Prototype (5)
"Team Leader!"
"S-Shall we open fire?!"
They had come in fully prepared. They'd expected the zombies to be swarming—but no one had imagined they'd all be floundering in the water like this.
What worried them even more was—
"Mr. Sang-goo! Boo Sang-goo!!"
No matter how many times they called over the radio, Boo Sang-goo wouldn't answer.
Most of them swallowed hard and surrendered to dreadful thoughts, but Team Leader Baek was not among them.
This was Boo Sang-goo, of all people. The man who had fought his way from Busan all the way up to Seoul, carving through hordes of the dead.
And that wasn't all. This was the man who had walked out of the Holton research facility in Gyeonggi Province alive, after taking on the mutants inside.
He refused to believe the man was dead. That would mean he was lying at the bottom of that pitch-black seawater.
More likely, he was locked in a bloody battle with a mutant or even a Zombie Lord somewhere out there.
"Machine gunners, hold fire! Everyone else, single shots only! Pick off only the ones trying to climb aboard! There may be friendlies under the surface—be careful!!"
"Yes, sir!"
"You got it!!"
Tak! Tak! Tak! Tak! Tak!
The zombies, who had plunged in blindly at the Zombie Lord's command, thrashed like madmen the moment the boat laden with fresh meat drew near. They wanted nothing more than to haul themselves up over that hull and tear into soft, living flesh.
"Damn it! Boo Sang-goo!!"
While the soldiers held the creatures back with single shots, Team Leader Baek paced the deck in a frenzy, working the radio.
Then—
"Team Leader!"
"What is it?"
Clutched in the arms of the navy lieutenant sprinting toward him was a familiar robot. Little Dog, deployed alongside Sang-goo on the operation just hours before.
"We just fished him out. This thing swam straight here on its own!"
"Oh, for God's sake… why is it just you…."
You goddamn tin-can mutt! What about your owner? How could you come back alone?
Beep—
As if to say there was no time for pleasantries, Little Dog transmitted a video to Team Leader Baek's tablet. Footage edited down to the crucial final moments. The scene of Sang-goo being overwhelmed by zombies and dragged beneath the water.
Tossed into the sea, the clever little thing had kept filming everything behind it even as it paddled for its life.
It's too early to give up.
"Should we deploy divers?!"
Divers. Would they even help? Even setting aside their mediocre swimming skills, there were a full thousand zombies thrashing around in that water.
Sorry to say it, but sending a few divers down there wouldn't help a thing—they'd only be feeding themselves to the grinder.
"Mr. Sang-goo is still underwater! Everyone stay sharp!"
He trusted Boo Sang-goo. All they could do was focus on what was within their power. That was the best order Team Leader Baek could give.
He should be surfacing by now. Any longer, and his life could be in real danger.
Team Leader Baek's wish—and the wish of every soul on that ship—was one and the same.
WHUMP—
His back struck cold steel plating.
The pitch-black seawater swallowed all light. The only things dimly visible were rotting limbs flailing at him from every direction.
Sang-goo had no choice but to fight by feel alone.
Chok! Chok! Chok!
The small-fry zombies were dealt with, one and all. All that remained was the Zombie Lord, clinging to his body, teeth grinding against one another.
KWAJIK!
He'd aimed for its neck—
Unfortunately, the blade lodged in the thing's collarbone instead. He yanked the longsword free and drove it in again, but the creature's two hands seized his arms and began to wrench at them. His grip slipped, and now the thing's gaping maw was snapping at his hand.
Not a chance!
He wasn't new to fighting zombies—it wasn't his first day, or even his hundredth. The gloves were made of ultra-light ballistic fiber reinforced with hardened urethane. He could have let the thing gnaw all day without a scratch.
The moment he felt the pressure, he clenched his fist hard and drove it up into the creature's jaw.
And then—
BOOM!
With his hand already inside the thing's mouth, hitting his mark blind was easy enough. Even with the drag of the water against him, Sang-goo's punch still carried bone-crushing weight.
-GRRRRRKK-
The creature's nose caved in and its jaw yawned wide open. But it quickly stretched out an arm and clamped onto Sang-goo's wrist.
They were locked together now, both arms bound, locked in a contest of pure strength. The creature's face seemed to sneer—as if to say, Time is on my side!
Sang-goo was approaching his limit. There was no room to draw the axe or the katana. Both his arms were pinned in the struggle, and if he gave ground even an inch, that maw would latch onto his face.
