Tears a Hunter Cannot Shed
"Kyaaagh!"
But the Corrupted paid no mind to the police sirens and charged. A Corrupted never lived long anyway. Whether the police intervened or not was a problem for the vampires and hunters who would go on living in this world afterward — not for the Corrupted.
"You rotten bastard! Do you even have a brain left?"
Song Deok-yeon felt his head spin as rage surged up through him. Coming out aggressive the moment he heard the sirens meant he intended to use the pressure of the police. If he could show that kind of calculation, that much reason still remained.
"You son of a bitch! I'm putting you in the ground!"
Song Deok-yeon dodged the Corrupted's attack and threw himself toward the SM5 sedan behind him. The Corrupted slammed its head into the SM5.
"Don't get worked up! It's not this way!"
Se-geon shouted in a half-strangled voice; he was in no position to scream at the top of his lungs. The police seemed to have been dispatched toward Silvester's side. But whether Song Deok-yeon heard him or not, he was so possessed by rage that he simply unloaded the shotgun.
Bang. Bang. Bang!
Blood fountained from the Corrupted's torso as it lifted its head from the crumpled SM5. Startled, the Corrupted clamped its jaws on the front bumper and heaved, lifting the whole chassis. The blaring theft alarm cut off as the car flipped over forward with a crash.
"Kak!"
But then Se-geon's Tokarev spat fire. The distance between the Corrupted just raising its head and Se-geon was about fifty meters — a stretch hard to hit cleanly with a Tokarev — yet Se-geon's senses, sharpened by Psychedelic Moon, had grown terrifyingly acute. Despite the range, the bullet struck the Corrupted's left eye dead-on and tore through the face.
Se-geon hurriedly shoved the Tokarev into his waistband, grabbed the gas pipe Song Deok-yeon had been using, and climbed down.
"You bastard!"
Song Deok-yeon vaulted onto the overturned car and kicked the Corrupted square in the jaw. The heavy combat boot buried itself and shattered the jawbone to pieces. A kick that crushed bone and sheared muscle was powerful enough that even a vampire with supernatural strength would struggle to take it.
"Now that it's come to this, I'll kill you with my own hands!"
Song Deok-yeon roared and raised the shotgun. Just then windows of the surrounding houses opened and people poked their heads out one after another. Gunshots had cracked through the alley and a car alarm had screamed itself to death — who could sleep through that?
But instead of ducking their eyes, Song Deok-yeon bellowed a threat in a voice that shook the street.
"Get your heads back inside!"
Bang!
He fired his pistol into the Corrupted while he threatened the onlookers.
"Eek!"
Heads vanished from the windows all at once. With bullets flying like rain, who would stand at a window and stare? It was only a stopgap; reports would go in soon enough. A vampire could kill the police and run if it got reported, but if Song Deok-yeon killed police the situation would get very serious indeed. He forced down the unease and locked his attention on the Corrupted.
"Kuu..."
The Corrupted's spirit was completely broken; it turned to flee. Startled, Song Deok-yeon raised the shotgun, but the Corrupted sprinted down the alley in a single burst. Though it was a mutant strain of vampire, a Corrupted still possessed superhuman reflexes, and its running speed was beyond anything human legs could match.
Song Deok-yeon immediately slung the shotgun over his shoulder and gave chase.
"Se-geon! Cut it off!"
"Yes!"
Se-geon dropped down into the street at once and looked around. Being a residential neighborhood, there was a motorcycle parked by the curb — a Ninja (Kawasaki) that had once been fashionable and was now thoroughly old. From the number of repaired sections it looked like a machine that had been sold used more than once, but it was still a bike, and a locking bar sat through the handlebars.
Se-geon put a precise Tokarev round through the lock, then cracked the front key slot and pulled the wiring free. It was already a damaged section, so the wires came out easily.
"Damn. This was the last thing I wanted to do."
He muttered as he fired the engine. The old Ninja's exhaust note was nothing special, but once it moved he felt real power under him.
Vroooom!
Se-geon called up the nearby alleys he had marked from the rooftop and took a detour to intercept the Corrupted. Cars were packed into the side streets so tightly a four-wheeler would have struggled, but the bike slipped through nimbly. He threaded the alleys with practiced ease and stopped first at the crossroads.
Grrrrr!
Wherever the Corrupted passed, neighborhood dogs set up a furious barking. Se-geon exhaled, fitted his knuckles, and loaded shells into the shotgun.
