Crisis
"What the hell is this, you bastard? You promised you'd play nice, and now you're changing your tune?"
"We said we'd cooperate. Did we ever promise to haul our food over and lay it at your feet? Why the hell should we have to feed freeloaders like you on top of everything else?"
Even in the face of Kang Hanna's furious rebuke, Choi Minhyuk only sneered back at her.
"Freeloaders? You son of a bitch!"
"Hanna, you've got to hold that temper!"
"N-noona, please calm down!"
"Let go of me! I'm gonna smash that bastard to pieces while I've got the chance!"
Hanna surged up from where she sat, shaking with rage, and Lee Jaemin and Jang Sangcheol grabbed hold of her and held her back.
"We'll find our own food. You find yours. We clear?"
"Hanna, better we each go our own way than tear into each other right here."
In the end their restraint cooled her enough to draw a hard line between her people and the delinquents.
"Fine. I get it. Every man for himself."
She spat the words through a growl, her anger nowhere near spent.
"But if you so much as twitch in a way I don't like, you know what happens. Right?"
She lifted the hem of her shirt just enough to flash the gun and drove the warning home.
"Yeah, yeah. We don't want a hole blown through our heads either."
Minhyuk raised both hands in a show of surrender under the weight of her warning.
"Oh, and we can take these with us, yeah?"
What he was pointing at were the spears belonging to Jeong Mina, Lee Jaemin, and Lee Jia — the three who hadn't been put on the food team.
"Yeah, yeah. Take them."
Refuse, and there was no telling what grudge they'd nurse or what they'd cook up behind her back. And even if they were criminals, they were still citizens; her conscience wouldn't let her send them out into the streets empty-handed. So she handed the spears over without a fuss.
"Then let's get out and find food before the sun's up."
At Jang Sangcheol's suggestion, everyone but the three left off the food team headed outside and started scavenging.
The first time they searched the surrounding streets and brought food back, there wasn't much difference between Choi Minhyuk's group and Kang Hanna's. The trouble was the commercial strip itself. It wasn't grocery stores and restaurants so much as arcades and clothing shops packed in together, and whatever food the area had to offer ran dry in no time. From there the gap between the two groups opened wide. Sangcheol's bad leg limited how fast Hanna's team could move, so they were always a step behind Minhyuk, and his crew started sweeping up everything edible in the neighborhood a step ahead of them.
"Oppa... did you find anything today?"
"Sorry. Came up empty again..."
"How long are we supposed to starve? They're coming back with plenty, so why is it only you who never has anything?"
"What?! You just sit here nice and comfortable waiting around — why don't you go out and find some yourself!"
"Mr. Minho, please calm down! Miss Mina, I'm sorry. We'll bring something next time, so just hold on a little longer."
As the days dragged on, Hanna's group began to starve in earnest. And hunger wasn't the only problem.
"Hey, kid. Hungry? I've got something to eat over here. Wanna come?"
"No thank you. I'm fine."
At Lee Jia's refusal, the face of Kim Hyunjun — one of Choi Minhyuk's crew — twisted.
"Fuck. This little bitch..."
He suddenly seized Jia's wrist, rough and hard.
"What do you think you're doing?!"
"Shut up, bitch. I know what you want better than you do."
"L-let go of me!"
"Damn, look at those pretty hands. She really is young."
"The fuck? You into that?"
"Younger is better, you dumbass."
Kim Hyunjun and Jeong Jinwoo kept hold of Jia's wrist, snickering between themselves. Maybe it was the psychological edge of half-monopolizing the food. Whenever the food team went out, Minhyuk's group would pick fights with whoever was left behind in the store.
"D-don't touch Jia!"
"The hell? Get lost before you get your ass kicked, runt."
"Nngh—!"
Hearing Jia's cry, Lee Jaemin tried to put himself in their way, but he was nowhere near enough.
"Hey, you sons of bitches! What the hell do you think you're doing!"
Of course, they backed off once Hanna's group came back.
"Why are you so pissed over a little joke?"
"A joke? Want me to joke a hole through your skull too?"
"Whoa, whoa. Calm down."
That was when Choi Minhyuk cut in from somewhere, Jeong Mina at his side.
"O-Oppa..."
"B-baby, why are you coming back with that guy!"
"You fucking bastard! I told you if you pulled anything stupid, you'd die! What did you do!"
Kim Minho and Kang Hanna, both of them knowing exactly what Jeong Mina's disheveled clothes meant, exploded.
