Chapter 8: Incheon Airport

Lin Jie looked at the clothing on the edge of the fountain. All of it was kind of expected, so it was easy to figure out their outfits to blend into Korea.

Lin Jie turned to Alex’s pile and picked out three outfits to give him.

“Alex, wear this. It will hide the build. Men here have muscle but can hide it under their baggy clothing. That or this.” Alex looked at the three outfits in front of him. “You should also find a better bag. We can’t be carrying around these huge military bags. If you can find one that is black, has a lot of pockets, and is big enough for your stuff, then use that and ditch this.”

Lin Jie gave him three outfits and two different shoes. One was a beige Fear of God button up that was long enough to be tucked into the pants and some black sweatpants, and Jordan shoes. Another was a Supreme black hoodie, black jeans, and combat boots. The last was a work out outfit of sorts. It was a tank top with another gray Fila sweatshirt he could wear over it, some cargo pants, and the same shoes when needed.

“Okay, definitely the second.” Alex pointed to the second pile of clothing. He put everything else into a bag that he picked up from the Supreme store. “I’ll go change.”

“The first is for blending in if we ever have to go somewhere like Itaewon, Hongdae, or Seoul. Don’t go too far, though. We have no idea who or what is here and what is not.”

“I will. Don’t die either. We need to find answers and then reverse them.” The others nodded and watched Alex walk off making sure there was no movement excluding his.

“Me next!” Dylan said hauling all of his shit over. He had this huge smile of excitement plastered on his face. “Check out all of the expensive stuff I found!”

“You do know that that stuff is losing value if the entire world is like this, right?” Lin Jie commented with a raised eyebrow.

“Okay, what do we have here. . .” Lin Jie pulled at the huge pile of clothing and found a couple of things.

One was a very nice button up, but it looked way too stuck up. “Here, keep this unbuttoned and put on a t-shirt under it.” It was a black, long sleeve, plaid, button up from Dior. Lin Jie gave him a beige t-shirt under it. There were some black pants and Prada combat shoes. Lin Jie sighed looking at the pile. These boys were really taking advantage of these stores.

“There’s number one.” She pulled out another regular outfit. There was a Gucci jean jacket, a half black half gray sweater, a black scarf, and gray jeans with some Yeezys. “That’s number two. This one should be worn the same way when Alex wears the button up outfit.” Dylan nodded in understanding. “Choose any of these to wear now and they should work. Also, go tell Alex to take a shower if he hasn’t already. We’re covered head to toe in dirt.”

Dylan stood there in amazement at her work. “Wow. . .these are actually really good. I love this one on the right.” Lin Jie chuckled knowing that they had no clue that it was the same type style from an old drama, but just a little more high end, called Itaewon Class.

Dylan pulled out a new bag that he found that could fit his laptop, all of the necessities, and the other outfits he could use. “I’ll go get Alex.” Lin Jie nodded.

Something didn’t feel completely right right now. The world was too silent, so it was odd to hear these three talking.

“Me last!” Wynter threw down about 30 different shirts, pants, skirts, jackets, jewelry, and accessories each. Lin Jie was brought out of her daze to see Wynter smiling at her expectantly. She felt a sweat drop as you knew he was willing to keep all of that.

“Um. . .let me take a minute to put everything together. Dylan and Alex. Go see if there’s any good left over. I think it’s been a few months since this has happened, right?” Dylan left Alex and went back to take a shower and change.

“Two and a half most likely, but yes.” Alex mentioned. He took his bag and left to the food court just down the hallway to check for anything that could be considered food.

“Put the clothing on and take a workout type normal is fine and two or three more outfits like this before you leave! Aka, go find more clothing like this! We’re going to need at least some changes here and there!”

“Yeah yeah!” Alex waved over his shoulder as he rounded the corner. “I’ll make sure to come back with enough of one or the other.”

“So, could you please make one where I could look cute cute too?” Wynter asked kind of squirming under Lin Jie’s gaze. Some people were still weirded out by cute looking boys, but right now, it couldn’t be a high priority.

“Of course, just know that you will need some long coat just in case we need to run or something like that.” Wynter jumped for joy and hugged Lin Jie tightly.

“Thank you thank you thank you! 1980s Hungary was so putrid back then!” Lin Jie quickly pulled out three outfits and smirked.

“Take this one for anything blending in for getting everyone to turn to you, this one for functionality, and this one for blending in cuteness.” The first one was a light gray sweatshirt, dark gray jeans, and a red Supreme beanie with proper prescription glasses for him. “I can tell that your vision has become a little bad, so these should work until we can find contacts for you.” Wynter thanked her immensely and ran off.

