I Don't Bet My Life
"Ah, this is some next-level bullshit."
I had no idea how long it had been. I stopped the bicycle — which had, in the meantime, been reduced to something resembling scrap metal — irritation flooding every inch of me.
Not even thirty seconds after I'd set out, the bike's bell had drawn the corpses in droves. There was never a chance to build up speed. Dodging them left and right was one thing once or twice, but when they came barreling out of every alley like blind deer, tackling from front, back, and both sides — if I kept weaving around that forever, what was I, a stunt cyclist?
Pissed off, I just ripped the fixed bell clean off with raw grip strength. After that it wasn't the sound anymore — it was a whole pack of bastards who simply saw me and stuck to my trail.
Still, I somehow made it. The real problem was that I'd have to walk back on foot. That part was pure shit.
"You fucking — if you're gonna bite something, bite me. Why the hell are you chewing on the bike frame?"
What were they, carp? Why latch onto a toy lure and thrash around like they'd been hooked, clamping down on the wheels?
I stared with pure disgust at the chunks of flesh jammed between the wheel and the chain, then sighed and turned my head.
Sure enough, a few lively corpses that had chased the whole distance for nothing but appetite were sprinting toward me, arms stretched out.
I reached for the kitchen knife in my hoodie pocket — then shoved it back in and muttered a single line.
"Watch me ever drag a bicycle around again."
With one hand I hoisted the bike, then hurled it with everything I had. The corpses went flying like pins hit by a bowling ball. I ignored them and walked straight through the high school front gate.
Those disgusting bastards. Seriously.
I'd already cleared the place once that morning, so until I got inside the main building I barely ran into any corpses.
One came limping toward me like its knee joints were shot. I stared at it blankly, then shut the glass door. The way it clawed and scraped trying to get in was almost pitiful.
I watched that spectacle with cold, flat eyes, then absently fingered the kitchen knife at the sound of a gurgling throat from further down the hallway.
...Isn't there anything better than this scrap of metal?
I had one particular item in mind, but whether I could find it in a school meant for kids was another question. Still, no harm in checking — I'd have to dig through the gyms at least once.
Mulling that over, I flung the scrap of metal at a lower-body-deficient corpse that was creeping down the stairs with grotesque, jerky movements.
It punched clean through the Adam's apple, but the blade was too short to sever the spine. The thing kept crawling forward, blood bubbling from its mouth. I closed the distance and drove the knife home with my foot, and only then did it collapse like a kite with its string cut.
Even then its face kept working, thrashing to bite my foot somehow. I yanked the knife free and looked up the stairs.
Darkness from the blackout, a backdrop painted in blood and saliva — the kind of set dressing I'd seen a hundred times in horror games. Still, nothing. No reaction at all.
I dribbled the head of the one still snapping its teeth at me like a soccer ball, checked the school map taped to the side wall, then put weight into my leg.
Crunch—
The skull caved under the pressure. The two eyes beneath it lost their shape, brain matter squeezing out like pulp through a press.
Watching it, I almost felt like I was looking at a brain destroying itself in real time. The mood soured a little.
Even on the first day, inside that bus, my emotions and my heart had barely stirred. With every day that passed, they grew so quiet I started to wonder if the thing was even beating at all.
Even when I'd first seen what had become of my house earlier, it hadn't felt like genuine rage so much as me forcing myself to overreact because reason said I should.
The only things that still got a real response out of me were the three basic drives... and even those, appetite aside, I wasn't sure about.
Was Ye-jin's loosened shirt, her eyes bloodshot from crying herself out, actually turning me on — or was I just deciding it should, and making it so? I had no way of knowing.
"Tch. Who cares."
I let it go. Same as always. No point chewing on a question that had no answer.
Thud. Thud.
I climbed the stairs with no energy in my steps, then glanced down at the floor below.
Maybe it was because only one set of footprints remained. The hallway's atmosphere twisted into something even more grotesque for anyone looking on.
...Anyone seeing this would think there was a hopping vampire around.
I cut the thought off there and headed for the rooftop.
A short while later.
To cut to the chase: it was a bust.
The rooftop, which I'd checked first, had nothing special — not even a single corpse. Then I'd bothered going all the way to the gym in the annex, only to find dozens of corpses clustered there, and wasted the effort for nothing.
"...Ah, this is foul. Seriously."
Scratch the part about my emotions wearing down. At the very least, this irritation was one feeling I would never forget — not until those corpses stopped showing up entirely.
In the end I grabbed a bat I'd scavenged from the teachers' office, spun it a few times, and headed for the side wall. I tossed the bat over to the other side, vaulted the fence into the middle school, dusted myself off, and quickly scanned the main building's rooftop.
...Just my imagination.
I could have sworn I felt a filthy gaze on me. I narrowed my eyes and stared for a few seconds, then turned my head and walked toward the building.
