Chapter 121: Escape
Chapter 121: Escape
#
"Why is this bastard suddenly acting so suspicious?"
"W-well, it's..."
Slap, slap, riiip.
The man stammered.
I could practically see him scheming, so I slapped him across the face several times in succession.
Blood burst from his lips and stained his clothes.
"Hey. Hey."
"Hheuk... Yes. Cough, cough."
"Stop scheming and tell me everything you know."
"Yes, yes. I'll talk. Heuk... I'll tell you!"
I seized his collar and shook him violently, urging him to hurry.
Assuming the pursuit had already begun, we had no time to waste.
"The message said our squad had been defeated, so the pursuit team will contain at least ten people. Once the paper airplane reaches them, assembling the team and deploying should take around forty minutes. As for how they'll track you..."
According to him, the paper airplane had arrived safely and the pursuit was already underway.
They knew my appearance precisely and would likely mobilize several reconnaissance-type ability users.
Most importantly, they possessed an ability capable of tracking this man's location.
"It's the truth. Please spare me. If I run in the opposite direction, I can confuse the pursuit team."
"Oh? That's an excellent idea."
I left him in the room and went into the living room with Eun-ah.
We needed to leave immediately.
I didn't know what reconnaissance abilities they possessed, but encountering them or allowing them to draw too close would be dangerous.
"Mister..."
"It looks like we'll have to keep moving no matter what... You're exhausted, aren't you?"
"I'm okay..."
"Wait here for just a moment, all right? I think I need to deal with that bastard before we leave."
"That's okay too... I'll come with you."
The method he'd proposed sounded plausible.
The problem was that I couldn't trust him.
We had no idea how his paper-airplane ability could be used beyond simple message delivery.
I couldn't shake the fear that keeping him alive might actually help them track us.
When we returned to the room, Eun-ah approached him first.
She wrapped tape repeatedly around his eyes and mouth.
Riiip, riiip.
"Mmmp, mmp-mmp-mmp!"
I aimed at the head of the pitifully struggling man and swung my baseball bat.
Whuum—thwack.
Without ceremony, we killed him and left the room.
I couldn't tell what Eun-ah was thinking.
She couldn't even look toward the underwear hanging to dry, yet she calmly watched the brutal sight of a man being killed.
Perhaps none of us—people who could silently commit murder and then search the corpse—were sane anymore.
#
Before leaving, I decided to overhaul the handcart.
First, I smashed the house's wooden table and removed its legs.
Then I laid the flat tabletop across the bed of the cart and secured it.
When Eun-ah fused it in place with her ability, the bond was far stronger than expected.
"Done? How does it look?"
"It came out well."
On the bottom layer, I lined up the water containers so their tops sat at the same height.
After securing them firmly, I placed the duffel bags on top.
I laid the duffel bags flat, stacked them two layers high, and bound them tightly with the restraint rope.
Crrrack.
Then I broke apart one of the dining chairs and removed its backrest.
Eun-ah fused the backrest to the upper frame of the handcart, which had originally reached my solar plexus.
The extended frame now reached my chin.
"Sit."
Hop.
"..."
Apparently, it was too high for Eun-ah.
After one pathetic little hop, she looked up at me.
She appeared slightly embarrassed.
"Pardon me."
I lifted her onto the cart, and she settled atop the duffel bags.
Eun-ah was astonishingly light.
It wasn't merely that my strength made weight difficult to judge; I doubted she even weighed forty kilograms.
"Bear with the discomfort for a while."
"Yes... Strap me in, please."
I wrapped rope around Eun-ah's waist, then crossed it over her chest in an X.
It served as a makeshift seat belt.
The breasts hidden beneath her loose raincoat suddenly bulged outward, making their presence impossible to ignore.
I forced my gaze away from her chest and placed her backpack on her lap.
"Don't worry too much. Whatever happens, I won't let you get hurt."
"I'm not worried."
I had modified the handcart so I could run along National Route 6.
Eun-ah was fast for her size, but still far slower than I was at a sprint.
On top of that, her stamina was already near its limit.
I needed to keep running at high speed to shake the Ark's pursuit team, which was why I'd devised this method.
"Don't push yourself. If it becomes too much, you can simply pass out."
"Okay."
Eun-ah gripped the handcart with one hand.
She intended to Enchant the cart while I ran.
'I hope the cart holds together...'
Carrying that concern with me, I left the house.
Now it was time to run.
At first, I ran at a modest pace.
The arrangement required a certain technique, so adapting took some time.
Kwaaarrgh—
Whuum—thwack.
A zombie charging from directly ahead collapsed.
I veered slightly and passed around its corpse.
Since reaching National Route 6 by a side road, I'd come this far without stopping.
Zombies had charged at me eight times in total.
If they came from the side or behind, I simply ignored them.
After all, I was faster.
The problem was zombies lunging from directly ahead or from very close by, as one had just done.
I had to grip the center of the handcart with one hand and keep running while maintaining its balance.
The cart had two wheels mounted side by side.
If I applied force incorrectly, the load shifted forward and sent the cart pitching into the ground.
Supporting the cart's weight with one hand wasn't difficult.
The challenge was swinging my baseball bat or throwing a stone with the other.
Every attack shifted my center of gravity and made the cart wobble.
Even a slight stagger threatened to topple the heavily loaded cart, so building speed had been difficult at first.
After practicing the movements several times, I learned the trick and was now maintaining a respectable speed.
"You okay?"
"Yes. No problems."
She could still speak while Enchanting.
