Walker Suit 2
Of all of us, the first to don that armor of hope was, naturally, me.
I took a deep breath and stepped toward the Walker Suit. As I approached, the suit seemed to recognize me—the chest section hissed open with a soft chiiik, parting smoothly. It looked for all the world like a loyal knight welcoming its new master.
"Whoa… it actually opens," Nam Jin-ju murmured beside me in quiet awe.
From the outside it had looked like solid metal, but once I started putting it on, the material stretched like a bodysuit and clung snugly to my frame. Getting into it wasn't particularly difficult. The moment I was fully inside, the chest sealed shut again. I pressed the small SYSTEM ON button on the display mounted at my wrist.
The suit sealed itself perfectly against my body, and then the metal plates at the back of my neck began to climb with a series of sharp clack-clack sounds, closing over my head without a single gap.
My vision went black. For a moment I could see nothing at all. A flicker of fear ran through me, but I told myself this suit wasn't going to kill me and simply waited in the dark.
A low hum of machinery rose a moment later. The suit tightened a little more firmly around my entire body—especially my arms and legs—then settled and stopped.
Synchronization with user 'Seo Yeong-chan' complete.
Activating neural connection system.
With the system's mechanical voice, the world in front of my eyes lit up again. The landscape outside the suit resolved with the clarity of a high-definition display, and sound came with it.
"Oppa? Can you hear me? Can you hear what I'm saying?"
Yang Jin-ju was waving her hands right in front of my face as she spoke. It wasn't sound reaching my ears directly so much as a voice delivered straight into my head through some high-performance microphone—the kind of uncanny sensation you might get if bone-conduction earbuds ever evolved to the next level.
"Yeah, I can hear you fine! Super clear, actually."
She looked relieved and stepped aside. Nam Jin-ju, who had been circling me front and back for a better look, let out a cry of pure admiration.
"Oppa! The whole suit… it turned into, like, a super-muscular bodybuilder! You look so cool!"
I looked down at my arms. The once-flat surface of the suit had swollen outward like living muscle. Anyone glancing at me would have thought a bodybuilder had squeezed himself into a metallic pair of tights.
Yeong-ju, seeing the transformed suit, let out a gasp of open admiration she usually would have kept under wraps.
"Whoa… fuck, this is seriously… the most amazing thing I've seen since we got into the Shelter. You look like a completely different person."
She came closer and ran her hand over the hardened surface of my arm, tapping it with her fingertips.
For their benefit, I struck a few of those classic bodybuilder flex poses. Even Yeong-ju finally cracked up at the ridiculous display, hanging off my arm, thumping my back, then climbing on again to swing from me like a playground ride.
After that brief stretch of fun, I finally took my place at the Shelter entrance for the real test.
"I'm dropping the Force Shield. I'm actually going out."
I worked the system window and deactivated the shield. The massive doors whirred open with a heavy mechanical groan. For the first time in the six months since the zombie outbreak began, I walked out into the world beyond without a shred of fear.
Three worried voices called after me from behind, but the moment I was clear of the entrance I reactivated the shield, and none of them could follow.
"How is it? You scared? You really okay?"
Yeong-ju's voice came through the suit's comm system. Remarkably, the suit could link up with the big screen and console in the support room for two-way communication.
"Yeah, I'm good! Can you see me okay on the support room screen? If I start doing anything weird, tell me right away."
"Yes, Oppa! We can see you perfectly! The picture quality is insane! It's like watching a movie!"
"Yeah, we can see you fine, so don't mess around—just run the tests properly. If it looks dangerous, get back in here immediately."
All three of them were watching me from the support room.
"Alright. Starting now."
I gave a light hop in place. Against my will, my body rocketed skyward. The view flipped in an instant, and the unbelievable sight of the Shelter's roof spread out beneath my feet.
Kuuung—!
I landed with a massive thud and heard Yang Jin-ju and Nam Jin-ju's delighted cries of "Whoa!" and "No way!" crackling over the comms.
"The strength amplification is beyond anything I imagined…."
Yang Jin-ju's analytical voice came through.
"How's the landing impact? Any shock transferring into the suit? Check the energy consumption. How much did one jump cost?"
Even through her excitement, Yeong-ju stayed cool-headed. I checked the numbers floating on the HUD in front of my eyes.
"Almost no impact at all! Feels like I landed on jelly. Energy use is… 0.05%? Basically nothing."
A low murmur of awe rose from the support room.
"Next, running! Sprint about a hundred meters at full power. Check your top speed and energy consumption!"
Following Yang Jin-ju's instructions, I kicked off the ground and ran. The scenery around me blurred past as if someone had hit fast-forward.
"This is insane… I'm basically going car speed? Energy use for a hundred meters is only about 0.2%!"
"At that rate, you could cross the whole city without any real energy drain…."
Yeong-ju muttered in a voice thick with disbelief.
