Give a Doe, Get a Mal
I climbed up onto a commercial building's rooftop, pulled the notepad map from my pocket, and compared our first target against our current position.
"Hmm. Looks like we're almost there, but every building model on this thing looks the same. Can't tell them apart."
"Um... Oppa? Are we still far?"
"Hold on. It's clearly not out on the street. If it fell from the sky, the highest probability is that it landed on some building's roof. So maybe over there?"
"Oppa? Oppa? I, uh, really didn't want to interrupt..."
While I was glaring at that scrap of scribbles masquerading as a map, Soeun — who had been fidgeting the whole time — finally tugged at my sleeve.
"What. What is it?"
"Over there. Look that way. At what Im Chaeyeon is staring at."
"...?"
Come to think of it, Chaeyeon — who had been stuck to me like a rice cake — had peeled off at some point and was now glued to the rooftop railing instead, staring intently at something.
Curious what could be so fascinating, I stuffed the map away and walked over beside her.
Grrrrngh! Kurrngh! Kngh!
The instant my eyes met whatever sat between living creature and corpse, it bared its jaws and started barking its head off.
"Ah, finally. It's barking. I've been watching it this whole time and it didn't react at all — then the second Oppa shows up, it goes off like that."
"What the hell is that? Wonder if there's any edible parts if we catch it and butcher it."
"...Mm, even so, that might be pushing it."
Even Chaeyeon, who agreed with every single one of my opinions as a matter of course, made a face at that one. I just kept staring at the thing as it applied a zombie's signature phlegmy, sore-throat register to a dog's bark and went woof woof.
I recognized the breed on sight. Those distinctive folded ears and drooping eyes. The ivory coat. And the overwhelming size — standing roughly level with the waist of the zombie shambling next to it.
The breed with the strongest bite force in the world. A Kangal.
Grrrrrrngh! Kurhungh!
True to its reputation as a giant dog, it glared at us like it wanted us dead, muzzle and chain collar still locked on. And just as the thing found me irritating, I wasn't exactly fond of it either.
"An animal zombie. That's a big variable. If it were something you could just casually run into, I'd rather have come alone."
"Aww, you're worrying over nothing, Oppa. Even if something that size charged us, one swing of your iron pipe and it'd go down."
"I'm not worried about me. I'm worried about you two. Especially you, Im Chaeyeon."
"Huh? Not Kang Soeun?"
I pointed at the unfazed Chaeyeon instead of Soeun, who was staring at the dog, wound tight as a spring. Chaeyeon blinked at me, completely lost.
"I'm going to keep Kang Soeun right next to me the whole time. But you can pull your own weight. What happens if you let your guard down and one of those things comes flying out of nowhere?"
"Hmm... a straight fight would definitely be rough, but if I just bolt to Oppa's side before it bites me, wouldn't that work?"
"You really are ridiculously optimistic."
I gave a dry little smile back at Chaeyeon, who was grinning up at me like a kid, then turned my head toward the dog again.
"Though honestly, with that muzzle on, even if we ran into it I don't think it'd be much of a problem."
KWAJAAAK—
The second the words left my mouth, the thing smashed its muzzle apart with a violent impact loud enough to carry all the way up here.
Watching a single chomp obliterate a metal muzzle, Chaeyeon muttered,
"Mm. Taking back what I said earlier. Not 'might be pushing it' — it's definitely pushing it."
"Yeah. One bite and you're done. Even a living one of these is a monster, but not like that. Buffed after it died, huh?"
Still. So what. It wasn't like it was going to come charging all the way up here.
And the moment I muttered that, the thing shook out its fur with a murderous air, body-checked every corpse in its path out of the way, and came barreling toward us like a maniac.
"....."
"...Oppa."
Soeun and Chaeyeon both looked at me with eyes gone completely flat. I spoke in self-defense.
"Hey, it's not like it understands Korean, and we were this far away — you think it heard me? Coincidence. Pure coincidence."
"And even if it somehow did hear me, so what. It shows up, then what?"
That was the truth. No matter how many times in a row the thing had shattered my expectations, there was nothing it could do about this height difference.
I locked eyes with it down on the crosswalk directly below the building, black drool streaming from its jaws as it stared up — not at us, at me specifically.
Looking at it, the thing was pretty damn cocky. I was curious how many points it'd be worth. Should I just go down and kill it?
