Portrait of Hell
"Ugh. I'm dying."
The stairs hadn't done him any favors, and Park Jaeho had never been the sort to keep up with physical training. By the time he made the second floor he was heaving, and he stopped to catch his breath.
The second floor of Got-It-All was lined with goods of every kind, and the floor-to-ceiling glass the store prided itself on showed every soul walking the sidewalk outside.
"Aaaagh!"
There was no time to take in the view. A scream cut the air, and he turned toward it.
Kang Hanna had a man pinned.
"You're under arrest. Sexual assault, obstruction of official duty, and assault—caught in the act."
She snapped the cuffs shut and went right on.
"Listen up. You've got the right to keep your mouth shut. One lie out of you and they'll use it to wring your neck in court, so get that through your head. You've also got the right to a lawyer. Can't afford one? The state'll toss you some public defender. Got it?"
She cuffed another man and gave him much the same.
"Same goes for you. Right to shut up. Anything you say, they use all of it against you in court. You can call a lawyer, and if you don't have one the state'll stick some guy on you. You understand?"
Jaeho's mouth fell open at the rough patter.
"Oh—Sergeant Park, you're here? Mind lending me your cuffs? I'm one short."
Three grown men lay sprawled, and there in the middle of them Hanna spotted Jaeho and asked for the cuffs as brightly as anything.
"You put all of them down?"
"Yes, sir. Confirmed assault and sexual molestation on the CCTV and moved to arrest them in the act. They resisted with violence, so I subdued them."
She answered as if he'd asked something obvious, and a chill crawled up Jaeho's spine.
Crazy. Say one of them went down to the Taser—she still beat two grown men into the floor by herself?
Cold sweat broke on him at the sheer strength of it.
"Sergeant Park?"
Hanna, finding it strange that he was just standing there blank, called to him.
"Ah—right. I'll do it."
He stepped up to the man who wasn't reacting at all—tased out, maybe—and cuffed him.
"You're the victim, correct? The station may contact you later to take a statement. Just so you know."
"Yes. Thank you."
"...Thank you."
Meanwhile Hanna had gone to the woman who looked like the victim and told her a statement might be required. Beside her stood a man who seemed to be her boyfriend. A bruise marked his face; he'd probably tried to stop them from groping his girlfriend and taken a beating from the bunch for it.
"What the fuck—cops can do this to citizens?"
"Yeah, we can, you little shit. Move. A crook about to rot in a cell doesn't get to call himself a citizen."
"H-Hanna, easy. Easy."
One of the suspects spat curses at them, and Hanna planted a kick in his rear to hurry him along. Park Jaeho, fretting helplessly at her elbow, came with the package.
"Heh. Why the hell would we be the ones going to prison?"
At her words, another suspect behind them laughed in her face.
"Hey, hey, relax. Forgot who my dad is? A prosecutor. A prosecutor of the Republic of Korea. Worst case, he'll get us out on a suspended sentence."
No wonder there hadn't been a scrap of fear of the police in them. They had someone at their back.
"You, lady cop—I'm getting you fired for police brutality. And you! You shake your ass and then report us? When I get out, you're first. Watch yourself."
"Eek!"
Whether it was faith in his father's power or not, he laid the threat on Hanna and the victim alike, and the girlfriend stumbled back, white with fright.
"Who the hell do you think you're threatening!"
Crack!
"Aaaagh!"
Far from being cowed, Hanna seemed furious that he'd threatened a police officer. She drove a fist into the back of his head and made him pay for it.
"Y-you think you'll walk away from this?"
"Didn't you say you'd get me stripped for brutality? It's already over, so what do I care?"
"Nngh...!"
He had nothing to say to that. The man who'd been throwing his weight around twisted his face.
"And if I take this uniform off, I'll come find you first. So you watch yourself."
Then she leaned in and whispered it at the ear of the man who'd threatened her.
"You crazy pig bitch!"
Crack!
"You looking to die, calling a cop a pig to her face?!"
Rage had taken him at her words, but one blow to the back of the head put him down.
"H-Hanna. You can't do that."
