The Pheasant and the Fevered Old Man
Crackle—
It wasn't the sound of human footsteps.
But it wasn't a zombie, either.
It was something absolutely delicious.
A hen pheasant!
A pheasant was hiding near the brushwood.
I calmly picked up my bow and an arrow, nocked it to the string, and took aim. Unlike the showy plumage of a cock bird, the hen was covered in camouflage browns, so she blended right in with the fallen leaves around her. Which meant I had to wait for the moment she took flight — only then would her body stand out clearly against the ground.
Flap-flap—
Sensing something off, she burst into the air.
Before she could build up flight speed — now. This was the moment.
I loosed the arrow with every ounce of obsession I had. I am Kim Hyungwoo, the Divine Archer of Bamnamugol!
Thwip—
The arrow flew true and struck her clean through the body.
A thrill of pure catharsis shot through me. All the more so given that I had to find food to survive.
Time to load up on protein!
I hung the pheasant from my A-frame carrier and went back to digging arrowroot. Luck was with me today — I found several roots of deodeok as well, and gathered up some shriveled chestnuts that had been lying on the ground for who knew how long. The old me wouldn't have spared them a glance, but now they were precious food.
That's enough for today.
Shouldering my carrier, now packed full of edibles, I headed down the hill.
With this much food, I feel a lot more secure.
A bodyguard brought food to Ko Se-rin's room.
"We assumed you might not have much of an appetite, so the chef prepared easy-to-digest dishes."
It was a meal made from the long-term preserved stockpiles in the bunker: a porridge of finely shredded dried abalone and sea cucumber, braised dongchimi tofu discs fragrant with truffle oil, and a can of fruit cocktail.
"I'm not hungry."
She waved the meal away. After the bodyguard withdrew, she sat quietly cross-legged in her room, steadying her anxious heart through meditation.
Knock knock—
Someone rapped on the door.
"Come in."
A middle-aged woman wearing glasses stepped inside, and Ko Se-rin sprang to her feet.
"Secretary Han! Did you find anything?"
She had quietly asked her personal secretary to look into her grandfather's whereabouts.
"Director Ko, please steel yourself before you hear this. The Honorary Chairman was hiking Mount Seorak at that hour. When he received word of the mass infection outbreak, he set off for the Baekdamsa helipad, and that's when... he..."
"What happened to him?"
"He fell from the slope. He went down along with two bodyguards who were with him. They are missing."
"That's impossible! That area isn't even an infection zone! How on earth—?"
Secretary Han handed her a document detailing the circumstances of the fall. Ko Se-rin read it through, then shut her eyes tightly.
How could something like this happen...
Darkness was settling over Deoksu-ri Village.
Ever since the zombie outbreak, the residents had been patrolling the village perimeter in pairs. Kim Deok-su, the Youth Association President celebrating his sixty-first year this year, turned to Choi Jin-beom.
"Jin-beom, I heard Hyungwoo showed up at the house in Chestnut Valley?"
"Yes, sir. Somehow managed to get out of Seoul in one piece."
"Lucky you, having your friend come. You two used to be inseparable, remember? Always stuck together like a pair of mutts."
"That's ancient history. We got busy and lost touch over the years."
Kim Hyungwoo had been working an office job in Seoul while Choi Jin-beom taught children at the very elementary school they'd both attended. With no occasion to meet, their contact had dwindled until these days it amounted to a text or two a year.
"Jin-beom, a friend is someone you never get tired of seeing — even every single day. And when you meet one after ten years, it feels like you saw them just yesterday."
Jin-beom smiled and nodded at the old man's words. That was exactly how it had felt when he'd run into Hyungwoo earlier that day.
"Tell Hyungwoo to come stay in the village. It's dangerous for him out there all alone."
"Yes, sir. I'm planning to talk it over with him next time we meet. But would he actually come?"
That was when it happened.
Huh?
Something caught Choi Jin-beom's eye. In the distance, someone was approaching.
"Someone's coming this way, sir."
"Where?"
"Over there."
"Ah, I see them!"
The silhouette was human. It was shambling toward them in slow, lumbering steps.
The Youth Association President spoke with uneasy eyes. "Could it be a zombie?"
Jin-beom stared ahead for a long moment before answering. "I don't think so."
He had spent every spare minute studying footage of the creatures, analyzing how they moved. Zombies that wandered without purpose kept up a slow, steady, unwavering pace. But this figure kept walking, then stopping, walking, then stopping. The pattern was clearly different from a zombie's. Still, just in case, he nocked an arrow to his bow and moved toward the unknown figure.
Definitely not a zombie.
Breath was streaming from its mouth — a living human, no question. Up close, it turned out to be an old man of about eighty, muttering something over and over to himself.
"Mama, give me food. Mama, hurry, give me food. I'm hungry."
The Youth Association President rushed over, examined him, and said, "Looks like he's got dementia."
