The Tooth Collector (2)
Rifle shouldered, Sang-goo advanced slowly toward the corpse strapped to the chair.
"Vicious bastard."
His brow furrowed deep as he stood over the body.
The raider Sang-goo had chained up here two days ago no longer resembled a human being — he was closer to a grotesquely mangled meat puppet.
There was nothing remarkable about it anymore. Not a single trace of the bite marks unique to zombies.
Bruise marks that looked as though they'd been pressed in by crushing force, joints bent at angles no body should allow. It must have been agonizing.
Presumably the tooth monster had pinned the man down so he couldn't thrash — that was how he'd come to look this way.
Sang-goo lifted the corpse's chin with a leather-gloved hand.
"Just as I thought…."
A low breath, half sigh, escaped him.
The brute's mouth hung open as if it had been split apart, and not a single tooth remained inside.
They hadn't simply been pulled. The gum tissue had been torn away wholesale, and the jaw joint, wrenched open past its limit, hung dislocated and loose.
Zeeeek— pop—
The lower jaw finally dropped to the floor — and Sang-goo's gaze followed it down. There, in the dust-thick ground beneath the chair, he found something.
Crude letters, pressed hard into the dust with a bloodied finger:
"…?!"
A chill crawled up Sang-goo's spine.
This was an unmistakable message — a kind of thank-you note.
'He took it as a gift from me, did he?'
Sang-goo had built the trap intending the brute as bait to lure the thing in. But to the monster, the brute hadn't been a trap at all.
He'd been a 'white treasure chest,' lovingly prepared by someone just for it.
The monster had dismantled a laboriously laid trap as if toying with it, and on top of that, it had left a memo for the very man who'd set the table — a reminder to hurry up with the next 'delivery.'
"Crazy monster son of a bitch."
One thing was certain: this was no ordinary lunatic.
Sang-goo swept the area one more time.
Every trap had been sprung, and the zombies had ended up as meat shields.
The most important item — the camera.
"Huh."
Gone.
Used the zombies to strip the traps, then took the camera too?
Something of that caliber had appeared?
Staring at the traces of this bizarre intelligence, Sang-goo thought of one particular child.
No. 24, created by Charles Lee.
These days, the boy went by the name Boo San.
Eleven years after humanity stopped reproducing, San was the only child on Earth aged eleven or younger.
Or rather — they'd found two girls on the Ryan, so he was the only boy.
Either way, there was one reason a child who was neither zombie nor mutant had come to mind.
Five months since the Break — the sudden emergence of an intelligent life form that had appeared out of nowhere, no warning, no buildup.
Sang-goo couldn't help but wonder if this tooth-obsessed monster and the thing that had prowled the mothership for brains were the same kind of creature.
The one that had murdered Colonel Oh at the end, too.
Lives born of… failed experiments, perhaps.
Charles Lee claimed he'd blown up his own laboratory, but who was to say Holton or Marksa weren't still running their human experiments somewhere, even now.
'Why show up at this exact moment, of all times? Come to think of it, that mothership was suspicious too. Did our own country partner with them and run human experiments as well?'
Were they surfacing now because the zombie numbers had thinned? Or had a secret lab nearby collapsed without anyone knowing, spilling its test subjects into the world?
'I wonder if they've got a set lifespan, like San?'
There was nothing he could know for now.
But Sang-goo found himself wanting to meet the thing — just once.
"I'll catch it and report to Charles."
He photographed the carnage and the note on the floor with his tablet, recording everything.
When he was done, he offered a brief moment of silence, then zipped the body into a body bag.
He had no intention of burying it, of course.
That much courtesy was simply his way.
And with that, Sang-goo left the place behind.
The Dark Knight cut through the ruins of Busan with a quiet electric hum.
Perched in the sidecar, Little Dog scanned a ceaseless 360 degrees around them, streaming data straight to the display inside Sang-goo's helmet.
Nobody had asked it to, and the constant motion was mildly distracting while riding — but the thing seemed eager to be useful, so Sang-goo let it be for now.
They'd be working together from here on out; no better time to start getting in sync.
If it performed well, its help might even make night rides safer.
Sang-goo showed no mercy to bad men, human or otherwise — but for a good(?) and helpful robot, his affection ran deep.
He rode west.
The road from Jung District toward Saha District was desolate.
Abandoned dog strollers sat rotting along the roadside under a thick coat of dust.
Eleven years since the last human child was born — and the sight of those pet-carriers, relics of the explosive boom in pet ownership from before, still looked eerily out of place.
As he rolled into the aging repair-shop complex near Gu-dong, the air seemed to grow heavier still.
'There.'
Ahead, something that looked like a camp came into view.
The instant he spotted it, Little Dog's sensors began to shriek.
Keeeeng— bip bip bip!
Rumble rumble rumble—
The moment Sang-goo braked, a cold menace rolled in from up ahead.
Beyond a barricade of rusted oil drums and shredded tires, rusty iron grilles and homemade firearms revealed themselves.
"That's far enough! One more step and I'll put a hole in your skull!"
The voice was hoarse and gravelly, and the man's eyes burned with a mix of killing intent and fear.
"Freeze!"
"Don't you move a muscle, you bastard!"
Half a dozen hardened men appeared at his flanks, weapons trained on Sang-goo.
None of it was real firepower — gas-pipe shotguns, steel pipes, a hunting bow or two.
Watching them coil with tension, Sang-goo answered as blandly as he could manage.
"I'm from the Yeongdo District camp."
"Y-Yeongdo?"
"Isn't that the place run by those soldier guys?"
"Why would you be coming from there?"
"Hold on — that bike, those clothes… why's he dressed so damn well?"
