Rooftop Market
"So you ran all the way here from Daldongne? Damn, you're something else."
"Something else? Ajumma, you only get it once you've been truly screwed over."
"What the hell does that even mean?"
It was a mild May spring day. I had started my morning with a light ten-kilometer run, and now I sat at a bar-style table under a tent canopy, recounting the chase. My conversation partner was Baek-ajumma, the shop's owner. Beyond her shoulder stretched a view from the same height as the one I had seen in Daldongne — just a different stretch of skyline.
"And after that I got chased three more times. Unbelievable."
"Couldn't you just hide somewhere along the way and wait it out?"
"It was like a relay. The second I thought I'd shaken one pack, another one picked up the trail."
Rooftop Market. No one had bothered giving it a formal name. People had simply connected the rooftops of tightly packed residential buildings with plywood and scrap materials, set up stalls, and started trading — all to stay out of zombie reach. That was how it earned the name. It was where I did most of my dealing, and one of the few places where something resembling trust had managed to take root.
"Enough story time. So what are you buying today?"
Baek-ajumma cut my grumbling short and got straight to business. Usually she put up with at least another five minutes of my complaining, but today her edge was sharper than usual. The long scars on her neck and cheek said enough. Anyone who could survive this world and run a business had to be tough as nails. She looked young enough to pass for early thirties and was still quite beautiful — but every idiot who had tried to force himself on her based on that face alone had ended up with her knife through his throat.
"...Before I buy anything. Something happen?"
There had to be a reason. Baek-ajumma didn't flinch at much, so this vague irritability was out of character.
"Haa... Look behind you."
She glanced at me, let out a deep sigh, and pointed over my shoulder. I turned. Under a tent I didn't recognize, a group of kids sat huddled together.
"Those kids... where are they from?"
I wasn't part of the Rooftop Market faction, but I had made a point of memorizing faces as I came and went. You never knew when or where an attack might come — the bare minimum of self-defense. Kids were no exception. I was not the kind of man who went easy on children. But the faces Baek-ajumma was pointing at were ones I had never seen before.
"The underground mall. Got wiped out, apparently."
That made sense. Survivor groups forming and falling apart was routine in this world, but the underground mall crew had been one of the larger ones. If a place like that had been hit, no wonder everyone was on edge.
"By who?"
It depended on who had done the wiping. The first names that flashed through my mind were the more violent factions — the Gym, the school, the apartment complex... Jesus, there were way too many of them.
"A mutant... a monster with one grotesquely oversized arm."
At the word mutant, my right hand clenched on the table of its own accord. Ask anyone what destroyed the world and you would get a dozen answers, but that one always made the list. Not your ordinary slow zombies or runners. Mutants had no infection, no hunger for flesh — only an absolute instinct to slaughter anything living. No uniform shape. Just things that had evolved into pure threat.
I had only seen two myself. One whose arms had twisted into hooks, loping on all fours and tearing people apart indiscriminately. Another that swung the guts spilling from its split belly like tentacles, snatching people up. In short: the kind of things that took a standard zombie flick and mutated it into a full-on gore creature feature.
"Setting that aside — why are the kids here?"
"The underground mall folks traded with us some. Word is they got the kids out, pulled the steel shutters down behind them, and told them to come to us."
I could picture it then — people herding the children outside, then hauling the steel shutters down by hand. Anyone who could run had probably already run... but they couldn't risk letting a mutant loose. So they sealed it in with them.
"Tch. What a pain... If they were going to run, they should've just run themselves. Why dump the kids and pull that crap?"
Even as she said it, Baek-ajumma's eyes flicked toward the children with something almost like worry. No matter how many storms a survivor had weathered, pity for kids was hard to kill. Or maybe in her case it was just maternal instinct.
"...Yeah. Well. Give me some sweet potatoes, potatoes, and tomatoes."
I would be lying if I said I felt nothing. But my own mouth still ranked higher. I had seen too many people get themselves killed following a moment of soft-hearted pity. Even Baek-ajumma could only look at them with sympathy — she wasn't about to stick her neck out.
