George Bush’S Great America [EN]: Chapter 194

< Episode 193 >

“Artis. O-Our hometown…! Our house where three generations lived!”

“Shut up! Ivo! I know!”

Ivo sobbed, watching the scenery of Riga burning over Artis’s shoulder. Artis suppressed his reddening eyes and pulled Ivo, who kept falling behind. Artis was sad too, but Ivo especially had more reason to be.

Ivo had never been on a proper trip like everyone else. His workplace was only a 5-minute walk from his house, and he was even born in a hospital in Riga. To Ivo, traveling was ‘going outside the house’ itself.

So Ivo was leaving Riga and walking on a road he had only heard rumors about: a low-quality concrete paved road made during the communist era that had completely disappeared from people’s minds. Now, he was taking one step, two steps on a paved road that was more green than gray. It was a road that was no different from ruins, where the feeling of concrete dust crumbling came up through the soles of his shoes. It wasn’t thick, but there was quite a bit of ‘fog’, giving it the feeling of going on an adventure.

“Smoke…”

It was smoke. Black smoke was rising into the sky from the direction of Riga.

“Shit! Shit!”

Decades of memories, months of struggle, were turning into a fleeting dream and rising into the sky. It had only been a little less than half a year since the incident occurred and the government closed Riga, but that half a year felt as long as a lifetime spent in Riga. The only thing longer than that was Artis’s heavy steps.

With each step away from Riga, his steps became heavier, as if Riga’s resentment was pulling on his shoulder.

‘No, is it just my imagination that my steps are getting heavier?’

They were exhausted both mentally and physically. Both Ivo and Artis had been risking their lives in the concrete jungle of Riga every single day. Therefore, the expression ‘exhausted’ suited these two well.

Every meal consisted of canned relief goods and rainwater obtained from the Union or the militia, and when the money to pay the militia ran out, they had to become looters. At first, they felt a pang of conscience, but it quickly faded in the face of desperate survival, and after that, they at least didn’t starve.

“But, but I haven’t even buried Nils yet.”

Originally, it was a team of three close friends. Artis was fearless and could boldly charge, the coward Ivo couldn’t move well but had a good head, and Nils couldn’t do anything else but was ghostly good at handling a shotgun.

The reason why the trio became two was just the day before yesterday. On Christmas, Riga was completely destroyed, and everyone desperately tried to escape or fight back. The first thing everyone, including the trio, chose was to escape. Everyone fled to the gate, to the river, to get out of Riga.

The controlled gate was not such a good idea, to say the least. The confrontation between those trying to escape and those trying to stop them continued even when the fire was right in front of their noses. The plastic PET [Polyethylene terephthalate] bottle gas masks made for quarantine melted and stuck to the skin, and many people trying to escape suffocated from the smoke without even properly resisting the fire.

Aircrafts were diligently pouring water from the sky to a limited extent, but that was all. It was seriously insufficient. So, people decided to fight the fire by scooping up the river water of Riga in every possible way.

However, putting out a fire with only buckets without proper equipment was virtually impossible. By the time it spread near the river, everyone gave up and started running away in every possible way to find their own way to survive.

Among them, the trio escaped Riga through a disused sewer. But before that, trying to make a big score became poison, and they were rather defeated. All the looters were defeated by the cruel ‘archer’ that everyone knew.

They thought they could handle arrows, but who would have known there would be a bow that shoots bullets. Anyone who was hit by an arrow died instantly or became a body that could not be saved in this harsh environment. Nils was the same.

He was hit in the stomach, and his organs were shattered by the bullet. If it were just a bullet, it would have been embedded or passed through, but the arrow was also covered in all sorts of filth. Nils, judging that he could not be saved, sacrificed himself to drag the archer while the two could escape.

“That archer bastard!”

The thought alone made him shudder. He wanted to go back and kill him right away, but he couldn’t. It was a life Nils had made for them. If Nils couldn’t handle it, neither could Artis. Ivo even more so.

Nils had clearly said at the end, ‘A divine punishment for living by stealing from others.’ He’d rather believe that. Artis, repeating that, gripped the shotgun in his hand so hard that it was sweaty. It was the only memento Nils had left, but Artis didn’t think of it as a memento. The true memento he left was the existence of Artis and Ivo themselves.

Artis habitually pulled the stiff bolt back and then forward again. His mind was so uneasy. He couldn’t help but feel like he was being chased. That’s right, it’s not just feeling, he was being chased.

“Damn it. Something’s unsettling. I just don’t know what it is.”

Artis felt it intuitively, while Ivo realized it rationally. Ivo was a bit slow in action, but his quick wits were among the top ten in Riga.

