Five Shots of Opportunity 4
Even though all we had done in the chill of dawn was put down a single straggler zombie, my nerves were stretched razor-thin. We pressed on toward Apartment Building 108 with even greater caution.
How long had we been moving again?
At the center of the apartment complex that led toward Building 108, a two-story management office came into view.
“Hold on a second…”
The thunder of the test round we had fired the night before had drawn every zombie in the area toward Building 108. As a result, the surroundings of the management office were eerily empty.
Most of the windows were shattered, the door stood wide open, and no shadows or signs of movement stirred inside. Still, Yang Jin-ju stopped us and approached with careful steps, scanning the interior.
“Wait. Let’s rest in there for a bit.”
She returned a moment later and spoke in a low voice.
“That building looks perfect for double-checking the route to Building 108. And we need to catch our breath, even if only for a minute. Pushing straight ahead like this is too dangerous.”
Trusting her judgment, we kept watch on our surroundings and slipped carefully into the management office. The first floor was chaos—papers and broken furniture strewn everywhere—but mercifully free of any trace of the creatures. Relieved, we climbed to the second floor and peered out through the gaps in the broken windows, studying the terrain.
“…Visibility’s worse than I thought.”
“Want me to climb up on the roof and get a wider look?”
“Huh? Y-you can do that?”
Yeong-ju spoke while watching Yang Jin-ju struggle to survey the area.
“It’s dangerous. Will you be all right alone?”
I asked, worried. She snorted a quiet laugh and gave my shoulder a light shove.
“Don’t worry, scaredy-cat. Just wait here.”
With that she launched herself out the window, scaled the drainpipe clinging to the wall with practiced ease, and vanished onto the roof. Nam Jin-ju stared after her, tongue clicking in awe.
“Whoa… that unni is seriously no joke. Was she a spy in a past life or something?”
A few minutes later Yeong-ju dropped silently back through the window. Certainty was written across her face.
“I saw it. The safest path to Building 108. The straight route we were about to take is the worst option. It’s wide open, barely any cover, and there are still quite a few of them wandering around.”
She began sketching a rough map with her finger in the dust on the floor.
“Going around by the playground is much better. Old slides and playground equipment, plus mature landscaping trees—plenty of cover. And that side is a little farther from the center of last night’s chaos, so there are way fewer of them.
If we can just get through that playground cleanly, we can approach Building 108 from the rear, right by the recycling dump.”
Yeong-ju’s explanation was clear and logical. In the brief time she had spent on the roof she had completely mapped out the most efficient infiltration route.
“Great! Then let’s go right now! We don’t have time to hang around here!”
Nam Jin-ju said urgently. Anxiety and fear still filled her heart. But I stepped in front of her.
“No. Wait a second.”
Every gaze swung toward me.
“Why? You heard what unni said, right? That path is the best option.”
Nam Jin-ju asked, puzzled.
“Of course it’s the best. But we also have to think about the way back. The route we take after we find the warhead and return safely.
What if something goes wrong on the playground path, or they swarm it? By the time we try to find another way it’ll be too late. So right now, while we still can, we should secure the original straight route as an emergency escape path. Just in case.”
Silence settled over us for a moment.
Yeong-ju looked at me with an expression that said, That actually makes sense. Nam Jin-ju furrowed her brow, trying to grasp the meaning. The most surprised was Yang Jin-ju. Her eyes went round as she glanced back and forth between me and Yeong-ju.
“Doesn’t this seem weird to you? No—not that both of you are weird.
I mean the two of you… are you really just ordinary college students? Did you get some kind of special training or something?”
She asked with genuine curiosity.
“Uncle Park always drilled it into us. Securing an escape route is just as important as the entry route. Always keep the worst-case scenario in mind.
But that woman’s movement and scouting ability, and your situational judgment…”
At Yang Jin-ju’s words Yeong-ju gave a short laugh, perched on the windowsill, and gazed outside.
“Never received any training. We’re just… people who’ve been rolling around a little longer and a little harder than you. You two at least had a safe hideout thanks to that Uncle Park guy. We didn’t.”
She glanced at me and continued. Mixed in her eyes were affection, resentment, and resignation all at once.
