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CHAPTER ONE
I moved to this island to write my first novel, but instead, I’m sitting on the couch in my SpongeBob SquarePants boxers at ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning, watching CNN International and eating dry cereal from the box. I’m scratching my belly, which I’m proud to say has shrunk to an almost imperceptible lump, more of an inflamed liver look than the supersize-extra-value-meal-drive-through look it had when I rolled myself out of the airport last year. CNN has been delivering nonstop, borderline hysterical coverage of the crisis on the Korean peninsula for days now. It feels like it’s been weeks.
The past year had been an endless stream of good news coming from Korea. It was all peace and love; de-escalation, denuclearization, reunification, pacification, and normalization. There’s been so much news and frenetic activity around the nascent peace between the two Koreas that the networks started to ignore it.
Then, as the emerging peace exploded and unraveled one tweet and one diplomatic misstep at a time, it was like watching the grand finale of a Fourth of July fireworks display running in slow motion in ultra-high definition.
My wife’s at work on the other side of the island, God bless her. I try not to think about this as I throw my head back and toss another handful of Banoffee Crunch Monster into my mouth. Breakfast of champions in this strange land, I reckon.
The TV flashes a bright, epileptic splash screen: “BREAKING NEWS,” and the monstrosity soars across my TV with a dramatic swooshing sound. When it finishes its acrobatics performance, the graphic settles into a corner where it spins and flashes with annoying urgency. There’s a woman on the TV now—a CNN anchor with Icelandic features, reporting from Seoul, talking about an evacuation of the greater Seoul metropolitan area. That gets me sitting bolt upright on the couch, my heart rate spiking so suddenly that I can actually hear it. I’ve spilled cereal all over myself and the couch.
CNN shows a Seoul that I’ve never seen before: a Seoul in absolute chaos. They roll drone footage of gridlocked streets, panicked crowds surging along packed sidewalks lined with shattered windows. The sound of the crowd rumbles beneath the anchor’s narration like a runaway train barreling out of humanity’s worst collective nightmare.
I grab my phone and walk to the front sliding door, speed-dialing my wife. She doesn’t answer. I open the messaging app and type, There’s an emergency. I think we should prepare. Get supplies. Maybe a gun.
She doesn’t respond, and the app doesn’t show that she’s read the message. I’m staring at the TV again, the camera showing more gridlocked streets in Seoul. Lines of people leaving the city on foot. What in the fuck could cause them to try to evacuate a city of ten million people? Is it even possible to evacuate that many people? Seems unlikely. At least not without a significant number of injuries. Fatalities, even. Looting. Murder. Chaos.
My phone chimes; it’s my wife, Noi. She tells me to calm down, that everything will be fine. Don’t worry. She says she’ll be home from work tonight. After she hangs up, I stare at the phone. No, I don’t think so. Not if they’re evacuating Seoul. Something terrible is about to happen, and we need to get ready. This could be the beginning of the end, right? That’s what CNN is saying. Then again, that’s the same thing CNN says when there’s a celebrity breakup. Sky’s falling, folks! Again. The apocalypse is the ultimate ratings generator.
If that rusty old wire does finally give way, and the red balloon does go up, at least Thailand wouldn’t be on anyone’s list of targets. We definitely won’t get nuked, but…if this thing escalates into a global confrontation…if Russia and America start playing nuclear grab-ass with their massive arsenals, things could quickly get out of hand. All it takes is one side shoving the other just a little too hard. One miscalculation. One misinterpretation of the other’s posturing.
We should be preparing. I wish we lived closer to her family. Well, fuck it. At least we don’t have any kids yet. Thank God for small mercies. Now I’m cursing myself for not getting a second car. Fucking moped. There’s no way I can outfit us for the apocalypse on a goddamn moped. Who do I know with a truck? Nobody. Damn it.
Turning away from the chaos on CNN, I open the GrabTaxi app on my phone and summon a minivan to take me to the big warehouse store. How bad is it going to be out there right now? Will the store be overrun with panic buyers? Am I planning on panic buying? No. No, I don’t think so. There’s never been a better reason to panic than what CNN is shooting out to the whole world right now.
