Chapter 4: Change
Chapter 4: Change
#
The place we'd rented for the company outing was a grass field near DMC Station.
More precisely, it was a small field in a park with the grandiose name of Comprehensive Sports Park.
There was a building right next to it.
We'd rented the building as well.
The building was one story below ground and three above, and we were holed up in the underground parking garage.
This was already our third year.
Every May we rented the grass field and held a company outing.
As many employees as possible would gather to exercise together in the morning, eat lunch, and hold a small event afterward.
Once, after we'd wrapped up the activities, we washed up in this same building and went home from there.
"Team Leader, how are you feeling? Are you hurt anywhere?"
"My body's fine. No injuries. More to the point, the zombies seem to react to sound, so let's move as quietly as we can."
Seon-yeong suddenly asked how I was doing, apparently concerned about my condition.
I quietly answered Seon-yeong after she got out of the car, then gestured toward the stairs.
After watching the heavyset man get attacked the moment he stepped out of the elevator, I decided we should be careful about even the smallest sound.
I took the lead toward the emergency exit next to the elevator, and felt a tug on my shirt.
I turned to find Seon-yeong pointing at the company car and the baseball bat in my hand.
I nodded and went back to the car to grab one more baseball bat.
Seon-yeong now had a weapon.
Shhhhhhh
The rain was coming down harder.
The rain sounded fairly loud all around us.
With two of us moving, we occasionally made small noises, but the rain muffled them somewhat.
I'd never realized how much sound people made just walking around.
Maybe because we were on edge, even the soft rustle of fabric sounded loud.
'Haa...'
We made it from the underground garage up to the second floor without any incident.
At the second-floor emergency-exit door, Seon-yeong gave me a look, then carefully eased it open.
Through the gap, an empty hallway came into view.
The building was small enough that we could see the end of the corridor at a glance.
'Nothing there.'
One side of the hallway was one long glass window, and the other side had a row of doors.
Above the last door at the end was a sign that said Shower Room.
"I don't think anyone's here."
"We rented the whole place for the day, so there probably weren't any outsiders."
We walked down the hallway and gave every door a light knock.
If a zombie was inside, we figured it'd give some kind of reaction.
The second floor was completely still.
Finally, we entered the shower room and found two more doors.
One led to a restroom; the other opened into a changing room and then the showers.
It was a small shower room with three showerheads.
"Team Leader, this seems to be the women's shower room. The men's must be on the third floor."
"Right. Let's finish checking the third floor."
Unfortunately, it had only the fixtures and no supplies.
All it had was running water.
I'd been hoping for a hair dryer or whatever toiletries might be on hand, but no such luck.
Tap, tap-tap.
I continued on, listening to the rain patter against the windows.
We went back to the emergency exit and climbed to the third floor.
The stairs continued up another flight, apparently to the roof.
Once again, we exchanged a glance before cautiously entering the third floor.
The layout was identical to the second floor.
A big window on one side of the hallway looked out over the playing field.
Several zombies stood motionless in the rain near the blue canopy.
'One, two, three, four, five... How many people had come to the outing again?'
After thinking for a moment, I looked away.
Like before, I started checking the row of doors along the hallway.
"It's quiet here too. I don't hear anything."
We even went into the men's shower room at the far end together, but found nothing.
No zombies, not even a used towel left behind.
"They must take good care of the place. I can't believe there's nothing here."
"Team Leader, let's check the storage room. There's got to be something..."
We'd only knocked on the other doors before moving on.
Clinging to one last hope, we headed for the storage room.
Clack
Seon-yeong opened the storage-room door.
It wasn't locked.
Graaah!
"Aaaah!"
The second the door opened, a zombie screeched and burst out.
Seon-yeong fell backward with a heavy thud.
A female zombie lunged at her.
"Seon-yeong!"
Whoosh
I swung the bat on reflex.
My first swing missed its head, so I hammered the fallen zombie again and again.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
"Team Leader. Team Leader! You can stop now. It's not moving anymore."
"Huff... huff... Are you okay? Are you hurt?"
"Luckily, I blocked its mouth with this, so it couldn't bite me."
She meant the baseball bat Seon-yeong had picked up in the underground garage.
It had saved her life.
"Haa..."
I helped Seon-yeong to her feet and checked the zombie again.
It didn't move at all.
Her clothes made her look like a cleaner. Had she turned inside the storage room?
