I Killed a Person Before the Zombies
The day the zombie outbreak began. I killed a person before I killed any zombies.
It had been about three weeks since I’d shut myself inside my room. I was chasing a dream of becoming a scenario writer, pouring everything into a contest entry. With the deadline looming, I’d been hammering away at the keyboard, even cutting back on sleep. The noise from outside finally got on my nerves, so I irritably walked over to the window.
My haggard face briefly reflected in the old villa’s dirty, cloudy glass. Beyond the rattling pane, the alley lay shrouded in twilight shadows. A group of uniformed students was rushing past in a noisy cluster.
“Hey! What’s wrong with you? Snap out of it!”
“What are you doing? You trying to act like a zombie?”
I stared down at the students in silence. They were shouting, laughing, making a complete racket. God, the noise is driving me insane. I was already stressed out from writing the scenario, and sleep-deprived on top of that. Every little sound felt like nails on a chalkboard. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to open the window and yell at them. I’d probably lose if it came to a fight. Kids these days were scary.
Instead of complaining, I grabbed my coffee mug, took a slow sip, and watched them. Maybe it would help with the scenario. I was writing a zombie apocalypse story, after all. Their behavior might spark some ideas.
“Grrrk.”
One student was drooling heavily, arms flailing. Another was clacking his teeth together, trying to grab and bite his friend. Thick saliva overflowed from his mouth, dripping in strings. Is this some kind of prank? Or rabies? It looked exactly like a zombie, but I couldn’t seriously believe it was real. Zombies? In this day and age?
The other students seemed to think the same. They laughed and playfully shoved the sick kid.
“This guy’s turning into a zombie!”
“…Wait, dude. He actually looks really sick.”
Some were joking around. Others were starting to take it seriously. I fiddled with my coffee mug, thinking quietly. Maybe I should tweak the opening scene a little. Make it more like this.
For a moment, everything seemed peaceful. The students were having their fun, and I was gathering material. But peace shattered in an instant.
“Graaaah!”
The sick student suddenly lunged at the one who’d been hitting him. He wrapped both arms around the boy’s neck, yanked him close, and sank his wide-open mouth into his face. The wet crunch of tearing flesh carried all the way up to the fourth floor. Bright red blood sprayed everywhere.
“Aaaagh!”
A piercing scream rang out. The students scattered like a swarm of locusts. Most ran. A couple tried to pull the sick kid off.
“Are you crazy? Hey! Hey! Someone grab him!”
“O-okay!”
“Blood—there’s blood!”
I tapped my fingers on the windowsill, then slammed the window shut. I’d seen enough.
“Must be rabies.”
Anyway, I’d gotten some decent material. I needed to edit the scene before the idea slipped away. I sat down at the computer and started typing furiously.
Then my phone began blaring.
Beeeep—! Beeeep—! Beeeep—!
Emergency disaster alerts. Not just one. Messages poured in from the local government office, city hall, and the national authorities in rapid succession. I stared at my phone in a daze.
Civil unrest detected. Citizens are advised to...
An unidentified viral contagion has been confirmed. Please refrain from going outside, wear masks, wash your hands, and follow all disease prevention guidelines.
Nationwide viral spread. Tune in to TV and radio for...
My head spun. This wasn’t spam. I’d never heard of emergency alerts being used for junk messages.
“TV. Turn on the TV.”
With trembling hands I switched on the television. An emergency broadcast was already in progress. The announcer was speaking urgently, but none of it registered. All I could see clearly were people attacking other people on screen. Infected individuals howling and biting. The footage was brutally vivid.
“…Are those actual zombies?”
They really were zombies. The image of the student from earlier flashed through my mind. And the one who’d been bitten. This building—this entire area—was ground zero.
A thousand thoughts raced through my head in a single second. Zombie apocalypse. Scenario. Contest. All the research I’d done. Survival protocols. I shot up from my chair. There was no time to stand around. I had to take action. The right kind of action.
“Pot. Water. Shampoo.”
I squeezed my exhausted brain and mixed water with shampoo in a large pot, then stepped outside.
While writing my zombie apocalypse scenario, I’d come to one conclusion: there was no way a simple zombie outbreak could actually end civilization.
In this day and age? The military would wipe them out in no time. Drones, tanks, fighter jets, biochemical weapons. Hell, just shooting them would be enough. Modern science and technology have advanced too far. A basic zombie virus couldn’t collapse society. Not with all our weapons and the social systems hardened by COVID.
That belief hadn’t changed even now that the real outbreak had begun.
If I can just hold out for two weeks, the government will handle it.
All I had to do was stay inside and protect my home. Two weeks’ worth of food and water were already stocked. I hurried down the old staircase.
“There’s no elevator anyway. If I block the stairs, that should be enough.”
The four-story villa I lived in was an old building. No elevator—just stairs. If I sealed those stairs properly, zombies would never reach me.
I started at the first floor, splashing soapy water everywhere, refilling the pot, then moving up to the second floor and repeating the process.
Zombies are still basically human. If they keep slipping and tumbling down the stairs, they’ll break bones and die.
The corpses would then become natural barricades, making it even harder for more to reach the fourth floor. The stale air of the old villa filled with the artificial scent of shampoo.
I kept going until every step leading up to the third floor was drenched. My legs burned from running up and down so many times. I was out of breath.
“Just two weeks. I can hold out that long.”
I muttered the words like a vow. Who knows—maybe this outbreak would make zombies trendy and my scenario would actually win the contest. I filled the pot with soapy water again, clinging to that hopeful dream, and was about to pour it on the stairs leading to my fourth-floor unit when—
Crash—!
The sound of someone falling and a scream echoed from below.
“Yeonseo!”
A man’s anguished cry. Standing on the landing, I wondered if it was a zombie and cautiously peered between the railings.