My phone chimes: the van will be here in ten minutes. Good. It’s an expensive indulgence, but I’ll consider it a blessing if I’m here to pay the credit card charge. The reporter on CNN is talking about the sound of explosions now. The fear in her voice and on her face is unnerving, and it’s apparent that she suddenly wishes she hadn’t taken this assignment.
“My lord! Look at that!” she says, pointing to somewhere behind the camera.
CHAPTER TWO
The camera spins around to catch an orange and red fireball blooming from the side of a disintegrating glass highrise. The entire side of the building slouches off in slow motion and comes to a lazy repose in a pile of twisted rubble. Onyx-black smoke erupts from the mess, and fingers of orange flames appear and disappear like lightning in the smoke. It’s taking on a surreal quality, an otherworldly glow. It’s so real, it looks fake. Could it be fake? Is that possible? My mind is racing.
The Nordic anchor lady is saying, “Seoul is under some sort of attack. It seems to be conventional artillery, Morgan. The crowds are fleeing the streets and seeking shelter inside the buildings. We’re going to continue our broadcast from this location for as long as we can. We may have to seek shelter soon though. The…ah…”
She turns and looks behind her, then back to the camera. “The frequency of the explosions is increasing now. I don’t know if you can hear this in the studio, Morgan. There are—”
The TV lights up all white, like an overexposed negative, and the screen cuts back to a confused-looking CNN anchor at a desk, staring at the camera and holding a finger against his ear-piece.
“We, ah…seem to have lost Diana in Seoul. We’re working to restore our satellite link. We’ll now take you to Jason Resnick, reporting from the press room at the Pentagon.”
I hear a car honk outside and my phone chimes. The minivan. Jesus Christ. Okay. Whatever the fuck just happened on the TV, it’s only made me more anxious to get ready. Was that a nuke? It couldn’t have been a nuke, could it? The camera cuts to another reporter in a suit standing in front of an empty podium with the Pentagon logo on the wall behind it. Reassuring royal blue curtains hang behind the logo. The scene projects order, strength, and continuity.
The reporter says, “Yes, thank you, ah, Morgan. We’re here at the Pentagon, where a press conference was scheduled to start,” he glances at his watch, “thirty seconds ago, but nobody has appeared to deliver that briefing yet. We’re just standing here waiting, and the information that we’re getting is spotty. I can tell you that multiple anonymous sources have confirmed that hostilities have erupted between North and South Korea.”
I’m squinting at the TV. It feels like the house is sitting on a gigantic turntable, and has just started slowly rotating. Another honk comes from outside, longer this time. An irritated, hey-buddy-I-ain’t-got-all-day kind of honk. I look outside; a minivan idles in front of the house. I grab my phone and keys, leave the TV on and lock the door as I leave.
CHAPTER THREE
I jump into the passenger seat of the van. The driver wears a broad, warm smile. He’s got a grip of Buddhist amulets hanging from his rearview mirror. The dashboard is a thick forest of little monk statues and Buddha figurines. The van reeks of lemongrass and cigarette smoke.
The driver gives me a quick wai and says, “Where go, boss?”
I squint at him. “Makro. Fast. Go fast, and I’ll give you a big tip.”
He nods and jerks the van into first gear. We lurch forward with a jolt that sends his dangling menagerie of Buddhas and monks jingling and swinging.
He’s listening to Thai country music, all cowbell and electric guitar. Crooning men blathering wistful words about the women who stole their hearts. I should have known better than to tell him to go fast. He’s literally squealing the tires around turns, passing cars as we go around blind corners, narrowly missing tentative pedestrians. Sometimes, it seems like he’s aiming for them.
I want to ask him what Buddha would think of his driving, but instead, I say, “Please slow down!”
He shoots me a curious glance. “You want go fast? You want go slow?”
“Yeah, look, just not too fast, okay? Safety. Drive fast but safe. No need drive dangerous, okay?”
