The Tooth Collector. (1)
Wheeeeeooo―
The fierce river wind at the mouth of the Nakdong River wailed like the cry of a ghost. It knifed its way through the broken glass of a second-story window in an abandoned factory.
Dark night. In his right mind, no one would ever set foot in a place like this.
Yet a mysterious giant of a man was sweating busily, absorbed in some strange task.
"One... twoo... thwee. Ah, no good."
Four corpses lay sprawled across the floor. Only three of them still had heads.
The giant swung a leg over one of the fallen bodies, straddling its chest. The broken-necked corpse belonged to one of the raiders common to this region. Its hair was matted into greasy clumps, and filth and dried blood caked the underside of its fingernails.
None of that mattered to the giant, though. His sole interest lay in what might be inside the corpse's mouth.
Skreeeak―
As he forced the corpse's jaws apart with his thick hands, several teeth glinted between blood-red gums. His strength had crushed most of them; the mouth was a ruin.
"Aww... angwy... I'm angwy."
Each time he clicked his tongue in disappointment, a glimpse of the creature's own mouth showed through. All that remained was a single large front tooth. Everything else had rotted away, oozing foul pus along with a stomach-turning stench.
He knew it himself. His lifespan was running out, and his body was beginning to break down. He pushed back the terror of it with an obsessive fixation on white things—on teeth. His craving for a 'perfection' he didn't have and never could possess seemed to have been projected onto those teeth.
He jammed a pair of rusted, dulled pliers deep into the corpse's mouth. His grip strength alone was enough to pull a healthy tooth, but his hands were so enormous that he kept snapping too many of them—which was why he now relied on 'tools.' The pliers' decrepit handles wobbled precariously between his blood-corded fingers as he dug them into the tooth's root.
Crunch!
With a horrific tearing sound, a molar came free by the root, dangling from the pliers' jaws. He held it up to the moonlight. Blackened, riddled with cavities. The next tooth, then the one after that—all just as bad.
"Hawful."
He scowled in dissatisfaction. Rotten teeth had no place on his collection list. More than five months had passed since the Zombie Break, so perhaps it was only natural—and yet the creature was incapable of such understanding.
Thwack!
Without hesitation, he crushed the corpse's head with his fist. A single swing burst the skull like a watermelon, spraying blood and brains in every direction.
"Noo... you noo..."
Then he opened the next corpse's mouth and repeated the ritual. This one showed promise—teeth that were yellowed but unrotted. He pulled one, held it up to the moonlight, then tried wedging it into his own front teeth. Naturally it was too small; he pocketed it anyway, making do.
Ziiiing―
He opened the canvas bag hanging from his waist and dropped it in. Since he had it open anyway, he plunged a hand inside and rummaged through the contents, feeling them.
Clatter, clink.
Every time the battered canvas bag slung around his belt shifted, white fragments knocked against each other inside. There were hundreds of them. Teeth pulled from zombies, teeth pulled from survivors—even animal teeth, all jumbled together.
"Hee hee. Heh heh heh."
Like a man fingering gold bullion, the corners of his mouth twitched with satisfaction. Having soothed his seething jealousy and compulsion just enough, he climbed onto the last corpse as well.
.
.
.
Crash!
He dumped the teeth from his bag onto the floor and began arranging them all over again. By size, by color—even by the spot in the mouth from which each had been pulled. But no matter how he laid them out, no perfect combination appeared that could fill his own empty gums. It was a ritual symbolizing his lack.
"More... whiter... big, clean ones... need. Zombie teeth. Have to go where lots of people live... Seoul... left it alone... there..."
His thick, low voice rolled through the abandoned factory.
The next morning, on the top floor of the Grand Hotel in Yeongdo District.
Sang-goo rose earlier than usual. The Yeongdo Camp visible outside the window looked peaceful enough, but Colonel Oh's death—which he had confirmed only yesterday—had left a cold, lingering doubt in his mind.
Perhaps because of that, he began with his weapons. The pistol and long sword beneath his pillow. The axe and katana he wielded like extensions of his own body waited quietly at the bedside. His rifle and spare magazines were all in perfect order.
Yiiing―
"Slept well?"
Well rested, Little Dog wiggled his hindquarters. Sang-goo stroked the mechanical dog's head as it bounded over.
Next came his routine of taking in the photos of his family. Only after that was done did Sang-goo shower and leave the room.
"See you later."
Down in the lobby, the same two men were there to greet him as always.
"Good morning, Hyung-nim."
"Breakfast is ready, sir."
"Where are the others?"
"We ate ahead of you, Hyung-nim."
"Thanks."
Clear bean-sprout soup, rolled omelet, and five side dishes. Sang-goo finished the breakfast that Kim Dae-gi and Park Ji-hoon had prepared. Just then, the hotel door swung open and Team Leader Baek Sang-jin walked in. His face was haggard, as though he hadn't slept a wink all night.
"Up early. Don't tell me you're heading out starting today?"
"Yes, sir. There are a few things I need to check on. Actually—what happened with that memory card?"
At Sang-goo's question, Baek shook his head with a bitter smile. "One of the tech kids has been at it all night, but his head was blown apart—the physical trauma was probably too severe. They're decoding it now with precision-recovery equipment, but it's going to take quite a while. The moment anything turns up, I'll radio you."
It was more or less what Sang-goo had expected, so he gave a quiet nod. Baek held out a silver case he'd been carrying.