But I couldn't. Leaving Soeun and Chaeyeon alone while I went down by myself, in a situation where any variable could pop up, was a bad idea.
I'd already smashed every corpse in this building ages ago, but you never knew. If four-legged beasts were wandering around, winged ones could be out there too...
Flap flap!
"Huh?"
"Ah, shit."
At the sound, Chaeyeon made a blank noise and turned around. I spat a curse and whipped my head after her.
CAAAAW!
Puhk—
A zombie crow came flapping in on wings shedding rotten scraps of feather, and Chaeyeon's sword — drawn on pure reflex — punched straight through its beak.
"Ah! That startled me. I just heard a bird and reacted."
"...Don't play coy after killing it that cleanly."
"Hm? What's 'coy'? Is it something you eat?"
"That right there is what coy means, you little—"
While Chaeyeon spun her blackened blade once, sheathed it, and started bickering with Soeun, I glared at the other birds perched on the power lines.
Thought it was an assassin the crow sent. I should've noticed something was off earlier. They were weirdly hard to spot. Did they do that on purpose?
Hard to write them off as simple rotting bird-brains when I already knew one bird-brain that strutted around acting filthy smart.
The bastard dog still barking its head off down below. The chickens on the utility pole.
The phrase "prologue over" had never hit this hard.
Unless you were an irregular like me, the knowledge that things like that could drop on you anytime, anywhere was the kind of penalty that would clamp survivors' throats shut all the way up to their chins — people who were already living with their breath held.
Add the bald zombie on top of that, and that goddamn Alpha.
I crushed the irritation rising fast and picked up the iron pipe I'd left against the wall.
"Let's go. That bastard dog can wait until I get down there — I'll handle it myself. When that happens, you two stay hidden."
"Got it~"
"...Okay."
Chaeyeon was as unfazed as ever. Soeun, by contrast, hunched in on herself — the savage look of the dog zombie had clearly pressed the air out of her.
Right. Up on the rooftop, that had been true.
But the Soeun I was looking at now — was this even the same girl?
"Hyaaaaah!"
Puhhhk—!
The thin baseball bat she swung cracked dead-center into a corpse's temple, and the zombie that had let its guard down against a slender girl's body went quietly to sleep on the spot.
More precisely: the impact was so far beyond anything you'd expect that the spine tore free below the snapped neck and dangled from the rotting torso, soul and all blasted clean out of it.
It had happened while we were cleaning up the zombies drawn by the noise after that bastard dog bolted somewhere.
"...Okay, is this even possible?"
"I told you, Oppa. Compared to her, I'm completely normal."
"...I still don't want to be compared to you!"
Soeun snapped it with her face gone bright red, then immediately clapped a hand over her mouth and checked my reaction. She didn't need to. The zombies around here seemed pretty much cleared out.
Most of that was thanks to the iron pipe in my hand doing the heavy lifting, sure — but impressive was still impressive.
This high school girl who spent every second reading my face and shrinking into herself had just taken out multiple zombies on pure sense and raw power alone. An achievement I wouldn't have believed if I hadn't watched it with my own eyes.
"Hehe. So who's playing coy now? I told you I could do it."
"Ugh... shut up!"
It wasn't like Chaeyeon next to us, born with genius and technique. This was pure physical dominance, nothing else. Against man-eating corpses, no less.
Thinking about how Kang Haejun — currently loafing around back at school with far superior height and muscle mass — had been completely useless, you could coldly say Kang Soeun was almost on the same level of value as Im Chaeyeon.
Having reached that conclusion, I looked at this precious talent with the first genuinely peaceful smile I'd worn since the end of the world began.
"Kang Soeun. You're not hurt anywhere?"
"Y-yes? Ah... yes..."
"Until we get back to the school, Chaeyeon and I will keep looking after you, so don't push yourself. Build experience slowly first. Got it?"
"Yes... Oppa."
Under that look of mine, Soeun awkwardly wiped the filth off her baseball bat with an expression I couldn't place — shy, burdened, or both.
Chaeyeon watched her from the side with the sly fox-eyes of a girl up to something, then caught my gaze and flashed a cute little wink.
See? What did I tell you?
At a gesture that said exactly that, I had no choice but to nod and admit it.
These two high school girls — Im Chaeyeon and Kang Soeun — were the equivalent of hitting the lottery.