Something Else Got Driven In
Something else got driven in.
The zombie drove it in.
No, wait—putting it like that just makes the whole thing sound fucking weird.
The zombie’s arm had been driven into my arm.
Stay calm. I needed to stay calm, take stock of my surroundings first, and figure out how my arm—no, how an arm that wasn’t supposed to be there—had ended up attached to me in the first place.
I’d walked straight into a situation that made my stomach turn, but I forced my heart rate down as far as it would go and tried to put my thoughts in order.
Or rather, I tried to try.
“This doesn’t make any goddamn sense—why the fuck is an arm stuck to me—does that mean I’m a zombie now? What the hell, am I even still okay?”
I’d blacked out, and when I came to, a zombie arm was fused to the stump where nothing used to be. Calm was nowhere in sight. My hands and feet shook hard, and the panic rolled in like a tide.
“Hoo… No. No. Settle down. Settle the hell down.”
Okay, how should I put this. It was like waking up to find a dick growing where there hadn’t been one before.
Look on the bright side—something that wasn’t there had appeared, and it looked better than a regular arm, so maybe it wasn’t all bad?
“…Yeah, no. This is not a good thing.”
I tried moving the hand. The sensation of working a left arm was completely alien.
Not just alien—brand new. I’d never felt it before.
If I’d gotten the prosthetic the way I’d planned, would it have felt like this? Of course, this thing looked nothing like the design I’d wanted.
“Ha…”
Ironically, I was basically a dead man walking already. So even if it was a mutant’s arm, having a left hand again didn’t feel all that bad.
I let out a hollow laugh, tore my eyes off the mutant arm, and looked ahead. Adrenaline must still have been doing its job—the pain wasn’t as bad as it should have been.
The hideous mutant zombie that had hounded me so relentlessly was now just a long-armed zombie without the long arm.
“What the hell is this bullshit.”
Its skin had gone black and dead, like every drop of blood had been drained out of it, and that already skinny body had withered down to something like a dry stick.
“Don’t tell me it’s because of this arm?”
Even if I’d been out cold, there was no way a zombie would have sat there long enough to end up looking like that just from time alone.
If it wasn’t time, then by process of elimination the only remaining factor was the arm stuck to me. That was the conclusion I could reach.
“Hoo…”
I couldn’t just keep sitting there, so I planted both hands on the ground and pushed myself up.
And because it was so much easier than I’d expected, the simple act of standing felt weirdly comfortable—almost miraculous.
“Holy shit…”
But this mutant arm—wasn’t it way too long? Looking closer, it was grafted onto the stump of my original forearm like someone had bolted on an extension piece.
Even when I stood up straight, the fingertips nearly brushed the ground. And for some reason it also seemed a little shorter than the arm on the zombie I’d fought.
“Does it size itself to whatever it sticks to?”
As if the arm came with a self-adjusting feature. I’d already given up on understanding any of it, so I deliberately ignored the question, dragged the hand along behind me, and walked over to the withered zombie corpse.
Thwack—
I reached out with my right hand and yanked the axe free from its skull. The mutant’s head crumbled apart like a rotten log, dry and soft.
“Hoo… Good. Now.”
Axe recovered. That left me with only one job.
I still had no idea what this arm even was—but in a world where completely insane shit happened every single day, there was no guarantee I wouldn’t turn into a mutant myself.
Thinking about the monstrous strength of that mutant arm, its absurd intelligence… for all I knew I was already changing, second by second.
I shortened my grip on the axe handle, stretched my left arm out straight, and without hesitation brought the blade down to cut the thing off.
“Kh—this fucking—!”
But to my shock, my left arm apparently had other ideas.
Grrrk…
The mutant hand clamped hard around my right arm.
Moving completely outside my will, those fingers held on gently—careful, almost, as if they were trying not to let the sharp tips cut me.
“Fuck… you’ve got to be kidding me. Let go.”
I’d been reduced to a lunatic fighting his own arm, but even if I died doing it, I did not want to become a mutant.
I’d considered suicide, too—but right before I blacked out I’d watched the body keep moving after its head was split open, so I shelved that idea as well.
Honestly it was also just scary, and cutting the arm off still seemed better than killing myself.
“Kh… Let go…!”
I put more force into the hand holding the axe, but there was no way my strength alone could pry open that mutant grip.
“Kh—! Ugh…”
In the end I gave up on severing the hand, scooped up the axe and machete, and left the area. Not that I’d given up completely—I still needed to find a way to get the thing off me.
“It’s night.”
It had still been afternoon when I came in, but the sun was fully down now. Close to full, the moon hung huge and bright, so it wasn’t total darkness at least.