Lin Jie got two more outfits prepared and put them on top of his black, Gucci, duffle bag that could become a backpack if needed. The second was a maroon cropped sweatshirt, a black Gucci beret, and Gucci capris pants with some Prada black boots. The last look had half a black plaid skirt attached to it through a belt, white pants, and a Louis Vuitton t-shirt with a denim jacket.

By the time Lin Jie finished with the outfits, Dylan and Wynter had come back. “Anything like this will work. Don’t go too crazy. These will be fine for now, so pack these inside the bag. I need to go change myself.” Dylan left to go find Alex as Wynter continued packing.

Lin Jie quickly looked over to one portion of the fountain’s rim and grabbed three outfits. One had black jeans, a pure black button up from Prada, and a dark red tank top under it with some doc martens. The other was some light blue shorts that had zippers above the knees so that it could become cargo pants, a black t-shirt, a red plaid button up, and a Gucci denim jacket with some Fila tennis shoes. The last was one that she would have to wear if they came to Hongdae. It was a beige jacket from Burberry, the same black t-shirt, acid bleached jeans, and the boots.

“We have brought sustenance!” Dylan screamed, holding up two capsules in his hand smiling. “We actually found something that wasn’t spoiled.”

“Somehow.” Alex mumbled as he had the capsule show the inventory. “We found a lot of frozen foods that could sustain in this freezer, and we found some non perishables, and a couple of pieces of meat, but we might be going vegetarian very soon unless we find meat that isn’t rancid.”

“Everyone, go eat for now. We have no idea when our next opportunity will come.” Lin Jie grabbed her backpack and threw everyone else theirs. “Get to the kitchens. We’ll heat up most of this and take the portable stoves if we need them.” Alex opened the capsule and a lot of food came out of it.

“Eat.” He gave everyone something that would sustain them long enough. “We need to leave here soon.”

“Everyone, put something on to blend in with but functional. And dear god please let there be someone in Itaewon. I’m getting tired of seeing no one here besides us test rats.” Lin Jie brushed a hand through her hair and pulled it back getting it out of the way. “I-We need answers.”

“W-w-we aren’t test-t rats.” Everyone turned to see Wynter looking a little scared at speaking up. He was the youngest and this was not a fairytale land with rainbows and unicorns. This was real life. “We are still h-humans ar-aren’t we?” Wynter kept checking around his body trying to see if there was anything inhuman about him. It was crawling at him knowing just how much of a test rat they had become.

Lin Jie came over and put her hands on his shoulders giving them a light squeeze. “Oh no, sweetheart, we’re okay. I’m just saying that I hope my friend is still in Itaewon when we stayed here before the quarantine got worse here. There is someone here who can probably give us answers. He lives in Itaewon, so we need to check.”

“Okay, well hopefully we can get some more intel on what the hell happened here.” Alex pulled his backpack onto his shoulders and motioned for everyone to follow.

“Um, Alex, the way to Itaewon is that way.” Lin Jie pointed towards the left of the airport with a raised eyebrow. Lin Jie started to walk in the proper direction and led everyone out of the building and into the real world.

“I wish we could just go into the Pods and see what happened right before we left.” Alex mumbled angrily. “This would end a lot faster if we could just ignore all of this shit.”

“We’d be waiting for you for 5 months at least. That’s not happening.” Dylan said, rolling his eyes. He fixed his backpack on his back. “If we let you go into the Pods now, we’d basically be leading the enemy to us. They take too much power. It would put a tracker on our heads, and we’d be like sitting ducks for those five months. We need to find a safe place to do this experiment.”

“Do we even know who the enemy is?” Wynter raised his arms, raising his shoulders in a shrug. “W-What if we’re the. . .enemy?”

Dylan turned around and looked at Wynter’s wide eyes. “And what if we aren’t?”

“Come on, let’s just eat this and hope there’s a way to either get to Itaewon or out of this country and maybe to Japan or America. We need to find out how and where this all started.” They all nodded and continued to eat the sandwiches that were made in an abandoned Subway as they walked through the empty streets in Incheon.

“Okay, Dylan, is there any news related to what’s going on on the outside?” Alex asked as we broke into an electronics store down the street.

“Best as I can see the whole world got attacked by the virus again and this time it killed almost everyone, at least, that’s what it says this is. A company under the name Edin said they had created a cure and most people believed them with their little testing experiments they had. It was a fake because they killed almost all of the population within the month. This was in July. We were still in the Pods while this happened. This means that Edin is something we need to look out for. Well, they claimed to have killed them. It was probably a combo of that, economy, environment problems, etc.”

“I’ve got some stuff here, Dylan.” Alex came from the doorway and brought a projection of the news. “It says this disease started in America.”

“Okay, never going back unless absolutely necessary. Is there any place with a high population that didn’t believe that bullshit?” Alex scrolled through the news articles and still didn’t find much.