“It’s strange. Why are these traces left behind?”

Footprints were easily left on the dusty road. Not hiking boots, but clearly the marks of military boots. Marks of something heavy being dragged. There were also bullets or carbon arrows. At first, he thought it was the traces of a hunter passing by, but as he went on, he became convinced that these were relatively recent traces, and traces of humans being hunted.

“Especially this part is strange! Why are ‘intact things’ scattered around!”

Until now, he thought someone had dropped them while doing good deeds, but that wasn’t it. At least, several people wouldn’t drop wallets full of money. At least someone should have picked them up.

“Damn it. How unlucky!”

Artis, who was leading the way, kicked the wallet away. The wallet made a firm sound and fell somewhere in the forest.

“Artis! Be careful! That wallet is a trap!”

Ivo was horrified, but Artis stomped on the spot where the wallet had been as if he was angry. The sound of innocent grass being torn was heard.

“No! There’s no trap! That’s why it’s annoying! I don’t know what the purpose is!”

“No, there is a trap. Right there! Coming to that spot itself is a trap!”

Ivo hurriedly added what he had realized, but it was already too late. It was the moment Ivo opened his mouth. Artis screamed and fell on the spot. A black arrow made of carbon was piercing Artis’s chest exactly.

“Uwaaaagh!”

“Yes! Coming to that spot was enough!”

Someone revealed himself from the foggy forest.

“I was nervous about the gun, even for me. But that’s the end.”

Arturs Levits. The best archer in Riga. At the same time, he was the ‘object of fear’ for all looters. In the militia, he was the symbol of twisted order. In the Union, he was a nightmare. Such a man was now moving to completely finish off the trio that had been reduced to two!

By the time Ivo realized what he was doing, he was already running away. He was running away at a speed that even surprised himself, but even in the midst of that, his quick wits were not dulled, so he went into the forest and ran between the trees as much as possible to create blind spots.

‘No matter how mysterious his archery skills are, he can’t shoot where he can’t see! Right?’

“Any looter must be judged. Like that aunt who tried to kill her neighbor for a pickle! Of course, no one in the government, or even the world, can know what happened in Riga!”

Levits pulled the arrow from Artis’s chest. Artis, who was still breathing, resisted with determination, grabbing Levits’s arm with his hand, but with his weak strength, he couldn’t stop it. The last legacy Artis left was a red handprint.

“Therefore, the ‘law’ cannot judge! Then I will judge!”

The arrow that was pulled out was put back into the quiver.

“What? I’ll be judged too? I know that much! Gordon!”

This time it was a doll made of socks. It was a sock doll made by putting newspaper in a sock and shaping it, and the face was drawn with blood.

“More than that, he’s running away! I have to chase him!”

Levits kicked off the ground and ran. Unlike Ivo, who left clear footprints even though he was wearing sneakers, he left very shallow footprints even though he was wearing military boots. His momentum was similar to that of a nimble feline creature.

And sometimes footprints are erased by ‘bigger footprints’. Ivo’s footprints disappeared overlapping with Levits’s military boots.

At the same time, at the White House, the Chief of Staff finally found the report and opened his mouth.

“Riga is said to be recovering. …According to the media.”

“Then what is it actually like?”

He showed a thick report. It was a report that had not yet been properly organized, and there was too much unnecessary information because it was forcibly brought. It was written by agents who had infiltrated Riga, and it contained who was killing whom and who was leading the group.

“We have not yet properly controlled Riga. Latvia has an extremely small military. Even if we want to temporarily increase the size, it is burdensome to gather a large force anywhere because of the virus. Quarantine must continue to be carried out.”

“Then does that mean the Latvian government has achieved nothing?”

“That’s not true. They have always chosen the best within their means. Their capabilities were insufficient. The biggest problem is that Latvia, where public power is relatively weaker than China, benchmarked China, but that was the problem.”

In fact, if it had been normal, there would have been no such extreme closure of a city. China showed an effective rate of blocking infectious diseases with this method, so they just benchmarked it. In fact, until about 500 years ago, this method was prevalent when infectious diseases occurred.

“Other than that, everything is working properly. The fluctuating Latvian economy is now fine. And it is true that the outskirts and the center of the city are slowly being restored. At this rate, it will be called the ‘Miracle of Riga’ by future generations. The slogan put forward by the Emergency Recovery Headquarters is as follows: ‘Born again from the ashes.’ It’s like a phoenix.”

“This speed…. Russia intervened?”

“That’s right. They are lending under the name of loans from the former communist bloc, but in fact, it is close to no interest. Latvia may soon be absorbed into Russia.”

“What we have to do is prevent that from happening.”