He gives me a look that I’ve seen a million times before from a million Thais, but he does slow a bit. Then I ask him to turn down the music. He does, but slowly. Reluctantly. He doesn’t turn it down much.
“You know what happen? War? Kollea?” I ask him, my Thenglish automatically taking over, the words coming from the reptilian part of my brain. It’s a reflex. I can’t help it anymore.
He glances at me. “Americans allway war. Allway. Bua. Boring. No worry. We in Muang Thai, war not come here. Muang Thai never occupied. Never colonized.”
I’m staring at him, my mouth dropping down a little bit. I’m not sure how to respond to that.
Outside the minivan, it’s just another beautiful day in the neighborhood. Cars drive with their usual degree of recklessness; people cross the road, frogger style. Nobody is running. Nobody is screaming. There’s no mad rush to storm the markets. It just looks like a typical day in Phuket, and I’m baffled. The missiles could be in the air already, dark seedpods racing into outer space to rain down nuclear winter and freeze all the goodness and light from the world in explosions of stupidity over targets on the other side of the planet.
I get out my phone and bring up one of the pirated CNN video streams. I turn it up all the way, but I can’t hear it over the cowbell and electric guitar. I make out two words of the song: jai dam. Black heart. Yeah, I’m thinking. Jai dam is fucking right.
“Look, I can not hear news. Please music off! This im-por-tant! My family maybe trouble back home.”
He gives me a much more apologetic look this time and turns the music off.
“Thanks,” I say.
“You family Kollea?”
“America,” I say.
The CNN feed on my phone is choppy and pixelated. They’re definitely broadcasting video taken by a cell phone. The crawler at the bottom of the screen says it’s live from a reporter named George Sinclair who is twenty-five kilometers northwest of Seoul. The video is wobbly, the hand holding it obviously shaking badly. Still, I can make out flames in the distance. Not flames. It’s more of a glow. There’s a bright red glow on the horizon, and the reporter is saying, “Again, that is Seoul that I’m showing you right now. I don’t know if you can see it, but conventional artillery is streaking across the sky and arcing up and down the entire border in both directions. It’s an astonishing and terrible sight.”
The voice sounds broken. Ashamed, almost.
It’s really happening. Is this really happening? Is this possible? Can they stop it now that it’s started? I don’t think so.
“Khun,” the driver says.
I look up at him, and we’re stopped.
“Oh. We’re here?”
“Kap. You want me wait? One hunled baht I wait for you.”
“You come inside with me. Help me shop? I pay you.”
He looks at me quizzically. “You pay me shop?”
“Yes, I pay you five hundred baht help me shop.”
His eyebrows go up, and a big grin spreads across his face. “Okay, boss! My name Somchai. What you name?” He gives me a very convincing military salute.
Five hundred baht is probably what the ride here and back home would have cost me. At this point, I’d give him ten thousand baht if he asked for it.
The Makro’s parking lot, just like the rest of Phuket, is business as usual. Everything is perfectly normal. The place is much less crowded than it is in the early evening when I’m usually here with my wife.
I grab a cart and Somchai starts walking next to me.
I say, “No. You get a cart too.”
He gives me a deer in the headlights look. I point at my cart, then at him, then at the rack of carts. His eyes light up, he smiles, nods, then jogs over to grab a cart.
My phone is still streaming the pirated CNN feed. They’re showing clips of Incheon International Airport in flames now, clearly visible even in the shaky video they’re playing. Jesus. I start shoveling pounds of canned tuna into the cart as fast as I can. Mercury poisoning, I figure, is going to be the least of our health concerns a few weeks or months from now.
I’ve got half a cart of tuna before I move on to other canned goods. I’ve sent Somchai down another aisle to gather all the dried goods that he can. Huge, twenty-kilo bags of rice. Pasta. Powdered milk. Instant coffee. I’m loading a bundle of shrink-wrapped cans of peas into my cart when I hear the reporter on CNN saying, “Dear God!”
The awe in his voice pulls my eyes to the phone resting in the kid’s seat of my cart.
This isn’t the end of the story
Cover Photo Credit: By D.Alyoshin – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=779369