Awls That Pierce Through Pockets
Haejun stood inside the convenience store, an empty box dangling from his hand, and muttered in hollow defeat.
"Boss. It's completely cleaned out."
"There's nothing to eat no matter how hard you look. The only useful stuff left is toothbrushes and soap..."
"Just grab those for now."
"Boss, you're not seriously going to eat the soap, are you?"
I turned my head to look at him. He flinched, spooked himself, and stumbled backward — straight onto a corpse's arm.
"Hwaaaagh!"
"Drama queen."
Haejun could handle a zombie or two on his own now without my help, but that chicken heart of his still hadn't improved one bit.
"Jokes are fine. Just read the room while you're at it. We're about to go back empty-handed."
"...S-sorry."
He rose shakily, eyes fixed on the zombie whose skull his blunt weapon had cracked open, brains still oozing out.
"Since this trip's already a bust, might as well pad your experience a little more."
"Huh? What do you mean by that?"
"You can take one zombie no problem now, right?"
"...Uh."
I asked while stuffing the toiletries he'd gathered into a bag, and Haejun felt a survival instinct he hadn't even tasted on the first day of the apocalypse.
"No, boss. I'm nowhere near ready. I still..."
"Nah. From where I'm standing, you're good enough. On the way back, try fighting two of them."
"No. No way. Boss! Boss!"
He trailed after me as I zipped the bag and stepped out of the convenience store, pleading in the lowest voice he could manage.
"Two is seriously over the line. Boss. Honestly, even earlier — if you hadn't warned me, I would've gotten bitten..."
"Quit whining and shut up. Before the actual zombies lynch you."
"....."
I cut off his rising volume before it got any louder and slowly surveyed the desolate commercial strip. Something was off — more than one something.
We'd torn through every building that might have held food, and it really was stripped bare the way he'd put it, which was strange enough. More than that, the number of corpses wandering around was conspicuously low.
The roads were wide, the gaps between buildings generous, and beyond the nearby apartment complex there was barely anywhere people would have lived — which was why we'd bothered detouring all the way out to this commercial district in the first place.
Lost in thought, I let my eyes wander, then dropped my gaze to the ground.
If there's nowhere to hide aboveground... what about underground?
The moment the thought hit me, I uncrossed my arms and looked toward a shadowed alley.
Come to think of it, I'd heard there was a big club somewhere around this commercial strip. Was it this way?
I asked Haejun. He nodded.
"Ah, yeah. That's right. There's a club nearby that used to have a pretty good reputation."
"And how does a middle-schooler like you know that?"
"...I heard it from some older guys I know, boss."
Hmm. Sounded like a lie. That thug face of his never lied about what it was, did it.
Either way, I jerked my chin for him to take the lead, and this time he moved without complaint. He'd already learned that hesitating the way he had earlier could earn him a beating from two zombies — plus alpha. Or maybe he still hadn't noticed the unsettling moans coming from the streetlamp at the end of the alley.
"...Uh, boss? Maybe it's just me, but that streetlamp over there..."
"Yeah. It's exactly what you're thinking."
So deal with it fast. We don't have time.
"....."
The thing slamming its head against a blood-smeared wall, over and over, was a one-hit job no matter how generously you looked at it — but Haejun clearly didn't see it that way. He walked toward it one reluctant step at a time, then shot me a pitiful look. A grown man's face like that only backfired.
I frowned and waved him on. He finally clenched his teeth and smashed the thing across the back of the skull.
But of course, Haejun's strength — which sat squarely in the ordinary civilian range — wasn't enough to cave in a skull in one blow.
"Kkgeuk. Kkgeugeuk."
It slowly twisted its head toward him like something out of a horror movie, and that was all he could take.
"HWAAAAAAAGH!!!"
He screamed at full volume, brought the blunt weapon down hard enough to drop it, then kept hammering the skull over and over.
Goddamn it. Keep your mouth shut when you fight.
Same thing back at the convenience store. A short battle cry I could understand. Whatever this overacting was, I had no idea.
I sighed once, then adjusted my grip on the lightweight baton as corpses began to poke their heads out in our direction, one after another.
One more deer-scream out of that bastard and I'm leaving him behind on the way back.
Grab—
With that resolution, I caught a female corpse by the throat as she lunged at me and hurled her into the others.
Meanwhile, at that same moment.
"Wh-what was that sound?"
"...You heard it too?"
Inside the club, two men who'd been rummaging around by the light of a single small flashlight both flinched at the horrific scream from outside and turned toward the entrance at the same time.
