The Tail End of Winter. (1)
The Seomyeon intersection — once one of Busan's busiest commercial hubs.
A place that had been called the beating heart of the city, overflowing with youth and pleasure. Now it was a scene of necrosis, like a massive artery gone blocked and dead.
The ten-lane boulevard was choked with tangled buses and sedans until it looked like a parking lot, and shattered glass and torn signage lay strewn about like grotesque debris.
Skreeeee…
Krrrgh….
What filled the maze of wrecked vehicles wasn't people.
Thousands of zombies.
Perhaps because it had always been so crowded with the living, the Seomyeon area alone held four distinct mass swarms, plainly visible to the eye. The creatures swept back and forth like one enormous living organism, hunting for the scent of life.
Pitter-patter— drip. Drip.
Raindrops began to fall from the slate-gray sky, as if to wash the stench of blood from the entire city, and the drizzle quickly thickened into a downpour.
And cutting through that cold rain came a sound that had no business existing here — a strange engine note, utterly foreign to this place.
Vrooom-vrooom-vrooom—
A single matte-black motorcycle slipped into the heart of hell.
In the face of overwhelming numbers, the rider dropped the engine to a whisper out of habit, switching to the electric motor.
"Filthy many, aren't they."
Boo Sang-goo.
With his helmet visor down, he worked the handlebars with easy precision, threading between the packs of zombies. Sure enough — the horde was intimidating only because of its sheer size. Individually, they were no different from any others.
Even as he passed right in front of them, the creatures merely shuffled vacantly, making no move to lunge. A few sniffed at the air and drifted closer, but when Sang-goo turned his head and stared at them dead-on, they quickly lost interest and looked away.
Once again, they registered him as one of their own — or as a predator best left untouched.
"Same loop, over and over."
He briefly considered following them for a while, then thought better of it.
Sang-goo opened his eyes wide and expanded his hearing. From the look of things, there couldn't possibly be any survivors here — but he had no intention of giving up. Everything he'd been through had taught him that human endurance ran deeper than anyone expected. Even in a hell like this, somewhere, someone would be trapped and waiting for a helping hand.
It was hard to put into words, but it had always been this way. In every area Sang-goo committed himself to sweeping, survivors always turned up. Whether fate was handing him a chance to wipe away his karma, or whether it was nothing but coincidence, he couldn't say. He only intended to use the power he'd been given — plainly, diligently, and in the right places.
Pulling slightly away from the center of Seomyeon, Sang-goo parked the bike in a suitable spot — a dense cluster of buildings, large and small packed shoulder to shoulder. No mutants in the vicinity. No particular will to live radiating from anywhere either.
Day one would start here.
Sang-goo opened his backpack and pulled out what he'd acquired — the goods he'd traded for one more bundle of cigarettes. Two small drones built by the technical team leader of Yeongdo District.
Smart little things: set a route and they patrolled it on their own, recorded footage, and came home. He launched both and sent them flying in opposite directions.
Buuuwooong—
The two drones punched up through the rain and climbed into the sky, rapidly shrinking into the distance. Following the routes Sang-goo had plotted on his tablet, one searched north and east, the other west and south, tracing wide circles.
Some time passed.
The pair returned, having swept the five-hundred-meter radius around Sang-goo in figure-eights. One of them had found something.
An eight-story commercial building in Seomyeon. The eighth floor had once housed a gym, and its interior now reeked of mold and rot.
And in that cold, filthy space, there were survivors.
"Mmmgh…."
A woman lay moaning in pain atop a stack of yoga mats, using them as a bed. She'd piled dozens of gym workout clothes over herself in place of a blanket, but it was nowhere near enough to fend off the cold.
Park Su-yeon — a physical therapist who had worked at a clinic on the building's second floor. She groaned, clutching her grotesquely swollen left ankle. She'd splinted it, but she'd fractured it jumping from the second floor during their escape three days earlier — a compound break, the bone crushed. Untreated, it had grown inflamed, and now fever burned through her.
"Nuna. Just hold on a little longer."
The one watching over her was her younger brother, Park Min-jae. The powerful athlete's build he'd had as a college PE student on leave was gone; what remained was skin stretched over bone. He was hardly better off himself — a rib had snapped somewhere in his side, and his face twisted with every breath.
"Min-jae… don't go. Koff! Koff! Hah… it's dangerous."
Su-yeon grabbed the hem of her brother's shirt with a withered hand. Sweat poured off her, yet her lips were cracked dry and the skin beneath her eyes had gone black. Exhaustion layered over malnutrition layered over cold — she could drop dead at any moment, and it would surprise no one. Just looking at her tore her brother's heart apart.
"Hah…."
They'd had no food from the moment they escaped. What remained now was an empty water bottle and nothing else.
"I have to catch some rainwater. Otherwise we die of dehydration."
Min-jae's voice, worn ragged by hunger, trembled. But they couldn't just lie here and die because it was hard.
Dad saved us — he got us out. We can't end it like this.
Min-jae clenched his jaw. Three days ago, in that living hell called L Hotel. The night they fled from the uniformed men of Taesan Financial Security, his father — Park Chul-ho, a former taxi driver — had pushed the two of them out first and made himself the bait, luring the pursuers away in another direction.
"Don't look back, just run! I'll shake them and catch up!"
That was the last time.