The stun gun.
It surfaced in his mind—the stun gun tucked into his combat vest. The one Little Dog had demonstrated by carving through that two-headed mutant in the engine room.
Easing off just slightly, Sang-goo drew his arms in toward his chest. He tore the velcro loose and pulled out the stun gun.
There we go.
He aimed at the creature's face and squeezed the trigger.
THWIP-THWIP-THWIP-THWIP—!!
Two barbed darts shot out like lightning—
—and buried themselves dead center in the creature's smashed nose.
-GRRRRRRRKK-!
The thing's face convulsed and its arms bent, slackening. Thankfully, none of the current would pass through Sang-goo's clothing.
He didn't waste the opening. With everything he had, he wrenched his right arm free of the creature's grip.
The stun gun's effect lasted only an instant—but for Sang-goo, it was more than enough of a chance to turn the fight around.
Wham! Wham! Wham!
Three punches hammered into the thing's face.
KKUGUGUK—!
Next, he spread his right hand and crushed down on the creature's cheek. Hard enough to shatter the cheekbone.
A Zombie Lord with a grip stronger than any mutant. Panicking, it twisted both of Sang-goo's arms with its hands. Normally, a human's fragile limbs would have snapped like chopsticks under that kind of force.
But Sang-goo's arms of iron showed not the slightest sign of giving. And that terrified it.
-Kkwaak! Kkrollok!
Now the tables had turned. The creature fought desperately to break away. Its lungs begged for oxygen, but Sang-goo held on with vicious tenacity, refusing to let go.
At this rate, its cheek would cave in under Sang-goo's grip—it was only a matter of time. After that, the soft spot—the brain—would surely burst next.
-Kkwak! Kkeullok!!
The Zombie Lord thrashed with everything it had—not to breathe, but to tear itself free of Sang-goo's hand. And so Sang-goo was dragged swiftly upward toward the surface.
A moment later—
PUHAAA—!
"Haaahk…! Hahk!"
The creature broke the surface first, with Sang-goo's head following half a beat behind. Every nerve in his body screamed for oxygen—
—but Sang-goo never took his eyes off the thing.
A laser?
His wet pupils dilated. A red targeting beam glittered on the brow of the Zombie Lord, its nose smashed to pulp.
Reading the room, he released his grip—
SSSSIII— POP—!!
The head exploded like a watermelon. A high-caliber sniper round had struck the creature's skull dead on.
"Haah…! Haaaa…!"
Gulping down air, Sang-goo turned his head.
"BOO SANG-GOO!!"
"WHOOHAA—!!"
Allies were waiting there. Little Dog's laser, fast and precise the moment he surfaced—and a sniper, a former navy special forces man, to put the round home.
"Haah… haah… thank you."
Sang-goo gave them a thumbs up.
"Move the ship!!"
Soon Sang-goo climbed aboard, and—
"You sons of bitches! Sweep them all!"
Four machine guns were already primed and ready. It was time to start cleaning house.
.
.
.
In an instant, the water had turned a deep, dark red. Blobs of matter floated here and there or drifted slowly down—enough to make anyone's stomach turn. It was only knowing they had once been zombies that kept everyone's sanity intact.
Dozens of eyes swept the terminal and confirmed it: not a single zombie left standing.
Even so, no one let their guard down until the very end.
"This sector is clear."
Only after Sang-goo made one final pass with his detector did the team clench both fists and let out a roar of triumph.
A battle against a thousand of the enemy—Zombie Lord and mutants included. Rescue team casualties: zero. Everyone survived.
And wasn't all of it thanks to the man called Boo Sang-goo? The rescue team's blood was boiling; they felt ready to hoist the man up on their shoulders and parade him around.
But there was still work to do. The toast could wait until they were back in Yeongdo-gu.
From here on, they would have to split into teams. Rescue Colonel Oh. Recover the bodies of their fallen comrades. And secure the mountain of supplies.
"Eyes front!"
Team Leader Baek called the squad leaders together to issue operational orders.
"Mmmm…."
Colonel Oh Sang-shik, who had drifted into a fitful sleep, was roused by a commotion.
"You goddamn bastards. Every last one of you—drop dead."
The moment his eyes opened, he took stock of the situation. Mr. Sang-goo had drawn the zombies off toward the cargo terminal, and with the floodgates opened, Team Leader Baek and his men had come inside. Soon—very soon—they would recover their fallen comrades and gather the towering stockpiles of supplies.