—Skrrrk, grrk-grrk-!
Somewhere nearby the zombies were still wandering, or slumped against walls with their heads mashed in, just waiting for a person to walk by.
“Haa… haa…”
Maybe the adrenaline was finally wearing off. Walking by moonlight, the pain I’d been stacking up started to catch up with me, and fever rose right alongside it.
“Kh—cough!”
I tried to smother the sudden cough, but the blood already climbing my throat forced the sound out anyway.
“Kigrrrk! Grrk!”
“Ah, shit.”
A pack of zombies roaming nearby had heard the cough and were coming my way.
My body was in the worst shape possible, and at night I couldn’t even see properly.
I tried to pick up the pace, but the slow zombies had already clumped together into something like a living wall.
“Cough! Cough! For fuck’s—”
“Gaaaah, grr, kak!”
Shamble, shamble.
The coughing wouldn’t stop. That half-forgotten coppery taste of blood filled my mouth all over again.
My head spun. Dizzy like I’d downed three bottles of cheap soju, I couldn’t keep myself upright and slumped against a building wall, gasping.
The zombies were still slow, but they were closing the distance. I spat blood with my saliva and finally drew the machete.
“Kigrrrrrk…”
Thwack!
“Huh.”
Before I could even swing the machete down on the first zombie’s head—
the mutant left arm, which had been completely quiet ever since I pulled the axe free, again slipped free of my will and punched straight through the approaching zombie’s skull.
It gathered those sharp fingers into a single spike like an awl, smashed the head open so black blood dripped, then seized the next zombie’s skull in its grip.
Crunch, crack.
“Kak… kak.”
That monstrous grip crushed the cranium flat; the scalp crumpled with it, and the zombie died on the spot.
“Whoa…”
A long time ago, back when I had nothing better to do as a kid and sat around watching YouTube on the computer, some streamer had been playing an old-game special. The protagonist’s ability had looked a lot like this.
Ah, are you watching?
Feeling nostalgia from a fucking arm like this left me with a faint sense of self-loathing, but still.
“Fuck that—and you, stay still!”
Thud! Thud!
Having an arm that still moved outside my will was deeply unsettling, so I hammered the mutant arm with the machete’s handle, trying to force the runaway hand back under control.
“Kiiiek…!”
Slash!
Thud!!
A vicious fight for control broke out—me trying to rein in the movement, the mutant arm sensing nearby threats and reacting. A pure tug-of-war.
Slam!
To stop it from moving I drove the hand into the building wall.
Grrrnd! Shhhk!
But the hand clawed free of the concrete and simply split another zombie’s head open.
My skull was already boiling with fever and I felt like I was going to pass out; now the arm wouldn’t listen either. I was about to lose my mind.
Right in the middle of that struggle for control, the hand suddenly stopped reacting. I looked around.
At some point the whole pack of zombies that had been closing in lay scattered across the ground in brutal pieces.
“…Fuck.”
I nearly slipped more times than I could count on the way down the stairs, but I finally dragged myself into my hideout.
“Uegh…”
I collapsed before I even made it to the subway car.
Creeeak—
Hot…
My whole body burned like I was being boiled alive, sweat pouring off me. I thrashed and twisted, fighting for every breath—
Sss—
Someone pressed something cool against both of my cheeks and tried to soothe me.
I wasn’t the kind of person to refuse kindness like that. Even in a world like this I could still feel a cool scrap of human warmth, so I nuzzled my face into the cold thing.
“Gwoo…?”
A faint voice reached my ear. Was it even a voice? That soft, drained little cry made me wonder if Baeksooni was worried about me—
Who’s the one holding this against me?
The thought hit hard. My severed consciousness snapped back into place and set every alarm screaming.
Sweat started for a completely different reason than the fever. I could open my eyes, but reason insisted I shouldn’t, while instinct demanded I open them right now.
“Ugh…”
I sided with instinct, shoved the rising dread aside, and slowly opened my eyes.
Ah…
The first thing I saw was white. White hair hanging over me like a curtain of pale cloth.
White pupils staring at me from inches away, sharp and clear. I realized then that even on that day, a zombie’s eyes could still hold life in them.
“Baeksooni?”
She was cupping my cheeks in both hands, straddling me so our noses almost touched, just watching. The moment I opened my eyes and said her name, she slowly lifted her head, sat up, and kept staring at me with drool still dripping from her mouth.
“…Heehee—”
For some reason that sound felt different from her other little cries. It felt like laughter.
As if to prove me right, she looked down at me and the corners of her mouth curved up.
“Hi-u—”
Baeksooni called my name.