“Because of that crazy bastard over there, we could never settle comfortably in one place. All for the ridiculous goal of activating that damn Shelter supposedly at the Buk-gu District Office Sports Ground, we kept having to push north, straight into the middle of this hell.
Well, one thing led to another. We ran into an especially large number of fucked-up situations, and after surviving them… we just ended up like this.”
Her calm words compressed the five months we had endured.
Watching the two Jin-jus’ reactions, Yeong-ju pulled something from her backpack. Two cans of cola—the very ones that had melted the tension between us on the night we first met.
“And I packed these specially, knowing it might come to this.”
She shook the cans with a sly grin.
“When we move toward the playground, we’ll need to draw their attention elsewhere. Throw these to make noise and we can lure them for just a moment. We use that opening to move more safely.”
She looked at me.
“When we first reach the estimated impact point of the warhead, you throw one first, Yeong-chan. As far as you can, opposite the direction we’re heading. Then when we finish checking and pull out, I’ll stay back, throw the last one, and rejoin. Sound good?”
“Yeah. Perfect.”
It was a flawless plan. Sound-based diversion. Over the past five months we had used this method countless times to slip through crises.
“…You two are seriously amazing.”
Yang Jin-ju and Nam Jin-ju watched our exchange with the fascinated eyes of people watching a military briefing in a movie.
“…All right. Let’s do it that way.”
Yang Jin-ju nodded as if she had decided to trust us.
“Let’s move. We can’t delay any longer. Once the sun’s fully up we’ll stand out even more.”
We steeled ourselves once more, left the management office, and decided to approach the rear of Apartment Building 108 by the relatively safer playground route.
Yet the closer we drew to the playground, the thicker the rotting stench hanging in the air became. Strangely, though, almost no sounds of the creatures could be heard.
“…Why is it so quiet?”
Just as Yeong-ju muttered, it was far too still to believe that last night’s commotion had simply drawn them all to the front of Building 108.
We stayed hidden and peered into the playground. The sand was stained with dark-red blood, and around the broken seesaw and swings lay several bodies that looked like zombies.
“What, other survivors came through recently—”
As the words left my mouth something felt wrong. The damage was hard to believe survivors had inflicted—flanks and thighs savagely torn as if mauled by a wild beast.
“No… something’s off.”
Yeong-ju crouched low and whispered. Her eyes swept the surroundings faster than I had ever seen.
“They don’t attack each other. But that…”
Then it happened.
Beneath the old slide, in the shadows, something stirred. We all held our breath.
What crouched there was a creature of a shape we had never seen before.
Crunch. Crunch-crunch.
It was different from every one we had encountered until now. The thing squatted over another zombie’s corpse on all fours like a beast, long arms planted on the ground. And… it had split open the belly and was greedily scooping out the entrails. The disgusting wet sounds echoed through the silent playground.
Yeong-ju met my eyes and whispered barely audibly.
“…Everyone stay quiet.”
Its frame was far thinner and more gaunt than ordinary ones. Yet the muscles of its entire body were abnormally developed, twisted like a racehorse reduced to nothing but hide. Its back was grotesquely hunched, its arms and legs far longer than the others.
The most horrifying moment came when the face that had been buried in its meal, intent on feeding, slowly turned toward us as if sensing our presence.
Its jaw was torn open to an unnatural length, and inside grew multiple rows of razor-sharp teeth like a shark’s. The sockets where eyes should have been were empty, yet I felt with absolute certainty that it was “looking” at us—perceiving our existence not by sound or scent, but by some other sense.
“Hic… what the hell is that?”
Nam Jin-ju’s whisper was nearly a scream; her face had gone paper-white.
“A mutant…?”
Yang Jin-ju’s expression was pure disbelief.
In that instant Yeong-ju seized my arm hard. Her hand was ice-cold and trembling faintly.
“No. We can’t go that way.”
Her voice carried a depth of terror I had never heard from her before.
“That’s the reason this whole playground is so quiet. The others either fled or… got eaten by that thing. My gut is screaming. That one is different from everything we’ve faced. We have to turn back.”
Her instinct. The same sense that had saved my life countless times over the past months.
I had never once doubted that instinct since the world fell apart. I nodded at once.
“Got it. We’re going back.”
“Then… what about the plan?”
Yang Jin-ju asked in a voice thick with despair.
I thought for a moment, then rapidly sketched a new plan in my head.