“Not a shocker there, and no I don’t think there is unless we look at our generation. Gen Z has been feared for what they did, but they were most likely killed off.” Lin Jie mumbled. “America didn’t do well during the first pandemic, but no one did well in it anyway.” Lin Jie walked out of the shop and looked towards the skyscrapers in the distance. “We need to get to the main cities. That’s where we will most likely see the most people and get the best intel.”

“Well, you’re right there is one close by and it is Itaewon, but even there, it’s only about 1200 people compared to the 120,000 that should be there. What happened to the population?”

“Well, we have to try something. Let’s arm up.” Everyone found different shops to break and grab weapons of sorts and a lot of ammo. Lin Jie took a couple of handhelds and was stuffing amo into a capsule as Dylan grabbed a few devices and Wynter grabbed a dagger and a glock. Alex took a rifle and a few .45s and shoved them into the pockets he had.

Lin Jie looked over after she finished packing seeing Wynter trembling as he tried to attach the glock to his belt. She sighed and took the glock from him. “Don’t force yourself to take something you’re not comfortable with.”

“I need something for protection.”

“Yeah protection only. You don’t need to be on the offensive.” Lin Jie gave Wynter sais. “These could help you a bit more, but I think the best weapon for you is your brain. You don’t need to be on the attack physically if you don’t feel it’s right.”

After everyone found something they could use, they stood outside looking at the route it would take them to get to Itaewon. “Okay, either we walk or find a car that was left here.” Alex suggested.

“Okay, if they did get rid of all of the population, they couldn’t have had all of the bodies decompose fast enough and that’s a lot of people to bury.”

“Cremation Dylan!”

“Oh yeah. Ew. So wait, we’re stepping IN THE REMAINS OF PEOPLE?! Ew, that could explain why there was so much dirt and gray sand everywhere.” Dylan jumped a couple of feet in the air trying not to step on the ground.

“No, they’re probably somewhere. Besides, we don't’ know the full spectrum of what happened here, so calm down.” Dylan sighed looking ready to either faint or puke. He quickly ran out into a bookstore where he saw a trash can and just let go.

“Okay, let’s hope we can either find someone alive or something and not have another thing like that happen.” Alex sighed. Lin Jie gripped his shoulder tightly and shook her head.

“This isn’t a good time, Alex. Let it go. Some aren’t trained soldiers, so give it a rest.”

“You’re really going to test me?”

“As your superior, yes I can test you. Look, you ranked 3rd and I ranked 2nd in the Power Division. We are both qualified, but don’t start trying to be all high and mighty. We are equal, so don’t start that when someone can’t handle what you can. Have I made myself clear?” Everyone stood stock still as they watched the flames of anger flare between the two.

“Yes.” He mumbled as he looked away from Lin Jie.

“Good. Then we’ll be going through Seoul so maybe someone will be there. Let’s make it there without any more hiccups.”

Wynter walked out of the store and found some motorbikes set at the broken charging station. They were half electric. “Lin Jie! There’s some bikes out here!” Wynter excitedly jumped up and down looking around for some set of keys..

“Well, that will do. Is Dylan okay?”

Lin Jie turned around, but she was greeted with a “Blech!!!!” coming from in front of her. “I’m okay.”

“Soon.” Wynter giggled as he went over to help Dylan with some water.

“So, I found some that run on fuel but do we have enough for four people or should we double up?” Wynter held the keys out to Lin Jie and Alex. “We could find a place to stash these, but we could be running low on capsules if we use more.”

“Double up. It will be easier like that rather than find the fuel for four. Get the fuel from the capsules hopefully I took enough. If not, we can probably find some in the planes left at the airport.” Lin Jie popped out one of the capsules and counted the fuel tanks.

“We have 15 tanks. Wow how in the world did you find this much?” Wynter asked, surprised. His eyes were wide as he took a few to fuel the bikes.

“Well, most of them are half to a quarter full only and we didn’t have time to transfer all of the fuel so let’s hope for the best.” Lin Jie quickly got all of the tanks and fueled up the bikes that somehow still worked. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

Wynter came over and looked at the skyscrapers as something caught his eye, but he tried to overlook that.

“Are we riding these?” Alex asked, hauling a little pale but better looking Dylan.

“Yeah, double up, and get some bags for him if needed. When we get into Seoul, we can go raid a pharmacy for a restock on medical equipment, and try to figure out what the hell is happening here.”

Alex got Dylan onto one of the bikes, glaring at Lin Jie. “Who is this person that we’re trying to find anyway?”

“An old frenemy. I have no idea if he’s still there, but we need answers.” Everyone quickly mounted the bikes and drove off to Itaewon.