Chapter 88
Chapter 88
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 46
Chapter Title: Messiah (6)
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“Grrrrr!”
Right below us, Je Phong-ho bared his teeth in front of thousands of zombies.
“Chairman.”
I muttered without thinking as I looked at him.
“Let’s not do this.”
Je Phong-ho charged forward at the lead.
Behind him, an endless horde of zombies filled the entire road, closing in on us.
“Can’t you do something?!”
I whipped around desperately toward I Am Jesus.
“N-No! He’s not listening to me!”
I Am Jesus muttered with a pale face full of despair.
“No, I can’t use my power right now.”
I could guess what he was afraid of.
He feared that if he unleashed a shockwave, the backlash would make me pass out again.
It was a reasonable worry.
But we couldn’t just hop off the motorcycle either.
Doubting whether he could pull his soldiers away from the true zombie king even if we did.
With no choice, I tried reverse-driving to evade them.
Vroooom—
I felt a bit grateful to Baek Seung-hyeon.
For handing over a vehicle that could charge so powerfully even with two people—who together barely made one full serving—plus a zombie aboard.
But behind us was the city center, the zombies’ lair.
I pictured the map that had been imprinted in my mind earlier.
No escape routes.
Every area I’d considered had way too many zombies for us to handle.
“...”
If it were just me, I might survive.
Dropping one zombie and one human would lighten the load on the motorcycle, allowing for more aggressive maneuvers.
But I couldn’t abandon I Am Jesus or his sister.
What I was carrying was the weight of humanity, after all.
“Can’t you do anything?”
Now, I Am Jesus was all I could rely on.
I didn’t believe in gods or saviors, but right now, I believed in this immature guy.
“Uh, uh!”
I Am Jesus rolled his eyes.
“Ah! Dad’s church!”
“Dad’s church?”
“Basement! Basement! Let’s go! The basement should be fine.”
“How?”
“There’s an underground parking lot! Behind the church!”
Vrooooom—
The moment I heard him, I floored it toward the back of the church.
There it was.
Hidden by collapsed debris but visible—a fairly spacious entrance to the underground parking lot.
I plowed through the rubble and headed straight down.
Click.
I switched on the headlights and looked inside.
Bodies everywhere.
Corpses that hadn’t turned into zombies littered the place.
Probably churchgoers or people who’d hidden here from zombies, only to die without their brains or spines crushed—denied even the chance to turn.
“Basement level 3! Head to basement level 3!”
“There’s a level 3?!”
“Yeah! I know a spot!”
The place I Am Jesus pointed to was a dead-end wall.
“Nothing here?”
“Wait!”
He hopped off the motorcycle and groped along the wall.
“Found it!”
He pressed a hidden button, and a shutter camouflaged as the wall began rising with a mechanical whir.
Inside was a small garage with a single, unscratched Bentley.
“Dad’s private garage.”
I quickly parked the motorcycle in the empty spot and closed the shutter.
From beyond the underground, steep footsteps and zombie howls echoed.
I drew my axe and scanned the surroundings.
Sure enough, eyes gleamed in the darkness.
About fifty of them.
“Hey.”
I called to I Am Jesus.
“Can’t you do something?”
Thud!
I Am Jesus unleashed a shockwave, swinging his arm.
The fifty pairs of eyes lighting up the dark scattered, shuffling toward level 2.
“Hoo...”
“SKELTON. Here. Here.”
I Am Jesus opened a door at the back of the garage.
“What? More?”
“Yeah.”
We stepped inside together.
It was a spacious room with a bed.
Everything in pristine condition.
The bed was a far better brand than mine.
But the moment I saw the accessories scattered around, my appetite soured.
The room was littered with an eyebrow-raising abundance of bizarre adult toys, messily strewn about.
When I Am Jesus flicked on the light, the perverted atmosphere doubled.
The lighting was pink.
“What is this place?”
I asked, though I knew.
I Am Jesus smirked bitterly.
“Where Dad brings women.”
“...”
“After he got caught banging someone outside and it made the news, he built this in the church basement.”
“...Power’s still on, huh.”
“Backup generator, probably. He once told me he got chewed out after a blackout trapped him with a woman.”
“I see.”
An amazing family history, but not the issue now.
I checked the zombie.
She was still fully obeying I Am Jesus’s commands.
I pressed my ear to the garage door to gauge the situation outside.
By the sounds, the ones from level 2 had mixed with those from level 3, causing chaos.
We’d be safe for a while.
“Alright.”
