Going Down Like a Dog
CRASH—
My dramatic entrance of smashing the door to pieces must have struck a deep chord, because the zombies came charging at me in a frenzy.
I loosened my wrist a little, gripped the handrail pole like a baseball bat, and settled into my stance.
Then I blew the lead runner’s jaw clean off.
CRACK—!
Human skulls were solid enough that trying to cave one in with a single hit was a gamble, so I wrecked their weapons first. Simple, but brutally effective.
The school-uniformed girl zombie whose teeth—and gums—I had just pulverized collapsed to the floor. Three more shoved their faces in without the slightest care.
This was when you used reach.
I took one step back, shifted my grip to hold the pole as long as possible, and drove the ragged end into their mouths one after another. Teeth went flying through the air every time.
As I stabbed the last of the three, I yanked the pole inward, seized it in both hands like I was wringing out a rag, and smashed it into the temple of the one still staggering in front.
CLANG—
A cheerful metallic ring, and he dropped. Behind him, a zombie with no teeth left still gaped its mouth wide and lunged at me faster than I expected.
A few half-shattered teeth still stuck in its gums punched holes in my forearm. I grabbed a fistful of its clothes, twisted, and drove a kick into its shin. While it clung to my arm, off-balance, I shoved its gut with my foot and sent it crashing into another one that had been about to pounce with its own ruined mouth.
I didn’t miss the opening—stabbed the solar plexus of one to drop it, then hammered the other’s skull two solid times.
THUD— CRACK!
“Ah, fucking hard for real.”
A uniform zombie came in from the side. I stopped mid-swing, drove an elbow into its cheekbone, seized its forehead, and shoved hard. I was finishing the cracked skull when I saw the ones farther out that had heard the noise swarming in as a pack.
“…This won’t work. Ye-jin?”
She was clutching a similarly broken bus handrail, trying to help, hands trembling from pure tension.
“Get deep inside the bus and stay there. This is going to take a while.”
“…S-Sijun! Wouldn’t it be better to just run?!”
I kept holding the tide of zombies at bay while answering in a calm tone that had no business belonging to this mess. Ye-jin rushed to fill the silence for both of us.
“I’m fine with running, but I can’t guarantee your safety. Better to just—ugh!—clean this up here and then move.”
“I’m fine! You don’t have to push yourself—”
I smashed a second skull and cut her off without even looking.
“Just stay put quietly. I’m not pushing myself.”
Calling the strategy I’d carefully calculated the most reasonable option “pushing it.”
Ye-jin finally retreated to the very back seat. I stepped farther back myself, bracing inside the bus exit to kill the blind spots, then settled midway down the stairs leading out.
The filthy swarm was already jostling to be first. I held them with thrusts and thought:
Doesn’t matter how much they bite—if they pile on and crush me, it’s over. So fall back and strip their combat power first.
There were too many now to methodically crack skulls the way I had earlier. Full swings took time, and one slip could fill the bus. Then Ye-jin was dead for certain. Priority targets: mouths and…
Wrists.
As long as they couldn’t grab and drag me, cleaning them all out was just a matter of time.
…But thinking about it, why the hell am I not getting tired?
I’d been swinging this pole like a maniac. Even hollow and light, it was still metal. A styrofoam bat would have had me gasping by now.
I don’t know anymore. Good is good, I guess.
I shelved the stamina worry and methodically wrecked mouths and wrists. Numbers or not, as long as I held the interior, the space I had to cover stayed limited. They mindlessly jammed into the narrow choke and rubbed against each other; I kept shoving them back with thrusts and kicks.
“Oh, look at this bastard.”
THUD— THWACK—
One finally squeezed through and grabbed my leg on the stairs. I stomped its arm flat with my other foot and kicked its head with everything I had. In the brief second its body blocked the exit, I hammered the skull three, four times until it caved.
Still no end to them in sight.
No good. Plan change.
I’d already eyed something for exactly this.
I flung the mediocre handrail pole forward and snatched up a seat that had torn free of the bus right beside me. Normally I wouldn’t touch a weapon this heavy, but in a state where I literally could not tire, the math changed.
“Grrrraaah!”
I brought the chair down full force on the head of one that had just scrambled in with its mouth wide open.
