Human Disqualified, Zombie Approved
Siwoo, when you head out, take me with you and raise me too, heehee—.
“Hi-u—”
She called my name. The zombie who was no longer her called it as if it really were my name.
I slowly reached out with my right hand and brushed her cheek. Cold skin. Beneath that ice-sheet chill there was none of the warmth of the living.
How long had it been since I’d touched her like this? More than half a year since I’d brought her here, and this kind of closeness still felt rare.
Open your eyes, Siwoo! This is not real! A white-haired zombie beauty is not sitting on top of you, nuzzling noses and clumsily saying your name! Open your eyes! Your reality is a filthy, fucked world reeking of blood and rotting corpses where zombies run wild!
Shut the fuck up.
Morpheus screaming inside my skull finally dragged me back to what was actually sitting on me.
“Baeksooni, get down.”
“Gwoo…”
I shoved Baeksooni off and sat up—fine so far—but the sudden stimulation left my other self far from calm.
I am not a zombie-fucker. I am not a zombie-fucker. I am not a zombie-fucker.
I hypnotized myself and dredged up every memory of what had happened to people who’d done that during a year of survival.
I would not end up like them. Even if Baeksooni didn’t smell like a corpse and had no rotting parts the way other zombies did.
No!! Calm down!
I couldn’t let temptation win. I thought of the little incident of waking up with a zombie arm fused to my left side. Right. My arm was more important right now.
But if a zombie arm already stuck to me, doesn’t that mean I’m already zombie-flagged? So what’s the problem?
Bullshit. I brought an axe down on the lust in my head.
“Hoo…”
Surviving alone was hard enough. In a place like this, sex was a luxury, and even basic hygiene wasn’t guaranteed.
My body wasn’t normal right now either. Doing anything out of sheer resignation would only make things worse.
I couldn’t throw away my odds of survival for a moment’s pleasure.
Once I’d killed the urge and shoved it aside, Baeksooni was sitting in front of me with both hands held out.
“…Hi-u—”
I’d thought it was my name, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was just some phrase she’d known when she was alive. Or just a particular cry.
Better to think of it that way than attach meaning and start hoping.
But why’s she been holding her hands out this whole time?
“…Ah. She’s asking for food.”
Before I’d secured a base she’d gone hungry a lot. Once I had a place and life settled a little, eating together almost every day had become routine.
Maybe that was why she was asking now. Climbing on top of me while I was out cold might have been some kind of complaint too.
“Animals have fixed routines, they say. Guess it works on zombies too.”
“Geu…”
“Fine, I’ll give you some. Hold on.”
I avoided Baeksooni’s demanding stare—both hands still out—and unslung the bag from my back, setting it on the floor.
Ah, but is any of it still intact?
I’d taken such a beating and been thrown around so hard getting here that I was nervous about the supplies inside.
Rip—
I tore open the Velcro and opened the bag. Of course.
Completely pulverized potatoes and carrots, plus a crushed can of food, were giving their death rattles.
“Ah.”
Thankfully the water still held its shape thanks to that civilized miracle called plastic, but the potatoes and carrots that had lost all form were a serious loss.
“Gaa—”
In a single day I’d beaten a muscle zombie, heard about the auntie’s hidden son, taken down a mutant zombie, and come home with an unwanted arm jammed into me.
All I’d gotten for it was a wrecked body and a weird mutant arm stuck to my left side.
“…Ah, for real.”
Coming up empty wasn’t new, but after this much suffering and walking away with nothing, the injustice boiled up hard.
“Ga-eup, ha-eup… hap…”
Baeksooni, oblivious to my mood, was busy picking fragments of raw potato and carrot out of the bag and stuffing them into her mouth. Watching her eat without a thought settled the rising anger for a moment. At least she was eating well. That was something.
“I’ll open a can for you—eat that instead. Stop picking scraps off the floor.”
I reached for the can opener the way I always did, then my eyes fell on the heavy mutant arm hanging on my left.
“Huh. Can I do it with this?”
Until now the only options had been a can opener or pinning the can with my foot. But now—
Rip—
“Heh. Fuck yes.”
For the first time since 2023, I opened a can with both hands. The left arm was pretty huge and I’d wondered if it would even work, but holding the can with my right and prying with the mutant fingers was ridiculously easy.
“Gua—”
“I know. Here.”
I speared a piece of the yellow peaches packed in juice and put it in Baeksooni’s mouth.