"Kyaa!"
Then the Corrupted appeared at the mouth of the alley. Blood poured without pause from the crumbling wreck of its body. Se-geon raised the Tokarev and trained it on the wounded monster. At that moment the Corrupted standing in the dark alley suddenly retched.
"Uweeeek!"
Human bones it had swallowed that night came pouring from its mouth. Ordinary eyes might not have made them out, but to Se-geon on Psychedelic Moon the bone fragments stood out white and sharp.
Bang!
He fired the Tokarev almost convulsively. The light-triggered pistol spat flame.
"Kwek..."
The Corrupted took the round and buried its head in its own vomit. A normal vampire would have died from a silver bullet, but a Corrupted that had gorged on so many humans and vampires was unnervingly tough.
"Huff... huff... huff!"
Song Deok-yeon, who had run the distance in a heavy bulletproof vest, staggered into the alley with ragged breaths. In that interval the Corrupted lifted its head from the mess of bone fragments and half-dissolved flesh.
"So... So..."
Was it calling Song Deok-yeon's name? The Corrupted made a whistling, broken sound as it struggled to shape words.
That alone was enough to stop Song Deok-yeon cold. Midway through raising the shotgun he nearly dropped it in shock.
"J-Jung Captain!"
"So... Soo... I..."
The Corrupted forced the syllables out. Had its mind returned for a moment after vomiting the human flesh?
Se-geon leaned against the bike's handlebars and watched. A Corrupted was like a mayfly — there was no saving it. Just as there was no way to reverse a human who had become a vampire. If such a method existed, Se-geon would have had no reason to kill Yong-jin either. Song Deok-yeon would almost certainly have to kill that Corrupted with his own hands.
"This fucking... this goddamn situation..."
Song Deok-yeon looked at his old friend Jung Jun, now turned into a monster, with wet eyes. The streetlight hanging from the utility pole flickered a few times and went out, plunging the alley into silence. But Song Deok-yeon, still under Psychedelic Moon, could examine Jung Jun clearly even in the dark. Skin had melted away; bone showed where flesh had been stripped. Jung Jun looked up at him with sad eyes while suffering wounds no creature on earth should have been able to endure. Yet it was less a living thing than something that belonged among monsters. It could also have been a projection of a vampire hunter's own future.
"..."
Se-geon, the Corrupted, and Song Deok-yeon stood in a line down the alley. Se-geon nodded once at Song Deok-yeon, then wheeled the bike out of the alley to put it back where he had found it. Stealing other people's things — bikes especially — was not something he liked, and remaining as a witness while Song Deok-yeon killed his friend was not something he wanted either.
"Kuuu..."
The Corrupted was growing confused again. Because Se-geon had stepped aside and opened an escape route?
Clomp. Clomp.
In the narrow alley Song Deok-yeon's combat boots struck the pavement with a heavy, deliberate sound — footfalls that drowned out the distant sirens. Sounds that were also slowly tightening around the Corrupted's throat.
What little reason the Corrupted still had wanted everything to end here, but the dark-red hunger boiling up its esophagus still craved blood. What desire is stronger than starvation? And Song Deok-yeon, tangled in too many feelings at once, had let his tension slip.
If it simply turned and ran, human legs would never catch a Corrupted.
"Kuuuuuu!"
Bang!
In that instant blood and flesh sprayed from the back of Jung Jun's head.
White smoke curled from Song Deok-yeon's shotgun. The Corrupted rolled its remaining right eye toward him, then toppled forward. With a heavy thud it hit the ground and did not rise again. No matter how powerful the monster, once the brain had been blown out it could not live and move.
"..."
Song Deok-yeon wordlessly, mechanically raised the blood collector and drove it into the Corrupted's skull. What little brain fluid remained after the shattered cranium was pushed into the collector. The bounty was placed on a Corrupted's brain fluid because once the brain was sucked out, even a vampire could not survive. So Song Deok-yeon planted the collector in the head of his old friend the vampire — no, the Corrupted — with an expressionless face.
"It seems vampires aren't the only ones who can't shed tears."
Song Deok-yeon muttered in a dry voice. Grayish-white, translucent brain fluid mixed with blood as it filled the plastic bag.
"Is it over?"
Silvester drove the nearly totaled Pride into the alley, somehow having shaken the police, and met Se-geon. Se-geon had roughly parked the Ninja by the curb and opened his mouth.