The armed men traded muttered words, weapons still raised. Then the middle-aged man who seemed to be their leader raised his voice.
"You! What are you doing here? Fuck… are you really from Yeongdo? The Crows… you're not with the Black Guard, are you?!"
Crows? Black Guard? What now. I'll find out soon enough, I suppose.
Assuming these men were his enemies, Sang-goo pulled off his helmet and spoke again, calm and even.
"No idea what a 'Black Guard' is. Do you have a patient here?"
But the sight of the scar carved across his face only made them more wary.
"Patient? Damn plague! What are you, some kind of doctor?"
"Something like that."
"Now that's a joke. There's no doctor left in this hell! You a broker from Yeongdo? Or a lapdog for Geumji New City?!"
The middle-aged leader's finger tightened on the trigger guard.
Little had already dismounted and taken up a guard stance.
"Wh-what the hell is that?!"
Sang-goo shook his head at the thing.
He didn't want it charging in on its own and starting something.
He dismounted and raised both hands to show them — then deliberately lifted the rifle from the sidecar.
"Uhh?!"
"Hey! What the hell are you doing?!"
They shouted their warnings in a flurry, but as expected, no one fired and no one charged.
Without a tremor in his hands, Sang-goo checked the magazine once, loaded the weapon — and leveled it at them, smooth and natural.
"Uhh…!"
"Get down!"
In an instant, the situation had flipped.
"If I meant to kill you, I'd have shot already. If there's a patient here, I'll treat them — and I want some information. So let's cooperate."
Whether he was demanding they hand over the patient before he opened fire, or promising to turn the lot of them into patients, there was no telling.
The distance was roughly ten meters.
And yet — was that the sound of the men behind the barricade swallowing hard?
Despite holding every numerical advantage, their bravado hadn't shrunk an inch; instead, they were the ones losing their nerve.
A short silence stretched between the two sides.
"If there's no patient, I'll be on my way."
Sang-goo stowed the rifle back in the sidecar without a second's regret.
Taking the cue, Little hopped lightly in after it — and from the other side came sounds of barely contained panic.
"A-are you actually a doctor?"
"Not exactly. Hmm… let's say I have a nursing background."
That was when it happened.
"Nurse? W-wait a moment… could you be…."
Sang-goo's eyes met those of the man who'd been the most suspicious of all.
The scar on his face, the axe at his hip, the sharp eyes, the long hair grown out with style, and that deep, resonant baritone.
The doubt in the middle-aged man's eyes faded fast.
"You know me?"
"The slum clinic… you're Dr. Boo Young-ho's son, aren't you? The… not Hong-goo, the other one…."
Sang-goo's brow twitched slightly.
"Sang-goo. Boo Sang-goo."
"Haah… ha! It is you. E-everybody, drop your weapons!"
"Huh, hyung-nim?"
"What?!"
"Just like that…?"
"Drop the damn weapons, all of you! Don't you know who Boo Young-ho is?! I'm telling you, this is his son!"
Conviction sat plain on the middle-aged man's face — as if, even in a world like this, he knew exactly who Sang-goo was.
Sang-goo gave the men a long, unhurried look, then began to walk.
"Have you been to our clinic before?"
"I have. Once, with my kid brother. Dr. Boo treated him when none of the regular hospitals would take an addict."
"…I see."
His father's name had melted their wariness clean away — the niceties could wait.
"Damn it all… God's looking out for us. Running into you here of all places. Th-this way. Come this way, please. Hey, what are you idiots doing?! Open the gate! He appeared like fate itself to save the boy!!"
Inside the repair shop, the stench of oil and sweat mingled with the reek of death.
Sang-goo headed for the corner.
There lay Jun — a boy sprawled on a mattress atop a desk, gasping for air.
Thirteen years old. One of the precious few born just before humanity stopped producing children altogether.
"Jun, look at me, son. Take a deep breath for me."
The middle-aged man said it gently. Instead of answering, the boy's chest heaved with a whistling rasp. His lips had gone violet, and his eyes had lost their focus.
"He took a hit to the chest a while back. He looked fine on the outside, then he just dropped — and he's been like this since yesterday."
Sang-goo's eyes sharpened.
First, he studied the boy's fingernails and lips. A bluish cyanosis tinged with purple — the signal that his blood oxygen was plummeting.
He didn't need a stethoscope to hear it. Wheeeze, wheeeze — the screams of air forcing its way through narrowed bronchi.
'Cracked ribs, damage to the lung? At this stage, that's not something I can manage alone.'
Just as Sang-goo reached for his portable CT unit —
Keeeeeeeng—
A source of blue light surged up from Little Dog's back at his feet.
In an instant, the light swept over the boy's entire body, forming a lattice of laser grid lines.
"Little?"
The moment Sang-goo stopped, startled, a precise anatomical diagram of the human body bloomed onto his tablet and the hologram projector on Little Dog's flank.
And then — a 3D rendering of the boy's lungs appeared on both screens at once.
The boy's chest cavity showed through the hologram as if made of glass.
Injured ribs, lacerating the lung.
Tension pneumothorax and empyema following in its wake.
The right lung, crushed by an abnormally ballooned pocket of air, had collapsed into a corner, and yellow fluid pooled around it — all of it rendered in real time.
Sang-goo was left speechless.
'This thing… it could do this all along?'
Little Dog, which he'd taken for little more than a pack mule and scout, was functioning as a complete mobile diagnostic center.
Sang-goo nodded as he confirmed the data values on the hologram Little had brought up.
"Good. Hold the hologram steady, just like that."
He hesitated no longer. Reading the 3D anatomy Little Dog was projecting, he gauged the exact position for the needle.