The Tooth Collector. (5)
"This way."
Ji Seong-gyu led the way down into the basement.
The underground corridor, driven deep into the earth, was considerably wider and longer than Sang-goo had expected. Cracks webbed the concrete walls, stained with dark reddish grime, and somewhere overhead an unknown liquid dripped at intervals — tik, tik — into the dark. Electricity was precious here, so the sparse overhead lamps left the passage dim enough to strain the eyes.
"It'll feel stuffy, but bear with it a while."
Ji Seong-gyu took the lead, sweeping his flashlight across the path ahead. Sang-goo activated his helmet's visor mode and took in the interior with ease, while Little Dog nestled quietly in his jacket, warily watching their surroundings, ready for anything.
The deeper they went, the cooler the air grew, but threaded through that chill hung an unpleasant stench — the iron tang of blood, the bite of antiseptic, and the sour musk of human bodies all mingled together.
Partway down the corridor, partitioned spaces began to appear. Makeshift wards.
"...Khulck! Ke-huk!"
Tearing coughs echoed from every direction. Sang-goo slowed and peered past one of the partitions.
Patients lay sprawled across old mattresses, every one of them clutching their chests and wheezing for air.
"Rest easy. Anyone at risk of turning gets kept at the outside clinic, separate from here."
"I thought you said you had doctors."
At Sang-goo's question, Ji Seong-gyu nodded with a bitter twist of his mouth.
"Four of them. But what good are doctors without medicine? Those folks over there are the closest things to 'teachers' this place has."
At the corridor's end, four men and women sat gathered around a small table. Rather than tending to the patients, they were flipping through worn charts and sighing. When Sang-goo approached, their eyes snagged on his pristine protective suit — and on the little dog riding in it.
"He's a guest. You lot get back to work. No flapping your gums."
"...Yes, sir."
"Understood."
Glares laced with envy, jealousy, and fear brushed past Sang-goo as he moved among them. He lowered his voice.
"How short on medicine are you, exactly?"
"Haven't laid eyes on an antibiotic in over a week, and even simple painkillers are treated like gold. What can you do? War's like that. Always has been."
Ji Seong-gyu's matter-of-fact delivery only made it crueler.
They'd be better off sending the patients away. Even a minor illness, in a place like this, just gets cultivated into something worse.
The farther down the corridor they walked, the louder the coughing grew. Sang-goo pitied them, but there was nothing he could do at this moment. First, he needed to understand what kind of people ran this organization — this sprawling warlord state. That took priority. He left the suffering patients behind him and kept walking.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
At the end of the underground corridor stood two massive cargo lifts, each guarded by four hulking men armed with shotguns and rifles. They eyed Sang-goo with open curiosity but kept their mouths shut.
Soon the lift doors ground open.
Leaving the gloom of the underground behind, Sang-goo rode the rattling cargo lift up toward the surface — and an overwhelming sight unfolded before his eyes.
Incredible.
The low whistle escaped him before he could stop it. The wall of crushed cars he'd seen at the fortress entrance had been nothing but a trailer. Before him now, two colossal concrete structures rose in sheer grandeur: twin ten-story buildings — the former industrial center's main hall and its research annex.
But their original shapes were all but unrecognizable now. Dozens of old shipping containers had been welded to the concrete outer walls, clinging to them like parasites, packed tight, one against another. The effect was that of enormous steel barnacles devouring the buildings. The containers linked into one another, forming passages and living quarters, and through the gaps between them snarled masses of wire and pipe tangled like veins.
Looks just like a giant ant colony.
"Well? What do you think?"
"Desperate."
"Keheheh. I'll take that as a compliment."
Huge solar panels sheathed the building exteriors like scales without a single gap, glinting as they caught the setting sun. And spanning the rooftop of the eighth floor between the two great towers, two long steel bridges — precarious-looking things — joined the buildings into a single mass.
"The view's fine up there. The ground's a battlefield, but the top floors are damn near livable."
