Reference Point
Before anyone realized it, the zombies had thinned out noticeably.
No—more precisely, the streets were suddenly crowded with headless corpses, bodies that could no longer even pretend to be zombies.
“This is dangerous,” Kang Yundo muttered.
The scruffy blonde-dyed woman trailing right beside him asked in a weary voice, “…Why? Fewer zombies is a good thing, isn’t it? Creeping around holding our breath the whole time is way too slow.”
“Wiping them out in piles like this means a group with that kind of power is nearby. One person alone couldn’t pull it off.”
“Huh? Then maybe…”
A man whose clothes were just as filthy as Kang Yundo’s and the blonde’s, yet whose hairstyle somehow still looked alive, brightened and cut in.
“How about asking those people for help? If we just pay a little something…”
“Best not to meet them at all. Even if we run into them, a decent conversation like that would be impossible. We might get jumped out of nowhere like last time.”
“…Like those crazy bastards?”
The blonde woman, Sujeong, couldn’t help frowning. Those truly horrific humans had even shown up in her dream last night.
She wasn’t even sure it was right to call them the same species.
You couldn’t call creatures that attacked their own kind just to eat them “kin.”
“…We got hit not long after entering Suwon. We don’t know how far their range stretches, so we can’t relax even if we see someone.”
Kang Yundo said it while rubbing the spot in his side where he’d been stabbed before.
Without his special ability he would have died for sure. These weren’t the old days when a few stab wounds just meant treatment and bed rest until you were fine again. Hell, there wasn’t even a chance to get treatment now.
Hearing that, the greasy az-perm guy, Hyeonsu, broke out in cold sweat and scanned the surroundings even harder.
A few days ago he’d thought he was dead for sure, and seeing those psychos again was something he absolutely refused to do.
Thinking that, they paused in an alley to wet their throats. And wouldn’t you know it.
The old saying about speaking of the tiger and it appearing wasn’t empty talk.
“What the hell. That bastard… where have I seen him?”
One of the men posted as lookouts after clearing a building near the department store on the old man’s orders spotted someone below and muttered.
“Who?”
“Over there, four o’clock alley. The fat guy chugging a plastic bottle.”
“…Huh? You’re right. Isn’t that the same bastard from a few days ago? Goldfish.”
“Yeah? I’m not seeing things?”
The man chewing on rock-hard jerky of unknown origin thought it over for a second, then grinned.
“The old man said it clear, right? While we’re staying here, if anything runs short, go fill it yourselves.”
“We’re not short on food though?”
“Look next to him.”
The blonde woman’s face that entered their eyes was, like every other woman they’d seen, caked in dust and dressed in rags—but her eyes were still alive.
And that alone was enough.
“Those bastards definitely aren’t connected to the department store, right?”
“Last time we saw them they were on the complete opposite side. Looks like they’re just some vagrants circling around here.”
“No base? Heh. Goldfish bastard. Thinks a weird ability means his guts are hanging outside his belly.”
“Who knows. Maybe he’s looking for some girlfriend who dumped him for that face so he can fuck her.”
They snickered while grabbing blades and clubs. Then one of them suddenly remembered something and muttered.
“Hey, that funny rumor we heard lately. Think that bastard’s the one behind it?”
“Oh. Could be. He’s shit at fighting but tough as hell, so he could take down a few zombies easy.”
The big guy smacked his lips enviously. Beside him, another man wore a doubtful look.
“But the rumor’s ridiculously overblown. Even Goldfish couldn’t handle dozens, right?”
“Rumors always get exaggerated. One guy wiping out dozens of zombies? Come on. Even the old man couldn’t do that.”
“What are you talking about? That old bastard totally could.”
“Whatever. Don’t care.”
The last man grabbed the thick coat hanging on the window frame to dry the blood, cracked his neck left and right, and said,
“Kill everyone except the woman. Fuck her till we’re sick of it, then cut her up for extra food. So don’t rough her up too bad.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll see.”
The three men opened the door and stepped outside. On the back of every hand, a wild-dog tattoo glared blue-eyed at its owners.
A little later, in the present.
The three men were breathing hard, staring straight ahead, then tilted their heads.
“Hey, mister. Your skills got a lot better already? Last time you were just scrambling to dodge and block, now you can even counter.”
“…There’s a limit to how much I can hold back. I really didn’t want to get tangled up with trash like you.”
“Ohhh? You were holding back?”
The man twisted his neck with a crack and glared at Kang Yundo with a slimy look, then fixed his eyes on Hyeonsu and Sujeong, who were only flinching behind him.