"That's Song Deok-yeon's business to finish. By the way — the vampires? Don't tell me you took care of that many?"
But Silvester, as if there was nothing more worth asking about the Corrupted, spun a circularly cut piece of the Pride's roof on his fingertip like a tray and answered.
"The police found the bodies. It's a headache, but it can't be helped. Come daylight the corpses will have vanished... and whatever comes after that is for the vampire clans that put up the bounties to handle, isn't it? There's that convenient little phenomenon. Spontaneous human combustion."
"..."
Se-geon looked back without a word. Police cars were nosing into the alley, probably after reports from the residential block. With cars packed into the narrow lane and the Corrupted having overturned one already, the cruisers would not get far easily. Even so, they had no time to spare. If the road was blocked the police would naturally think of coming around another way.
And who looked more suspicious right now than Se-geon, Song Deok-yeon, and Silvester? The Pride Silvester was driving had become an open-top, and the back seat was piled with the assault rifles the vampires had been using. Between the blades, the vests, and the guns, the cleanest way to avoid a mess was to leave fast.
"Want a few?"
Silvester boldly held up a rifle on the main road where sirens were howling and asked.
"I'd be grateful."
To Se-geon, who had been fretting over inferior firepower, nothing could have been more welcome. But was Song Deok-yeon really all right? No sooner had the worry formed than Song Deok-yeon walked out of the alley holding a plastic bag.
"It used to be my car, but... this is really bad."
"Get in. Quick."
Se-geon climbed onto the rifles in the back seat and urged him. Sitting on blood-soaked guns was not comfortable, but with police possibly closing in there was no room to be picky.
"Well, don't worry. I called that guy knowing it'd come to this."
Song Deok-yeon muttered to himself and took out his phone. Silvester produced a PDA from his coat and pulled up a map of Seoul. Police checkpoints were set, in principle, where cars naturally slowed — T-intersections, road mouths, and the like. Their only option was to leave the car somewhere that could dodge the net and lay low until things cooled.
"Ah — he's nearby, luckily."
Song Deok-yeon closed the phone and reported to Silvester. Se-geon looked at him and asked.
"Did you really finish him?"
"What, is there a way to fake the kill and still suck out the brain fluid? A hundred million. The guy has no family, so I'll just think of it as inheriting his estate."
Song Deok-yeon muttered with an expressionless face as he drove. When they took a detour around the intersection to keep clear of police eyes, a large refrigerated truck sat parked by the roadside. The trailer doors were open and rails had been laid so a vehicle could drive up; the man standing beside it had his hat pulled low and was blowing bubble gum. When Song Deok-yeon's Pride rolled up onto the truck bed, he approached while still working the gum.
"Hmm. It's really a mess. The fee?"
"Take this and get lost."
Song Deok-yeon handed over a bundle of bills. The man took it, flipped through the stack once, then his eyes lit up at the firearms loaded in the Pride.
"Looks like they all died."
"Huh?"
"No, nothing. I'll take you to the safe house. Get in."
The man tapped the truck door and ran a quick, sharp look over the three of them. Se-geon found that gaze somehow unpleasant, but in this situation even paid help was welcome enough that he could not afford to suspect him. When Silvester, Se-geon, and Song Deok-yeon climbed into the freezer compartment, the man grinned, shut the rear doors, climbed into the cab, and started the engine.
Once inside the refrigerated truck, Song Deok-yeon went and sat in a corner against the wall. Frost clung to every surface, as if the freezer had been running when they loaded. He leaned into the cold metal and took out a syringe.
"Ah — hey!"
Se-geon tried to stop him from injecting the drug when it was not even necessary. But Silvester cut him off.
"Don't stick your nose where it doesn't belong, kid!"
"B-but..."
Song Deok-yeon quietly drove the needle into his body and pushed the drug home. Not a combat dose — pure, uncombined Psychedelic Moon. Once again his vision swayed and his sense of color loosened. Soon the heavy thoughts filling his head were swept away like fallen leaves in rainwater.
"Aaaaaah!"
A sound that was neither scream nor moan clearly enough spilled from Song Deok-yeon's mouth.
"..."
When Se-geon had killed Yong-jin, drawn the vampire blood, and disposed of the body, he had first taken Psychedelic Moon. The present situation was not so different. That even a hunter as worn down as Song Deok-yeon still had to borrow the power of the drug — that was the karma of hunters.
Se-geon could only twist his face and keep silent as he watched Song Deok-yeon sink into the hallucination.