“We revise the plan. Abandon the playground route and take the backup we scouted—the straight path.
It’ll be dangerous, sure, but better than running into that unknown monster. And the cola cans… don’t use them on the way in. Approach carefully first. When we find the warhead and start coming back out, then we throw both at once to split their attention both ways and slip out while they’re confused.”
At my proposal everyone fell silent for a beat. Risky, yet the best option we had in the moment.
“…All right. Let’s do it.”
Yang Jin-ju nodded grimly. She had decided to trust Yeong-ju’s instinct and my judgment.
Without a sound we turned our backs on the grotesque Mutant Zombie and began moving again toward the dangerous but predictable straight route we had originally intended.
Fortunately the path, though rough, was not impassable. Using cover and shadows, moving as one body, we successfully reached the area near the recycling dump behind Apartment Building 108—the estimated impact point of last night’s test round.
The ground was littered with broken concrete chunks and discarded furniture. We spread out and began combing every inch of the floor, searching for the small metal rod that could be embedded anywhere.
“Found it!”
Before long Yang Jin-ju called out in a low voice. Where she pointed, the concrete of the apartment’s outer wall was cratered, and the practice warhead we sought was half-buried.
“My god… only five meters northeast of our target point, and about three meters low in altitude. Almost no wind effect?”
Yang Jin-ju pulled out her notebook and quickly recorded the error. Now we could return and correct our aim with this data. The mission was a success.
The problem was the way back. While we worked, the scattered zombies had begun to fill the path again. The route we had come by was now a danger zone crawling with dozens of them.
“Damn it. We can’t get through like this.”
I muttered. Any careless move would get us surrounded from every side.
“No choice. We use them now.”
Yeong-ju drew the two cola cans from her pack.
“As planned—throw them both ways to scatter their attention as much as possible. The second the noise hits, we sprint full speed the opposite direction. That should buy us enough time to escape.”
Yeong-ju and I locked eyes. I would take the right, she the left. We hooked our fingers through the rings and signaled each other at the same moment.
One, two, three!
We hurled the cola cans with everything we had in opposite directions. The cans arced through the air and smashed into a distant wrecked car and a building wall respectively.
Clang-clatter-clang
Clang-clang-clang
Sharp metallic impacts rang out one after another. Instantly every zombie blocking the path whipped its head toward the two sources of noise. In that fleeting instant while they hesitated and began shuffling toward the sounds—
“Now! Run!”
We seized the gap and charged madly toward the empty center space. But then a movement that iced my spine registered.
Kieeeek
The Mutant Zombie from the playground. It was racing toward the right—where the first can had landed—at a speed the ordinary zombies could never match.
What was more terrifying was that it stopped after only a short distance. It scanned the surroundings for a moment, then pivoted and sprinted toward the left where the second can had fallen. It was not simply chasing sound; it was moving toward new stimuli as if selecting prey.
“Shit, it saw us!”
Then, as if it had finally spotted us, the head that had been racing toward the second noise source snapped precisely toward the four of us sprinting at full power. The empty eye sockets locked onto us, and my heart felt as though it stopped.
Kiaaaaah!
It let out a grotesque shriek and veered straight for us. In that same moment, however, the dozens of ordinary zombies drawn by the can noise blundered into its path. They did not even register that they were obstructing the mutant; they simply lumbered toward the sounds.
Krrr… kraaaah
The Mutant Zombie exploded with merciless rage at its own kind blocking the way.
As if they were mere nuisances, it smashed a zombie’s skull with one long arm and tore a shoulder free with its teeth, flinging the body aside.
“Don’t look back! Just keep running!”
While the creature butchered the zombies in its path and lost precious seconds, we barely managed to slip outside its pursuit radius.
Just as Yeong-ju shouted, we ran for our lives without once looking back. Behind us the mutant’s furious howls mixed with the horrific sounds of other zombies being ripped apart.
By a hair’s breadth—truly by the narrowest of margins—we finally broke free of the pursuit and reached a safe alley where our hideout building came into view. We collapsed against the wall, gasping for a long time. Our bodies were soaked in sweat; our legs trembled and threatened to give out.
“…We made it.”
Nam Jin-ju said, nearly in tears.
We had survived. And in our hands was the notebook containing the coordinates of hope.