Chapter 12: Farming
Chapter 12: Farming
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My ragged breathing steadied, and Seon-yeong gradually stopped sniffling and calmed down as well.
I wanted to keep resting like this, but decided to get up.
I was conscious of Seon-yeong sitting there uncomfortably, and this was hardly a place where we could relax.
My stomach was still too weak to lie down and rest in a room smeared with blood alongside two corpses giving off a rotting stench.
'Ugh.'
As I straightened up, the pain returned.
I swallowed a groan and stepped outside to assess the situation.
The quiet hallway felt reassuring.
Earlier, the building's interior, cooler than the outdoors, had felt chilling and ominous, but after taking care of all the zombies, my impression had changed.
"Team Leader. Are you okay?"
"Yes. We should get moving now. By the way, I checked my Status Window a moment ago and found a new ability."
"Oh? Really? Give me a second... Status Window."
Seon-yeong scanned her Status Window, then said hers was unchanged, sounding disappointed.
After a brief exchange, we looked around the fitness center to see if anything worth taking was left.
We found women's clothes in several lockers, grabbed a few, and filled up our water bottles at the water purifier.
When we stepped into the corridor, we saw the scattered corpses and the shoes that had fallen down the stairs.
Nothing looked as though it would fit me. When I glanced at Seon-yeong, she shook her head.
"Let's find your bat, then finish checking the rooftop."
Humans were creatures of adaptation, or so they said.
As we passed the horribly ravaged corpses, I felt unexpectedly fine.
At first, they had been so horrifying that I couldn't tear my eyes away, but now I felt surprisingly numb.
I'd never even twisted a chicken's neck before, yet here I was getting used to human corpses first.
At the bottom of the stairs, I spotted Seon-yeong's bat lying where it had fallen.
I retrieved it, then we headed toward the rooftop while listening carefully for any sound.
Honestly, I wasn't expecting much from the rooftop.
Thinking that scavenging this entire commercial building had yielded less than a single convenience store, I signaled to Seon-yeong.
Clank, clank
"It's locked."
We had no choice but to turn back.
"Who's there?"
An unfamiliar woman's voice came from beyond the door.
It was a small voice, slightly hoarse.
We both looked at each other, eyes wide.
"Are you a person?"
The voice came again from beyond the door.
"Yes. There are two of us out here. We've been looking around for supplies."
Seon-yeong looked at me as she leaned close to the door and answered.
After confirming there were no zombies on either side, the woman opened the door.
Squinting against the sunlight streaming in from the bright rooftop, we stepped out slowly.
"Eek!"
The woman gave a short shriek at the sight of me and stumbled backward.
She looked to be in her twenties and was wearing black leggings and a white short-sleeved t-shirt.
Her appearance was clean, so it didn't look like she'd been in a scuffle with zombies.
Seon-yeong, who had come out behind me, slowly approached the trembling woman and spoke.
"Calm down. We look like this because we just fought the zombies downstairs. We're human. It's all right."
Only then did I realize my clothes were completely soaked in blood.
I'd wiped my face, but had put the blood-spattered mask back on, and my hair was stiff with dried blood.
On top of that, I was carrying a baseball bat—or rather, something closer to an item called a Blood-Soaked Club by now.
'Even I'd have been startled.'
"Oh my god... You took care of all those zombies?"
"Yes. Our team leader did. We nearly died too after we made a loud noise by mistake... Oh, but neither of us was bitten, so don't worry."
"Hic... hic... thank goodness. My yoga instructor only told me to run, so I just... hic... came up to the rooftop. But outside, people were attacking each other..."
The woman suddenly burst into tears and rambled incoherently.
Seon-yeong calmly soothed her, and the woman went on to recount everything that had happened, sniffling as she spoke.
It seemed like it would take a while, so I plopped down in the shade and watched the two women talk.
"Here, have some water. It's going to be okay now. There probably aren't any zombies left in the building."
Seon-yeong had already switched to casual speech with the woman on the rooftop.
From what I overheard, the woman had come to the fitness center the day before for a yoga class.
It seemed that some of the people in her class had then turned into zombies.
She'd fled to the rooftop alone and had been hiding there ever since, waiting for a rescue team to come.
The woman was terrified, and not only because of our appearance.
She said she'd watched accidents happen all over the road, and had seen people pounce on and bite each other.
She said the screams of people who had been caught while fleeing and killed still echoed in her ears.
She had heard explosions loud enough to suggest a war, even through the pounding rain, and had nearly passed out.