"You don't think someone just got swarmed by zombies? Because of those beanbag rounds we threw?"
"...Fuck if I know. Me neither. Let's just find some food and get out. I've got a bad feeling."
"But I seriously can't find anything to eat... Wait — hyung! This!"
"Huh? You found something?"
Jeonghwan whipped his head around at the voice of the man who'd been tensely ransacking the kitchen. What filled his eyes was a bulk package of bar snacks — less than half remaining, but he'd take it and be grateful.
"Holy shit! Where was it?! Where?!"
"Shoved way back in the corner! Those gangster bastards were petty enough to hide even this crap!"
"Hey, dig deeper! Reach all the way in! Shoulder-deep!"
"Hold on... hold on. Tsk. Feels like... there's something else..."
Jeonghwan snatched up their precious first haul and urged the other man on, who set down the burlap sack he'd been using as a weapon and stretched his arms every which way.
In the pitch-dark club, a faint rustling came from the corner sofa.
But both men were so fixated on tearing through the kitchen that there was no chance either of them would hear a sound that small.
"...Kkgeugeugeuk."
The second sound, when it came, was the kind they had no choice but to hear — whether they wanted to or not.
"....."
"...Hyung."
The moment that moan faded, Jeonghwan's face went deathly pale as the realization hit him that they were fucked.
What? What the hell? There weren't any corpses in here!
His companion's face had gone just as ashen, and when the younger man reached for the burlap sack, Jeonghwan frantically waved him off. The slightest sound now and it would all be over.
He shook his head hard, then jabbed his thumb toward the entrance with everything he had. Get out of here right now, don't do anything else — his companion understood well enough and nodded.
But then the thick snack package caught his eye. Jeonghwan grabbed the arm of the man still staring at it with pure longing, crouched as low as he could, switched off the flashlight, and began walking one step at a time through the darkness-choked space.
"Gulp."
The sound of a dry swallow felt unnaturally loud. A question suddenly flickered through Jeonghwan's mind.
What is this? Why did the zombie sounds stop?
He needed the thing to make noise so he could roughly pin down its location and get out of here.
And right then—
The bone-chilling sound Jeonghwan had been waiting for rang out.
"Kkgeuk."
Right next to his ear.
Every hair on Jeonghwan's body stood on end.
In a field of vision that, even with dark adaptation, could barely make out a handspan ahead, a corpse's white pupils filled the space and locked onto him. Bloody drool trailing from its mouth, eyeballs rolling a full three-sixty, ears pricked — Jeonghwan froze solid, unable to do a thing.
Instinct told him the thing in front of him hadn't detected him yet. He even stopped the breath he'd been drawing in.
But the man behind him didn't know that.
Or maybe he did, and simply couldn't endure the terror.
With an expression of indescribable misery — the face of a man staring death in the eye — he finally shot to his feet.
"Uwaaaaaagh!!! Aaaaaagh!!!"
Then he vaulted the kitchen counter in pure desperation and bolted alone toward the entrance.
"Kkgagagagagak."
Only then did the thing fully register the prey it had been half-sensing. It rose with a grotesque cry.
"Kkeueueueuk."
"Kkgeugeogeok. Kkgeogeogeok."
As if they'd been waiting for nothing but that scream, every corpse lying throughout the vast club snapped their jaws wide open and howled as one.
...There weren't no corpses. They were all gathered in one place.
Still frozen, Jeonghwan could only watch as the zombies tore after the man in a frenzied chase. However they'd died, every single one of them had their neck muscles severed — heads flopping wildly with every stride — and they didn't care in the slightest as they charged madly for the entrance.
Watching that, Jeonghwan understood just how worthless the countermeasure that had briefly crossed his mind really was.
I actually thought about fighting those things barehanded, even for a second. I must be out of my mind.
What good was a judo black belt? Arm locks, throws — none of it would matter. Those things that weren't even human anymore would just ignore it all and tear into his flesh.
But right then, something like a voice seemed to come from the open entrance—
And the entire zombie horde that had been radiating pure horror and revulsion toppled over in a mass, like a rack of bowling pins.
"...Huh?"
Faced with something so extreme it defied the situation, Jeonghwan's mouth fell open without thinking.
Have I finally lost it and started seeing things?
The entrance, previously blocked by zombies, flooded with sunlight — and someone walked in through that light.
...Yeah. Definitely seeing things.
Then the zombies that had been charging the stranger all at once got hit by something and went flying in every direction, and Jeonghwan finally closed his eyes.
Maybe it was worse because he hadn't eaten a thing since lunch yesterday.