Zombie Hunter Kim Hyeongwoo
The person in the passenger seat of the cargo truck was Kang Min-chae.
About two weeks had passed since she first climbed into this truck wearing her school uniform.
It wasn't a long time, but in that span she had been through so much.
The truck's passengers had changed completely since then.
Some had left, new ones had arrived, and some had died.
At some point, Kang Min-chae had become the truck's most senior passenger.
"Min-chae, what do we do?"
The woman gripping the steering wheel asked, her face frozen with fear.
Min-chae checked the side mirror.
Three zombies were sprinting toward them.
A pile of rocks blocked the road ahead. They couldn't go forward.
"Back up and run them over!"
She meant to ram the zombies with the cargo truck itself.
The driver nodded and threw the truck into reverse, then stomped hard on the accelerator.
Vroom—
The cargo truck shot backward at a furious speed.
Jolt—
Suddenly the whole body of the truck lurched violently.
It wasn't because they'd hit a zombie.
The driver had been so tense that she'd failed to keep the vehicle straight. The truck's rear wheel plunged into a snow-covered ditch.
Vroom—
Vroom— vroom—
No matter how hard she pressed the pedal, the wheels only spun uselessly. The truck wouldn't budge.
The zombies drew closer and closer.
The woman at the wheel burst into tears and screamed.
"Min-chae, what do we do?!"
Jin-beom and I simply watched the situation unfold.
Three zombies had surrounded the cargo truck. One clawed at the cargo bed while the other two threw themselves against the driver's and passenger's doors.
"What should we do?"
To Jin-beom's question, I answered flatly.
"We take them out."
We would eliminate the zombies.
It wasn't a decision born of some righteous urge to save people in danger.
Zombies that wandered close to the village had to be dealt with anyway, and the faster, the better.
If the people in that truck got bitten, the number of zombies we'd eventually have to kill would only grow.
Zombies were a plague, after all — which was exactly why rapid response mattered.
Jin-beom asked me again.
"Just the two of us? Or should we call the villagers?"
Summoning the villagers by phone wouldn't have been hard.
But it would take time, and there was no good in a crowd of people rushing toward a spot crawling with zombies.
"Let's just handle it ourselves. It's only three."
"Then you're taking two of them?"
I snorted at his joke.
"If you play bait, I could take all three."
Jin-beom caught my meaning and nodded.
The two of us knew this terrain inside and out — we'd crossed it every single day back in our school days.
The road we stood on now and the road below the slope where the truck was stuck formed an S-curve.
As kids, we used to cut across the slope, scrambling up and down it as a shortcut.
There were a few stretches bare enough of trees and brush for a person to climb, and one of them was exceptionally steep.
In elementary school, Jin-beom and I had made a bet over it — who could conquer that slope first.
Neither of us had managed it, even by high school.
It was that steep.
That was the slope we would use.
"The zombies aren't going to pull it off in one try, right?"
Jin-beom asked, tying a rope around his waist, his expression a mix of unease and laughter.
"Don't worry. There's no way in hell."
"Hyeongwoo, listen — if I ever turn into a zombie... you handle me. Promise."
"I'd do it even without the ask."
"Aigoo, you cold-hearted bastard."
I lashed the other end of Jin-beom's rope securely to a wooden post.
Pay out the rope little by little, and he began his descent down the slope.
Once he was far enough down, he shouted at the zombies.
"Hey! Over here! Come and get me!"
The zombies, which had been hammering on the truck's windows, were drawn by his voice and came running.
Then they started climbing the slope.
The first few meters were quick.
But where the grade turned sharply steeper, the zombies slowed to a crawl.
Scrrrape—
The lead zombie lost its footing and slid back down, tangling with the ones behind it and knocking them all flat.
But they were up again in an instant, clawing their way up the slope once more.
And they slipped again.
It was like watching Jin-beom and me from the old days — slipping over and over, yet refusing to quit, swearing that today would be the day.
Jin-beom shouted to me.
"Hyeongwoo! Are they gonna make it? They're getting higher every second!"
"I know, you punk."
I hauled on the rope and pulled Jin-beom back up to safety.
The zombies were still trying to climb.
I stood where I had a clear view of them and drew my bow.
Their movements, scrambling up the incline, were so predictable that aiming was easy.
Thwip—
The arrow flew straight and buried itself near the crown of the lead zombie's head. It toppled and slid back down the slope.
Thwip—
Thwip—
I drove arrows into the skulls of the other two as well.
Their movements grew sluggish.
Not yet.
Thwip—
Thwip—
Thwip—
I kept shooting, planting one or two more arrows in each of their heads until the zombies were dragging themselves along like inchworms.
That was enough.
I went down the gentle slope on the other side, drew the kukri at my hip, and approached the creatures carefully, blade sweeping.
Whoosh—
Whoosh— whoosh—
One by one, I severed their necks.
Once the zombies were all dealt with, Jin-beom came down to join me, grinning.
"Good work out there, Zombie Hunter Kim Hyeongwoo!"
