Apocalypse Like a Dog
Thwack— Crack! Crack!
At the savage sounds that had been ringing out for some time, the woman slowly opened her eyes.
The sight that filled her vision left her expression blank in an instant.
Corpses in such wretched condition that just looking at them was exhausting were swarming toward a single man. And that man wasn’t being pushed back at all—eyes rolled back in frenzy, he was beating the already-dead corpses like dogs.
…I-I have to help him.
But that thought lasted only a moment. The woman hurriedly rose from her seat and started toward him to help—then froze.
Because there was no need. The last remaining one already had its head propped on a seat like it was about to be beheaded, and he was still hammering away at it.
“…Hm?”
The man, expressionless as he excavated the brains inside the skull, finally noticed the woman standing awkwardly behind him and stared straight at her.
It looked like he was trying to decide whether she was human or not, so she hurriedly opened her mouth.
“Um, excuse me…”
When a normal human voice came out instead of some grotesque sound effect, the man simply turned back and resumed his work.
“Just a second. Let me finish this last one.”
Crack—
Crunch—!
After a couple more blows, the shattered skull finally spilled its brains. The man casually jammed the handle of the pole into the mess and crushed it flat, then locked eyes once more with the woman watching him, her face deathly pale.
“…Are you okay?”
Her mental state was clearly shot; her pupils and lips were trembling hard.
“Well. More or less. At least it doesn’t hurt.”
I shrugged at the woman who, despite everything, was still asking after my well-being without showing her own distress. I could see perfectly well why she was asking, but the truth was I felt nothing. Not a single twinge of pain.
Bite marks and gouges from fangs had punched straight through my clothes and covered every limb, dyeing my gray hoodie completely red—but what could I do? It genuinely didn’t hurt.
Still, this is a little ridiculous. How can something that chewed me up that badly not even sting?
Only after the chaotic fight ended did the question finally hit me. I peeled back the sleeve of the arm that had taken the most bites.
“…?”
What the hell. There’s nothing?
Ta-da. There was something… except there wasn’t. Like that old gag.
The clothes were covered in countless marks, yet not a single scratch showed on my skin.
Question marks floating in my head, I rolled up the other sleeve, then both pant legs, even the hem over my stomach—nothing but bloodstains.
I stared blankly for a second at the woman who had flinched and looked away when I lifted my shirt, then dropped my gaze to my palm.
The cut from when I’d finished off the last one. Still no pain, not even a sting, yet I’d clearly felt the broken chair edge slice me open.
And now?
I couldn’t take my eyes off my palm.
Like a YouTube injury-timelapse video playing in real time, the wound closed right before my eyes. In the blink of an eye it was gone—no scab, nothing. I clenched and unclenched the perfectly healed hand.
…I’m losing my mind.
Not that I was about to start complaining about how absurd it was at this point. If any of this had been normal, I’d already be dead and sightseeing along the River Styx, and those heads I smashed wouldn’t have needed to pull that shit in the first place.
No—wrong order.
There was no need to keep guessing what the goddamn starting point of this dogshit absurdity was.
“That mummy bastard.”
“Pardon?”
“The guy on the TV screen spouting off about the end of the world. No matter how I look at it, whatever that bastard said is what caused all this.”
I brushed off the dust that had stuck to me from all the wrestling with corpses as I spoke. The woman, makeup around her eyes completely ruined by blood and tears, slowly nodded.
“I think so too. Blaming the bus crash itself on him might be a stretch, but… the corpses moving… that has to be…”
The phenomenon the mummy had called “the extinction of humanity.”
Also the most clichéd post-apocalyptic theme of all: zombies.
Of course, now that it had actually happened, there was no laughing it off anymore.
I moved closer to a broken window to check the situation outside the bus and looked around.
I’d expected an absolute hellscape of screams and life-or-death games of tag, but the streets were surprisingly empty.
Sure, corpses still wandered here and there, making those gurgling throat sounds, but…
…This isn’t the picture I was expecting. How much time has passed?
Apparently I’d been out longer than I thought after the crash.
“Let’s introduce ourselves first. I’m Lee Sijun.”
“Ah… yes. Kim Yejin.”
Yejin hesitated, then took the hand I offered. She fidgeted for a moment before finally speaking.
“But are you really okay? Your clothes, and this hand… you’ve lost so much blood…”
“Yeah. For now. You saw earlier—not a single wound left.”
I could hardly call her out for staring when I was lifting my clothes earlier, then playing dumb; even I had to admit the amount of blood looked insane.
“Some of it’s mine mixed in, sure, but more than half of it splattered off these things, so don’t worry.”
“How can I not worry? You’re the one who saved my life.”
If I hadn’t cleaned them all out, she said with a weak smile, she would’ve been torn apart alive right here on the bus with no chance to run. She offered her thanks.
“Sijun… really, thank you. I’ll never forget this debt as long as I live.”
“…Well, I didn’t do it knowing that, so don’t take it too much to heart.”
