The Zombie Apocalypse Begins
"You've gotta be fucking kidding me! You said a week from now!!!!!!"
I'm fucked. I knew it the instant it happened. No matter how you sliced it, this was well and truly fucked.
The Goddess had told me, crystal clear, that the zombie apocalypse would begin in a week. I'd timed every last preparation around that window. And then it went off today. I was sitting in a convenience store on the outskirts of Taewang Metropolitan City, eating ramen, when the outbreak hit.
Civil disturbances of varying scale are currently breaking out simultaneously across the entire country.
The emergency alerts poured in without pause. The zombie virus had erupted across the entire nation of South Korea.
"Kieeeeeek!!!!"
"Fwaah!!!!"
"Gah!!!"
"Guaaah!!!"
The Taewang Metropolitan City where Kim Taeshik currently found himself had descended into chaos as well. The zombies made their first real appearance in a shopping alley. At the mouth of a commercial strip in Taewang Metropolitan City, a pack of them burst into the open and began to run wild.
Wet, rattling coughs. Guttural groans dragging themselves out of ruined throats. Bodies shuddering, twitching, convulsing. In their wake, countless people were bitten and infected with the virus.
"Kyaaaaaaaaah————!!"
"Kyaaaaaah——!"
"It's a monster! A monster!!!!!!"
"Z-zombies! Those are zombies! Zombies!!!!!"
At first the onlookers just stood there, bewildered, watching the scene with a kind of vacant disbelief. The moment the zombies began multiplying in plain sight, they screamed and ran.
"Graaaaaaah——!!!!!!"
"Kieeeeeek——!!!!!!"
"Kieeeek——!!!!"
The zombies locked onto the source of those screams and gave chase with savage, single-minded hunger.
"Get away! Get away! I said get the hell away!!!!"
In a corner of the alley that had already become a slaughterhouse, a car sat trapped. The driver huddled inside had gone white as a sheet — because a zombie was slamming its head into the driver's side window with absolutely no regard for itself. Skull cracking or not, it rammed the glass in a mindless frenzy.
"Fuck, stay back!!! Stay the fuck baaaaack!!!!!!"
The driver was terrified out of his mind by the thing's feral, animal aggression, thrashing in his seat and screaming himself hoarse.
Then the window exploded inward. The zombie had headbutted it with such force that its own skull split open, and dark crimson blood fountained from the wound.
"Kiek! Kiek! Kieeeek!!!!"
Even so, it kept coming, lunging furiously toward the driver. The brain itself hadn't been destroyed.
"Aaaaaaagh!!!!"
The driver wailed, terror climbing into something like a howl. The zombie that had been a heartbeat away from falling on him suddenly stopped dead, thrashing in place — its body had jammed in the shattered window frame. Stuck there, it snapped its jaws at him over and over, biting nothing but air.
"Aaaah!!! Help me!!! Somebody help me!!!"
Tears and snot smeared the driver's face as he begged. As if it could smell the fear on him, the zombie threw back its ruined head and roared.
Wet, ravenous chomping. Gnashing teeth. A chorus of shrieks from every direction.
"Kieeeeeek——!!!!"
"Grrrrrrrr——!!!!"
"Kyaaaaah!!!! Get away!! Get away!!!!!"
The unrest in Taewang Metropolitan City only grew more violent. The zombie numbers swelled at an exponential rate. When a massive wave of them came crashing in, the enormous plate-glass front of a large cafe on the strip shattered completely.
"Graaaaaaah——!!!"
"Kieeeeeek——!!!!"
"Kieeeeeek——!!!"
Zombies poured into the cafe on a tide of pulverized glass and flying shards.
"Kyaaaaah!!!!! What the hell is that!!!!"
The people inside recoiled in horror at the flood of bodies coming through the broken front. A pack of zombies lunged straight at the nearest customers, tearing into the people at the window-side tables with savage, wet bites.
"Zombies, zombies, they're zombies!!!!"
At that gruesome sight, the people toward the back of the cafe broke into a panicked scramble for the exit.
"Fucking move!!! I said move!!!"
"Get out of the way, you pieces of shit!!!!"
"You sorry bastards, get off my goddamn foot!!!"
But the space was packed far too tight. The fleeing crowd tangled into a single thrashing knot — and the zombies came at them with blood-caked maws yawned wide, seizing and tearing.
Fuck!! What kind of insane situation is this?!
Inside the cafe that had become a living hell, a staff member dove into the space under the counter. Hurry! Hurry!!! His hands shaking, he fumbled out his phone and called the police, his voice cracking with panic.
