Chapter 4

7-3-D

The gray sedan rammed the front gate barrier.

The arm snapped and went flying. The sedan didn't stop. It shot across the parking lot straight toward Building B, bumper scraping the asphalt and throwing sparks.

Behind it, one Three-Eyed Hound.

"...It's the manager."

Boram said it. No one answered.

Mansik's phone rang. Oh Byeongcheol, Center Manager on the screen. Mansik didn't pick up. He set the phone on the table and let it ring.

The buzzing stopped. Then Jeongwoo's phone rang.

Jeongwoo answered.

"Jeongwoo! Jeongwoo, it's me! Open up! The door!"

"Manager, where are you headed right now?"

"How should I know?! Anywhere! This damn mutt won't stop chasing me! And I'm out of gas! The light's on!"

The manager's voice was about half an octave higher than usual. His head-office video call voice.

Jeongwoo covered the mic with his hand.

"Hyung."

"No reason to let him in."

Mansik didn't even look out the window.

"Ran off alone, that one. And meanwhile Kim..."

Mansik cut himself off. Didn't say any more.

Boram and Rajiv both looked at Jeongwoo.

Jeongwoo took his hand away.

"Manager. One question. Do you have the key to the emergency generator room?"

"What? The generator? Is that what matters right now?"

"Do you have it?"

"...Of course I do! Only the center manager has that! It's head office policy!"

Jeongwoo glanced at Boram. She turned her phone around. A breaking-news ticker. Power outages spreading across parts of the capital region. No timeline for restoration.

"I'll let you in."

Mansik turned his head.

"Without the generator, the refrigerated zone spoils in two days. Eggs, milk, meat. Lose that and a third of our food is gone."

Mansik looked at Jeongwoo for a long moment, then let out a short breath through his nose.

"...For the key. Not for him."

"Yeah. For the key."

On the other end of the line, the manager was yelling.

"Jeongwoo! Save me and I'll put in your conversion to permanent! I mean it!"

"Head office does that."

"I'll write you a recommendation!"

"...Just come to the emergency exit at the end of Building B. Exit 4. Green sign."

The problem was the dog.

There was no way to let only the manager in. Open the exit and the dog follows. Two seconds for a person to get through a door. The dog was right behind those two seconds.

An hour ago, at Dock 5, he'd seen it for himself: boxes of instant rice hadn't even slowed a dog down. If he couldn't shut the door in time, the only thing that would stop one was weight.

"Let them in. Both of them."

"What?!"

Boram nearly screamed it.

Jeongwoo spread the floor plan on the floor. Exit 4 sat at the end of the Rack 7 aisle in Building B. Come in through that door and you were in Aisle 7. Three meters wide, fifty meters long. Dead straight.

"The manager runs straight down Aisle 7, and the dog follows. We drop it on top of them."

"Drop what?"

"7-3-D."

When Jeongwoo said the rack number, Mansik's eyebrows moved. Mansik got it.

Rack 7, Bay 3. Four levels high. Level A was the floor, D was the top. Four and a half meters up. That slot held replenishment stock. Two-liter water, one pallet. One ton.

"The instant rice boxes failed earlier because they were light. This is a ton. And four and a half meters up."

"But boss, they'll come down one at a time. Like the water before. One bundle at a time."

Jeongwoo shook his head.

"Boram, does a forklift move water one bundle at a time?"

"...No. By the pallet."

"Exactly."

Nobody unloads the top level of a rack one item at a time. You bring it down by the pallet. The basic unit of logistics was the pallet. Most of the location changes Jeongwoo had called over the radio for seven years had been pallet moves.

He didn't know if it would work. He'd never tried.

"Rack'll come down."

For the first time, Mansik said more than a few words.

"Drop a ton from four and a half meters and it's not just the floor that shakes. The rack shakes. Pallets in the next bays start pouring off, and the manager ends up under them."

"Rack 7 is anchor-bolted. Sixteen bolts into the floor. I checked every one during last year's safety inspection."

"Why'd you check."

"The inspection company just signed without looking."

Mansik looked at Jeongwoo for a second. Then nodded once.

"Next bays?"

"7-2-D is empty. 7-4-D is cereal. It won't hurt anyone if it falls."

Boram raised her hand.

"Boss, I checked the dog's weight. With [Analyze]. Ninety kilos."

"Then that's plenty."

The manager was shouting through the phone again. The sedan was looping wide around the lot. The dog stayed glued to it, tireless.

"Jeongwoo! Not yet?! The gas light's blinking!"

