The Abandoned Building in the Mountains
The next day.
I scrapped my original plan to rest and recover at the base and headed outside instead.
People say the pain after a car accident only hits later, but with me it was the opposite—my body was getting better the longer time went on.
When I woke up, the bruise across my stomach had clearly shrunk. And the better it got, the more the terror came flooding in until I simply couldn't stay still.
That was why I was suddenly climbing a mountain.
Rustle.
"Kkagak, kkagagak…!"
I hadn't exactly wanted to climb a mountain either. Out here, no matter how carefully you tried to keep quiet, sound was inevitable.
Puhak!
"Kkagak…"
But the city was too conspicuous in my current condition, and I was going to have to come up here eventually anyway. For now, this was the only place I could go.
"Hoo…"
I flung the zombie corpse I'd just skewered clean through with my hand far off into the trees.
If I went around doing this downtown, other survivors would notice—and once word of it reached the wrong groups…
"Ugh, damn…"
They'd never leave me alone. Whether they wanted to drag me in or just eliminate the threat, they'd keep coming.
The school crew especially. There was bad blood between us, and if they ever heard about this, they'd come as a pack and try to kill me.
That bastard would do it for sure.
I was thinking about the guy we both still had scores to settle with when my foot slipped on the trail.
Pasasak!
"Kyaaak!!"
"Kareureuk!"
"Ah."
One wrong step and the zombies nearby locked onto me. There were plenty of trees and the visibility was garbage, but that only made them more sensitive to sound. They zeroed in on my direction in seconds and came charging.
Kang! Kakak—!
Pasak!
Why the hell does it have to be the running ones.
The short gaps between their footfalls said they were runners—at least three of them. One sounded heavy, with a metallic clank to its step; that one had turned while still armed.
"Kaaaak!"
A zombie burst out of the brush behind me, armored and caked in dried blood. It probably hadn't been aiming for my blind spot on purpose—but it hit it perfectly all the same, leaping to take me down.
Chak!
In a blink its head was sliced into three horizontal pieces and it toppled sideways.
Keudeudeuk—
My arm twisted its joints past any angle a human body should allow, carved through the zombie at my back as well, then snapped back into place with that distinctive sound of writhing muscle.
"This is insane."
The joints had bent wrong, but there was no pain. Of course there wasn't. The Mutant arm grafted onto me was closer to a detached accessory than a true part of my body. No connected nerves meant no pain. That much made sense.
"Keureureureuk!"
"Kihyaak!"
Two left—and both runners. Back when I was still just Shanks, I would've turned and run for my life. This time, I decided to put the Mutant arm to real use.
"Heup!"
Jjeok!
"Kak!"
I drove the axe in my right hand into the neck of the first one charging me. It staggered with the blade half-buried in its throat—but I couldn't finish it. While I was focused on one side, the other zombie came sprinting in from the other.
"Not a chance, you bastard!"
Peok!
I swung the Mutant arm and batted the charging zombie away. Even a light swing from that monstrous strength sent its body flying through the air.
"Kyaeueuk, keureuk…!"
Kwaak! Tutuk…
I put my weight into the axe still lodged in the first zombie's neck and yanked it free, finishing the cut. With its spine fully severed, the head lolled and the body toppled backward.
"Geueuaaak!"
Jjeok!
The one I'd shoved away scrambled up and lunged again—only for my next axe swing to split its skull clean down the middle and end it.
"Hoo…"
I took a second to catch my breath and strained my hearing. This was already the third ambush since I'd entered the mountain. Runners were a first, but the sheer numbers were getting high.
"The deeper I go, the more dangerous it gets."
The mountains were a den of monsters.
That was the saying that had been circulating among survivors for a while now. People who hid up here, groups that tried to settle—every last one of them vanished without a sound, as if the mountain had simply swallowed them whole.
"I'd planned to come better prepared than this."
I felt time breathing down my neck. The wound on my shoulder that had already closed. The steadily fading pain in my gut and back.
Maybe it was the growing sense that I was slipping further from being human that made me so restless.
"How long can this body hold out?"
People bitten by zombies took wildly different amounts of time to turn completely.
Some took a day. Some half a day. People with strong immune systems supposedly lasted a week.
I hadn't been bitten—I'd had a non-infectious Mutant arm latch onto me like a parasite. Still. Mutants came in so many absurd varieties that I couldn't help wondering whether parasitism led to the same place as a bite.
I shook the thoughts off. When no more zombie sounds reached me, I started climbing again.
I wasn't expecting much, honestly. Plenty of groups had called themselves Shelters. Peel back the surface and every single one turned out to be a lie—rumors cooked up to lure people in.
And yet here I was, still looking for one.
Like an arrow already loosed from the bow. Like a candle with its wick burning down.
Maybe I was just riding the inertia, throwing myself at the goal called Shelter because that was the only direction left.
"Huh?"
Halfway up through the trees, something caught my eye.
Far ahead, half-hidden by branches and leaves, was the unmistakable shape of a concrete building.
"What the hell is that."
Startled but curious, I pushed toward it fast—sweeping aside branches and leaves, smashing the skulls of the occasional zombies that lunged out, running hard for a long stretch.
Cheolkeong, cheolkeong!
"Geueueueu…"
"Gaaaa…"
"Kyaaak! Kiiik!"
What I'd spotted was real—a gray concrete building maybe four stories high. The problem was everything in front of it: barbed-wire fencing wrapped around the place, barricades studded with blood-caked spikes, and zombies—more of them than I wanted to count, plus even more corpses.
"Geugagak… kkagak!"
"Holy shit."
How many of them were there?
The creaking zombies pressed against the wire wore every kind of clothing imaginable. Some in ordinary street clothes. Some geared up like security. Some in the tattered white coats of researchers.