I cracked open the glass front door, stepped inside, and stood still, surveying the surroundings.
...What is this.
Something felt wrong.
What was this filthy, crawling unease?
I'd never felt it before, and it was so vivid it was almost awkward.
What I'd sensed at the high school next door had been atmosphere — something the setting itself had manufactured. This was the opposite.
"Why is it so clean?"
Blood that should have been smeared everywhere from fleeing, chasing, feeding — there was far too little of it.
And that wasn't even the strangest part.
I wasn't suddenly trying to play detective, but it was so obvious to the naked eye I couldn't ignore it.
Not a single patch of fresh red. Only the rare, rotting black of old blood. It was an awkwardness I hadn't felt once since the world ended.
Countless corpses roaming free. Plenty of people left to serve as food. Escape routes limited — and the most likely route of all looking like this?
Three possibilities.
Either the people hiding in this building had never even tried to run and were still holding out.
Or everyone who was going to escape had already gotten outside.
Or they'd all been dead for a long time already.
"....."
The building itself was packed with silence.
In a place filled with nothing but the wind coming through the open hallway windows, I rolled my eyes, then slowly set my foot on the stairs.
Whatever the case — I had to check.
As I'd said before: no matter the situation, my brain and my heart stayed endlessly calm.
Step. Step.
Second floor. This one was a bit more of a mess, which felt familiar. I let the fresh red blood on the walls — no telling when it had been painted there — settle my nerves a little, and climbed to the third.
Step. Step.
The third floor was worse than the second. Floor, both walls, even the ceiling — nowhere without blood spatter. Still, I'd seen the look enough times that I just skimmed it and moved on.
I was about to head straight up when a familiar sound made me turn. A middle-school-girl corpse lunged at me. I kicked it in the gut, shoved it back, and finished it fast with the bat.
Maybe it was the growing sense that I shouldn't be wasting time.
Step. Step.
Halt—
My feet stopped on the stairs.
Blood was trickling down from above, sliding slowly over the steps, dripping onto my shoes.
I stared expressionlessly, then slowly lifted my head. The hallway around the stairwell looked like the site of an explosion.
Not just any explosion — the kind where people had burst.
Bones, eyeballs, nerve clusters, brain fragments, fingers. Every body part imaginable was strewn across the floor. Then my eyes caught an arm hanging from the stair railing on the way up.
...Torn off?
It hadn't been cut. And it hadn't burst the way I'd just described — if it had, the pieces would have been far finer.
Like someone subjected to the old execution of dismemberment by five horses, an arm ripped free by enormous force was swaying, shifting little by little.
That was the problem. It was moving — which meant something had touched it.
My gaze rose naturally toward the floor above.
...No way a person did this.
Even a bastard worse than me wouldn't be human if they were capable of this.
Thinking that, I casually pressed my palm to my left chest.
Still. My heart was beating far too slowly.
...Step.
Step. Step. Step.
I unconsciously started lifting my feet carefully — then wondered what the hell I was doing and put my stride back to normal.
If it came down to it, I could smash a window and bail. What was the problem?
And then I stepped onto the fifth floor.
"...What the hell is this."
Completely lost for words, I just stared at the scene in front of me.
In one corner of the hallway, a mass of human corpses was stacked in layers like a cake.
Dozens of headless torsos were still producing blood. Looking at them, the "modern art piece" couldn't have been finished very long ago.
"Kkeueueuk..."
Then, from beside me as I stood blankly taking it in, a sobbing sound rose.
"...You didn't do this, right?"
I turned to an utterly ordinary zombie and asked. As if in answer, it stretched its mouth wide open.
"KRAAAAAAAAH!"
The scream rang through the building once. Then a few seconds of dead quiet.
After that, a low sound broke the silence.
Crack—
Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack—
The sound of something being twisted in grotesque angles began to grow from the floor above. Looking up, I suddenly had no choice but to drop my gaze.
The heart that had been so still was speeding up to match that noise.
"Krrrrrk?"
And the sound stopped.
Blackened fingers.
The first thing I saw was that alien shape — stretched long like tree branches — gripping the railing.
Then, slowly lifting my eyes, I saw a long neck twisted mercilessly like a pretzel, dipping down to look this way.
As if eyelids were unnecessary, the eyeballs sat fully exposed. White pupils. A nose and ears punched open into holes.
And finally, instead of piercings, a massive mouth split the cheek in half and hooked back toward the ear, slowly opening. The teeth it revealed were viciously sharp.
Sharp enough that the first thing I thought of was a shark.
"Oh, for fuck's sake."
I summed up my first impression in a single line.
I'd thought it was pretty clean, personally. Apparently the other party disagreed.
As the thing came clattering down, I vaulted the railing and dropped to the floor below, thinking:
No, seriously — is there a worse setup than this?