Tremors 3
“Lately things that hadn’t been showing up at all suddenly started appearing, so I went after it before it could run.”
Yeong-ju said it like that and immediately started playing dumb hard enough that I could feel it even through the suit.
“And where was I supposed to find time to talk? What if it got away? That thing was running on all fours—do you have any idea how fast it is…?”
“So you left every single security robot behind and just charged out there alone? You know perfectly well that if you tell them to keep perimeter watch and follow slowly, they actually follow slowly. You should’ve at least said something before you left.”
The moment I finished speaking, the four security robots finally came into view between the apartment buildings, still maintaining their perimeter sweep as they approached us.
“…Sorry. When something that hadn’t been visible suddenly showed up, the only thought that hit me was that I had to catch it before it escaped.”
Still, the fact that she apologized this quickly told me she knew she’d been reckless herself.
While I was thinking that, a rustling sound came from the side. I looked over and found five soldiers staring at us in a daze.
“Um… thank you so much for saving us.”
The soldier wearing sergeant’s insignia finally seemed to come back to his senses and spoke to us.
I walked slowly toward them and asked,
“What were you doing here?”
My voice must not have sounded particularly friendly, because the sergeant flinched and started edging backward little by little.
“I’m sorry, but… if you come any closer, we will open fire.”
“You just thanked us for saving you and now you’re talking about opening fire?”
At the sergeant’s bizarre words, the other four soldiers seemed to sense something as well. They all raised their rifles at once, aiming at me as they began to back away.
That was when Yeong-ju stepped up behind me and spoke.
“Why you were here. And what kind of unusual situation made that variant—something that hadn’t been visible before—show up in this place. Just tell us that honestly. Then I’ll let you walk away clean.”
Let them walk away?
What are you talking about? These are the same 50th Division bastards who attacked you before.
But before I could even finish whispering it to Yeong-ju, the sergeant who had heard her stopped retreating, told his men to lower their weapons, and asked us back,
“…What exactly is it you want to know?”
“You’re going to talk? Even knowing that after we hear everything we might just kill you anyway?”
“From what you showed us earlier, we already know you could handle us easily. In that case, we have to follow whatever gives us even a slightly better chance of staying alive.”
At those words I stared at the sergeant—who had been unusually calm from the start—with open curiosity and said nothing. He looked at me and continued,
“I’m only a sergeant, but I came out of the mobile unit. If the zombie outbreak hadn’t happened, I’d already be a staff sergeant. I’m talking too much… but the most important thing in the mobile unit is knowing your own position exactly. And no matter how I look at it, my position right now is a long way below the two of you.”
“…Fine. Let’s hear it for now. What the hell were you five doing here?”
The soldiers who heard me suddenly said “Five?” and started looking around at themselves and their surroundings. From every direction came startled exclamations of “Huh?” and “Where’d he go?”
The sergeant muttered under his breath,
“…That crazy son of a bitch…. The second I told him to run he took off without even looking back. The one who caused the mess just bolted by himself….”
It sounded like there was some frustrating story behind it.
After a moment the commotion settled and the sergeant began speaking to us.
“We are… Recon Team 3 of the 50th Division.”
He glanced around in every direction for a while as if searching for someone, then seemed to decide it was pointless and continued in a resigned, matter-of-fact tone.
“It was made up of me as team leader and five team members… Recently, because of the zombies that suddenly stopped being visible and the scavengers that suddenly vanished, we were given the job of scouting the surrounding area and were moving around.”
We still didn’t know about the zombies either, but the scavengers around here had gone missing because Yeong-ju and I had been steadily cleaning them out. The soldiers still didn’t seem to have figured that part out.
He glanced briefly toward the underground parking garage behind them.
“Then, in the lowest floor of an underground shopping arcade a little ways from here, we found zombies gathered together and completely motionless.”
He looked back at us and seemed to be choosing his words carefully for a moment, but when I clenched my fist slightly and he saw the head-sized gauntlet the suit created, his eyes wavered and he continued.
“…We thought this would be important information for the division later, so before reporting we decided to check one more place and came here.”
He pointed toward the underground parking garage.
“Down there, in the underground parking garage, we found zombies packed tightly together in one spot. And… those zombies, even from the slightest external impact, started colliding with each other like dominoes in a chain reaction….”
His voice began to tremble faintly.
“…They started eating each other… and right there on the spot we watched them turn into that horrific ‘variant’.”
