Chapter 34: A Trade Partner
Chapter 34: A Trade Partner
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Tap tap tap.
The alley in front of the officetel building.
Three men stood side by side, tossing small pebbles at the fourth-floor windows.
With seven windows per floor, each man aimed for one of the three in the middle.
The survivor was supposed to be somewhere around the middle of the building, so those windows seemed about right.
Sliiide.
Soon one of the windows slid open sideways.
A haggard woman in her early to mid-forties poked her head out.
Her hair was tousled and she was squinting, as if she'd just woken up.
It was still early evening—had she been taking a nap or something?
Manager Lee took water and an energy bar from the trolley, showed them to the woman, and asked for the door code.
The woman gave them the code and warned them to be careful because zombies were in the hallway.
She wasn't sure about the other floors, but she confirmed there were definitely some on the fourth floor.
She cooperated far more readily than I'd expected.
I had expected her to be wary of outsiders, but the moment we showed her food, she gave us the code.
As I watched Manager Lee's exchange with the fourth-floor woman, I realized something: even when you speak quietly, conversations carry clearly.
I'd been unconsciously keeping my voice down all this time, but with absolutely no noise in the city, I made a mental note that even a soft human voice traveled quite far.
Once the conversation ended, the utter silence around us suddenly felt alien.
"Will the four of you be able to head up? We need to deal with the zombies in the hallway and also talk to the survivors inside the building."
"Yes. The zombies are scattered, so we can handle them. But aren't you coming with us?"
"If it's all right with you, I'll start by checking the units on the second floor. In that case, you four go on up, and let's meet back here once things are sorted out."
Seon-yeong stayed in the parking lot with two trolleys while Manager Lee's group took the stairs to the fourth floor; I decided to scale the wall and check the units on the second floor.
Manager Lee's group headed through the entrance right away, and I sized up the height of the second-floor windows from the alley.
Probably because the first floor was a parking garage, the windows looked to be over three meters high.
A ledge-like strip ran beneath the windows of every floor, marking the divisions between stories.
I glanced once at Seon-yeong, who was looking around for a way to climb up from outside, and then just jumped from where I stood.
Tap.
I wanted to measure my standing vertical jump. It might have qualified for a Guinness World Record.
I didn't know the exact height, but even with a light jump I managed to grab the projection on the wall with both hands.
At our apartment, that would have been about third-floor height.
I pulled myself up with a burst of strength, using the momentum to get all the way onto the ledge.
Gas pipes and metal cages around the outdoor air-conditioning units gave me secure handholds.
"Whoa—when did you get up there? How?"
"Just jumped up."
"No way..."
Leaving a slightly dumbfounded Seon-yeong behind, I started checking the windows, beginning with the end window on the corner of the building where I'd jumped.
The unit at the very end looked like it was some kind of boiler room.
It was a tiny utility room, barely thirty-five square feet, with three boilers mounted on the wall and a delivery box on the floor.
I carefully moved sideways along the wall and looked through the next window, but the blinds were drawn.
It was a casement window that opened outward, and I could see that it was locked, so I moved to the next window.
This time I could see a living room and kitchen. It appeared to be the same unit as the room beside it.
It looked like a two-room unit. On the opposite side from the window I was peering through, I could see the front door, and in the living room there was a sofa and TV.
The woman on the fourth floor had opened a sideways-sliding window earlier, and this window was the same type.
I spotted that the lock was open, so I slid the window and went straight in.
Once I climbed through the window, I saw two doors to my left.
One seemed to be the room with the blinds drawn, and the other looked like the bathroom.
I opened every door and checked everything—no zombies and no people.
I lowered the electronic lock's volume and opened the door to the hallway.
I cracked it just a sliver and peered out; there were no zombies, so I propped the door open with a stopper and returned to the living room.
From the way it was furnished, it looked like a single man lived there.
In the space that looked like a living room, there was a bicycle, and the other room was a bedroom with clothes hanging on one side.
So I'd secured one fully furnished two-room unit. To move to the next unit over, I headed back out through the living room window.
Going in and out through windows when there was a perfectly fine door made me feel like a petty thief.
#
Using my petty-thief tactic, I checked every unit up to the fifth floor, then finished by verifying the rooftop as well.
For apartments with locked windows, I broke the glass with an elbow and climbed in; in one place, the sound of shattering glass drew a zombie charging out.
I dodged to the side, a little startled, and the zombie couldn't stop—it just kept going and fell straight out the window.
Thanks to that, Seon-yeong down below got a hell of a fright and screamed, then conjured a shield over the sprawled zombie, pinned it in place, and finished it by caving its skull in.
In another unit, a naked male and female zombie came out of the bedroom.
It looked like the woman had turned first and then infected the man—I figured that because the female zombie's mouth was drenched in blood, and the male zombie's penis was half...
Ugh. That was too gruesome. I needed to erase it from my memory.
People lost consciousness for about ten minutes when they turned, so why had the injury been to his genitals?
Ah, I'd said I was erasing it and now I was making pointless speculations again.