I approached the largest chunk of broken concrete lying nearby—something that easily looked like it weighed several hundred kilograms. I bent at the waist, wrapped both arms around it, and heaved.
"Hup…!"
It came up as lightly as a styrofoam box.
"Oppa! You lifted that? That's impossible!"
Nam Jin-ju shrieked.
"I'm not just lifting it. I could throw it, too."
Saying so, I hurled the concrete mass toward an empty lot free of zombies. A thunderous KWAANG! rolled out, and a massive cloud of dust billowed into the air.
"…That's not just raw strength…. Being able to lift that kind of weight so stably means the suit is assisting the user's movements and calculating the center of gravity in real time. The control systems are incredible…."
Yang Jin-ju murmured in wonder.
And then, the last test.
"…I know we need to check how much impact it can take, but do you really have to go that far? Can't you just come back in?"
Leaving Yeong-ju's worried voice behind me, I spread my arms and walked slowly toward the zombies that had been shambling just outside the Defense System's range.
The moment they spotted me, they came—first at a crawl, then in a full, frenzied charge. Old fear rose up on instinct and I wanted to run, but if I was ever going to move freely outside, this final test was non-negotiable.
"Grrraaagh—! Kwoooor—!"
Dozens of zombies slammed into me, latching on and biting. Their rotting teeth scraped against the surface of the suit.
Crack!
And contrary to every worry I'd had—
Crack. Crunch. Snap.
Their teeth shattered and broke against the suit's hard surface. They couldn't put so much as a scratch on it.
"Check the energy consumption! The numbers under sustained attack are what matter!"
Yang Jin-ju's urgent voice came through.
"I'm fine! All these zombies chewing on me and it's only dropping 0.1% at a time… even if they kept biting for a full minute, I don't think it'd cost much more than this!"
"The experiment's a success!"
At my shout, the women in the support room let out a collective sigh of relief.
And then I turned on the disgusting things hanging off my body and poured every ounce of rage and terror from the past five months into a single roar.
"You fucking bastards!"
I clenched my fist and swung at their skulls.
"You're all dead, you sons of bitches!!"
My fist, loaded with five months of fury and fear, smashed into the head of a zombie clinging to me.
Puhk—!
The suit's power was beyond imagination. The zombie's head burst like a watermelon—no, more hollow and pathetic than that—scattering dark red fluid and bone fragments in every direction. No impact registered in my fist at all. Only the faint sensation of popping something soft remained.
"Whoa… it actually exploded…."
Nam Jin-ju's stunned voice came over the comms.
That single strike opened my eyes to an entirely new world. There was no more fear. The gaze of a giant looking down at insects crawling at his feet—that was my gaze now.
I kicked at the other zombies charging in. The one that caught my foot went flying a good ten meters with a sickening crack of shattered ribs, crashing into the others and taking them down with it.
I lost all track of time. As if reclaiming every terror and fear that had tormented me, I began slaughtering them in a frenzy. I picked them up and hurled them like baseballs, bowling the others over like pins. I flung stones from the ground and shattered distant skulls with pinpoint accuracy, sinking deeper and deeper into a game that was as horrible as it was exhilarating.
"This bastard's completely lost it."
Yeong-ju's voice came through, but I paid it no mind. For this one moment, I was king of the world.
Then Yeong-ju's irritated transmission dumped a bucket of cold water over my rampage of a celebration.
"Hey! SlurpSlurpBoobies!"
"I told you not to call me that!"
"Shut up! I'd love to just leave you to your fun, but this is too much! You've been goofing off out there for four hours! Are you even thinking about the energy?"
Four hours. I genuinely hadn't noticed the time passing.
"If you can't handle all that overflowing power, then do something productive with it! See all that trash the mutants dumped around the Shelter? Sort it by type and stack it up!"
At her words, the fighting spirit and excitement boiling inside me deflated in an instant, like air rushing out of a balloon. Drained, I trudged back toward the Shelter and started gathering the junk she'd pointed out—crumpled car doors, broken chunks of concrete, bent streetlamps….
The moment I piled a big streetlamp and a car door together in one spot, Yeong-ju's nagging started up again.
"No! You can't just dump it all mixed together! Separate it! For the streetlamps and car doors, pull off the glass and plastic parts and stack those separately! We'll be able to feed them into the resource processing room later!"
"Yeah, yeah, I got it…."
Grumbling, I started smashing the glass covers off the streetlamps and tearing the plastic interior panels out of the car doors.
"And what's that! That's reinforced concrete! Don't just leave it—pull the rebar out of it and stack the rebar separately! You have to separate the concrete from the steel!"
Under her endless stream of instructions, I let out a deep sigh without meaning to. In this hell of a world, wearing a super suit in the middle of a zombie apocalypse… and doing recycling.
In that moment, I felt like I was getting the tiniest secondhand taste of what every husband in the old world must have gone through.
And so my glorious Walker Suit debut day came to a close under Yeong-ju's command—in a grinding session of soul-crushing waste sorting.