Home 4
After parking the truck inside the Shelter, we returned to the support room and went straight into a meeting.
On the large table, Yang Jin-ju had already spread out a map of the livestock complex area we had scouted.
“So… to sum it up, the livestock complex has already become another mutant’s territory.”
Yeong-ju said, arms crossed, her expression grave.
I nodded and described in detail everything I had seen.
An ordinary zombie torso with four unnaturally long, spindly limbs attached—like some grotesque giant spider. And the silent, eerie way it moved.
When I finished, Kang Po-gyeong nodded.
“It seems to be the same kind as the mutant I mentioned before. One of those that survivors have been spotting more and more often lately.”
“So what’s its deal? How dangerous is it? Worse than that muscle-armor one?”
Yeong-ju asked sharply. Kang Po-gyeong thought for a moment, then answered with clear difficulty.
“To be honest… once it stakes out a spot, it hunts down anything that moves nearby—zombie or human. That’s about all I know. I only heard it secondhand…”
Her words brought us up against the wall of an unknown threat once more.
“Then what do we do? That thing might even count toward the Level 4 upgrade conditions.”
Yang Jin-ju said in an uneasy voice.
“It’s far away, so for now maybe we just don’t touch it…”
“No.”
I cut her off.
“You said all the livestock at the complex are gone. If that thing ate every last one and starts looking for its next meal… there’s a high chance it’ll head this way, where the zombies are thick. Not right this second, maybe, but sooner or later it will become a threat to us.”
My opinion split the room again.
After a long discussion we finally agreed: rather than rush out to hunt it, we would gather information on the creature first.
“So where did the rumors about this mutant start?”
I asked. Kang Po-gyeong glanced briefly at Yeong-ju, then answered in a very small voice.
“…I heard the first stories came from the group led by that woman, Sim Geum-a…”
At that, Yeong-ju crossed her arms again and scowled exactly as expected.
A moment later she let out a deep sigh and uncrossed them. Then she turned to me.
“…Seo Yeong-chan. You go again. Take Nam Jin-ju with you.”
“…Really?”
I asked back. She didn’t look at me; she spoke to Yang Jin-ju instead.
“Remember the goods we coordinated with that woman’s subordinates last time? Put together another list, mostly daily necessities, and give it to Nam Jin-ju.”
Then she turned to Nam Jin-ju.
“Go give her the note Yang Jin-ju writes, tell her we can supply more of this kind of stuff next time, and take scrap metal or broken, unusable resources as payment. I’ll write a separate memo for them. Oh—and ask if they have any chickens, pigs, or cows.”
She kept issuing orders without ever looking my way.
When I continued staring at her, she finally shot me a look with that signature sullen expression of hers.
“What. Should I go instead? I’m not going in a suit because I don’t trust myself not to wreck that bitch. Happy?”
She added,
“Just make the trade, get the info, and come back quietly and carefully. Got it?”
“…Yes.”
That single word was all I could manage.
The next morning we immediately began preparations for the second expedition.
I helped Nam Jin-ju into her Walker Suit, and together we filled the truck bed with the daily necessities and clean water jugs for the trade.
Even after the way she had snapped at me the night before, Yeong-ju must have been worried about us leaving the Shelter; she had come outside at some point and was watching us prepare, arms folded.
“…If you’re going to negotiate properly this time, make it crystal clear that what we want are ‘basic resources’ the processing room can use—metal, glass, plastic, that sort of thing.”
She came over and began rattling off instructions in her usual brusque but thorough way.
“And tell them to start stockpiling, because we’ll be back. Got it?”
She even gave me a complete set of concrete guidelines on how to behave once we got there—exactly like a mother fretting over her son the first time he goes grocery shopping alone.
I couldn’t help a small laugh at the sight of her. Then I pulled her tightly into my arms.
“I got it, I got it, my queen. Don’t worry. This time I’ll stick strictly to the mission and come straight home. No side trips.”
A soft sigh brushed my ear.
“…Hurry back.”
Unlike before, the road was nearly empty of zombies. Nam Jin-ju and I were about halfway to our destination when we spotted something very strange.
Zombies—ones we had barely seen at all until now—were packed densely into one spot, as if surrounding something.
“(Oppa… that looks like at least a hundred of them. Why are they all clustered only there?)”
Nam Jin-ju, who had climbed down from the driver’s seat and was already in her suit, spoke in a tense voice over the comms.
Still wearing my Walker Suit, I dropped from the truck bed and approached slowly, observing as I went.
“I’ve never seen anything like this either. What the hell is going on over there?”
Right then the center of the zombie mass suddenly grew agitated. I zoomed in with the suit’s magnification.
And I saw it.
One zombie was biting into the nape of another, chewing and swallowing the flesh with wet, grinding sounds.
What happened next was even more shocking.
The body of the zombie that had been devouring the other began to change—slowly, but unmistakably.
Its mouth split wide to either side; its legs reversed at the joints, bending the wrong way for a human.
“…Oh, fuck…”
I cursed under my breath and sprinted toward them like a madman.
The form taking shape right in front of me was identical to the four-legged mutant I had seen at the playground before I ever reached the Shelter.
“Get the fuck out of my way, you bastards!”
I used the suit’s raw power to smash aside every zombie that blocked my path.
“(Oppa! It’s dangerous! Why are you suddenly—!)”
Nam Jin-ju’s startled voice came from behind, but I had no time to look back. Stopping the horrific “birth” unfolding before my eyes was more urgent than her cry.
With a heavy thud, another zombie went flying. In one burst I reached the transforming mutant that was still chewing.
It looked at me with eyes that seemed to grow more cunning by the second, as if intelligence were blooming in real time.
Those eyes sank deeper into its skull and vanished; in their place huge bat-like ears sprouted, twisting its face into a nightmarish hybrid of dog and bat.
Before the metamorphosis could finish, I raised my fist and brought it down with everything I had, shattering the creature’s skull.
I had finally discovered it—the way “mutants” were born in this hellish world. I had witnessed the moment of that terrible birth.
After clearing out the remaining zombies, I returned to the truck where Nam Jin-ju waited and collapsed into the cargo bed.
With the central mutant dead, the clustered zombies lost their focal point and began drifting away in all directions. I sat there sorting through the shocking scene I had just witnessed.
“Oppa, are you really okay? You’re not hurt anywhere?”
When I stayed silent in the truck bed, Nam Jin-ju called worriedly from the driver’s seat.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just… a little shaken…”
I unlocked the suit’s headpiece and sucked in rough breaths.
“I always thought mutant zombies were just random mutations—radiation or some virus or whatever.”
Nam Jin-ju kept driving, listening quietly.
“But that wasn’t it. The zombies just gathered in one place, and when one of them bit into another and swallowed… the change started right there on the spot. Like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.”
I clutched my spinning head.
Did a mutant form every time one zombie simply ate another?
“So… if there are just two zombies, does that mean a new mutant keeps appearing one after another? Or is there some other condition? My head’s a mess…”
Nam Jin-ju listened, thought for a moment, then forced her voice into something bright and cheerful.
“(Then let’s finish the trade fast, go back to the Shelter, and put our heads together! There’s five of us, right? Don’t stew over it alone, Oppa!)”
I could tell she was lifting her own confusion with sheer willpower, yet her pure, positive comfort eased the heavy weight that had settled on me.
“…Yeah. You’re right.”
I let out a long breath and reactivated the suit.
“Let’s go, Jin-ju! Finish the deal, grab the intel, and head home.”
Thinking of the five of us, just as she said, cleared a little of the fog from my head.