The old man was a complete mess. His face and hair were caked with dirt, and though he wore a thick padded jacket and pants, they were torn in places with the stuffing poking out here and there.
"Where do you suppose he came from?"
"His family probably dumped him when the dementia got bad. Why'd he have to show up in our village of all times, at a moment like this? We can't exactly afford another mouth to feed."
"We'll have to ask the Chief what to do."
"Ask the Chief, and obviously—"
Just then, a voice came from behind them.
"Obviously what, if you ask me?"
The Deoksu-ri Village Chief had arrived. The Youth Association President jumped and shouted, "Aigoo, hyung! Make some noise when you walk up!"
The Chief approached the old man, a kindly smile spreading across his face. "Sir, might I ask your name?"
The old man only repeated the same words. "Mama. Give me food."
The Youth Association President said to the Chief, "With the state of the world as it is, shouldn't we just send him on his way?"
Supporting the old man by the arm, the Chief rounded on him. "The man's not even in his right mind! Leave him out here and you're telling him to die! How can a person be so heartless!" Then he turned back to the old man and said gently, "You're hungry, aren't you, sir? Come with me to the village and have a meal."
The old man reacted to those words. "Food?"
"Yes, I'll get you some."
"Ah! Hurry, give me food!"
The Village Chief took the old man by the arm and led him toward the village, and the Youth Association President grumbled under his breath.
"Our Chief, honestly. Can't walk past a pitiful soul to save his life..."
A new day dawned.
I started before first light and dug arrowroot without pause. By now a small mountain of it had piled up in front of the storage wing. But it only looked like a lot — processed into starch, the yield would be meager. Arrowroot gives you far less than sweet potatoes or potatoes, so I would keep digging for as long as my arms let me.
That said, digging nothing but arrowroot gets dull, so this afternoon I'd go fishing for cherry trout.
Come to think of it, when am I going to eat that?
I still hadn't touched yesterday's pheasant. I couldn't use fire with any peace of mind, which made cooking a real headache. Frying Spam and roasting a whole pheasant are two entirely different weight classes of undertaking. I'd removed the innards and cleaned her thoroughly, though, so in this weather she'd keep a good three or four days.
Find a way to eat her before she spoils.
I wasn't about to throw her out — I'd eat her if it killed me.
Survive for 28 days.
Upon success, a special reward will be granted.
Past noon, the number in the message ticked down again.
I picked up my phone and scanned for news. I was checking it far more often than I ever had before the zombie outbreak — no help for it. Information was every bit as vital to survival as food and water.
The biggest event overnight in South Korea was this: the power and gas supplied to Seoul and Incheon had been cut off completely. Those cities had gone dark.
And it wasn't just the loss of electric light. The blackout took down the internet lines, the carriers' base stations and relay offices, even the data centers — the capital had become a communications dead zone. Out here in a remote mountain valley my phone still worked, while in Seoul, the very capital of the country, everything had gone dead. Who could have imagined such a day would come?
The videos had stopped uploading, too — the ones where survivors stranded in Seoul and Incheon screamed for rescue. They were still alive, perhaps, but no longer able to raise their voices to anyone.
"God, that's brutal."
There was nothing else to say. There was no way a guy like me had the power to save people their own government had given up on.
Time to go fishing.
I pulled my tackle bag out of the storage wing. The cherry trout spot lay downstream of the stream near the house — far enough to justify driving, but not quite. I walked about fifteen minutes to reach it: a stretch where the narrow stream widened slightly. It was just as hemmed in by layered peaks as everywhere else here, and for as long as I could remember, no one fished this stretch but me.
Man, it's been ages.
Zip—
I unzipped the tackle bag and got out my gear. One short rod and an artificial lure — a spoon — were all I needed.
Only problem is, I've got exactly one spoon.
I'd have to be careful not to lose it. If the line snapped and the lure went with it, I'd have to rig up bait from food stores or something else entirely.
Cherry trout can survive in only a very narrow band of natural habitat, so local organizations in this region had long stocked hatchery-raised fish into rivers and ice-fishing sites for the annual festival. But this stretch was so utterly remote that wild, native cherry trout still lived here. Ask me which tastes better, farmed or wild, and I couldn't give you an easy answer — but either way, whatever I caught here was the real thing.
Whoosh—
I let my line down, and the spoon flashed silver as it sank into the cold current. Before long, a bite came. I waited for the right instant and snapped the rod up.
Flap-flap—
A cherry trout, longer than a grown man's palm, came thrashing up out of the water. Just as you only need to learn to ride a bicycle once and it stays with you for life, so it was with fishing.
I dropped the trout into my keep net.
.
.
.
I lost myself in the fishing and forgot the time entirely. When I surfaced from it, the sun had sunk low in the sky.
Should I call it a day?
The keep net was bulging with cherry trout. I'd need to gut them before drying anyway, so cleaning them now would time everything perfectly.
I was just packing up my tackle when—
Hm?
Far off in the distance, someone was approaching.