The Escape
"Th-this should be safe enough now, right?"
The young man muttered it as he looked over the barricade. They had stacked display shelves until the pile stood high enough that a zombie would have a hard time forcing its way through.
"Oppa, what do we do now? Are we going to die?"
"D-don't worry. This isn't some novel. You really think soldiers with guns are gonna lose to zombies? Just hang on. A rescue team'll be here any minute."
He did his best to soothe his girlfriend as she shook with fear, but his own hands were trembling just as badly.
"If this isn't a living hell, I don't know what is."
They had only just managed to seal off the stairwell, and the hellscape spread beyond the windows was dragging everyone down into dread.
Clap!
"All right, then. How about we introduce ourselves?"
Afraid the fear might tip them into full-blown panic, Kang Hanna slapped her palms together to turn the mood and launched into an introduction.
"Officer Kang Hanna, Honghak Police Substation. This is my senior, Sergeant Kim Jaeho."
"Hello. Good to meet you all."
At her cue, Kim Jaeho dipped his head.
"Pleasure. Name's Jang Sangcheol. I run the hardware store right around here."
The limping older man who had been the first to start blocking the stairs with shelves offered his own greeting.
"Hello. I'm Lee Jaemin. I'm in my last year of high school."
"Hello. Lee Jia."
"You two a couple? Matching school uniforms and everything."
"Wh-what?! N-no, we're not!"
"No. We just happened to run into each other. We're in the same class, that's all."
Jaemin denied it in a flurry of waving hands, his face gone bright red. Jia denied it just as flatly, and far more coldly.
"Hmm..."
Hanna looked as if she had caught on to something. She stepped in close to Jaemin and dropped her voice.
"I'll let it slide since you're a student, but stalking can be a crime, you hear me?"
"I-it's not like that, I swear!"
He denied it again, red to the ears, and the introductions went on from there.
"Hello, I'm Kim Minho. I'm in college."
"I'm Jeong Mina. College, same as him."
So the couple was Kim Minho and Jeong Mina. Under Hanna's pressure, the thugs gave their names as well. Their leader—the one with a prosecutor for a father—was Choi Minhyuk, and the other two were Kim Hyunjun and Jeong Jinwoo.
"So what do we do now?"
Once the names were done, Jaemin was the one to ask.
"What is there to do? We wait until the rescue team gets here."
Kim Minho answered.
"Th-they will come, won't they?"
"Sure they will. Folks say the army's gone soft, the way the country's been drafting every last body without a look at physical standards, but there's no way men with guns lose to zombies. You officers—radio getting through at all?"
Jang Sangcheol put the question to Kim Jaeho.
"No. Nobody's picking up. Our substation's a small one, so probably..."
Kim Jaeho tapped the radio, his face gone dark.
"Hngh... Then we're stuck right here, like it or not."
In the end the group had no choice but to sit and wait. Even so, the mood sat easier than before, thanks to Hanna breaking the ice with the introductions.
A day passed. Then another. And everything changed.
"Hey! Rescue team, my ass! We haven't seen a single goddamn soul!"
Choi Minhyuk, still locked in cuffs, shouted it at Hanna and the others.
Thud!
"Quiet, you little shit. What're you yelling for? You want the zombies downstairs to hear us?"
"Ghk... You crazy bitch, I swear—"
Hanna answered him with a crack across the back of the head, but the fact that the words had come out at all said enough about how sour the group had turned.
"The boy's not wrong. We haven't even heard gunfire. Waiting on a rescue doesn't look like it's going to work."
Jang Sangcheol offered the thought carefully.
"Mister Jang is right. We won't last much longer on snacks and drinks."
Lee Jia put her weight behind him.
"Then instead of waiting for rescue, what if we joined a group that can actually fight the zombies?"
Jaemin raised his hand and said his piece.
"You can say that, but a group that can handle zombies, in a mess like this..."
Hanna turned the idea over hard and came up empty.
"Um..."
That was when Kim Minho raised his hand.
