The Hundred-Million Bounty
But the vehicle waiting in the alley outside the goshiwon was far from satisfactory for Se-geon: a white Pride whose scrap deadline had long since expired. Silvester’s Corvette only had two seats, so they had decided to use Song Deok-yeon’s Pride instead. The Pride itself was just as cramped inside, offering nothing close to a comfortable ride.
“You getting in or what?”
Song Deok-yeon watched Se-geon with complete calm. Se-geon sighed and opened the door. The moment he did, the Japanese sword propped near the entrance tumbled out onto the ground. Se-geon picked it up, climbed in, and asked,
“So how exactly are we tracking him?”
“Dunno. Let’s ask the Finder first. Won’t get anything useful, but we still gotta make back the membership fee.”
Silvester said this as he plugged his PCS into the Pride’s hands-free system. Kim Seong-hui had provided this phone as well, so Se-geon had half-expected something Hello Kitty-themed. Seeing the plain, austere handset left him more than a little disappointed. Silvester flipped it open, dialed, and carefully entered the password once the connection tone sounded. Song Deok-yeon watched him, turned the key, and pulled out onto the main road.
“Yes. Welcome to Vampric Finder, where we link you to the latest intel. Ah, there’s some information currently riding the absolute highest market value. I’m sure you members are interested in a top-priced case like this, aren’t you?”
A man’s voice, half-slurred and thick-tongued, suddenly crackled from the hands-free.
“Wh-what is this?”
“Quiet!”
Silvester snapped, focusing on the transmission. The strange voice continued over the speaker.
“Yes. The Corrupted currently roaming Seoul has been identified as former hunter Jung Jun. Looks like he turned after hunting a vampire of Juk-yo’s bloodline, don’t you think? Take care not to end up like him, everyone. Ah, and you all know there’s a bounty on that Corrupted now, right? Even for a worthless Corrupted, once it reaches this level they must’ve decided our own survival is at risk—so a prize has been posted. Don’t be shocked. The bounty is a full one hundred million won. A fortune no ordinary vampire could match, yes? Send the Corrupted’s brain matter to Yeongdeungpo Post Office PO Box 12, along with your account number, and we’ll pay you one hundred million!”
Song Deok-yeon’s expression hardened as he listened. Se-geon watched that face in the rearview mirror and kept his mouth shut. Silvester, however, kicked the floorboard hard.
“Tch. A vampire posting a bounty for vampire hunters to collect…”
“What?”
“Who do you think put up a bounty of a hundred million?”
Silvester asked back, seething anger carefully banked behind the words. As someone who had fought powerful vampire clans for years, he knew their economic reach intimately. He himself had once trusted funds to a famous foreign bank only to have the account flagged as illegitimate and the entire sum confiscated. Even without citing the example of Row Gibson—no, the Jinma Phantom—it was simply a fact that vampires pulled the strings of global politics and finance.
Living that long and accumulating nothing would have been the strange part. Korea, however, had been an anomaly: almost no vampire clans of note, only the occasional naturally occurring individuals unaffiliated with any clan.
But from the moment the two Jinma, Juk-yo and Chang-woon, had spent their lives on Korean soil, the country had begun turning into a free-for-all battleground for every vampire.
“Still… that this kind of thing even operates. There must be quite a few vampire hunters out there, right?”
Se-geon asked while studying the Finder, which was essentially a pirate broadcast. He knew little about machines beyond changing a phone ringtone, but even he could tell this was no simple setup of a few phones left running. Come to think of it, the gear Vampric dealers used was anything but ordinary, and the cash they moved in a single day was staggering. If a market this large existed, didn’t that mean a matching number of vampire hunters had to exist as well?
It was a world utterly removed from the illegal work Se-geon had known until now.
“Not that many, but where there’s demand, there’s supply.”
Song Deok-yeon answered gruffly. Se-geon had never seen any vampire hunter other than the two men sitting in this Pride with him, so curiosity about the others burned sharp.
Just then the Finder host’s voice turned urgent.