Time for the most important task.
Turning the zombie back into a human.
The moment when I Am Jesus ascended from mad forum poster to humanity’s messiah.
As he drank some water, I asked,
“Your sister. Can you bring her back fully?”
I Am Jesus nodded gravely.
“...Yeah!”
And so, beneath the lewd pink lights, the ritual to save humanity began.
Thud!
I Am Jesus generated a shockwave.
Not right next to me, so the impact was milder, but each wave made my body twitch.
“...”
It was agonizing, a bit frightening, but I saw it as a baptism.
Park Gyu, untouched by any god, snatching crumbs from one who was chosen, gaining power to fight my enemies—a holy rite.
Sis.”
I Am Jesus gazed solemnly at the zombie.
I felt an intangible energy flowing from him to her.
And sure enough.
Her ashen skin regained a human flush.
From gray-white to milky pink.
Gulp.
I watched the miracle unfold, waiting for the next moment.
“Sis. Can you hear me?”
I Am Jesus reached to touch her face.
But his hand never made contact.
The moment she opened her eyes and saw him,
“Kyaaah!”
She screamed and slapped his hand away.
Coincidentally, an adult toy rolled behind her, making her tumble backward.
“Aaah!”
She flailed on the floor, trying to escape the approaching I Am Jesus.
“S-Sis?!”
I Am Jesus said with trembling eyes.
His sister shrieked,
“G-Get away! Get away from me, you bastard!”
Her thrashing held more contempt than I’d imagined.
“Sis.”
I Am Jesus’s face went pale.
“You’re gross! With that monkey face, who do you think you are, creeping on me? If it weren’t for Dad, I wouldn’t even look at you!”
Her face suddenly froze.
A terrifying expression replaced the icy words she’d just spat.
“Pastor. Don’t do this.”
She stared into empty space.
“Why are you doing this? I’ll call the police!”
She spoke vividly,
as if I Am Jesus’s father were really standing before her.
“No. Pastor. We can’t do this. We said we wouldn’t...”
Gesturing fearfully at the air, grimacing, crying, laughing—she no longer even glanced at I Am Jesus.
“Pastor. Is this the first time? What if Dongpil finds out? You know he likes me.”
In some dream we couldn’t know, she repeated fragments of her past soullessly.
“Dongpil? I don’t think of him that way. Honestly, he’s a burden.”
Thinking this zombie had turned human was a fleeting illusion.
I Am Jesus’s power only briefly infused the dead with shards of their living memories.
Like a dreamer, she grasped at shattered recollections, babbling nonsense.
Like a broken phonograph.
“...”
I glanced at I Am Jesus.
This immature man, with his shaggy beard and tangled hair, stared unblinking at the last remnants of the woman he loved, his face rigid.
“I’m pregnant. What do we do? Huh? You gonna throw me away like that other girl?”
Her crude words hinted at something vile, so I stepped out to listen for movement outside.
“...Ugh.”
The moment I looked away, I Am Jesus collapsed.
He buried his face in the bed where his father and this woman had likely rolled, sobbing bitterly.
While he cried, the zombie reverted to her original pallor, standing blankly like a doll, gazing indifferently at the weeping man with gray-white eyes.
The crying didn’t last long.
I Am Jesus wiped his tears with his sleeve and stood resolutely.
“SKELTON.”
I noticed another change in him.
“Let’s go.”
I Am Jesus said with a relieved expression.
“What?”
“I think we can make it out.”
“Your sister?”
To my question, he replied with a wistful smile.
“...She’s just a zombie.”
In that brief moment, the boy had become a man.
Like a cicada emerging from the dark, drying its wet wings, preparing to fly.
Now, he was ready to soar.
“Ma-ma-m...”
I Am Jesus uttered our code word and shyly smiled at me.
I smiled back and followed him.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Now he emitted monster-like waves.
Not just from his eyes, but a brilliance enveloping his entire body.
Zombies were nothing before him.
Twilight was falling.
Thousands of eyes watched us from the dark, and atop them, the faceless monster—like a profane god’s statue—revealed itself again.
Click!
I readied my gun and stood by I Am Jesus.
But I probably had no place in this fight.
The necromancer-type unleashed waves, swinging his arm.
Thousands of zombies charged us at once.
Like a massive tidal wave crashing in.
Facing that terror, I Am Jesus responded with identical waves.
“Go back.”
He said in a raspy voice.
And a miracle occurred.
The zombies charging us turned, attacking their former king.
“Kieeeek!!!”