"What about the police headquarters? There's one near here, isn't there?"
"That's right! The police headquarters!"
Struck by it, Kim Jaeho smacked his own forehead.
"They've got plenty of guns there, and they've got a SWAT team. Fewer than the Seoul Police Agency, sure, but a place like that wouldn't have gone down easy to zombies."
The moment a real option hit the table, the talk picked up.
"But how do we get there? It's thirty minutes by car. On foot that's an hour, minimum."
"The patrol car! We've got the one we came in!"
"Oh, right. We left it parked in the alley before we came up here."
Kim Jaeho backed her.
"Ha! Then we just take that!"
"Except even crammed in, six is the limit... And getting to the car is a problem of its own..."
Hanna's words hit them like a dousing of cold water. The patrol car could hold six. There were eleven of them here. Someone was going to be left behind.
"Then we do it like this. One person makes a racket and draws the zombies off. The other six take the patrol car to headquarters and bring back help."
Jang Sangcheol had put forward an efficient alternative. The trouble was who would play bait, and who would stay. That was the real problem.
"Sergeant Kim. We're police. Shouldn't we get the civilians out first?"
"Huh? Ah—yeah. Right?"
Caught flat-footed by Hanna, Kim Jaeho agreed before he had thought it through.
"Then the two of us will draw the zombies off."
"Huh? Us?"
"Yes. Shouldn't we be the ones?"
"R-right. We're cops. We've got to protect the citizens."
He had been ready to refuse. Under the flat weight of Hanna's stare, he agreed anyway.
"Yes, exactly. So the two of us lure them—"
"But do we really need two people just to lure zombies?"
She had his yes and was pushing on when Kim Jaeho cut straight across her.
"Then I'll lure them by myself..."
"No. I'll take the lure. Hanna, you escort the group as far as the car. Getting there is dangerous either way."
She had been wearing a look that said yeah, figures you'd try that, already halfway through volunteering to draw them alone, when he broke in and claimed the bait for himself. Surprise wiped the look clean off her face.
"You, Sergeant?"
"Yeah. A man like me's got the better odds of coming back alive, don't you think?"
"Are you sure you'll be all right?"
"I'm a cop. It's the job. Escort won't be a walk in the park for you either, Hanna. The second that engine turns over, every zombie in earshot is going to lock onto the car. You'll have to make it back here through all of that in one piece."
Whatever reluctance he had shown toward playing bait was gone. Already, Kim Jaeho was laying the plan out piece by piece.
"Then who's driving?"
"I'll do it."
Jang Sangcheol raised his hand to the question.
"You can actually drive, right?"
"Boy, it's my left foot that's bad, not my right. I'm no punk who drives with both feet, so quit your worrying."
He barked the retort straight at Jaemin.
"W-wait a second. What about us? We're going too, right?"
Only then did Choi Minhyuk notice he had been shut out of the talk, and he shouted at Hanna.
"Didn't you hear the part about six? Times like this, regular citizens come before criminals like you. Where do you get off trying to cut in?"
With that, she drew a hard line between her people and the thugs.
"Goddamn it, then uncuff us!"
"Uncuff you when I don't know which way you'll bolt? I get to the patrol car and make it back, and then I'll uncuff you. So wait."
"You piece of shit! What if you go out there and drop dead?!"
"This bastard really does know how to pick the one thing nobody wants to hear."
Smack!
"Aagh!"
Only after Hanna hit him did Choi Minhyuk shut his mouth.
"Then we leave tomorrow morning. Let's turn in early."
With Minhyuk handled, she called an early rest for the sake of the next day.
"Hold on. Not morning. Let's leave in the evening."
"Why?"
That was when Jang Sangcheol put a suggestion to her.
"I've been watching them. After the sun goes down, they get sluggish compared to the ones you see in the morning. Dumb as posts, I'd say. They lean hard on whatever their eyes give them, so once night cuts the view short, they slow right up."
He laid out everything he had observed.