Sang-goo followed Ji Seong-gyu onto the cargo elevator and arrived at the rooftop — where yet another improbable scene was waiting for him. Atop the gray forest of steel stood a green oasis. A vast smart-farm greenhouse, roofed in tempered glass and solar panels, claimed most of both buildings' rooftops. Inside, vegetables of every kind grew lush and fresh under a blend of LED light and sunlight, and beyond a fence on one side, pigs, chickens, and even a few cows idly chewed their fodder.
It was abundance far beyond anything he had imagined.
"I didn't expect facilities like this."
"The higher-ups put a lot of work into it. Of course, it falls woefully short of feeding five thousand mouths."
Ji Seong-gyu led him to a table set in the middle of a glass dome at the rooftop's heart. The mouth of the Nakdong River spread out below at a glance, and across the water, the skyscrapers of Geumji New City shimmered faintly in the distance. Fresh air moved rich and clean through the dome; it made his head feel clear just breathing it.
"Let's sit."
Sang-goo removed his helmet and took a chair. Little Dog settled onto the floor nearby, keeping watch over their surroundings. Dinner was already underway. The smell of fresh pork grilling over charcoal stung at his nose.
Not everyone in this camp eats like this, though.
With the succulent meat right in front of him, Sang-goo's worry only deepened. It made him suspect this organization was even more brutal than he'd imagined.
"Drink?"
"I'm fine. Though — is hospitality always this generous for guests?"
"You're no ordinary guest. You've got quite the reputation, after all?"
"I'll take that as a compliment."
"Keheheh. Take it."
The meal began. Sang-goo chewed the rich meat and let his gaze drift over their surroundings. Along the rooftop railings stood modified improvised turrets and absurdly oversized harpoon launchers, and the eyes of the men standing watch were razor-sharp.
"You're preparing for war."
At his words, Ji Seong-gyu drained a glass of harsh whiskey in one go.
"Not preparing. We're already fighting it. It just never ends — nothing but a war of attrition with no finish line in sight."
Ji Seong-gyu's eyes darkened.
"Every three days or so, a firefight breaks out with those crow bastards across the river. It's been months already. Morale's hit rock bottom, the food keeps running out, and the sick just keep piling up."
Sang-goo took a piece of meat, chewed it slowly, and then laid out his real business.
"An operation this size is bound to have information on the Yeongdo-gu camp. Do you have any interest in joining forces with them?"
In that instant, Ji Seong-gyu's chopsticks stopped mid-air. The gazes of the senior men standing guard around the table all snapped onto Sang-goo at once.
"...What did you say?"
"I asked whether you'd consider joining a government-led camp."
"Hm. So Yeongdo-gu's doing well for itself, is it? Well enough to take in the likes of us?"
"They have stockpiles of food and medicine, and above all, they're working to restore Busan. If this camp's population joined them, it would be a real asset."
"Ah~ so we all join hands and retake Busan from the zombies together. And after that, unification of the whole country, is it? And the big shots at the top will just sit back in the rear and give the orders?"
Something raw and long-buried bled through the words, so Sang-goo answered with silence first.
Whether Ji Seong-gyu mistook that silence for a hit landing home or something else entirely — a short pfft of laughter burst out of him, and soon the men around the table started snickering and chuckling along. Once the laughter broke loose, it rattled the table with mockery for a good long while.
Sang-goo stared straight at Ji Seong-gyu and rolled the meat around in his mouth. Then Ji Seong-gyu cut his laughter off sharply and shot back at him.
"You're not planning to use us as meat shields, are you?"
"Surely not. This is the government we're talking about."
"The government? You've got a great sense of humor, doctor. When the Zombie Break hit — when they dragged my wife and my boy off and left them in the gutter — where was that precious government?"
Ji Seong-gyu slammed his fist down on the table.
"The second things got dangerous, they vanished without a trace. And now they crawl back, set up a cozy camp on some safe little island, and expect to control us? Are we insane? Do they want us crawling like dogs for their masters?"
"Ji Seong-gyu—"
"We've been breathing steel dust down here all this time, building our own laws, holding our own line. Months of this life, and now we're supposed to bow to a government? You think those men — the comrades down below — will just fall in line?"
Sang-goo set down his chopsticks. His eyes had gone cold and still.
