Chapter 10: Farming
Chapter 10: Farming
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Urp.
When I cleared the zombie corpses blocking the entrance, I couldn't help but dry-heave.
The middle-aged female zombie and the teenage zombie were badly mangled.
The middle-aged man zombie and the young woman zombie, on the other hand, were relatively intact.
I guessed those two had turned first and attacked the others.
People who suddenly turned into zombies.
People who were bitten and infected by the turned zombies.
And then there were Seon-yeong and me, both of us with a Status Window and some kind of ability.
I didn't know the cause, but the world had changed as a result.
A world where a single bite was the end.
"Team Leader, I'm going to use the bathroom for a moment."
We went down the stairs together and opened the bathroom door.
We'd already checked it once, but even so, I didn't let my guard down when I opened it this time.
I couldn't forget Schneider's cat.
Luckily, I opened the door without incident and we were able to use the bathroom.
Hrrp, hurk, blech.
After a bout of retching and the sound of running water, Seon-yeong came out.
I'd been forcing myself to hold it in, but it looked like Seon-yeong couldn't.
"Let me take care of business too, and I'll be right out."
I took care of business, wiped off the blood spatters as best I could, and then we entered the drum academy.
Once I'd checked every room and confirmed there were no zombies left, the tension finally eased.
Being this tense all the time couldn't be good.
It was draining my stamina too fast.
"Aren't these bags pretty good?"
Seon-yeong came over carrying four bags from a cabinet in the corner.
Two rectangular bags and two round ones.
They had shoulder straps and appeared to be designed for carrying drum equipment.
"Nice. The plastic shopping bags from the convenience store were so loud and crinkly, and it was a pain keeping everything in our pockets."
Seeing the bags made me think of an inventory system from a game.
Wondering if that kind of ability had shown up, I started listing off different words.
"Inventory, bag, storage, stash, I, subspace, open sesame?"
"Heh heh... I tried all sorts of things too, but nothing worked. But what was 'I'?"
"Oh, the letter I. The inventory hotkey in games is usually I. Honestly... I don't know if there's another method or if that ability simply doesn't exist. It'd be nice if someone ran a tutorial for us."
I'd been mumbling to myself quietly, watching Seon-yeong crouched in front of the cabinet, but apparently she heard me.
Seeing her laugh softly was a bit of a relief.
When she'd finished the big fight with the zombies, her face had gone completely pale, and I'd been worried.
"Besides the bags, there doesn't seem to be anything else worth salvaging. Think we could use these sticks as weapons?"
"Their reach is pretty short, so maybe not ideal... but let's grab them for now."
We packed the energy bars, water, and towels from my pockets into the bags along with the sticks and got ready to head back out.
I slung the rectangular bag across my body and secured the round one snugly like a backpack.
Then we left the building.
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Once we were outside, the roads were as chaotic as ever.
The corpses still lay where they had fallen.
I was worried about decomposition.
There was no one to remove them; if they were just left there like that, it seemed like walking the streets would become a struggle even without zombies.
'I would worry about that later. For now, I needed to focus on crossing the road.'
The situation was no different on the road beside the apartment complex.
Worse yet, the road we'd crossed yesterday was two lanes, but this one was four lanes.
It looked like we'd need to be even more cautious before crossing.
We hid behind a bus stop on one side of the road and quietly scanned the surroundings.
The cars with heavy window tint made me a little uneasy, since I couldn't see inside them well.
The silent road made me wonder whether anyone else was still alive in the world.
Was everyone hiding somewhere?
'Time to go.'
I exchanged a hand signal with Seon-yeong, and we rose from our spot.
As I headed for the crosswalk at the three-way intersection, I felt a tug on my collar from behind.
I turned around, and Seon-yeong was pointing at the road right in front of us.
'Oh, right. No need to use the crosswalk anymore, was there?'
There was no traffic anymore, so why bother?
Ignoring the red light, we crossed by the most open route possible.
"Team Leader, there are people on the second and fourth floor balconies watching us."
As we approached the commercial building of the apartment complex, I spotted people on the balconies of Building 301 next to us.
They must have been watching us cross the road.
It had been just a day, but it felt like seeing another person for the first time in a long while, and I was glad.
They could have turned into zombies, but seeing them wave their hands at us, they were surely human.
I waved back and then we entered the commercial building.
"I don't think they were waving hello. I think they're telling us not to go in here."
I looked up at the person on the second floor, who was still waving both arms frantically.
Did that mean this building was dangerous?
I gave them a small nod, then inspected the commercial building entrance again.
"There must be a zombie inside. Let's stay calm and check carefully."
Having taken out a bunch of zombies in the drum academy, I figured we could handle this.
Seon-yeong had used her Shield only once, so she still had plenty left. As long as zombies didn't pour out in a horde, we should be fine.
"I'd really rather we didn't push it too much."
"Of course. If there are too many, we'll simply retreat."