What's more, the only shelter from the rain on the rooftop was the area right by the door.
The rooftop door was sturdy, but she'd endured this long alone under extreme stress, with the constant cries of the gathered zombies reaching her.
I studied her.
She had dark circles under her eyes and looked completely drained.
She probably hadn't slept properly and was running on empty.
She'd been rained on in those thin clothes, so maintaining body temperature couldn't have been easy.
It was a miracle she'd held on this long without collapsing.
"It's okay now."
After spending some time comforting her, Seon-yeong handed her water and emergency rations, then walked over to me.
Before we'd come up to the rooftop, she had seemed so worn down and intimidated that I'd been worried about her mental state.
Now, she looked completely fine again.
Maybe she recovered quickly and was stronger inside than she looked.
Maybe it was because I was comparing the two, but Seon-yeong suddenly seemed remarkably strong.
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"What are you going to do now? Ga-yeong says she lives in the apartment right in front of us and is asking to be taken home... I'll go along with your decision, Team Leader."
So her name was Ga-yeong.
This was a tough problem.
We weren't the rescue team Ga-yeong had been waiting for.
But if we simply decided there was nothing worth taking up here and left, the woman would probably die.
Seon-yeong wasn't trying to pass the responsibility to me. Her eyes said she would follow whatever decision I made.
Ga-yeong, who had wolfed down two energy bars in an instant, was eyeing us.
Then, she suddenly stood up and approached me.
"Could you please save me? I know it's a lot to ask, but my home is right next door. If you take me there, I'll make it up to you. I promise."
If she'd simply begged us to take her with us, I was going to refuse.
Since there was a convenience store in the building, she could hold out for a while here.
'I hadn't considered she'd ask us to take her all the way home.'
I ran through various calculations in my head.
The distance was short, so it seemed doable.
We also lacked a proper place to sleep, so perhaps we could ask to stay the night.
Ga-yeong clung to me, not caring that my hands and clothes were bloody.
There was clearly a good ten-year age gap between us.
The way she clung to a complete stranger and spoke as though we were already close showed just how desperate she was.
"First, give me some space. And call me 'mister' instead of acting like we're close. Where exactly do you live?"
"Right there. Building 301, Unit 502."
Perhaps sensing my agreement, Ga-yeong's expression brightened a little as she pointed to the apartment building right next door.
It really was close.
Of course, being close didn't necessarily mean it would be easy to reach.
"If we take you home, could we stay at your place for the night? And tell me if you're uncomfortable with me speaking casually."
Normally, I'd use formal speech with someone I'd just met, even if they were younger.
Maybe watching Seon-yeong talk to Ga-yeong had influenced me, because I had unconsciously started speaking casually too.
Ga-yeong didn't seem to mind it much either.
Though I did get the feeling Seon-yeong was glaring at me from the side.
"Of course. No problem. You saved my life. Anything's fine."
And so, we agreed to head to Ga-yeong's home together.
Once our destination was set, we exchanged brief introductions.
Ga-yeong said she was twenty-four and looking for work.
Both her parents had gone to work, and she hadn't been able to contact them because she didn't have her phone with her.
Seon-yeong was also unable to reach her parents. Given the state of the world, it seemed best to prepare for the worst.
Still, I couldn't bring myself to say that to her.
After the brief introductions, we moved on to planning our route.
We sat side by side on the stairs and worked out the details.
We decided I would lead, with the two women following side by side, and I explained several precautions.
"From what I've figured out, zombies respond to sight and sound. So while we're moving, we need to be as quiet as possible. Keep talking to a minimum. And always watch your surroundings. You focus mainly on the left, based on our direction of travel."
Since Ga-yeong had been stuck on the rooftop the whole time, there was a lot I needed to tell her.
It had only been a day, but the gulf in experience between Ga-yeong and Seon-yeong, who had risked her life alongside me, was enormous. That worried me.
Moving as three would also generate more noise than just the two of us.
"A zombie's weak point is its head. It's softer than you'd think, so if you land a clean hit, you can kill one fairly easily. They lunge blindly at people and aren't very smart, so use obstacles whenever you can. We'll avoid them as much as possible, but if we have no choice, focus on not getting bitten. Hold out and buy us time."
I realized there was only so much I could explain verbally.
I wasn't sure how much of the nonstop stream of warnings and advice Ga-yeong was absorbing.
Still, it couldn't be helped.
I still worried, but a glance from Seon-yeong told me to leave it at that.
What was left now was for her to go out there, experience it firsthand, and overcome it.