"Damn it all…."
As the physical pain receded and his mind cleared, the guilt came flooding in. If they had just taken what was on the nearby warships and the carrier's decks, they could have held out for months.
And now his men were dead, before spring had even come.
"I'm sorry. This is on me."
He had received the Prime Minister Shin Dong-wook's orders directly: don't push yourselves, and retrieve the materials if at all possible.
There was no President in this world anymore—the Prime Minister was effectively the head of this camp. Colonel Oh, a soldier his whole life, could not refuse an order from his superior. And yet… in a situation like this, he shouldn't have pushed so hard. In the end, realizing he couldn't carry out the order, he'd given up—but it was already too late.
It all felt like his fault, and the tears wouldn't stop.
The reason he knew the carrier's interior was that he had once served aboard it, before the Zombie Break. A Marine colonel, granted a place on the carrier because of a classified mission from up the chain of command.
Security chief for Decks 7 and 8, and certain designated areas. Under the government's direction, research of some kind had been conducted inside this ship.
Whether by luck or design, he had been abruptly relieved of the post just days before the Zombie Break. He'd been on extended leave, resting, when the outbreak hit.
In any case, even he didn't know exactly what had gone on inside. Chief of security in name only—he had merely kept outside watch over sealed laboratories, and only at a surface-scratching level.
Now he had returned to the carrier. With the Prime Minister's mission failed, this last desperate gambit had been his attempt to dig out what happened here. The order was already shot to hell—so he had tried to unearth the ship's secrets at least, to honor the grudge of his dying comrades.
But all he'd obtained in the way of materials was a handful of printed documents. They were written entirely in English, and with everything that had happened, there had been no time to read them.
Once they returned to Yeongdo-gu… he would open everything up to Team Leader Baek, the National Intelligence Director, and the Prime Minister. Perhaps the experiments conducted aboard this ship had something to do with the shitstorm the world had become. Surely that alone would offer some small comfort to the souls of the men he'd sent to their deaths first.
Just as Colonel Oh was wringing out tears and damning himself—
Beep— Whrrr—
Big Cow, which had been quietly keeping its back to him, rose to its feet.
Thud— Thud—
Are they already here?
Colonel Oh stopped crying. He didn't want his rescuing comrades to see him so wretchedly drained.
But something was off. They should have come through the entrance by now. So why wasn't anyone calling his name?
An enemy? Zombies?!
VWOOOONG—
What the—
Big Cow, which had risen, slowly sank back down. At the same instant, the crackling radio went dead silent.
An electromagnetic pulse.
What now? Would their own side really use a weapon like that in this situation?
Clack—
The only weapon left was the single pistol Boo Sang-goo had left behind. Colonel Oh picked up the handgun resting at his chest.
Thanks to Sang-goo's emergency treatment, his strength had recovered enough that he could at least raise and aim a pistol. But… his heart was pounding like it would burst.
Was there yet another enemy here—something that was neither zombie nor comrade?
He could feel it with perfect clarity, from beyond the wall of boxes Sang-goo had stacked before leaving. Someone—a group—was coming this way.
They're enemies, all right.
What could it be? Don't tell me—it's because of the documents he'd gathered earlier? No… did that even make sense? Was someone still alive inside this carrier? Or had an outside force chosen this exact moment to storm in?
It made no sense. Maybe this was a post-injury nightmare, some fever dream of trauma. Surely none of it added up—
Pull yourself together! You could die here like a dog!
Colonel Oh couldn't rule out a single possibility. So he slipped his hand inside his combat vest.
A small camera he'd snapped a few shots with while collecting the documents. He had to get the memory card out.
"Hoo… hoo…!"
Footsteps drew closer. But with only one hand, everything took far too long. A fever burned through him, cold sweat pouring down.
He had never had a nightmare this vivid in his entire life—which meant this was without question real.
Agonizing seconds crawled past before Colonel Oh finally managed to fish out the tiny, fingernail-sized memory card. He swallowed it whole.
Damn it… fine! Come on, then! I'll drag as many of you down with me as I can!
He raised the pistol and aimed it toward the sound.
He didn't know what kind of bastard was coming, but he would not die easy.
Soon, the wall of boxes Boo Sang-goo had stacked came crashing down—
"UWAAAAAAAAAH!!"
Tak! Tak! Tak! Tak! Tak!
Colonel Oh fired his pistol at whatever was coming—and then froze, utterly rigid.
"Damn it… how?"