"Hello!? Hello?! Is this the police station!!??"
"What the hell is that!!!!!"
Out on the main road, a driver caught sight of the zombies spilling from the alley and nearly jumped out of his skin.
"The fuck is that!!!!!"
In a panic he wrenched the wheel. The car lifted, then slammed down and rolled, flipping onto its roof. From above it and from both sides, a swarm of zombies came boiling out — an enormous horde surging onto the boulevard like a breaking wave.
"Ah... fuck... it's a goddamn circus out here..."
From the mouth of the alley on the opposite side, where the horde had not yet spilled through, that degenerate wanker Kim Taeshik shook his head as he took in the scene. The moment he'd confirmed the zombies from inside the convenience store, he hadn't hesitated — he'd bolted out the back door.
"Recognizing a zombie was one thing. I was pretty chill about that. Actually beating them to death, though? That's a whole different ballgame."
A steel pipe was clenched in Kim Taeshik's hand, something he'd snatched up off the street while running. It was already stained with blood. He'd killed several zombies just getting this far.
The Goddess had given him a revelation that a zombie apocalypse was coming, so he'd been mentally prepared for them to show up. Actually caving their skulls in, however, was an entirely different experience. Unlike the relative calm with which he'd identified the first one, the tension on his face now was unmistakable.
"No time to sit around wondering why it went off a whole week early. It happened, so deal with it first. I can scream at the Goddess all I want once I've actually gotten through this."
Kim Taeshik had built a base camp on the outskirts of Taewang Metropolitan City specifically to weather the apocalypse. The original plan had been to hole up there three days before D-Day. This was supposed to be a full week out. That was why he'd been in the city at all, killing time the way he would on any other afternoon — and then the zombie apocalypse had simply... started.
The shock had gone past panic and into sheer disbelief. He'd come within a hair of completely losing it. He'd managed, barely, to get a grip, and after that he'd forced himself to focus on the problem right in front of him.
"What's there to even do? I've got a camp out on the outskirts, so I just need to haul ass over there. Get clear of this neighborhood and I'm golden."
The base camp was roughly two kilometers from his current position. There weren't many people out near the camp, so if he could just put five hundred meters between himself and this mess, he ought to be fine. Assessment complete, Kim Taeshik dropped his stance slightly and moved fast toward an alley that led out of Taewang Metropolitan City.
He didn't get far before he ran into a zombie. The instant they met, Kim Taeshik brought the steel pipe down without a second's hesitation and caved the thing's skull in. It was a vicious, full-power blow. The zombie's head split, and dark crimson blood sprayed from the upper forehead.
Kim Taeshik clenched his teeth as he watched the zombie gush blood from the hit. The real reason he was grinding his jaw was to put more power into the next swing — but it was also to keep his own head on straight.
The pallor, the chunks torn out of it — yeah, it definitely looks like a zombie. But you can still tell this thing was a person five minutes ago, and the way it feels through the pipe is disgusting as hell. This is so fucking grim...
The creature in front of him was unmistakably a zombie. The feedback through the steel pipe, though, was not just the feel of hitting a monster. Tasting that queasy, all-too-human impact, he snapped a front kick into it and drove the thing backward. Already off-balance from the blow to the head, the zombie flew a good distance and crashed down in a heap.
Kim Taeshik took a long step forward, lining up the follow-up to finish it — and then his eyes flicked sideways down the bend in the alley, and he startled.
"Graaaaaaah——!!!!"
Another zombie was charging him in a blind fury. The moment he registered the second attack, Kim Taeshik snapped his hips around toward it, gripped the steel pipe in both hands, stood it vertical, and drove it straight up through the underside of the zombie's jaw. Then he put even more force behind it, cramming the pipe up through the jaw and into the skull.
Kkhh....
His face crumpled as badly as the wet, grinding sound of the pipe forcing its way in. He was smashing zombie heads with everything he had because staying alive came first — but that was a separate matter from how thoroughly repulsive it felt to punch steel through living flesh, and it showed all over his expression.
Ah — the one I knocked down first.
He ripped the pipe free of the zombie's jaw and glanced toward the first one, the one he'd kicked down. He'd hit it hard in the head, but there was no way a single blow had put it down for good. He'd stepped in after the kick specifically to make sure of the kill.
"Kieeeeeek!!!!"
Sure enough, the first zombie had already shoved itself back to its feet and was coming at him again.
Fuck!!!
Kim Taeshik spun hard in that direction. And in that exact instant —
"Kyaaaaah!!!!!!"
A woman's sharp scream cut through the air.