what she could find in the next few hours. She didn’t bother to take Deangelo’s map or compass with her, since she planned to walk in one direction only, and then straight back again.
What Ae-jung didn’t expect was getting smacked in the back of her head with a blunt object only an hour into her journey, and falling to the pavement beneath her feet.
When she came to, her nose felt of dried blood, and someone was pulling her hair. It looked like she was inside some kind of warehouse. Her hands were bound behind her back.
“Nǐ hǎo,” a voice said, and then added a bunch of other words she didn’t understand as the voice’s owner dragged her to her feet.
“I don’t speak Chinese, asshole,” Ae-jung spat, spraying saliva on his face.
“Ah, then you must be South Korean,” the stranger said with a thick Chinese accent, “choosing English as your second tongue.”
Ae-jung didn’t reply, trying to figure out what he meant by that. The North had learned Chinese? The North had China on their side?
He observed her with his hands firmly on her upper arms. “How did you get here?” he asked.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
The man shook his head. “I’m the one asking the questions.”
“I’ve lived here my whole life,” she spat. “This is my home. It’s not for you, or the northern scum. What are you anyway, just some scavenger?”
He didn’t answer her. For a moment his whole face went blank, and Ae-jung thought it could be her chance to escape. His arms fell limp at his sides, and she cautiously stepped backwards, hoping any movement wouldn’t re-capture his attention.
Ae-jung heard him whisper, “What do you want me to do?”
She watched his face contort, back to the man who asked the questions, then to something more menacing. Ae-jung turned and ran for her life, but before she could reach the door, he’d grabbed her head. Before she could gasp, he swiftly twisted her neck until she fell to the ground, lifeless.
§
Deangelo woke up with a start, in turn frighting Ki-ryong awake, who was still lying on his chest. They both looked around the room, and then back at each other with horrified expressions.
“Where’s Ae?” Deangelo asked.
The river.
That voice from the cherry tree was back, whispering in his mind.
“Why would she be at the river?”
Ki-ryong just looked at him with the most confused look. Then he heard it too.
The river.
Choking and then coughing, Ki-ryong found as much strength as he could manage and started dressing himself. Deangelo followed suit. They both ran out the broken glass doors, leaving most of their belongings behind. Deangelo had his bearings now, and took hold of Ki-ryong’s hand, pulling him south as they ran in the light of the moon.
After about an hour, they stopped at an intersection and jumped inside a car to sit down and catch their breaths.
“What are we doing, Ki?” Deangelo asked, knowing well that Ki-ryong wouldn’t be able to give him much of an answer. “We’re listening to a voice in our heads, that’s what. We’re going crazy.” He placed his hand on Ki-ryong’s beside him. “Was it Ae who kept us sane?”
Ki-ryong shook his head and pointed in the direction they were headed.
“The river?” Deangelo asked.
Ki-ryong shook his head again.
“The military base?”
A nod this time.
“You think we’re losing our marbles because we left it?” Deangelo offered, and got another nod in reply. “So, what, the atmosphere here is polluted with something that makes us lose it?”
A shrug.
“I find it hard to believe the North had that kind of tech,” Deangelo said.
And then he heard Ae-jung’s voice in his mind, calling. Deangelo. Deangelo, where am I?
He looked at Ki-ryong and asked, “Did you hear that?”
Again, some confusion from Ki-ryong, but then his eyes open wide. “Ae,” he mouths.
“We don’t know where you are,” Deangelo said aloud. “Where did you go? Why can we hear you in our heads?”
I… I remember… a Chinese man.
Ki-ryong and Deangelo looked at each other, trying to figure out what she meant.
A warehouse.
“Are you there now?” Deangelo asked. “I saw some when I was out last night.”
No. Water.
And then as if saying that word in their heads made her acknowledge her predicament, Ae-jung gasped, and said no more.
“The river,” Deangelo said, and Ki-ryong mouthed at the same time.
They pushed the car doors open and continued their journey south, at a quicker pace than they had before. Somehow hearing Ae-jung had helped give them strength as they worried for her safety.
When they reached the river, the crossed a bridge halfway and looked in both directions. It felt hopeless. Ae-jung could be anywhere.
Suddenly they heard a splash in the opposite direction, and another gasp. Deangelo ran to the east side of the bridge first and saw her.
“Ae,” he yelled, and then Ki-ryong was at his side.
Deangelo dived into the water, his ski coat keeping the cold from penetrating his chest, but his legs were freezing. When he got about a metre away from her, arms outstretched, ready to pull her close and save her, something pulled him under, and soon he was fighting for his life, thrashing about. As he was dragged under, he noticed a pink fish tail with yellow fins at the end had replaced Ae-jung’s legs. As shock overcame him, he looked down and saw the face of a pale-skinned woman. The cause of his demise. She, too, had a fish tail, but hers was blue. His last, wide-eyed thought was, Mermaids?