Fortunately they were all facing the building, and the racket of them hammering the fence covered the sound of my approach.
I stayed low, kept myself hidden, and turned my attention to the building itself.
Doesn't look like anything special from the outside.
No sign. No name. Not even the windows a building ought to have—just a flat gray cube.
An unfinished abandoned structure. But the barbed wire ringing it like a fortress made my suspicions flare even higher.
I should at least check it out.
I needed to know what this place was—what it was for.
I scanned the perimeter for a way in. Even with fencing all the way around, there had to be a gate for people to come and go.
Still crouched low, I started circling the building.
"Kyaaak…"
"Keugeugeugeuk, kkak, kkagagak!"
I walked a long way from where I'd first arrived. Outside the cluster where the noise was thickest, there were surprisingly few zombies near the walls.
Ah. There.
A rusted car half-smothered in ivy lay overturned in front of the fence. It had stopped at a distance that was almost close enough to touch—and right there was a gate hinge and a machine that looked like a card reader.
"Kkagagagak, kigigik…"
Cheolkeong, cheolkeong.
Four zombies. Three of them, judging by their torn uniforms, looked like facility security. The last one was a bald zombie in a white lab coat—staff, probably—endlessly slamming its head into the wire.
I'll need to handle this quietly.
Kkeudeuk.
I flexed the Mutant's hand open and closed, checking its condition. Even if this arm was changing me, right now there was no better weapon.
High risk, high return, if I had to put a label on it. A cursed weapon that jacked your stats through the roof while locking a debuff on you that said "cannot dispel" and "???"—the kind of thing that made your skin crawl.
"Hoo…"
I shoved the idle thoughts aside and looked the gate over again.
The reader was glowing blue, so it still had power. Getting through would take an employee card, a fingerprint, an eye scan—or facial recognition. One of those.
That was every kind of scanner I knew, and if it was something else I was out of luck. I just had to hope it was one of them.
Take out the three security zombies, restrain the staff one—highest chance of working—and open the gate.
I locked the plan in, slipped out of the brush, and closed the distance in silence.
Truth was, using this left arm still made me uneasy. Relying on it so freely made me feel the distance from being human all the more clearly.
Depending too hard on this unidentifiable arm didn't sit right either—though maybe that was just because I'd gone so long without a left arm at all.
But—
If you don't use it when you need it, you're just an idiot.
"Keugeuk, keueueu… euk!"
Chwaak!!
This time I swung the arm on my own will and carved the back of a security zombie's skull into three pieces.
"Kkagagak…! Kkeuk?!"
Puhak!
I spun immediately and drove the edge of my hand through the neck of the one that reacted, punching straight through its head.
Two left. They convulsed grotesquely and came at me.
"Die!"
Shoulders, gut, chest—none of it did much against zombies. The real targets were the head, which ended them, and the legs, which killed their mobility. Legs were one of the most efficient ways to put a zombie down—
But there was another option, riskier as it was. Their mouths. The tools they used to infect.
Jjeok!
The axe in my right hand slammed into the staff zombie's face, wedging between its jaws.
A zombie that couldn't bite—unless it was a Mutant—was basically a Magikarp that only knew Tackle and Body Slam. Or a walking meat wall.
"Kkiik…"
Kwadeuk! Udeudeuk, chwaak!
I seized the last security zombie's head in my left hand, drove my fingers into its neck until the flesh went soft, and tore the head clean off.
"Ugh, eugh."
Extra bits came free with it and my stomach turned hard, but I flung the mess away.
"Alright then… Mr. Jang Seungwon, is it? Why don't you and I head inside together."
I clamped my left hand around the staff zombie's nape, checked its employee ID, and walked it over to the reader.
This is how my teacher used to haul people around. Weirdly convenient.
Beep—
I pressed the blue-lit scanner. No fingerprint, no face scan—just a friendly prompt asking me to present a card.
Bee-beep—
Cheolkeok.
I tapped the card. A mechanical welcome confirmed the credentials, and the lock on the barbed-wire gate released.
I transferred Mr. Jang Seungwon's ID to my right hand for safekeeping—might still need it—then—
"Thanks for the help."
Kwadeuk.
—squeezed hard enough to send Mr. Jang Seungwon off comfortably, recovered my axe, and stepped through the gate.
Thankfully it locked again the second I was through, so I didn't have to worry about zombies pouring in behind me.
Beep—
Kiiik—
The building entrance was the same setup—a thick steel door with a reader. Jang Seungwon's card opened it without trouble.
Whooosh…
A cool draft brushed my collar. Ahead of me was a stairwell leading straight down, and a corridor into the building proper.
The original plan had been to head inside—but at the bottom of the stairs, a faint light leaked from under another steel door.
…
Even if I tried not to get my hopes up, they rose on their own. It might disappoint me the way everything else always did. Still, praying it was an entrance to a Shelter, I went down the stairs.
Beep—
I held the card to the reader there too and opened the door.
"…Ugh?!"
A smell punched me in the face. After months of nothing but corpses and blood, the sharp artificial sting of chemical disinfectant was almost overwhelming.
Flickering lights. A pure white corridor that felt nothing like the outside world.
"Hoo…"
I exhaled once, then walked the hallway slowly. The place looked like a pharmacy, or a hospital—or a research lab.
A faint mechanical hum in my ears. A regular beeping. Through the windows of the rooms, tools and chemicals I didn't recognize were strewn everywhere.
While my eyes were caught on all of that, footsteps closed in behind me—and under them, the heavier sound of metal.
Cheolkeok.
"Don't move."
A woman's sharp voice. I turned my head on reflex—
and found a female researcher leveling a cold gun barrel straight at me.