I reassured the uneasy Seon-yeong, and we entered the building.
The corridor lights were on and bright, so we could see the interior clearly.
Straight ahead I could see the stairs. To the left of the stairs were a real estate office and a convenience store.
On the right were a bathroom sign and a nail art shop.
When I looked through the glass windows, inside was completely empty.
"It's a bit of a mess, but it's clean, isn't it?"
"Right. For a place the lady on the second floor was warning us about, there's not a single bloodstain."
Feeling a bit off, I went inside and searched carefully, but I didn't see the slightest trace of a zombie.
The bathroom was locked, so I pressed my ear to the door and listened, but it was quiet.
The clean first floor interior of the building felt chilly, as if the temperature was lower than outside.
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From the signs outside, I knew the second floor had a hair salon and a fitness center.
We went up the stairs and carefully checked the hallway around the corner.
In the second-floor corridor, I could see bloodstains here and there.
The fitness center had opaque colored paper stuck to the glass windows so I couldn't see inside, but the hair salon was visible through its clear glass windows.
Inside the salon were two zombies that looked like employees in aprons.
I hurriedly crouched beneath the opaque section of the window and waited.
Relieved by the silence, I considered how to see inside the places blocked from view.
We'd been lucky this time. If the zombies had seen me, I would have been in danger.
I looked back at Seon-yeong, who was tense and frozen, and held up two fingers, pointing at the salon.
Seon-yeong ducked down and came closer.
She quietly pulled out her phone, opened the camera app, and handed it to me.
'Oh, now that's an idea.'
I crawled to the door, extended the phone camera past the edge, and watched the zombies moving slightly on the screen.
Seon-yeong pressed close to my side to peer at the phone screen with me.
At that distance, I caught a pleasant scent from Seon-yeong.
'How come we both got splattered with blood, rained on, and sweated, but she smelled completely different?'
Seon-yeong and I sat side-by-side like that and waited for a moment.
Before long, both employee zombies turned away and faced deeper into the salon.
This was the moment we'd been waiting for.
I turned my head to signal her, and Seon-yeong happened to look at me at the same time.
We were so close that both of us held our breath for a moment before rising together in silence.
Thwack. Thwack.
We crept up behind the zombies and swung our bats at almost the same instant.
A perfect ambush.
After silently taking out the two zombies, we closed the door and relaxed our tense muscles for a moment.
"The fitness center is the problem. How many do you think are in there?"
"We can check it from the door, so let's take a short break and then go. Anyway, that was a great idea, Seon-yeong. Using the phone camera."
"Oh, I remembered a movie scene where they used a mirror to check ahead. You know, Saving Private Ryan? With bullets flying everywhere, someone stuck a small mirror to a knife with chewing gum to look at the enemy position."
If I could find one, I should grab a hand mirror to carry around, too.
Unless I broke it, it seemed like it'd be useful.
Since we were in a hair salon anyway, I looked for a mirror, but none were small enough to carry around.
I searched diligently, but there was nothing else worth taking.
"Team Leader, I'm going to take a hair dryer, some gowns, and a few dye capes. The capes might be waterproof. Since zombie blood keeps splashing on our clothes, we could alter them slightly and wear them over our clothes."
I hadn't thought there was anything to take.
Seon-yeong really had good ideas.
After finishing up our scavenging of the salon, we headed for the fitness center.
Again, I used the camera app to scope out the inside first.
I could see a shoe rack and a reception counter.
Further inside, there was one more closed sliding door.
'The shoes on the rack—one, two, three, four... just how many are there?'
I didn't see any zombies, so we went in to check. There were eight pairs of shoes laid out.
Seon-yeong, who'd been counting the shoes with me, looked at me and shook her head.
It meant this place was a no-go.
There might not be exactly eight zombies inside.
But there was no safe way to open the sliding door and check.
We decided not to push our luck and quietly withdrew.
'This was easier than I'd thought.'
Only the rooftop remained.
I wondered if there would really be anything on the rooftop worth taking.
I'd really wanted to find spare clothes, so I was disappointed that we had not found any.
It would be nice if we could change clothes, even just for sleeping.
'Still, you never know.'
The rooftop door could be locked like yesterday, but since we'd come this far, it seemed best to check.
I turned around to tell Seon-yeong that we should check the rooftop too.
We were in the corridor leading from the fitness center to the stairs.
When I turned, Seon-yeong, who was following right behind me, bumped her face into my chest.
Yikes, she must have hit her nose. That had to hurt.
Right as I had that thought, I heard a little yelp, and Seon-yeong lost her grip on the baseball bat.
Clunk, rattle-rattle.
Bump, bump, bump.
The bat rolled to the stairs and clattered all the way down.
Grwaaarrr!
Zombie howls immediately echoed down from the top of the stairwell.
Seon-yeong stared at me, her face drained white with shock.
A crisis could strike in an instant.