The minor, unavoidable jostling from the ride didn't interfere either.
As long as she didn't consciously decide to move and perform a deliberate action, the Enchantment's progress continued rising.
"Are they actually pursuing us?"
"I don't know..."
I glanced at the small hand mirror hanging from the cart's handle.
Not a single human figure was visible.
It was the same hand mirror that had made such a racket when I first met Eun-ah.
It had cracked when it struck the asphalt, but her ability repaired it without leaving any trace of the damage.
I was now making excellent use of it as a rearview mirror.
'A hand mirror... Why does this feel familiar?'
As my memories gradually returned, certain objects began giving me a sense of familiarity.
The baseball bat, the map, a pen, the hand mirror, and several others.
The other objects were things I might naturally have used, but the hand mirror was harder to explain.
'I was never someone who spent much time looking in mirrors...'
#
Night fell quickly as I ran.
Once again, there was little moonlight, and darkness swallowed the world.
I slowed as my visible range shrank.
The important question was when and where we would stop to rest.
"Eun-ah. Still okay?"
"Bathroom..."
"Okay."
I surveyed the surroundings while running.
A railway line had paralleled the road on our left for some time.
Derailed train cars lay toppled here and there. They looked like subway cars, though I couldn't identify the line.
One overturned subway car was packed with zombies.
'Whoa... If I'd been trapped in there on the first day, I couldn't have done anything.'
I knew those trains had emergency-release mechanisms, but apparently no one had managed to escape.
As I continued along while checking our surroundings, the Han River suddenly came into view.
"What the... Why is the Han River here?"
"Over there..."
Eun-ah was pointing toward a riverside park along the Han River.
She apparently meant that a park like that should have public restrooms.
[Men's Restroom]
"Seriously... Do I truly have to go inside with you?"
"Yes..."
We entered the park and quickly found the restroom.
After confirming there were no zombies inside, I told her to go alone, but she refused.
Instead, she pushed me into the men's restroom and followed me inside.
Squeak—clack.
Shhhhhhhh.
'Does this woman have no sense of embarrassment...?'
Eun-ah entered a toilet stall, and the sound of her urinating soon reached me.
My own bladder felt ready to burst, so I hurriedly relieved myself as well.
'So that's what it sounds like when a woman pees...'
Somehow, it sounded different from a man urinating.
Perhaps the pressure was stronger.
More importantly, I had the feeling I'd heard a sound like this before.
Clack.
"Uh... Wait a second."
Hearing the stall door unlock, I hurriedly shook the last drops from my dick.
A memory had been on the verge of surfacing, but the thought snapped.
"Done. You can come out now."
Eun-ah emerged without comment and briskly walked to the sink.
She turned the tap to wash her hands, but naturally, no water came out.
Seeing her make a mistake she normally wouldn't, I realized the situation had flustered her too.
'That's exactly why you didn't need to insist on coming in together...'
We left the restroom as nonchalantly as possible, pretending there was nothing awkward about the situation.
An occasional lone zombie emerged in the park.
After smashing a few skulls and walking farther, we reached a parking lot.
[Namyangju Hangang Riverside Park - Hana Futsal Lounge]
"Whoa... How am I still in Namyangju? Is the city really this big?"
The unexpected appearance of the Han River made it even more obvious.
I must have taken the wrong route somewhere.
Beyond the sign, we found an artificial-turf futsal field.
A parking area ran along one side of the narrow road, while the futsal field and a three-story building stood on the other.
"What should we do? Shall we rest here for a while?"
"Yes..."
"All right. Let's inspect that building first."
We entered the building and switched on the flashlight.
Shrouded in darkness, the building felt deeply eerie.
Clang. Clang.
As I moved through the building, I struck various surfaces with my baseball bat.
If anything moved, it would be a person, a zombie, or a ghost.
I remained ready to swing at any moment, but Eun-ah was clinging far too closely to me.
"Back up a little."
"..."
Only then did she retreat a single step.
The hand gripping my shirt, though, stayed exactly where it was.
She also insisted on bringing the handcart, so we awkwardly completed the interior search.
Every floor had restrooms and shower rooms, while a somewhat larger room on the second floor contained a ping-pong table.
"Maybe no one was here on the day of the outbreak. It's completely quiet."
"Yes... Mister."
"Yeah?"
"I'm hungry."
The third floor contained two rooms. One was a storage closet, so we entered the other, which resembled an office.
When Eun-ah said she was hungry, I opened two packages of combat rations.
"The Han River is behind us, so they can't approach from that direction. We should only need to watch the road from here, right?"
"Yes..."
"Let's eat and rest. You need to sleep."
"But if the pursuit team comes..."
"Then we fight. Honestly, though, they'll have trouble traveling in the middle of the night too."
The bastards had a permanent base.
I suspected that mounting an expedition this far from it would already be difficult for them.
We hadn't been moving slowly, so they might even have abandoned the pursuit.
"Mister..."
"Yeah?"
"May I take this off?"
Eun-ah held the hood of her raincoat as she asked.
She'd finally decided to remove it.
"Of course. Make yourself comfortable."
"I'm scared you'll hate it, Mister."
"Why? Because of your face?"
"Yes..."
Was she horribly ugly or something?
Maybe she had a huge scar, or something like that.
Whatever it was, I honestly didn't care.
If that was why she'd stubbornly kept the raincoat on all this time, she'd been suffering for nothing.
"I won't be surprised even if an alien pops out."
"Okay... thank you."
Eun-ah slowly began to take off the raincoat.