He snorted a laugh, as if he’d figured it out, and waggled the fire axe in his hand.
“Ahh, right. Last time it was an open lot with no cover. This time it’s an alley blocked on both sides. Perfect for playing shield, huh?”
“…”
“Too bad for you—we don’t have business with you, mister.”
The man shot a glance at the comrade who’d quietly climbed the wall and started walking forward slowly. Yundo’s attention was inevitably pulled toward him.
No matter how hard his scale skin was, an axe blade with full weight behind it was still dangerous.
“Just hand over the woman. We’ll leave nice and quiet. She your daughter?”
“…”
“Or we can just let you go clean. You don’t want to keep doing this alone against us either, right?”
Kang Yundo sensed something off about the constant eye signals and the talking, and whipped his head around—but it was already too late.
Thud—!
“Ghk.”
A kitchen-knife spear punched clean into the back of Hyeonsu’s neck while he stood frozen in terror.
“Hup!!!”
Blood sprayed like a fountain as he crumpled. Sujeong clapped a hand over her mouth and tried to bolt, but the man on the wall was faster, his hand snatching for her.
But decisively, Kang Yundo’s hand was faster still.
A thick fist clamped around the wrist that had lecherously grabbed Sujeong’s hair.
At the same moment Yundo turned his back, the two grinning men swung axe and baseball bat with everything they had.
“Huh?”
And then the man in Yundo’s grip was swung like a club.
Thwack—!
He dropped the knife spear; the two weapons smashed into his shoulder and temple. He didn’t even get to scream before the back of his head cracked against the wall and he blacked out.
“You fucking bastards…”
Kang Yundo muttered low, wrapping the hyperventilating Sujeong even tighter behind him and glaring at the remaining men like he meant to kill them.
“I told you there’s a limit to holding back. If you’d so much as touched a hair on the kid, you wouldn’t have died clean. Got it?”
“…What. You got pretty pissed, huh?”
The man took a couple steps back and thought.
He didn’t even look 180, and his muscles didn’t look that thick either.
What the hell was that strength just now? This changes things.
Kang Yundo was so rattled he kept checking over and over whether Sujeong was hurt, cold sweat pouring down, before he finally steadied his breath and spat once.
“Ptoo. Let’s just stop.”
“No, stop what?”
“…What?”
The man poked his head over the alley wall this way and that, checking something, then opened his mouth.
“Now I’m starting to get a read on you. The way you protect that woman so hard makes the answer obvious. If we pull aggro here, you’re the ones in a hurry.”
A few zombies had already started hunting for the source of the earlier noise, after all.
“We’re used to dodging zombies, no problem. But you two look like you’re not.”
He smiled at Sujeong’s exhausted face and jerked his chin at the big guy beside him.
The big guy edged closer to Kang Yundo, sneering.
“Hey mister. No matter how precious that woman is, you still value your life, right? Even if your skin’s hard like mine, if every zombie piles on…”
That slimy look finally snapped Kang Yundo’s temper. Cornered as he was, he had no choice but to spit one line.
“Hey, you son of a bitch. You think I’m sitting still because I’m scared of a few fucking zombies? Some pumpkin-pancake-faced pig spreading sideways…”
“Wh-what? You fucking—what did you just say?”
“I said your face looks like a pumpkin pancake, you disgusting cannibal bastard!”
Once he decided it was the end, even his old detective personality came roaring back. Watching the pumpkin-pancake guy’s face turn purple, the taunt seemed to have landed perfectly.
Since it had come to this, he had to beat the two men down fast and get out of the alley. Otherwise, just like they said, the zombies that heard the noise would pour into this narrow space and they’d all be eaten alive.
But easier said than done.
Two-on-one was a penalty that, unlike fiction, was never easy to break through. The zombie sounds growing louder, and the two men already starting to pull their feet back to run before the zombies arrived, made Kang Yundo feel his end approaching.
…I just wanted to reach the school somehow and at least recover my daughter’s body.
Still, he steeled himself to throw away his own life if it meant saving the girl beside him who felt like a daughter.
“…?”
“…??”
The two men who’d checked beyond the alley weren’t thinking of running at all. They were just staring blankly at one spot with eyes full of pure confusion.
“Ah, that fucking dog bastard… Should I just secretly cook him into dog soup for real.”
Then, suddenly, a blunt voice reached everyone’s ears.
It had come so quietly through the savage zombie howls that they had no choice but to doubt their own hearing.