Five Shots of Opportunity 3
At dawn, the seed of hope we had launched vanished into the darkness with a heavy roar.
Kieeeee—
Kuaaaah—
That sound was like hurling a stone into a silent lake of death.
The massive launch report and the dull burst of the practice warhead slamming into some part of an apartment building were soon swallowed by the hungry chorus of hundreds of zombies.
They surged toward the source of the noise like a great wave, flooding the area around Apartment Building 108, and in an instant the whole district turned into a screaming hell.
“Don’t make a single loud sound until it settles! Take turns watching how those things move!”
That night we had to stay awake until dawn.
Just as Yang Jin-ju had said, we rotated up to the rooftop in one-hour shifts to monitor their movements, yet the tension only kept climbing. We could not rule out the chance that the frenzied ones would come all the way to our own building, where the launch noise had carried.
“I guess we should call it lucky? They’re only heading for the apartment.”
They merely circled the vicinity of Building 108 and did not spread any farther. As time passed without fresh noise, the excited ones gradually calmed, returned to their original sluggish pace, and began to drift away in every direction.
The day of raw nerves finally ended, and a new dawn arrived for us to go out and recover the practice warhead.
When the darkness thinned to pale indigo and the silhouettes of the buildings began to show, Yang Jin-ju came back from her last rooftop check and spoke with quiet resolve.
“Now. There won’t be a better chance than this.”
Most of them had scattered, yet more than usual still lingered around Building 108. We could not wait forever. Time was not on our side.
“Final gear check, everyone.”
We each gave our equipment one last inspection. I slung the K-2 rifle over my shoulder and felt again the weight of a gun without magazines.
Yeong-ju cinched the laces of her newly issued combat boots tight. Nam Jin-ju checked the safety on her pistol again and again with trembling fingers. Yang Jin-ju unfolded a map that looked homemade and traced every stretch of the route we would take, burning it into her eyes one final time.
“…All right. Let’s move.”
At Yang Jin-ju’s low signal we slipped carefully out of the building and, following the method Uncle Park had taught them, split into two teams that kept a measured distance.
In the lead walked Yang Jin-ju, our guide, and me—the one who seemed to have the most combat experience. Roughly ten meters behind, Yeong-ju and Nam Jin-ju followed while covering the rear.
It was a formation meant to buy the second team time to react if the first was hit by a sudden ambush.
The dawn city lay drowned in fog and the stench of rotting corpses. We moved like shadows, without a sound.
Using abandoned cars and heaps of trash as cover, pressing our bodies flat against walls, we advanced one careful step at a time.
A single shard of glass crunching underfoot or one sudden cough could send every one of us to our deaths, so a razor-edged tension wrapped around me.
“Hey…”
Walking beside Yang Jin-ju at the front, I spoke in the barest whisper, trying to ease the choking pressure.
“…Sorry.”
“For what?”
She answered shortly, eyes still locked forward.
“Just… I feel like we dragged you into something way too dangerous. Even if the food really is running out like you said, maybe we didn’t have to rush this hard.”
At my words Yang Jin-ju stopped for a moment and looked at me. Her gaze turned briefly hazy, as if she were looking back through fog at something old.
“Nothing to apologize for. The decision was already made.
You two just moved the timetable up a little. And honestly… after Uncle Park died, all we were doing was hanging on.
Too scared to do anything, just waiting inside this cramped building for the day we’d die without hope. I’d rather go out doing something—anything—and feel less cheated.”
She finished speaking and started walking again. From behind, Yang Jin-ju’s shoulders looked unusually heavy, as if weighed down by the responsibility she carried.
“Still… we’re trying to live through this together, so the guilt creeps in.”
I gave an awkward little laugh. Yang Jin-ju snorted, glanced back, and smiled faintly.
“I’m noticing it all over again—you’re pretty kind too, just like that Seo Yeong-ju.”
“Huh? So do I get candy as well?”
I tossed out the joke, remembering yesterday. She looked at me for a startled second, then fired back playfully.
“Too bad. I’d give you one, but I left them all behind.”
That brief exchange loosened the tension between us just a fraction.
Meanwhile, careful conversation was also passing between Seo Yeong-ju and Nam Jin-ju as they followed behind Seo Yeong-chan and Yang Jin-ju. Unable to hold her curiosity any longer, Nam Jin-ju asked Yeong-ju,
“Um… there’s something I’ve been wondering.”