What made people turn into zombies?
I'd seen Jin-su turn after a zombie bit him, but this woman seemed to have been alone in the storage room.
If so, could someone turn even without being bitten?
Or had she already been infected elsewhere, made it here, and only turned after an incubation period?
I couldn't be certain of anything; one possibility after another came to mind.
"I wasn't bitten, but a lot of blood splattered on me... Could it spread just from this much?"
Blood had splattered all over both Seon-yeong and me.
I didn't know whether it was contagious, but we definitely couldn't keep wearing these clothes.
The scattered bloodstains made my skin crawl.
"I don't know. I can't say anything for sure. But earlier, in the underground garage, I got blood on me too, remember? Don't worry about it too much. This much should probably be fine."
We reassured each other and calmed our pounding hearts.
To my relief, Seon-yeong seemed calmer than I'd expected.
I'd been worried she might panic or start trembling.
"Geez. I seriously thought my heart was going to stop."
With a resolute expression, Seon-yeong checked the zombie's body and entered the storage room.
I hoped we'd find something useful in there.
#
Inside the supply room, there was a small sofa in the middle, flanked by cabinets and metal shelving on both sides.
Cleaning tools were arranged on one side, and we could also see large blankets and several towels.
They looked like items people had used and left behind.
'No time to be picky.'
A shrink-wrapped pack of 500 mL water bottles sat on the floor.
The sight of water made thirst hit us all at once, and we both gulped it down.
"Hah. I feel alive again. Ugh... now my whole body aches all of a sudden."
"Maybe it's because the tension is finally easing. But didn't you notice we couldn't hear anything? If that zombie was waiting silently, that's seriously creepy."
"This is only a guess, but I don't think zombies have exceptionally sharp hearing. It's pouring, and we only tapped lightly because we were being careful. On the bright side, maybe it didn't hear us at all."
Ms. Choi's guess made some sense.
I wanted to believe the more reassuring possibility.
Of course, assuming the best could still put us in danger.
"On the other hand, if we assume the worst, it had enough patience to wait until we lowered our guard. Still, I think you're right. If it had that much intelligence, wouldn't it have opened the door?"
If zombies retained any real intelligence, we were completely screwed.
A world ruled by smart zombies.
With nothing certain, talking it over only raised more questions.
"This isn't Schrödinger's cat. From now on, I can never let my guard down when opening a door."
"Yeah, that much is clear. We need to be careful whenever we open a door and never assume it's safe. But why cats? Do they like hiding too?"
Seon-yeong stared at me for a moment, said it was nothing, and resumed searching the shelves.
"Team Leader! This toiletry bag has shampoo, body wash, everything. There are plenty of disposable items too."
"Ah, you're hoping to wash up a bit, right?"
"Yes. Desperately. I feel filthy, so I'd like to wash if we can. The hot water works too..."
She didn't need to look at me that desperately. I wanted a shower too.
Sweat, rain, and blood clung all over me. I looked like a complete wreck.
The two of us had been moving around in this state, tense the whole time.
Whenever we heard even the slightest noise, we froze and listened intently.
Even in such a small building, moving this way had taken us ages.
"Seon-yeong, you wash first. I'll wait in the hallway."
The circumstances were completely different, but it still felt a little strange.
I was telling a coworker—and an undeniably beautiful woman—to go wash up first.
It was... something.
It had already been over five years.
Forget marriage; my last relationship had been in my twenties.
Around the time I'd settled into the company and my life had stabilized, a department manager who had since left set me up on a blind date.
Looking back, it was a little odd that a much older superior at work had arranged a date for me.
'Maybe it made more sense if I thought of it as a matchmaking date rather than a blind date.'
Either way, we hadn't met with marriage explicitly in mind, so I remembered it as a blind date.
She worked for a broadcasting company, and her schedule was wildly irregular.
She was very timid, and perhaps because of that, she seemed to have many secrets.
Or maybe she just never opened up enough to really let me in.
'The tension really must have eased.'
Here I was, thinking about an ex-girlfriend while Seon-yeong was washing up.
Thinking about such things in our current situation felt like an indulgence.
They felt completely out of place.
I needed to think about something useful for survival.
'Hmm...'
Nothing came to mind.
If I let my mind wander, all sorts of things came to me. But when I tried to think of something on purpose, nothing did.
I finally sank against the corridor wall and checked my phone.