"Let's get moving, Sergeant Park."
Jaeho, who'd watched the whole thing, was beside himself—but Hanna pretended not to hear and hurried them on.
They were heading back to the patrol car with the three suspects when it happened.
"Kieeeeeek!"
A grotesque cry tore through the middle of the store.
"W-what—why are you doing that! Aaaagh!!!"
Through the gap of the narrow stairwell, the first floor showed plain: a man had his teeth in the shoulder of a woman who looked like an employee, tearing into her.
"What the hell is that bastard doing now?!"
A decent citizen was being attacked right in front of her. Hanna's eyes went wild, and she was a breath from throwing herself down the stairs.
"H-Hanna, wait."
Jaeho caught her by the arm and stopped her cold.
"What's the matter, Sergeant Park?"
He didn't answer. A trembling finger pointed at the floor-to-ceiling glass, the outside laid bare beyond it.
The question lasted only a moment. She did as her superior said and looked out through the glass.
And a portrait of hell spread before her eyes.
Five minutes ago, children on the street had been chasing pigeons, bright laughter scattering in their wake, and lovers had sat on benches with their hands clasped. That peace had been twisted, cruelly.
"Kieeeeeek!"
"W-what are you doing?! Aaaagh!"
The instant the first scream broke, people froze. But they were watching a human being tear into another human being, and the ones who couldn't bring themselves to believe a zombie could actually exist took it for a film shoot.
"What is this, a movie?"
"Should we go take a look?"
Curiosity in their eyes, they drifted closer.
"Help! Somebody help me! You crazy bastards!"
"Damn, that's realistic. Where's the camera, though?"
"Heh. Who's that actor? Can't act for shit. Way too much."
Crunch. Crunch.
The sound of a zombie's teeth sinking into the man's flesh carried, vivid and wet, but the crowd still hadn't grasped what they were seeing. If anything, the people around him watched his agony and laughed.
"You... you f—fuckers..."
In the end the man glared at them with eyes full of resentment, and closed them.
"W-what? This is a movie, right?"
Only then did people catch the wrongness of it. It was already too late.
Kieeeeeek!
Maybe he wanted revenge on the ones who'd smiled while he died. The man rose from where he'd fallen and, together with the zombie that had torn into his throat, hurled himself into the crowd.
"Aaaagh!"
"Aaaah—w-what?!"
After that, the street was hell.
People shoved one another in the chaos and ran. Phones and bags went flying underfoot, and bodies kept going down.
"D-don't come! Don't come near me! Please! I don't want to die! Aaaagh!"
A woman dropped where she stood and begged zombies who could not understand a word, and they tore her apart.
"Aagh! Daddy, help me!"
"M-Minseo, I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"
"Where's Daddy? Daddy! Daddy!"
There was a father, too, who left his fallen little girl in the street and ran alone.
Hanna and the others watched that hell from the second floor.
"W-what is this...!"
Even Hanna, rough as she was, couldn't get her mouth to work in the face of what was unfolding.
Screech.
While everyone stared blankly outside, a middle-aged man had dragged a display rack over. He limped, one leg clearly bad, but he hauled the rack in silence all the way to the head of the stairs and blocked them.
"Sir, what are you doing?"
Hanna, coming back to herself at last, asked.
"Keep your voice down. What do you intend to do if those things swarm up here?"
His calm landed. Hanna seemed to agree; she clapped a hand over her mouth and nodded.
"They look like the zombies you only see in movies, but you never know, so we'd better seal the entrance first. Surely even a police officer bursting with justice isn't thinking of jumping in there to save those people."
"I'm not about to charge out like that. We'll help."
At her words, everyone on the second floor pitched in—the couple, the high school boy and girl who'd been shopping, Hanna, Jaeho, and the limping man—hauling display racks over to block the mouth of the stairs.
"Hey, let us go too!"
"Shut up. The worse things get, the less anyone knows where trash like you will bolt. You stay tied."
And so everyone but the punks begging to have their cuffs off threw themselves into it, shifting the display cases until the stairway was sealed.