“What.”
Seo Yeong-ju answered shortly while watching their rear.
“You and that Oppa have the same last name. Seo Yeong-chan, Seo Yeong-ju? The names are similar too—are you… siblings?”
“No.”
Yeong-ju shook her head.
“We were just seniors and juniors in the same university club. I was a fourth-year, that idiot a second-year.
But I’m an early birthday, so I’m actually a year younger. Twenty-four, he’s twenty-five. After five months of surviving together we just dropped the formal speech and started calling each other by name. That’s all. Not siblings.”
“Ah… got it.”
Nam Jin-ju nodded.
She hesitated a moment, then pulled something from her pocket and held it out to Yeong-ju. It was the exact same kind of candy she had given Seo Yeong-ju the day before.
“Yesterday… thank you. When I said I’d stay behind alone I was really scared. So… this is my emergency ration, but I just wanted you to have it.”
Yeong-ju stared down at the candy, looking briefly flustered. Then, just like yesterday, she answered in her usual blunt tone.
“Keep it. You eat it—you said it’s emergency food.”
“But still… can’t you just take it?”
When Nam Jin-ju spoke in a dejected little voice, Seo Yeong-ju finally accepted the candy as if she had no choice.
“…Thanks. I’ll enjoy it.”
Seo Yeong-ju’s small, embarrassed voice drifted quietly into the cold dawn air. Just as the light chatter was easing the tension between them, Yang Jin-ju, walking in the lead, suddenly raised a hand in a stop signal.
All four of us froze on the spot and slipped behind the nearest cover.
Thirty meters ahead, a single zombie appeared around the corner of an alley. It looked like one that had strayed from the pack during last night’s chaos. It was shambling without purpose, sniffing the air around it.
“What do we do? Fall back?”
Yang Jin-ju whispered to me. Retreating was the safest option. But we had already come too far.
“No. I’ll take care of it.”
I stepped in front of her.
“Alone? That’s dangerous. If it screams—”
“It’s fine. I can finish it quiet.”
I carefully set the K-2 rifle from my shoulder onto the ground and drew the dagger Yeong-ju had given me from my belt.
Then I shot Yang Jin-ju a look that asked her to cover me.
She hesitated a second, then drew her pistol and nodded.
I began to move like a cat, killing every footfall. Center of gravity low, body melting into shadow.
It still had not noticed me.
I closed on its back like the wind. Ten meters, five, three… the instant I was within arm’s reach I held my breath and drove off the ground.
At the exact moment it sensed a presence and started to turn its head, I was already behind it. I gave it no chance to open its mouth for a groan.
Without a flicker of hesitation I drove the dagger upward from below, deep into the soft flesh under its chin, and punched straight through toward the brain.
Crunch.
Kieek—
With that sickening sound every function stopped.
The scream never fully left its throat. All movement ceased, and without even a chance to thrash it simply crumpled.
I caught the falling body gently and laid it soundlessly on the ground.
I wiped the dark-red blood from the blade on its clothes and melted back into the darkness. Everything had been finished in perfect silence inside ten seconds.
When I glanced back on my return, all three women who had been watching me were holding their breath.
…You’ve changed a lot, Seo Yeong-chan.
Seo Yeong-ju thought. Five months ago, the first time they met a zombie, that clumsy, terrified older junior had squeezed his eyes shut and swung a crowbar so wildly he nearly caved in his own skull. Now he was ending a life without hesitation—cold, efficient, like a professional. She felt anew just how thoroughly this hellish world had remade them.
When Seo Yeong-chan gave the all-clear signal, the three approached carefully. Yang Jin-ju and Nam Jin-ju wore expressions mixed with admiration and shock at the way he had moved.
“Incredible… Even if Uncle Park were still alive, he couldn’t have done it that cleanly.”
At Yang Jin-ju’s quiet praise Seo Yeong-chan simply bowed his head a little as he picked up the rifle again.
In truth the man had been a soldier, and Seo Yeong-chan had merely learned how to finish things quietly after months of surviving; yet to her eyes the entire sequence had looked flawlessly perfect.
“Let’s move. Take point.”
Yang Jin-ju nodded at Seo Yeong-chan’s whisper. With her leading, the four of them began to advance once more through the silence.