They didn't know whether their father had been captured or killed. But they knew how vicious those men were — if he was still alive, he was enduring torments that would make death a mercy. If his sister had been the one caught, she'd have been made a sex slave; he himself would have ended up as a meat shield or a fighting dog for their amusement.
I'm sorry, Dad… but Suyeon — at least Suyeon — I have to protect her, and I'm just… so tired.
The memories of three days ago kept resurfacing no matter how hard he tried to bury them. A sob surged up his throat, and Min-jae pushed himself to his feet. He picked up a plastic bucket and the empty water bottle.
"I'll be right back."
Dragging his unsteady body, he hauled himself up the emergency stairwell.
Creeeeeak….
When the rusted steel door swung open, cold rain lashed his face, and the chill of winter seared through his whole body in an instant.
"Hnnngh…."
He was freezing out of his mind, but the thirst scorching his throat was worse.
Min-jae crouched on the rooftop, tipped his head back, and opened his mouth to the sky. Rainwater poured into his burning throat. It tasted of stale dust, but to Park Min-jae in that moment it might as well have been the water of life.
"Hooaah…."
He opened and closed his jaw who knew how many times before the thirst finally eased, and a faint bit of his hunger dulled along with it. It was miserable, being this cold — but for the first time in ages, his head cleared for a moment.
Okay. Good enough.
The bucket had filled to a sloshing slop of rainwater when it happened.
Buuuwooong—
A strange sound threaded through the drumming rain. A mechanical whine. An engine.
The Taesan bastards? No… they shouldn't be able to move around right now.
Startled, Min-jae ducked down behind the railing. Then he stared hard at his cracked-screen digital watch.
10:00 a.m.
He blinked several times. Still ten. Now it read 10:01.
What the—
The watch didn't seem to be broken.
Min-jae rose carefully from his trembling crouch and crept toward the railing.
This is zombie-wave hours. There's no way anyone could come through here right now.
The reason Min-jae and his sister had been able to escape L Hotel at all was information. Su-yeon had worked in this neighborhood, so the three of them had stayed in the area ever since the Zombie Break. For reasons no one understood, a couple of months back the zombies had begun forming swarms — and circling the same routes, endlessly. They stopped at sundown, but from sunrise on, rain or snow, they never stopped tracing the same loops. They bled off and absorbed members here and there, but always maintained roughly the same size, wandering the same ground.
And yet. Someone was moving around down there?
"…I can't… hear it anymore."
By the time he was nearly at the railing, the sound had vanished.
Did I imagine it?
Min-jae cautiously lifted his head and peered down through the railing's gaps — and doubted his own eyes.
"Wh…?"
On the road below, a single black motorcycle was cutting serenely through the seething center of a swarm of hundreds of zombies. A man armored in a black helmet and black suit. Where he passed, the creatures parted before him like the Red Sea. They only stared blankly at the bike — not one of them lunged to bite, to tear, to drag him down.
"Wh… what… is that…."
Min-jae wiped his rain-soaked eyes. Was he seeing things? Had starvation finally cracked his mind into hallucinating? Or was that man… a ghost?
But the sight of the bike's tires kicking up water from the puddles was too vivid to be anything but real.
Vmmm—
Is he keeping the engine quiet on purpose?
Even Min-jae knew some hybrid models could deliberately raise or mute their exhaust note. But that wasn't the point. Whether the motorcycle was loud or silent didn't matter. The real question was why — why in God's name were the zombies leaving that man alone?!
Then the bike stopped. A moment later the rider pulled something from his backpack, and it shot up into the sky with a buoong—
A d-drone? A search?!
Hypnotized, Min-jae gripped the railing and started to rise — then immediately flattened himself against the concrete.
Should I ask him to help us? Ah… who even is this guy? Please don't be a bad person.
The biggest worry, of course, was his sister. She was injured, and she was a woman — they couldn't just trust a strange man. But from somewhere in the back of his mind, another voice was shaking him by the shoulders. That guy might not be a looter. Look, he's obviously not your average survivor, is he? Have you ever seen anyone like that? His gear's clean. This is a chance — maybe the last one we'll ever get!
Was it hope talking, whispering to him like voices only the desperate can hear?
In the end, Park Min-jae broke down and wept.
"Hhhk…."
Cold, starving, aching everywhere. His sister looked ready to die at any moment, and the future was a blank wall. What if he just… just gave up? Here, now — wouldn't letting go of everything feel easier?
After this long in the apocalypse, a nervous breakdown or depression wouldn't have been strange at all.
Min-jae stood up. Clang. The arm that had held the bucket went slack, and it hit the ground. As if possessed, he walked back toward the railing. Body and spirit both worn through, his mind was no longer his own.
"……."
Part of him almost envied those zombie bastards swarming down there. What if he joined them — walked into that horde and became one of them? Wouldn't he never be hungry again, never be tired again, together with them forever?
"Hell… this is the hell. This right here is hell."
Min-jae washed his face with the rain. Tears and snot streamed down without pause. His breathing turned ragged; his chest felt like it was being torn open.
"Nuna… I'm sorry. I'm sorry, nuna…."
Just as his heart hardened into something final and his eyes squeezed shut—
BUUUWOOOOONG—
A hornet's drone in the rain. It closed the distance at terrifying speed, and—
"Huh…?"
The moment his eyes flew open—
THWACK—!
"Wha—?!"
A sharp drone hook slammed into the jaw of Park Min-jae, mid-climb over the railing.