When Deangelo didn’t come back up, Ki-ryong dived in after him. Given the choice of his sole survival between the three of them, which likely wouldn’t last anyway, given his illness, and possible death now, it didn’t even need to be asked.
When he locked eyes with Ae-jung, he felt her sorrow throughout his body. She met him halfway, kissed his mouth, and pulled him under.
§
It’s done, Li Qiang. Now come, be rewarded.
The words permeated the Chinese man’s mind, and an image of its owner followed. A naked white woman he’d met by the river when he was fishing one night.
As he followed her instruction, heading south, his mind fell to the memory of that meeting.
She was sitting on some rocks, or rubble, he couldn’t specifically remember.
“Help me,” she called to him.
He walked straight up to her and asked, “Are you real?”
In the four months he’d been in Seoul, he hadn’t seen another human. He’d been sent there by his government to see if there was anything they could salvage from the remains of the city, and then abandoned when he lost his communications device. Li Qiang presumed they thought him dead. Seeing the foreign woman had him wondering if they were right.
The woman nodded. “Come here and touch me if you don’t believe it,” she said.
As he reached out to her, she grabbed his hands and placed them on her breasts.
“How… how can I help you?” he asked, pulling his hands back.
“There is a Korean woman here, somewhere in this city. I want you,” she said, placing a finger to his chest, “to find her.”
“What then?”
“Keep her until further instruction.”
“And what will I get in return?” he asked.
She stood up, took one of his hands, placed it on her buttocks, and kissed him firmly on the lips. “More of that, taken to the next level.”
He watched her, dumbstruck, as she then walked toward the river, and disappeared.
It wasn’t until he found the Korean woman that Li Qiang realised it was not a dream. He tried to keep the memory of holding her captive from entering his mind next, but the woman’s words filled his mind.
Kill her.
Inside the warehouse, when the Korean woman came around, he got curious. He wanted to know where she’d come from; why he hadn’t seen her before. But it wasn’t to be. The white woman had other plans.
Kill her now, while you still can.
Her voice continued to echo in his head, even now, and he wondered why he was returning to a woman who would make him do this. A woman who could put thoughts in his mind.
Then he stopped in his tracks. This was not what he wanted. He lifted one foot and twisted to go back the way he’d come, but as soon as that foot hit the ground, a song filled his head. He entered a trance as the song drew him back toward the river.
As torturous as the words sounded—incongruous with the soothing tune—he could not stop himself from walking.
Come to the river
You are the last man in Seoul
All Koreans gone
Come to the river
Where lay the men from the war
Victims of my song
Come to the river
Meet your beautiful lady
Take me on a date
Come to the river
Receive me at my best, and
Meet Mr Kim’s fate
Though Li Qiang knew Kim was probably the most common Korean name, somehow hearing it in his head like this made him realise she was referring to the North’s former dictator. Had this fair songstress controlled him, too?
For a moment, the song paused, long enough for the woman to whisper in his head, Yes.
He could see the river by now, and—hoping it could buy him some time—asked, “But why?”
I was murdered by my Korean lover, when his wife discovered us.
But Li Qiang wasn’t listening too closely to her, trying to figure out any possible escape route. Before he could turn and run, she began repeating the song, the trance returned, and he walked on. Then he saw her, standing naked in the middle of a bridge. He could see her mouth moving in time with her lyrics, but they remained in his head instead of escaping her mouth, until he was three metres away from her.
“Wha— What do you want from me?” Li Qiang asked, when she had finished her song and taken hold of both his lower arms. He had to look up at her, as she had about fifteen centimetres on him. “What else, I mean?”
“Do you not wish to make love to me?” she asked with sultry eyes.
He was too fearful about what that would mean for him now, so he slowly shook his head.
Then you die sooner. Her words penetrated the deepest recesses of his mind in a painful manner he’d never felt with her words previously. It was enough of a distraction that she was then able to drag him over the edge of the bridge, where she dived into the river. As the pain receded in his head, he saw her legs morph into a tail. All too late did he discover the truth.
Seoul was destroyed by a vengeful, genocidal mermaid.
* * *
About Dominica Malcolm
Dominica Malcolm is the author of Adrift, a speculative fiction novel that follows pirate Jaclyn Rousseau in the 17th and 21st centuries. As with her novel, her writing tends towards pirates and/or mermaids, though she also writes dystopias. Look her up on Goodreads to find other anthologies she’s been published in.
Though born in Western Australia, Dominica holds citizenship in both Australia and the USA, and currently lives in Malaysia with her husband and two childr
en. She travels a lot, having been to over 30 countries in 6 continents around the world, which inspires some of her writing. She has a Bachelor of Science in Internet Computing, and a Graduate Diploma in Media Production. Checking out her web site (http://dominica.malcolm.id.au) will lead you to music videos and short films she’s worked on, as well as sample stand-up comedy, artwork, and writing.
Amok: An Anthology of Asia-Pacific Speculative Fiction Page 23
