I finished the pork belly and lifted the cover over the sink.
*Huh?*
The plate I'd used for the sausages earlier was spotless. It gleamed like it had just come out of a dishwasher.
I'd already sensed that this camper van didn't operate by any logic I understood, but it kept showing me things beyond even my imagination. The fuel situation alone had been strange from the start.
I cleared the table and moved to the driver's seat. Time to check what was going on outside.
*Oh — the radio!*
I looked over the dashboard. It wasn't too different from a regular vehicle, just stripped down to the basics. A speedometer, a fuel gauge, a few indicator lights I couldn't identify. But no audio system. Not even a basic AM radio.
I didn't care how little Grandpa needed one — this was too much. A vehicle with no radio at all.
I'd been hoping to catch some news, but no luck. I shifted my attention to the world outside the storage room.
*Okay. Time to head out.*
I decided to move carefully, one step at a time. Inside this absurdly well-stocked camper van, there was nothing to rush. Every move from here on out had to be deliberate. I only had one life.
At my last job I'd driven a five-ton box truck. A small bus this size was no problem. I took a slow, deep breath, pressed the brake, and turned the ignition.
I wasn't expecting the rattling chug of a diesel engine, but I barely felt the vehicle start at all. It was like powering on a large appliance. The sound was close to what an electric car makes when it rolls past you.
*Figured it wasn't just a regular bus.*
I eased down on the accelerator. I had no feel for how this thing moved yet, so I kept it slow.
Fortunately, the creature had left the repair shop door open, so the camper van rolled out without any trouble.
It moved forward almost silently. The only sound was the low, heavy roll of tires on the ground.
As the van crept outside, the headlights gradually revealed the yard.
*Looks like nothing's—*
I thought it looked about the same as when I'd gone into the repair shop. I was wrong.
The front gate was gone — no idea where it had flown off to. The flimsy wall had crumbled into a pile of rubble along the roadside. There was no longer any boundary between the yard and the street.
But this didn't look like the work of those massive fireballs. More likely the swarms of creatures I'd seen earlier had passed through and done this on their way.
*Another piece of this place, gone.*
I stopped the van in the yard and looked around. The right-side lights were on, giving me a clear view of the yard and the house.
Every window was shattered. The front door and window frames were warped and caved in. I didn't need to go inside to know what it looked like in there. But the old wooden platform out front was somehow completely untouched, exactly as it had always been.
*Too grimy even for monsters, I guess.*
To the left of the van was a low wall and the road I'd walked in on. I remembered passing streetlights and a few scattered houses on the way here. Now there wasn't a single light anywhere.
I flipped on the left-side lights. The dark country road appeared in all its bleak, unsettling detail. This area had always been sparsely populated, but even in the middle of all this chaos, not a person in sight.
Far in the distance, I thought I could make out something red flickering. I switched the lights off — the brightness nearby was washing out whatever was out there.
The town center was on fire.
My heart, which had finally started to settle, slammed back into a hard, fast rhythm. I'd expected something like this. But seeing it with my own eyes made it real.
It was definitely burning. Too far to make out clearly, but I could see smoke rising steadily above a bright, orange glow. Different from that strange luminous light earlier. This was human civilization burning.
Then a distant boom rolled in from that direction. A sound I recognized from movies.
So that smoke — that was people fighting the creatures.
*What do I do.*
Would going there actually help anyone?
What if I showed up trying to help and got shot?
And even if this camper van was invisible to the creatures — could it hold up against conventional human weapons? What would happen if a bomb went off nearby, or a missile came in, or bullets started flying?
I had no idea.
Same went for the creatures. Just because they couldn't see the van didn't mean it was immune to their attacks. The creature earlier had only reached its grotesque hand — or front leg, whatever it was — through the open door. It had never actually touched the van itself.
There was still so much I needed to figure out. For my own survival. And maybe, eventually, for someone else's.
*Be careful.*
But staying at this old farmhouse wasn't going to teach me anything either.
Frustrated, I opened the van door and stepped outside for a moment. I listened. Nothing.
I slowly leaned my head out. Cold air rushed into my lungs and I felt a brief, clean clarity. I looked around the yard.
It was quiet out here. Not even birds.
I stepped fully outside and walked around the van. It was perfectly visible to me — I could see right through the windows into the cozy interior.