Really, I needed to stop thinking about it.
Whatever the reason, whatever the process, it didn't matter.
I just dealt with two zombies, that's all.
After checking the very last unit, I finally used the building stairs for the first time and went down to the first floor.
Seon-yeong was sitting perched on the hood of a car parked in one corner of the garage, and Manager Lee's group, together with the fourth-floor woman, stood by the trolley parked on the road.
"No one's been bitten, I hope?"
"No, we're all fine. You've worked hard, sir. You checked everything that quickly?"
"Yeah, there weren't many zombies, so it went fast. Seon-yeong and I got seven—how many did you take out in the hallway?"
"We got five total. They were clustered on the fourth and fifth floors, but we had no real trouble."
Twelve altogether.
Director Kim had said her count wasn't precise, so there had to be some kind of limitation on detecting zombies.
Well, even if there was some margin of error, it was still a great ability for reconnaissance—and anyway, we'd cleared the building without incident.
It was already evening, and I wanted to say goodbye and hurry home.
The woman from the fourth floor seemed anxious about being outside; she was glued to Director Kim's side, constantly glancing around.
Her face was gaunt and her complexion was poor—she looked like she'd been through a rough time.
Not that anyone had had it easy since the outbreak.
Maybe Manager Lee had filled her in—when our eyes met, she bowed her head and greeted me.
"The building is secure, so we should be going. We also left every apartment door open through the fifth floor."
"Does that mean you won't be coming back?"
"I'll be passing through from time to time. Right now, you're all exhausted, so get things organized first and get some rest."
"Understood, then. Thank you again. Before you go, could I trouble you for your number at least?"
"Sure. And, Manager Lee, you don't need to call me “sir.” Just use my name."
I gave Manager Lee my cell phone number and headed back to the apartment with Seon-yeong.
I told him to use my name instead of addressing me so formally, but he insisted he couldn't do that to the person who had saved his life and kept calling me “sir.”
Having a guy who's older than me keep doing that was seriously uncomfortable.
The trolley creaked ominously the whole way, but it made it back without breaking down.
And when we got to the apartment, I pressed the elevator button for the first time.
I sent Seon-yeong up first, loaded the trolley into the elevator, pressed the button for the fifth floor, and then took the stairs up myself.
"You're back?"
"Welcome home!"
"Hey, Ga-yeong. Nothing happened while we were gone, right? Leave that stuff for now and let's eat dinner first."
"Okay, come in quick. Seon-yeong contacted me earlier, so I got it ready ahead of time."
I took the two women, who were busy pulling scavenged items off the trolley, and went inside the apartment.
We'd sort that out later—first, food.
The sun was already going down, and the day, which had felt unusually long, was finally coming to an end.
Ever since the world changed, every single day felt so damn long.
#
"Seriously?"
"I'm telling you. It was like watching a Spider-Man movie. He's probably faster climbing the walls than we are taking the stairs."
"Tae-sik, let me see your fingers. You don't shoot webs from them, do you?"
With Seon-yeong and Ga-yeong's endless chatter as background noise, I ate dinner.
Whenever Seon-yeong went out, she always told Ga-yeong about everything that happened that day.
Ga-yeong was an enthusiastic listener who reacted to everything Seon-yeong said.
Sometimes her reactions were so dramatic I thought her soul might leave her body, but listening to them talk was still oddly soothing.
Over dinner, we decided what needed to be done that night.
We usually spent nights just resting individually, but tonight looked like it was going to be a little busy.
Until moments ago, I'd felt a little relieved at the thought that the day was finally ending...
I guessed no matter how good your stamina was, mental fatigue was just unavoidable.
Seon-yeong and Ga-yeong were going to sort the scavenged supplies, and I decided I'd move the zombie corpses I'd dealt with earlier in the day by myself.
Ga-yeong said she could think of nowhere to bury them except the waste-sorting area.
From then on, every time we dealt with the remaining zombies in the apartment complex, bodies would keep piling up. We couldn't cremate them all, and I still couldn't think of a decent solution, so for now I decided to move them to the disposal area, as Ga-yeong suggested.
Also, as we kept scavenging, even with the neighboring unit being used as a storage room, we seemed likely to run out of space.
Even Seon-yeong and I, who had done the scavenging, no longer knew everything we had brought back.
At least Ga-yeong did a good job cataloging everything, so whenever we needed something, we just asked her.
After dinner, I smoked a cigarette and let my thoughts wander in no particular direction.
Even though I'd resolved not to, my worries started piling up in a jumbled mess.
Then I started recalling things that had happened, and imagining things that were yet to come.
Bzzz. Bzzz.
I opened my phone, which was set to vibrate, and there was a message.
The contact I'd saved as "Business Partner" appeared on the screen. The message thanked us and said that, thanks to us, they could finally sleep comfortably for the first time in ages.
It had been busy and exhausting, but it felt like a rewarding day, maybe... I wasn't really sure.
Even in the message, Manager Lee still called me "sir," despite my asking him to use my name.
Surely he hadn't saved my contact under "Sir" too.