"You're mistaken about something. I don't represent the government. Raising your voice at me won't change a thing."
"...Hoo. Then what is it you do, exactly? A man carrying scars like those on his face."
"Let's call it settling personal debts. I use a few particular skills to take the measure of people, that's all. Whether you and your men get wiped out fighting the crows is no concern of mine. The government is just a means — the choice is yours."
A faint, creeping bloodlust rose off Sang-goo's quietly murmured words. The men arrayed around them found their hands drifting to their rifles without meaning to, and Ji Seong-gyu let out a long, bitter breath before tossing back his whiskey.
"I got heated. My apologies."
Sang-goo rinsed his mouth with water and picked up his chopsticks again. Let them stare all they liked from every direction. He speared the grilled meat and stolidly ate it. In a world like this one, you couldn't afford to neglect eating and resting.
That was precisely why the men across the table couldn't make Sang-goo out at all. He'd come alone into an unfamiliar stronghold, yet instead of showing fear or tension, he'd somehow seized hold of the room.
After a long silence, Ji Seong-gyu dragged in a rough breath and spoke.
"Fine. Then help us. If you show us something — prove what you're worth — then I'll persuade my superior, and the brothers here too, to give your... the government's proposal, a serious look."
"And the conditions?"
Ji Seong-gyu held up one grease-stained finger.
"First is medicine. You saw the underground corridor, didn't you? Our doctors are sitting around sucking their thumbs. There's an Oseong University hospital on the outskirts of Seomyeon, and we've got word there's a mountain of drugs stockpiled inside."
"I've been there a few times before the Break. It's quite a distance, and it was one of Busan's busiest districts — it'll be a zombie pit by now."
"It will. But from what we hear, when the Zombie Break hit, the hospital's higher-ups got orders to gather the critical medicines from around Seomyeon into that hospital's basement warehouse. Some of our own doctors trained there, and they swore us to keep it out of the hands of the military units."
Sang-goo let out a dry laugh.
"You're comfortable handing me intel that valuable? What if I tell Yeongdo-gu and they fly a helicopter in and take it for themselves?"
Ji Seong-gyu drank with easy calm.
"It's a picture of a rice cake to us either way. We can't send a force that big that far — the strategic gap it'd leave is too wide. And there's no doubt in my mind the crows have informers inside this camp already. The moment we pull our main strength, they'll hit us that same day. Besides..."
Ji Seong-gyu shrugged and went on.
"If you don't help us, a negotiating table with the government was never opening in the first place."
Sang-goo nodded. It was cold, clear calculation.
"And the second condition?"
Ji Seong-gyu's eyes sharpened harder than they had all evening.
"Go to Geumji New City. Find out what's happening inside it."
"You want me to play spy."
"You're a Yeongdo-gu man, aren't you? Do what you did with me — approach them talking about the government camp, and you're in."
"And then? You planning an ambush?"
"Mediate. Put an end to this hellish war of attrition. Two sides — no, three, counting Yeongdo-gu — keeping the peace, each staying out of the others' territory. That's what we want."
Sang-goo said nothing. Push a forced merger too hard, and civil war could erupt instead. It might well be the wiser path — for now — for each organization to recognize the others and cooperate on clearing out the zombies first. He gazed out at the darkening sky, thinking it over, then finished his dinner.
"Not a bad arrangement. I'll pass it along. But I'm afraid this is where the meal ends for me."
Sang-goo rose slowly from his seat. Ji Seong-gyu blinked at him, caught off guard.
"Something wrong?"
And no wonder — there were the variants, after all, the ones that came out only after nightfall. The bald variants people called the night guests. They always traveled in packs, faster and far more vicious than your average zombie. Granted, they favored tunnels and the basements of high-rise buildings, so there was little chance of running into them this close to the open bridge.
"I've had a solid dinner. Time to work it off, don't you think?"
"Work it off... You don't mean the variant you pulled the teeth from? But the sun's going down right now. Wait a little and you can meet our Legion Commander—"
Ji Seong-gyu could gape all he liked, and so could every man around the table.
"Once it's dark, I'm moving."
Sang-goo was terrifyingly calm.