CRUNCH—!
Maybe the earlier hits had already softened it; the skull collapsed in a single blow and the body flopped. I grinned.
“Performance guaranteed.”
These fucking bastards.
You’re done.
I kicked the headless corpse—limp as a doll with its strings cut—out the exit and kept smashing every head that pushed in, full power, over and over.
WHOOSH— WHOOOOSH—
CRACK—
SPLAT—!
Anyone who had been bitten or fled would have wept at how exhilarating the sight was. The only spectator, Ye-jin, just fidgeted and stomped her feet, torn between helping and staying put every time I looked even slightly pressed.
“…Sijun! Just let me help! It really looks too dangerous—kyaa?!”
A chunk of brain sailed past her face and she shrieked.
“Just stay there, I said. Hup!”
I caved another skull cleanly and adjusted my grip on the now thoroughly dented chair.
“If you try to help and get hurt, that becomes the bigger problem.”
CRUNCH—
My body was starting to learn the rhythm. I uppercut a charging jaw to stop it cold, then crushed the forehead with the chair’s corner. Pinkish brain mixed with blood oozed out in thick ropes. Ye-jin was left speechless by the sheer brutality.
Maybe thirty minutes passed.
I finally finished pulping every head of what looked like well over ten of them. The bus was painted floor to ceiling in brains and blood. I looked more like I’d taken a bath in the stuff than painted anything.
I gave my own body a once-over and finally felt just how absurdly it had changed.
Thirty-plus minutes of swinging pole and chair until my arms should have fallen off, kicking, shoving, throwing—total chaos. From the first swing to the last, my muscles and lungs stayed eerily calm. More precisely, every time the thought okay, starting to feel it crossed my mind, the fatigue vanished like a lie. Result: never once out of breath, never once a real load on the muscles.
No wonder Ye-jin was staring at me like that.
“Sijun… how…”
I could roughly guess the reaction. Even I felt alien to myself; of course I no longer looked like the same species.
“Let’s just rest a little longer. Even if you say you’re fine, this isn’t okay.”
“…?”
Not the reaction I’d expected.
I stared at her, then asked bluntly:
“You’re not that surprised?”
“Huh? About what?”
“Feels weird saying it myself, but—this result.”
I had just soloed the equivalent of seventeen-to-one. And those seventeen were things you counted by the head, not people.
Ye-jin blinked slowly, then shook her head.
“No. I was plenty surprised.”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“More accurately, I was surprised and I’m just not showing it.”
“Why bother?”
“Because I don’t know how the person involved would take it.”
She gave a small smile and continued.
“You saved my life, took full responsibility for something you could have ignored, put yourself in this much danger, and then actually pulled it off. Reading the mood of someone like that is only natural, isn’t it?”
“.....”
I shook blood and brain matter off my dripping hair and answered.
“You don’t need to read my mood. I don’t particularly care…”
“Still, I care myself.”
I looked at her, not following.
“It would be pretty annoying, right? In a life-or-death situation you just watched without helping, and the second it’s over you start acting like you know something—‘Sijun’s body is weird’ or whatever. To the person actually feeling it in their own flesh, that could come off as pretty distasteful.”
Huh.
I hadn’t expected her to parse it that finely. I’d asked without thinking and gotten an unexpectedly awkward answer.
Deep thinker, or just needlessly anxious? Hard to tell.
From my side it wasn’t bad. Better she over-read the mood after I saved her than start putting distance between us.
“Alright. Then like you said, we’ll rest a bit—”
“Um, I have one thing to ask too.”
Ye-jin wiped her forehead repeatedly with the collar of her white shirt—nowhere near as soaked as my hoodie, but still stained red. The motion bared a clear collarbone; she carefully covered it again before speaking.
“By any chance… how old are you?”
“…Twenty-four. Why?”
“It’s a little out of place given the situation… but I think we should settle it properly.”
She fiddled with her fingers, hesitated a beat, then said:
“Please speak comfortably with me. I’m twenty-two. And…”
“W-whenever you need me to do something, just say so freely anytime. Oppa.”
I stared blankly for a second, expressionless, then finally nodded.
Even so, that kind of thing is off-limits.
Damn it. Someone please take my brain out and scrub it raw on a washboard.