"What's with you people? Anyone watching would think I forced her. She came to me."
"B-baby... is that true?"
When Minhyuk said it with that mocking little flourish, Kim Minho turned to Jeong Mina as if he couldn't bring himself to believe it.
"Yes! How long am I supposed to starve?! I've hit my limit. From now on I'm staying with them, so get that through your head!"
"H-how could you do this!"
"See? Told you."
Hanna glared, but Minhyuk only shrugged, his face all but saying Well? I was right, wasn't I?
"I'll let it go this time. Watch yourself."
"Yes, yes. We'll do just as the good officer says."
"Mr. Minho, come here. There's nothing we can do."
"Hic... you rotten woman, you awful woman... after everything I did for you..."
And so the friction between Minhyuk and Hanna's group kept growing. They hung the store's curtains to wall off a space of their own, and Hanna's people, eaten up with unease, even posted a night watch and stayed on guard.
But the accident happened while they were out looking for food.
Days without finding anything had left them desperate, and now they went scavenging morning and night without distinction.
"Ugh... this one's empty too."
Kim Minho muttered it at the bare convenience-store shelves.
"Haa... nothing we can do. Let's move."
At Hanna's sigh, everyone gathered their things and started walking.
"I'm sorry. All this, on account of me."
"Don't say that. Wandering around with just two people would've been too dangerous anyway. If it weren't for you, Mr. Jang, we couldn't have come out for food at all."
On the way back from yet another empty-handed search, Jang Sangcheol sighed and apologized, and Hanna only comforted him. It felt like any other day of coming home with nothing.
Until that moment.
CRASH!
A zombie dropped suddenly from the building above. The problem wasn't that a zombie had fallen. It was where it had fallen.
Bweep-bweep! Bweep-bweep!
"W-what the—!"
Unfortunately, the zombie had landed on a car, and the impact set the vehicle's anti-theft alarm screaming.
"GRAAAAH!"
"KIIIEEEK!"
"Oh, shit! Run!"
The howls of zombies drawn by the alarm rolled out after them, and Hanna's group broke into a run with their faces gone white.
"Why the hell did a zombie just fall on us?!"
"If you've got breath to talk, use it to run!"
They ran for their lives. But bodies that had barely eaten anything hit their limit fast, and one of them began to fail.
"Ghk—!"
THUD!
"Mr. Jang!"
"I—I can't go any farther! Leave me and go! Hurry!"
Jang Sangcheol, with his bad leg, was the first to fall behind. Unlike last time, there weren't enough of them to support him and still hold the zombies off. It was a crisis with no way out.
"Goddamn it!"
"Hanna! Leave me! You don't, and every one of us dies!"
Afraid the righteous fire in her would drive her into some reckless attempt to save him, he shouted for them to abandon him.
"Mr. Minho!"
"Y-yes?"
"Take care of Mr. Jang!"
"What? D-don't tell me—!"
"Hanna, no!"
Having made up her mind, Hanna drew her pistol, entrusted Jang Sangcheol to the frozen Kim Minho, and took off running.
BANG!
"Over here, you sons of bitches!!!"
"No!!!"
She ran the opposite direction from the store, firing as she went and drawing the zombies after her.
"Look over here, you bastards!"
BANG!
BANG!
Having seized their attention once more, Hanna broke into a full sprint.
"Ah..."
"Mr. Jang! Hurry! If it's Hanna, she'll be fine — come on!"
Thanks to her drawing the zombies off, Jang Sangcheol and Kim Minho made it safely back to the store.
But Hanna was still running the streets, gasping for breath. The zombies' shrieks behind her were getting closer.
"Fuck... I'm actually gonna die like this."
She muttered it between ragged breaths. Soon her vision began to blur. Her sweat-soaked shirt clung to her back, and her muscles trembled under the extreme fatigue.
"Fuck... I can't run anymore..."
Just as her body reached its limit, a silhouette appeared before her eyes. Certain she'd been surrounded, Hanna sank to the ground where she stood.
"Fuck. I really am about to die. I'm even seeing things..."
Maybe it was her fading mind, but the figure in front of her looked like a prince on a white horse, come to save her. Somewhere in her head a voice screamed that no such thing existed, that it had to be a zombie, that she had to get up and run — but her consciousness had hit its limit, and she passed out on the spot.
"...What? She's not dead, is she?"
The voice that followed never reached Kang Hanna. She was already unconscious.