Je Phong-ho lunged first.
Crunch!
Led by him, thousands of zombies swarmed the monster, tearing into its flesh.
The monster’s reflective barrier, bullet-bursting power, explosive currents—none mattered against countless zombies.
The king who ruled the city of the dead was devoured by the dead, and the city returned to them.
“...Let’s go.”
The king-slayer passed me, his long hair whipping in the wind.
Countless zombies still blocked our path, but they parted to the sides before he even approached.
Like the Red Sea of Egypt.
*
“He wasn’t always a bad father.”
On the way back, I heard about his dad.
“Back in the pioneer church days, he was a good man. Kind, friendly, deeply faithful. Knew the Bible inside out. No mom, but Dad pulled double duty.”
He glanced at the cargo hold.
We’d dumped the satellite gear for the zombie, but the small game console and cartridges remained, packaging crushed on the floor.
“Dad got me this console too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. In elementary school, I whined for the latest one—the Blu-ray one. But Dad had no money. So he took a classic from a parishioner’s family discard—not even used—and gave it to me.”
He pulled out a cartridge.
I knew the game.
The old bestseller he’d been speedrunning when I first tried befriending him.
I Am Jesus gazed wistfully at the faded pack, then tucked it back.
“Maybe those days were better.”
“The past gets romanticized.”
“Maybe.”
We were heading to I Am Jesus’s bunker.
Something he hadn’t grabbed yet.
The sun had set, night cloaking the city, but we had no worries.
What concerned me was this young man’s mental state.
“Dad committed too many sins. Probably in hell now.”
His voice mirrored his unease.
Makes sense.
Too much for a guy who’d cut off all human contact, living in the dark.
“Don’t worry about your father. Focus on calming down and resting now.”
Sincere advice.
Extreme emotional swings drive people mad.
Especially fragile, immature types like him.
“...Dad.”
Tears welled in I Am Jesus’s eyes again.
“I, I...”
He muttered in a hoarse voice.
“If I’d just said one harsh word...”
“Think that changes people?”
“Yeah.”
I Am Jesus said with conviction.
“Dad melted at anything I said.”
“Really?”
“He’d die if I told him to.”
“...Hmm.”
“I went mad with his money too. Knew he was turning rotten but looked away, and this is the result.”
The familiar partition came into view.
I Am Jesus’s bunker.
“Dad built this bunker too.”
“Figured.”
While he went inside, I stared blankly at the night sky outside.
I wasn’t much better.
Even now, popping a cigarette into my mouth, wondering if some divine scrap might fall on me.
“SKELTON!”
I Am Jesus emerged.
“Let’s go!”
He held something out.
“What’s this?”
A solid gold cross.
“You came to get me, so I figured I owed you this much.”
“Between us? Don’t freak out over the toilet.”
“Toilet?”
“Let’s go.”
As we prepared to leave with the precious cargo,
“Not riding?”
I Am Jesus stared at the ground.
Specifically, the zombie.
The one I’d axed earlier.
“What, something?”
“Nah, just suddenly wanted to see this zombie’s face.”
“Why? Know him?”
“No, just.”
I got off the motorcycle and flipped the corpse.
A middle-aged man’s distorted face, cleaved by the axe, gleamed under the moonlight.
Nothing special.
But suddenly, a face from some news clip flashed in my mind.
“Ah.”
I looked at I Am Jesus.
“Dad?”
Blank expression.
Then he crumpled to his knees before the body, grasping the cold hand and burying his face in its chest.
“...Dad.”
The zombie I’d split open was none other than I Am Jesus’s father.
*
“So what happened then, SKELTON?”
Su showed interest while eating jelly.
I glanced at Rebecca’s back as she stirred the canned soup boiling with tomato scent, transcribing my words, and told her the end of I Am Jesus as I knew it.
“He went back to the city.”
“To that zombie-infested place? To die?!”
I shook my head at startled Su.
“No.”
I recalled his finale.
Under the darkness, the self-luminous man walked of his own accord toward the masses gaping at him, arms spread wide.
“...He went to save the zombies.”
“Like a messiah?”
“Probably.”
I gave a wry smile, pulling out the cigarette from my pocket.
Still black.
So, he wasn’t my messiah, at least.
I’d pass anyway.
“Ma-ma-m!”
The messiah shaking game cartridges and an onahole, yelling nonsense.
Rebecca said he’d gone mad, but I disagreed.
Since that day, I’ve had dreams now and then.
I don’t remember the content, but the hue is always gray-white.