“We were trying to get out of there as fast as possible to report that shocking information to the division… and that was when we ran into the variant. And… the two of you saved us.”
He paused and looked around.
“And… that one soldier who needlessly applied external impact to those zombies… the moment I shouted ‘Run!’ he probably took off alone without even looking back.”
His last words carried the hollow disappointment of a commander lightly let down by a subordinate.
After listening to everything the soldier said, while we were lost in thought for a moment, the sergeant asked again,
“We’ve… given you every piece of information we can. So… if it’s not too much to ask, could we know which side the two of you belong to?”
While I was still deciding how much to tell him, Yeong-ju cut in.
“Earlier you said ‘information about zombies gathering would help the division.’ What exactly did that mean?”
At her words the sergeant suddenly acted as if something had gone wrong, unable to say anything and starting to avoid our eyes.
At that suspicious attitude I ordered the security robots,
“Surround them so they can’t run.”
The security robots moved without a sound and blocked the soldiers from behind. Startled, the soldiers reflexively raised their rifles and aimed at us, locking into a standoff.
“Why are you doing this?! You said earlier you’d let us go clean!”
“I never said that. She did.”
“That’s ridiculous…!”
I pointed toward Yeong-ju as I spoke, and the sergeant shouted urgently.
“So just say it already. What does ‘it would help the division’ mean?”
Even when Yeong-ju asked again, they only glared at us and said nothing.
“…Fine. Then how about we send one of you first and start from there?”
I drew the energy saw from the Foundation Suit. Remembering the horrific way it had mercilessly carved up the variant earlier, the soldiers flinched and began backing away.
Yeong-ju lightly caught my arm then, but I ignored it and spoke to the soldiers.
“I’ll count to three. If you don’t talk, I’ll just kill you one by one.”
The soldiers who had been retreating couldn’t go any farther because of the security robots behind them. Hearing my words, they began looking anxiously at the sergeant.
“Three.”
“…The division! The division is planning to reclaim this entire area…!”
Even though I had only said three, the sergeant spilled it immediately. I stopped speaking and he kept going.
“The operation name is ‘Cleaning Day.’ They’re going to pour every bit of firepower left in the division into a single strike and wipe out every scavenger and zombie in the surrounding area at once. A large-scale operation.
Information that the zombies are gathered in one place would be a huge help for the division carrying out that operation. That’s what I meant.”
The moment he finished, before I could say anything, Yeong-ju suddenly pulled my arm and said,
“…Let them go. Just tell them to leave.”
I looked at her in surprise. The sergeant who heard her quickly said “Thank you!” and tried to get out of there, but the security robots still surrounding them on my orders didn’t budge.
“You said you’d let us go!”
Blocked by the robots and unable to move, the sergeant shouted from among the soldiers.
“They didn’t attack us… and they told us everything. There’s no need to kill them. Just let them go, Yeong-chan.”
Yeong-ju said it quietly to me, but I slowly turned back toward them and asked the thing that had been bothering me since the moment we met them.
“You people… do you know a Lieutenant Colonel named Seo Guk?”
At those words the sergeant looked startled and said to me,
“L-Lieutenant Colonel Seo Guk… how do you know him?”
So… they do know him.
I nodded at his answer and drew the energy saw again.
“Hey… sorry for keeping giving you hope, but… if you’re connected to that bastard Seo Guk… then I’ve got no reason to keep you alive.”
The blue energy saw hummed with a low “woong—” as I stepped toward them.
“Wait! Just a second!”
Right then the sergeant shouted desperately.
“Lieutenant Colonel Seo Guk is with the deputy division commander’s side! We’re with Colonel Shin, the operations staff officer!”
At his urgent cry I flinched and stopped moving. The sergeant kept talking.
“The ‘Cleaning Day’ operation too! And exploiting the evacuated civilians and dragging women off!
All of that is the work of the deputy division commander and the bastards under him who’ve taken over the division now that the division commander is down!
We’re… we’re just an ordinary recon team that has nothing to do with any of it!”
At the sergeant’s desperate shout I slowly lowered my arm. His eyes didn’t look like they were lying.
If anything, his words hinted at cracks and conflicts inside the 50th Division that I had never known about—cracks inside the force I had thought was entirely our enemy after they attacked us.
“Ha… tell me in detail. Whose side is Lieutenant Colonel Seo Guk on?”