“Ah, another tip just came in. Southern end of Yanghwa Bridge, Hangang Civic Park side—that monster’s shown up again. Plenty of vampires seem to be active nearby as well… but best leave it alone if you can.”
“Damn it!”
Silvester spat a curse and snatched up the phone. Song Deok-yeon immediately swung the car around from the main road and shot onto the opposite lanes.
“Hey! You wanna die?!”
“You crazy?!”
Horns blared along with the shouted abuse, but the three men in the car never so much as blinked.
Song Deok-yeon next saw Jung Jun at the funeral home. The absurd gas-explosion that had collapsed the official residence was ultimately blamed on shoddy construction. But knowing the cause changed nothing. The dead could not return, and monetary compensation held no meaning whatsoever.
No one could share the despair of a man who had lost both wife and son.
Once a life slipped off its central axis, there was rarely any way back.
“What will you do now?”
Song Deok-yeon asked Jung Jun with a worried face after the funeral—held with bone fragments gathered from the site. Song Deok-yeon had been a sergeant, Jung Jun a captain, but Song was older, and after leaving the service they had become friends. An NCO and an officer remaining friends was rare enough that their bond ran especially deep. Perhaps for that reason, Jung Jun—who would have exploded at anyone else’s interference—answered in a remarkably calm voice.
“I don’t know… I’ll leave the military.”
“Think carefully. What happened to your family is terrible, but… right now you should take leave and rest. Making a decision this big so soon—”
“What does ‘big’ even mean at this point?”
Jung Jun exhaled a long, hollow sigh. With nothing precious left, with everything he had carefully protected gone, he had no strength left to worry about his own future. Song Deok-yeon understood that heart all too well, so he simply sat in silence and stared at the columbarium.
In the end, Song Deok-yeon made Jung Jun into a vampire hunter. Fighting powerful vampires required reliable hands, and Jung Jun was exactly that kind of hand.
But Song Deok-yeon and Jung Jun soon had to dissolve the partnership and go their separate ways. Jung Jun kept doing far too many reckless things. Every time, he threw his body toward death without hesitation. That was disqualifying behavior for a partner. The Jung Jun of Special Warfare Command days might have been different, but the man afterward was the worst kind of vampire hunter. In a way, the present catastrophe had been inevitable from the start.
Past Yanghwa Bridge, “it”—the Corrupted, or Jung Jun—was racing through the night park.
Citizens who had already heard of the tragedy at Hangang Civic Park stayed far away; instead, police cars patrolled beyond the vehicle-restricted zone. He, however, showed no fear of being seen by the police.
“KRAAAAH!”
Jung Jun hurled himself in front of a patrol car. The officers inside slammed on the brakes in pure terror.
“Uwaaaagh!”
The police were only human. Who wouldn’t panic at the sight of a monster whose very shape was warped beyond recognition—neither dog nor man?
Flesh and bone melted and dripped like bubbling lava. A snout thrust forward like a dog’s, razor-sharp nails, and shoulders swollen to grotesque size—any human, no matter how brave, would have been paralyzed with fear.
CRACK-KKK!
Those keen nails scored white fractures across the windshield. Hideous shadows fell across the officers’ faces under the sodium lamps.
“Khuk!”
With shaking hands the police rolled up the windows and drew their pistols. Even in this emergency, the cylinders were loaded first with blanks.
BANG!
The blank fired. Naturally neither the glass nor the monster was affected in the slightest.
“Grrrrr…”
Yet Jung Jun turned, dark-crimson saliva dripping from his mouth.
The saliva that struck the cracked windshield formed a bizarre abstract pattern. The terrified officers were just preparing a second round when—
Sssssssss—
Wind stirred. Grass and trees rustled. Mixed into that sound, something was racing closer at high speed.
“Kwoah!”
Jung Jun immediately launched himself off the police car. The suspension rocked; the officer in the driver’s seat, pistol still raised, flinched and ducked while pulling the trigger toward the roof.
BANG!
This time a live round punched a hole through the ceiling. Blood sprayed as the bullet tore through Jung Jun’s torso just as he cleared the roof. A .38 Police Action carried respectable power, and the deceleration from piercing the roof actually increased the stopping force.