Until now I’d only ever tossed her roasted potatoes, carrots, or tomatoes. If this close was safe, I should have been feeding her by hand a long time ago.
“Ku-eup, ha-beup, geu…”
Baeksooni had never been a picky eater—I’d fed her almost everything except people, so I could vouch for that. She usually just took what she was given.
“Geuuu, geu…”
Peaches were new, though, and her reaction was strong. She was expressionlessly patting the floor while her shoulders and whole body bounced—pretty sure that meant it tasted good.
“Gaaa—”
She liked it enough that she opened her mouth at me like a baby bird asking for more. If it had been any other zombie it would’ve been threatening, but her mouth was small enough that it only looked cute.
No, what the fuck, get a grip.
Apparently a rough day had raised my threshold. There was no other way I could admit I found a zombie cute.
“Ha-up, uum, he-u…”
Juice ran down Baeksooni’s chin as she ate. She clumsily wiped her mouth with her palm, then licked every last drop of juice off her hand.
…Maybe I should stock up on peaches.
That almost got to me again, but I held on, put Baeksooni back in the cabinet, and only then returned to my own living space.
“Ah… fucking hurts.”
I peeled off my coat and tore away the dented stab-proof vest. I’d have to hammer that flat again before it was usable.
I lay on the mattress and stared at the ceiling. The string of fairy lights I’d hung everywhere cast a soft glow, making the bleak space feel almost human.
But the reality shoved in my face was still hanging off my left side in all its grotesque glory.
Creak—
I stretched the left arm toward the ceiling. Red muscle fibers that looked like they’d punched through skin, packed into a dense, unnatural shape. If this was an infection, how long did I have?
People bitten by zombies usually lasted half a day to a day; those with strong immune systems maybe a week.
“More like a parasite than an infection, though.”
I turned my head from the ceiling toward the rear of the train car.
There hung the massive map I’d made—locations and spheres of influence of the various groups drawn out, X’s where ground or buildings had collapsed, and crude sketches I’d forced in wherever I needed them.
X’s and circles packed across the map: the trail of my survival so far.
I looked at the marks of my struggle to find a shelter—a map made not by some kid who sat out a year of survival, but by someone who’d run himself ragged on foot.
Until now I’d been taking it easy, thinking supplies were fine and I could search slowly with time on my side.
“Better find a way before this goes completely to shit.”
A real facility might know how to get this arm off me.
It was a vague hope, but what else was there? If I casually went to some other group and tried to have it cut off, I might end up hurting people.
I remembered how, on the way here, I hadn’t been able to control the arm and it had torn zombies apart. Any threat to me—more precisely, any threat to this arm—and it slipped my control and moved on its own.
Would that stop at zombies? Mutants that hated humanity went berserk on anything living, zombie or human.
…Then why Baeksooni?
Why hadn’t it attacked Baeksooni when she climbed on top of me? Because I was unconscious? Even after I came to, the arm hadn’t reacted.
Did it decide Baeksooni wasn’t a threat?
The mutant fused to my arm was a smart one. If some of them had their brains in their dicks, this one felt like its brain was in the arm.
I shoved the researcher thoughts aside and got up from the mattress to treat my wounds, intending to strip.
Or rather, intending to try.
“Ah, this is seriously pissing me off.”
Until now my left sleeve had been empty, so after putting a shirt on I’d just tied the sleeve off. Today this mutant arm had fused to me, and somehow it had completely shredded the sleeve I’d tied.
“No… come on…”
It had needed bare skin to attach, sure, but clothes were a resource I still had to conserve. Tearing a perfectly good shirt didn’t exactly put me in a good mood.
“It won’t come off.”
And with the arm swollen like this, stripping the usual way wasn’t easy either. I draped the clothes over the zombie arm first, then pulled them free with my right.
“What the hell.”
The problem was what I saw afterward. My stomach was a mass of livid bruises, and from the throbbing in my back I could tell that wasn’t fine either.
But—
The left shoulder, where flesh had been torn away by the zombie arm’s hand, had already stopped bleeding. The skin had closed over, leaving only an ugly red scar.
“What is this. Why.”
I was stunned. I prodded the wound with my right hand and found only a rough scar—no pain at all.
This was not normal healing.
But I already knew: if something was wrong with my body right now, the clear cause was in my arm.
“…I’m fucked.”
I was already leaving humanity behind.