He'd invented every one of my old nicknames. Divine Archer of Chestnut Valley — he'd been the first to call me that, too.
A little later, someone climbed out of the driver's seat — a woman in her mid-thirties, her face streaked with tears as she thanked us.
"Thank you so much! You saved our lives!"
Another figure emerged from the passenger seat — a woman who looked remarkably young.
She marched up to us, eyes brimming, and shouted.
"Who piles rocks across the road like that?! We almost died!"
I didn't answer.
Someone else would handle that one.
Sure enough, Jin-beom opened his mouth.
"Uh... you see... it's to protect the village... I'm sorry."
I snorted inwardly at the sight of Jin-beom's reddening face.
The villagers, alerted by Jin-beom, gathered at the scene.
Outsiders and villagers joined forces to free the truck's wheel from the ditch.
"One, two, three!"
Vroom—
The wheel popped free of the ditch.
I studied the outsiders.
Women, an old man, and small children — nothing more.
In times as dangerous as these, it was a group so fragile that a single gust of ill wind might have scattered them.
The woman from the passenger seat seemed to be their leader.
She and the Deoksu-ri Village Chief were talking.
It wasn't hard to guess what the Chief would say to her.
When the conversation ended, the woman returned to her group and asked their opinion. Everyone nodded.
A short while later, the Chief announced to the villagers:
"These folks have fallen on hard times. Let's let them stay in our village — at least until spring!"
The temperature was dropping by the day.
'Brr, it's freezing!'
Ten days had passed since the outsiders arrived in Deoksu-ri.
Survive for 1 day.
Success will be rewarded with a special prize.
Today was the day.
Once the clock passed noon, I would finally receive the something I'd been waiting for all this time.
I had survived thirty days without any truly precarious moment.
'I only made it because I came here.'
Everything since Grandmother appeared in my dream with her warning flashed past like a panorama.
This area — Chestnut Valley, Deoksu-ri, and the surrounding region — had turned green again on the app.
It wasn't green because the zombies were gone.
With the entire mainland aside from the islands painted red, there had been no point in even checking the app anymore.
But then the government overhauled it, recategorizing regions by zombie density.
Red for zones so infested that any activity was impossible. Yellow for places where a short outing was possible if you stayed alert. Green for areas where, with reasonable caution, your odds of being attacked were low.
The meaning of "green" had changed from before — but either way, this place was far safer than the cities.
Knock-knock—
Knock-knock—
I was building a platform in the yard.
'There. Done!'
I set the platform against the fence and stepped up onto it. My eye line rose high enough to survey beyond the wall.
I'd built it sturdy enough to fire my bow from, should a zombie appear.
Buzz—
My phone vibrated. A text from Jin-beom.
"What rice?"
When I reached the community hall, a military truck was parked there.
Jin-beom was nowhere in sight, so I asked the Youth Association President, who was standing nearby.
"What's this truck for?"
"The government's releasing state rice."
Soldiers were loading sacks of rice onto the truck and making rounds through the village, handing out portions.
By government order, state grain was being rationed out to the people — and not only to registered residents of the village. The outsiders received their share too, exactly the same.
These days the outsiders volunteered for all the village's menial work. Hauling firewood to the sentry posts and roasting potatoes fell to them as well.
And they were learning archery, as a group.
Jin-beom had tried to foist the archery instruction on me, singing my praises as the great Divine Archer — but I'd refused.
Archery lessons were just a pretext. His real scheme, dragging me deeper into the village community, was transparent as glass.
"Next in line, come collect your rice!"
At the soldiers' call, the Youth Association President nudged me.
"Hyeongwoo, hurry up and get yours. Everyone else already has."
I walked up to the military truck, and a soldier handed me a pen.
"Please write your resident registration number and name here, then sign."
I did as instructed and received my share — ten kilograms of rice.
I asked the soldiers how things were going.
"How's the situation looking these days?"
I could learn about other regions from the internet without having to ask anyone, but there was something different about men like these, who roamed the ground and saw it with their own eyes.
He shuddered before answering.
"Oh, don't even get me started! The people living here are truly blessed!"
I carried the rice home and waited for noon to arrive.
'So what kind of reward will it be?'
At first, I'd hoped for something like food or weapons.
But as time passed, my expectations had climbed considerably.
'It's going to give me superpowers, isn't it?'
Super strength, flight, superspeed, a regeneration boost — any of those would be incredible.
An immunity to zombie bites would be nice too, though once temperatures rose and the zombies weakened and were wiped out, such a power would become useless.
What I really wanted was an ability I could keep using even after the zombie crisis ended.
I glanced at the clock. Thirty minutes left.
Today, of all days, the hands crawled.
Whoosh—
Whoosh—
I swung the kukri.
Videos teaching "basic sword techniques for fighting zombies" were circulating all over the internet.
Tutorials on how to behead a person with a blade would have been blocked long ago in normal times — but now the government was actively encouraging them.
Whoosh—
Whoosh—
I drilled the forms hard enough to work up a sweat on my forehead.
And then, at last, the long-awaited message appeared.
With anticipation burning in my eyes, I checked my reward.