Ryugyong Hotel

You drive along the dust-covered fields, your eyes hurt by the dawn's grey light. For all you know, yours is the only functioning car in all of North Korea. At least satellites think so, and it has been months since anybody dared take a look. Too many spies never came back, and the airports have been closed longer than that.

All there is left is gruff, sparse radio contact ("Do not come. You are not welcome."), refused aid, and people walking slowly through the barren landscape, looking as you pass with dead eyes. You put a hand over the bag in the passenger's seat. You have a hunch, but it's not yet time.

Kim Jong-Il is surprisingly easy to find. He's in Pyongyang, of course, but not in any official palace. He's at the Ryugyong Hotel.

It makes more sense than you want to think about.

You'd think he'd be harder to reach. But you just enter the city -yours, again, is the only car- and drive to the black mountain sitting there like a blight. Not running over any of the thin pedestrians is the only thing that slows you down. Not even the guards, who only look at you with uninterested eyes as you leave your car, bag in hand, and enter the echoing building.

Jong-Il is playing pool by himself in one of the tables. He looks thinner than what was suggested by past intel.

"Want to play?", he says in no language in particular. Those are the first spoken words you've heard since entering North Korea.

You open your bag and put on your thermal vision goggles. Jong-Il's heat signature is perfectly normal.

You gasp in surprise. It's not what you expected.

You hear behind a shuffling of feet, and turn around to see the slow, grey outlines of the zombie guards.

"I'm the last one," says the man behind your back. Then something hits you in the back of your head. It's not the first time you've been hit by a pool cue.

But you've never woken up so hungry.

.finis.

Near-compulsory wikipedia link: Ryugyong Hotel