“KRAAAAGH!”
Jung Jun screamed, leapt down behind the car, and the moment his feet touched earth he toppled like a wooden post. The lead officer immediately threw the car into reverse.
CRUNCH-KKK!
The car lifted with a violence that made one question whether police tasked with maintaining traffic order should ever do such a thing. The way the chassis rose suggested the rear wheels had just crushed Jung Jun’s body the way one mounts a high speed bump or a curb.
Still grinding him under, the patrol car reversed until it slammed into a “No Entry” sign shaped like a police officer, stalled, and died.
“KRAAAAH!”
But it did not die. Far from it—somehow finding the strength, it seized the rear wheel and rose.
“Uwaaagh!”
The officer gripping the wheel screamed and stomped the accelerator. With the engine dead the wheels did not turn. He twisted the key again while his senior in the passenger seat buried his head between his knees and shrieked.
CRASH-BANG!
Jung Jun flipped the car over as casually as a child tossing a toy. The patrol car hit the ground with a dull thud; the roof, unable to bear the weight, crumpled inward. It did not flatten completely, but the doors were now impossible to open—the vehicle was hopelessly mangled.
“KRAAAA!”
Rage seemed to erase any fear of pursuers; Jung Jun approached the officers trapped inside, intending to “eat.” The men, already injured by the rollover, could offer no resistance against the clear malice—no, the clear hunger—advancing on them. At that moment two men appeared along the river embankment.
Anyone showing themselves at a civic park where a grotesque murder had just occurred was clearly no ordinary civilian.
“My, what an absolute maniac.”
“Even the shitty police of some trash country in the corner of Asia shouldn’t be taken so lightly.”
They muttered as they looked down at Jung Jun. Jung Jun spun around in shock. He had consumed a powerful vampire, but what was eaten did not immediately convert into total VT. A Corrupted was similar to an autoimmune disease. For the moment the swallowed vampire blood supercharged metabolism and regenerative power, yet it was no different from a candle flaring brightest just before it snuffed out.
“Oh? Trying to run, is he?”
“No worry!”
The man who had been standing simply took off—covering more than twenty meters in a single burst—and blocked Jung Jun’s path. Pale-skinned, gray-haired, he raised both hands and slowly brushed his hair back. Nordic features, cold eyes fixed on Jung Jun.
Pik!
The man twisted his body and swung his arms in a rhythmic motion. Something sharp buried itself in Jung Jun with a thin, cutting sound.
“Khwek!”
Jung Jun staggered backward. Transparent, thread-like strands floated in the air, sucking his blood.
“Corrupted blood is worthless.”
The man muttered with a sneer and severed the floating threads. Blood sprayed midair as though tiny tubes had been cut. Astonishingly, small spiders clung to Jung Jun’s body, drinking blood and pumping it out through their abdomens.
Jung Jun writhed in agony and terror, rolling across the ground, but the insects burrowed deep into collapsing flesh and did not die easily from mere thrashing.
“Damn. Looks like he ate quite a lot. This won’t finish him. Echelon?”
“Hm?”
The young skinhead vampire sitting on the riverside guide rail, looking down at the scene, rounded his eyes and answered.
“Mind wrapping this up?”
The spider-user asked the favor, but the skinhead vampire suddenly launched himself to his feet and shouted in urgent alarm.
“No—get clear!”
“What?”
BANG!
A gunshot cracked through the night. The report was too small for ordinary humans to hear, yet loud enough for vampires to catch clearly—meaning the distance was considerable. At that range, even a vampire had no way to dodge a sniper’s bullet.
Unless one was a Jinma-class vampire, how could anyone evade a shot fired from so far that the eye could not even see the shooter?
Blood sprayed from the spider-user’s right shoulder. Vampire hunters who had been lying in wait had opened fire.
“Damn it!”
“These bastards… they were waiting for us!”
Echelon suppressed his fury, closed his eyes, then opened them again. Between blood-red sclera, jet-black pupils swept the surroundings.
“There!”
Echelon pointed across the river—to the far side of Yanghwa Bridge.