"One more lap."

"One more?!"

"Drive slow. Save gas."

"Hyung, take the exit. Once the manager's in and the dog's in, shut it right away. So nothing else gets in."

"And if the dog turns around and comes for me."

"I won't let it turn around."

Mansik gave Jeongwoo one doubtful look, then walked toward the exit.

Jeongwoo stood at the far end of Aisle 7. Fifty meters ahead, Exit 4. Up and to his right, 7-3-D. A shrink-wrapped pallet of water sat neatly on the top level.

Boram hid behind a Rack 8 upright, behind Jeongwoo. Rajiv stood at the break-room door holding a fire extinguisher. Even he didn't know why an extinguisher.

Jeongwoo spoke into the phone.

"Manager, once you're in, follow the yellow line straight ahead. Aisle 7. Don't stop."

"Where's Aisle 7?!"

"...It's right in front of you when you come in. Just go straight."

In seven years, the manager had almost never come down to Building B.

Brakes screeched outside. The sedan slid to a stop in front of the exit. A door opening. Dress shoes.

"Now!"

Mansik cut the zip tie and shoved the door open.

Center Manager Oh Byeongcheol tumbled in. One leg of his suit pants was torn. His tie was flung back over his shoulder. He staggered like he was about to fall, saw the yellow line, and ran.

One second later, a gray mass poured in through the gap.

The Three-Eyed Hound. Bigger up close. Its claws skidded on the concrete with a shriek. It righted itself in one motion and went after the manager.

Bang. Mansik slammed the exit shut.

Between the manager and the dog: three meters. Two.

Jeongwoo counted. Bay 1. Bay 2.

The manager passed under Bay 3.

One meter between them. Drop it now and it hits the manager.

Half a beat.

"7-3-D, one pallet of water. Location change, 7-3 floor. Full pallet."

【Unit load request confirmed.】

The pallet slid off the rack.

One shrink-wrapped ton fell four and a half meters. It took less than a second.

The pallet's corner clipped the heel of the manager's dress shoe and tore it clean off.

And the dog was under the pallet.

Boom.

The floor shook. The whole rack swayed. The shrink wrap burst and water sprayed everywhere. A single gray leg stuck out from under the pallet, twitched once, twice, and went still.

The aisle went quiet.

The manager was on his knees two meters in front of Jeongwoo, gasping. One shoe had no heel.

【Three-Eyed Hound (F) defeated.】

Jeongwoo looked at the window. At the pallet. At his own hands. They were shaking. This time he didn't put them in his pocket.

Boram peeked out from behind the Rack 8 upright.

"Boss. You just... the whole pallet... in one piece..."

"It worked."

"That's not an 'it worked'—!"

"Boram. Volume."

Boram shut her mouth, then couldn't hold it in and said quietly:

"...Pallet-unit stacking. I have to put this in the guide."

Water ran down the aisle. Four hundred eighty bottles on a pallet. About half had burst.

The manager got up. His knees were soaked. He looked down at the pallet, down at the leg under the pallet, then at Jeongwoo.

And opened his mouth.

"So... who's handling the damage report on this?"

"..."

"What's the inventory loss on a pallet of water? I'll have to file an incident report with head office. Jeongwoo, who authorized this?"

Rajiv lowered the fire extinguisher. Quietly, very politely, he said:

"Center Manager. In Korea there is proverb like this. You pull a man from the water, and he asks where is his bag."

"...That one's actually right."

Jeongwoo said.

"It is right? Good. I am glad."

The manager's face went red, and he looked around. Mansik stood by the exit, arms folded. He said nothing. The silence flew straight at the manager.

The manager cleared his throat.

"...Right. It's an emergency. The report can wait. I'll handle it."

"Manager. The generator room key."

"Ah, right. The key."

The manager dug through his pants pockets. Right. Left. Inside jacket pocket. Back pocket.

His hands kept slowing down.

"...Manager."

"Hold on. Just hold on a second."

"Where'd you put it?"

The manager slowly turned his head. Toward Exit 4. Toward what was beyond it: the gray sedan, sitting in front of the door with the engine running.

"It's on the same ring... as the car key."

"..."

"I left it in the ignition."

At that moment, the fluorescent lights on the ceiling began to go out, one row at a time.

Starting from the inbound docks, then the rack zone, the outbound dock, the break room.

In the end, only the green emergency lights were left.

Somewhere in the dark, the refrigerated zone's compressor let out one last low hum, and stopped.

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