"Dr. Jang Sun-woo asked me to pass this along. Yesterday evening, when you were examining Colonel Oh's body—you remember. He said he apologized for intruding uninvited, and that he was too embarrassed to come by in person, so he went through me. It's the laser scalpel."
"......"
Recalling the conversation they'd had at the hospital, Sang-goo accepted it. He opened the case at once. Inside sat a sleek device of polished silver metal—clearly a step above the equipment he'd used a few times before.
Tucking the device into his pocket, Sang-goo asked, with deliberate casualness, "Team Leader. About that father and son—the Jangs. Where exactly did you rescue them?"
Baek searched his memory for a moment. "Somewhere quite far out from Haeundae, wasn't it? A small yacht adrift with a dead engine. They'd fled on it early in the crisis, then run out of fuel and were just waiting to die, they said."
"A yacht, hm. And that son of his—Jang Seok-woo. Was he already that robust when you first pulled him out of the water? His build is anything but ordinary."
At Sang-goo's sharp question, Baek nodded and went on. "He was pretty gaunt at first. But it's true he's gotten much healthier since entering the camp. Seems he works out as hard as you do back at his quarters. Well, the medical team are key personnel, so they get far bigger food rations than ordinary civilians too..."
Trailing off, Baek seemed to recall something and broke into a wry grin. "Might even be on steroids. Not like it's anyone's job to police that these days."
"Understood. We'll be off, then."
"How many days this time? Oh, right—I've stocked your bike's trunk with a full medic kit. Fuel tank's topped off too."
"Thank you. I plan to do a round and be back in about four days. While I'm at it, I'll look over the two survival camps in Busan you mentioned."
"R-really?"
"I'll just scout the situation and report back."
"Thank you. Truly, thank you, Sang-goo."
"Think nothing of it."
Sang-goo turned to go with an awkward smile, then remembered something and opened his mouth again.
"About Little Dog."
"Ah, use him freely. He's yours now."
"Thank you. But... is there no way to, say, talk with him?"
.
.
.
The Dark Knight was loaded down with four heavy leather trunks, two fore and two aft. Sang-goo had suited up in his one-piece leather armor suit, a bulletproof combat vest, and a helmet fitted with display goggles. Today, the sidecar was mounted as well—stocked with spare ammunition, a rifle, and Little Dog himself.
"Safe travels, Hyung-nim!"
"Watch yourself out there!"
Vroooooom―!
Leaving Kim Dae-gi and Park Ji-hoon's send-off behind him, Sang-goo rolled on the throttle. He passed the checkpoint on Yeongdo Bridge and crossed the span completely. Once he left the Yeongdo Camp's protected zone, downtown Jung District exhaled its gloomy, desolate air at once.
His first destination was an old commercial building in the heart of downtown, across Yeongdo Bridge. Two days earlier, Sang-goo had lashed a raider to a chair here and left him as bait. The man had made his living off human trafficking and plunder—trash to his core—so he'd been more than qualified.
Sang-goo meant to use the man's life to expose the true nature of the 'tooth monster.'
Two days should be enough.
It was after roughly thirty minutes of travel, all the while scanning his surroundings, that Sang-goo reached the destination. He dismounted, and Little Dog hopped down on his own. Lasers already glittered from the machine's two eyes, its lower back, and its hindquarters.
"Keep your distance and move with me. Out here is a different beast from inside the walls."
The machine chirped an electronic tone and bobbed its head. Sang-goo checked the tablet strapped to his left arm, rifle held at the ready, and followed Little Dog.
This should do nicely.
According to Team Leader Baek, Little Dog had originally been a top-tier unit built exclusively for special forces. But the machine had since undergone a kind of 'cognitive castration.' Years before the Zombie Break, the Little Dog series had committed fatal errors on several classified operations. The advanced AI installed at the time had weighed nothing but mission efficiency, ultimately concluding that the probability of completing an operation took precedence over the lives of friendly troops.
When the operative slated for rescue was wounded and slowed to a crawl, the AI had 'tactically optimized' the situation: it executed the man on the spot and retrieved only his data. The military brass had been left aghast. In response, the army carried out a 'nerf,' physically excising Little Dog's self-formation module and language circuitry. The machine was reduced to a loyal hunting dog with half its brain cut away—capable of communicating only through a tablet interface and simple electronic tones.
Yiiing― Beep―
Watch it even now—that's the all-clear signal. No moving objects. Sang-goo, who had always relied solely on his personal bio-sensor, found that having the machine at his side cut his fatigue considerably.
"There'll be traps. Stop and hold."
They were about to enter the building's third floor. Two days ago, when he'd left the big man here as bait, Sang-goo had rigged the place with all manner of traps.
Well, something certainly came.
Before he'd even reached the third floor, a vile stench drifted down—the smell of something having been destroyed.
"......"
The third floor was a disaster zone. Every trap he'd set had already been triggered, and zombie corpses lay strewn about in a chaotic sprawl.
"So he came."
The creature had indeed come. Every corpse's mouth had been torn open, every tooth extracted. Yet the one who was supposed to be caught—the bait—was nowhere to be found. Only useless zombie dead lined the room, each and every one of them with its teeth pulled.
"Hold and cover me."
Sang-goo approached the hulking figure still bound to its chair, jaw hanging open, dead where it sat.