It wasn’t important right now anyway.
Not when the certainty that saving a life once meant that life would last forever had completely vanished.
“But maybe it’s just me—you look like you’re having a harder time than I am.”
“Ah.”
“Is your forehead okay?”
Her mental state really was shredded. Look at her—just standing there and her legs were already shaking. Pitiful.
She clearly wanted to sit but was forcing herself upright because of me. It was obvious.
“I-I’m fine. The forehead’s just a little cut.”
Saying it with that tragic face had zero persuasive power. She must have read my thoughts on my face, because her tone suddenly hardened.
“It’s true! I’m really fine. You’re the one who did all the hard work.”
Comparing people to animals is a bit rude, but…
The way she stood there trembling and insisting she was fine looked exactly like a young deer caught in a trap, shaking its injured leg and desperately whimpering so its parents wouldn’t abandon it.
“Alright, just sit down and rest for a bit.”
“Ah…!”
I raised a hand and cut off her words as her face grew even paler.
“I’m not leaving you behind, so stop worrying and rest. Sit down and let’s figure out a plan slowly.”
“……”
Finally at a loss for words, Yejin carefully, cautiously sat in a seat. I watched her for a moment, then used the pole to shove aside the body parts and guts lying nearby.
Even if she didn’t show it, the way she absolutely refused to look down made it clear it was bothering her.
No matter how tough she tries to look, a woman is still a woman, huh.
That thought crossed my mind—then another fact suddenly hit me.
But isn’t it a little weird that I’m the one who made this mess, yet I’m the one fretting over the bystander?
Gender aside, any normal person would at least react to the gore spread across this bus. Arms and legs rolling around were the baseline; torn-out brains, half-crushed eyeballs and tongues decorating the floor like modern art—and the only emotion I felt was calm bordering on serene.
Another side effect of dying and coming back?
No, “side effect” felt wrong.
This body, and this mindset too.
A body that regenerated wounds without pain, and emotions that didn’t so much as ripple.
Side effect, my ass. This was a blessing. At least in this situation.
I clenched and unclenched my fist while thinking, then spoke to Yejin, who was still sitting there in a daze.
“When you feel like you’ve rested enough, say so. I’ve already decided where we’re going next.”
“Ah, yes. Thank you. But… where are we…?”
At her cautious question I pointed a thumb toward the commercial buildings beyond the window.
“The classics first. We secure food.”
Movies, novels, comics—didn’t matter. In every disaster the most important things were personal safety, water, and food.
My own safety was already secured, as far as I could tell.
As long as this body that defied all reason stayed the same, it looked harder to actually get into real danger than not.
The only worry was mutation, but…
It’s been a few dozen minutes since I got bitten and nothing’s changed. I’ll set that aside for now.
I’d promised not to abandon her, so I’d take one person along and gather as much food as possible first.
After that, figure out how bad this situation really was—and how widespread…
Wait. I can just check right now.
Dying, coming back, and dealing with all this nonsense had clearly frozen my brain a little.
I pulled out my phone—screen completely shattered—and hit the power button.
Then tried to open any portal site.
…No connection at all?
The internet was completely dead. Hell, even the call service showed an out-of-range mark.
This is ridiculous… We’re right in the middle of the city. Inside the subway station zone, even.
I turned to Kim Yejin.
“Yejin, can I borrow your phone for a second?”
It was a demand with zero explanation, but she handed it over without a word.
…Same here. Internet, calls—everything’s gone.
“What’s wrong, Sijun?”
“The phones are completely fried. Pretty badly.”
“What? What do you mean…”
I returned the phone and, instead of explaining further to her confused face, stood up.
“We should hurry. The situation doesn’t look good.”
Up until a moment ago the scenario in my head had gone like this:
A truck driver so distracted by the mummy’s random one-man broadcast that he plowed straight into the bus—that was first.
The massive chain-reaction traffic accident that followed produced a pile of corpses, which then rose as zombies in huge numbers. Anyone who could run had already run; anyone who was going to get eaten had already been eaten.
Then me and Kim Yejin woke up, checked outside, and while waiting on this bus we’d locate other survivors who’d fled the area, plus police and soldiers, and join up.
…But that’s impossible now. What this situation means is one of two things.
Either the zombies wandering out there were spawning naturally on top of just rising from the dead, and the numbers were so massive that within less than an hour of the accident every facility including the telecom networks was already paralyzed… or…
It’s that mummy bastard’s doing. One of the two.
I took Yejin’s hand as she stared blankly up at me from below and pulled her to her feet.
“First we hit a convenience store. We need bags to carry food.”
“…Y-yes.”
I glanced at her still-hazy eyes—mental recovery clearly incomplete—then walked toward the shattered exit.
And then—
KRAAAANG—
I front-kicked the door clean off its hinges, stepped out onto the asphalt, and added one more thing.
“For the record, don’t try anything fancy. Just stick right behind me.”
I’ll handle everything myself.
Yejin carefully nodded at my words.