"Five bottles of water."
"Oh, come on, why is it that expensive again?"
"Can't help it. Hasn't rained much lately."
I almost argued, but I could already feel the scorching look she would give me, so I just pulled the water bottles from my bag and set them on the table one by one.
"Let's see."
Baek-ajumma promptly produced a cotton-swab-style infection tester from under the table. She cracked each bottle open and dipped a tester inside.
Today's haul had been seven bottles of water, one purifier filter, and a few cans. Honestly, the filter alone more than covered my costs, but it still hurt to part with them.
"Good. Not a single infected one. You said you got these from Daldongne?"
"Yeah. I figured that place was picked clean by now, but stuff still turned up. This is probably the last of it, though. The whole area's a zombie field now."
The three runners that had jumped me the second I stepped out of that house were proof enough. I had enough survivor mileage to know. Runners were maybe one in ten zombies on a good day — and three of them had come boiling out of a single alley. That neighborhood was empty of survivors. Anyone still there was just a zombie waiting to happen. I would never set foot there again.
"Daldongne, the underground mall... things are getting dangerous."
"When were they ever not? Still, other groups seem to be expanding their territory too."
Even Rooftop Market was punching through houses to lay new bridges. Scattered survivors from broken groups and people fleeing faction wars were drifting in and clustering together. Other factions were probably doing the same.
"You still not interested in sticking around? People here might be scared of you, but they don't hate you."
I frowned. Through the motorcycle helmet, Baek-ajumma must have caught my eyes, because she clicked her tongue and shook her head.
"Fine, fine. God, look at those eyes. You're so wound up all the time — that's why everyone keeps calling you Axe Hand, Axe Hand."
"They call me that even when I tell them my name. Cheon Siwoo. Twenty-three. It's Cheon Siwoo."
Sharing a nickname with Axe-Hand Morgan was annoying as hell. I got it — the most obvious thing about me was the axe replacing my left arm. But for fuck's sake, I told them my name and they still used it. At least call me Shanks or something.
"Here. Sweet potatoes, potatoes, tomatoes."
"Thanks. I'll be back later."
I packed the vegetables Baek-ajumma had set aside into my bag and stood. I could feel the kids' eyes tracking me, but I deliberately ignored them and left Rooftop Market. Every building except the one used as an entrance had been sealed off, so you couldn't just climb down any staircase and leave.
Thud-thud-thud-thud...
A relentless vibration and roar carried up through the alleys. Those bastards never got tired of it — the sound of them tearing down the roads at full tilt reached even this far.
"Of course it's when I'm leaving. Goddamn animals."
Cursing wouldn't change anything, but it made me feel better. Taking the long way around still beat getting stamped into ground meat under their feet.
I wound through the alleys for a long time, keeping clear of the main roads.
"Kkagaak... kkeeg...!"
Crack!
I split the skulls of the zombies that popped out at regular intervals and kept moving. The runners, for whatever reason, still had working muscle and hit with human strength or better. The walkers, though — their muscles had long since withered — were barely a threat.
"What's even left to find in alleys like this..."
Crash!!
"You son of a—!"
They moved in packs. Kill one and at least four or five more came pouring in. I smashed a window and started splitting every last one that spilled out from between the buildings.
"I need to get the old man at the hardware shop to sharpen this axe soon. The edge never lasts a day."
After a long walk, I descended into the half-collapsed subway station, climbed past the shattered ticket gates, and went down again... On the tracks where trains used to run, a lonely pair of cars sat abandoned.
This was my base.
"Sweet home."
And then...
"Uuugh... kkeuh...!"
Clatter-clatter!
"Yeah, you've been doing all right too, huh, Baeksuni?"
The cabinet right beside the bottom of the stairs was shaking hard. Through a narrow gap, white hair and dead, milky eyes gleamed. My alarm system...
"Krrruuh..."
...and the pet zombie I was raising.