*Can only I see it?*
The creatures clearly couldn't. But I still didn't know about other living things on Earth.
I turned my gaze to the old, broken house.
Memories started surfacing, one by one. Falling down and crying. Grilling pork belly with Grandpa. Roasting sausages over a bonfire… Oh, right — didn't we have a dog for a while?
I couldn't remember what had happened to it. Maybe I was just too young.
Then, from somewhere near the house, a sound.
I scrambled back into the van and pulled the door shut. I stared hard at where the noise had come from.
As the shape moved into the light, it slowly came into view.
*Is that… is that a—*
A dog.
Not the same breed as the one I'd played with as a kid, but a small dog. It had heard me and come to investigate.
The dog didn't seem to see the van. It had followed the sound of a person, and now it looked confused — no one there.
I opened the door again and stepped back into the yard. The moment it saw me, the little white dog bolted over and threw itself into my arms.
*Oh god.*
A mutt — no clear breed, just a country dog. Its fur, which might have once been white, smelled like it hadn't seen a bath in weeks. There was a collar, so it had belonged to someone.
I looked down the road. No one.
This dog acted like it hadn't seen a human being in a long time. It was beside itself with relief.
"You hungry?"
I tried to carry it into the van. But —
*Wait—*
My body passed through the door. The dog didn't. It dropped straight to the ground, and for a split second I felt a strange, firm resistance against my arms — a force I'd never felt before.
*This van only lets me in? I thought it just blocked the monsters.*
I called to the dog from inside. It trotted up to the entrance, then stopped — like it had hit an invisible wall. It couldn't get through.
The dog didn't understand what was happening. Like a fly that keeps throwing itself at a windowpane.
I opened the fridge, pulled out a sausage, scored it with a knife, and put it in the microwave. Then I grabbed a water bottle and poured some into a bowl.
*Ding.*
I carried the warm sausage and water outside. The dog smelled it before I even set it down and came charging over.
It was gone in seconds. The dog looked up at me and kept nudging at my legs — still hungry.
I crouched down for a moment and looked at its face.
"Would've been nice if you could stay in the van with me."
But there were too many unknowns right now. Too many things that could go wrong. The more variables I had to manage, the more likely I'd lose control of something.
I needed to simplify. Even simpler than my already simple life. Right now, survival was the only thing on the list.
Out here, this dog was in serious danger. But so were all the other living things on this planet. I was just the one who happened to have a slight edge — for now. How long that would last, or how any of this would unfold, I still had no idea.
I went back into the van, grilled some pork belly, heated up a pack of instant rice, and arranged it all on a big plate in a way the dog could eat easily. Then I set it down on the wooden platform in the yard.
"This is the best I can do."
I climbed back into the van and sat on the bench seat, watching through the door.
The dog took one bite, then looked up at me. Those eyes said it already understood. That this was just how it was. That it was grateful for even this much.
Then it lowered its head toward the pork belly —
And disappeared.
"What — what the—!"
I rushed to the window and scanned every corner of the yard. The dog was gone.
Then I noticed something. A shape I didn't recognize. Long legs. Several of them, black.
I leaned my head out the van door and looked up.
The dog was floating high in the air. No — something was holding it in its mouth.
The dark shape towered above the utility poles. Eight long legs, at least. A small head. Like a massive spider.
The giant spider was carrying the dog in its jaws, moving past the van toward the town center.
"What… what is that…"
My body locked up. What could I possibly do against something that size?
This was fear. Fear of something unknown. Fear of something enormous.
I stood there and watched the creature grow smaller in the distance, the dog's fate unknown, and I couldn't do a single thing.
My hands and legs were shaking. I clenched my fists and looked back at the yard.
The food sat there, barely touched.
The dog had only gotten one bite. Then it had looked up at me — just looked at me — and then it was gone.
I stood there for a while, staring at that ownerless meal.
I'd known it for maybe ten minutes. But something surged up from somewhere in my chest. And a single tear fell from my eye.
*Ah… why do I feel like this.*
A little while ago, when I'd dealt with that smaller creature, I'd felt something close to confidence. Now all I felt was a crushing, hollow helplessness.
*How am I supposed to deal with things like that on my own?*
Anger rose up too. But I didn't know who to be angry at.
I sat there, holding both the rage and the helplessness at once, unable to do anything, staring at the meal that no longer had anyone to eat it.