What I saw was a person lying dead on the landing below. Not a zombie. A person.
My eyes widened as I stared down. My body went rigid.
“Yeonseo! Yeonseo!”
The young couple who lived on the third floor had fallen. The woman I occasionally exchanged greetings with had broken her neck in the fall. The man was slapping her cheeks desperately, then looked up with bloodshot eyes. Our gazes met through the narrow gap in the railing.
His eyes shifted slightly to the pot in my hands. I looked down at it too. It was full of shampoo mixed for maximum slipperiness, bubbles foaming vigorously. Clear evidence that I was the culprit.
“Uh…”
A droplet of water slid from the pot and fell onto the man’s face. He opened his mouth.
“You! You did this! You killed Yeonseo!”
“I…?”
My thoughts froze. The image of my neighbor’s body with its snapped neck burned itself into my retinas. My hands began to shake violently. Murder? Me?
The soapy water overflowed, soaking my hands in cold liquid. It felt like my body heat was draining away. Me, a murderer? What about the scenario contest? My script. What happens to me now? Prison?
Dizzying vertigo washed over me. I hadn’t felt this way even when I saw the zombies. It felt like the world was collapsing.
But I wasn’t given time to despair. The world didn’t allow for it.
The man ground his teeth and grabbed the railing. Even as his feet slipped, he hauled himself up like a wild animal. Veins bulged on his clenched fists. A roar tore from his wide-open mouth.
“Because of you—Yeonseo—!”
His voice echoed like thunder. Time seemed to slow. His distorted face, flying spittle, violent movements, and the fist cocked far back all appeared in slow motion.
I couldn’t think. My body simply reacted.
Whoosh—!
I hurled the pot full of soapy water. It flew through the air, spraying foam, and struck the man squarely in the head.
Clang!
“Argh!”
Covered in shampoo, the man squeezed his eyes shut. He lost his balance completely. Tumbling backward, he rolled down the stairs with a thunderous crash—banging against the railing, cracking the back of his head on the edge of a step, his neck snapping under his own weight.
And just like that, the man died too. Or would soon. He let out a strange, wheezing breath as his hands reached toward the air like he was playing piano. It was a fatal injury.
“…”
It felt like I was dreaming. None of this seemed real. My legs gave out and I collapsed on the spot.
The sweet scent of shampoo and the stark reality of two corpses. A bubble of foam slid down and popped with a soft burst. Suddenly, the weight of reality crashed down on me.
“I’m screwed…”
Murder. Not even zombies—I’d killed people. A crime. My life, which hadn’t been great but had been racing toward the dream of becoming a scenario writer, was over.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. My whole body convulsed uncontrollably. The sound of my teeth chattering hammered against my eardrums.
What do I do? Turn myself in? No, no. This is a zombie apocalypse.
The anxiety suddenly cut off. A scenario began writing itself rapidly in my head.
1. Pretend I don’t know anything. Everyone will be too busy with the zombies.
Zombies had appeared. Law enforcement and administrative functions would be paralyzed. No, that wasn’t right. The outbreak would be contained eventually. If they investigated, I’d get caught.
2. Confess.
Maybe I could get a reduced sentence by turning myself in? No, that wouldn’t work either. I’d killed two people. The man’s death was basically premeditated murder.
I tapped my fingers on my knee, continuing to write the scenario. Genre: zombie apocalypse. Plot: murder. Goal: perfect crime.
Suddenly my fingers stopped. A strange idea surfaced. My eyes rolled toward the corpses.
A low murmur escaped my lips.
“Option 3. Zombies.”
If I infected the man and the dead woman downstairs with the zombie virus, maybe no one would suspect me of murder. Besides, there were no security cameras in this old villa.
But as always, reality refused to cooperate.
Click—!
The sound of a door opening came from behind me. I whipped my head around. I couldn’t let anyone see the crime scene.
My next-door neighbor—a woman who looked like a college student—cautiously poked her head out, phone in hand. Since there were only two units per floor, the central stairwell landing was visible the moment you stepped outside.
Our eyes met.
“M-m-murder!”
The female college student screamed the moment she saw the man’s body. She quickly raised her phone, clearly about to call 112.
I jumped up immediately, grabbed the railing, and sprinted up the stairs. I tried to sound as kind as possible.
“Wait! It’s not what you think! Absolutely not!”
“Kyaaaaah!”
She looked at me with pure terror in her eyes, then slammed the door shut. I reached her door a half-second too late. I pounded on it with all my strength, screaming at the top of my lungs.
“That was a zombie! In a situation like this, neighbors have to work together! How much food do you have? Hey! Open the door! Open it! The police are too busy to answer calls right now anyway!”
The words tumbled out without any forethought. A moment later, I heard the rapid clicking of multiple locks—not the digital door lock, but the manual ones—being fastened one after another.
I slammed my fist against the door one last time, then leaned my forehead against it. The cold surface pressed against my cheek. Inside, I could hear the woman sobbing as she spoke.
“Police? There’s a murderer outside my door! Please come quickly!”
She must have gotten through to the police. One word floated through my mind.
Screwed. I was truly screwed.
Click. Handcuffs locked around my wrists. My face reflected in the shiny metal. Greasy hair that hadn’t been washed in days. A mask covering the unkempt beard. Sunken eyes.
A well-built detective sighed and began speaking.
“I will now inform you of your Miranda rights. You are under arrest for murder. You have the right to an attorney, and—”
I didn’t hear the rest. I slumped like a man whose floor had given way beneath him. Two detectives held me up by the sides and carefully guided me down the stairs.
One of the detectives walking ahead nearly slipped and grumbled.
“Seriously, who pours something like this on stairs people actually use?”
“Zombies… zombies…” I mumbled weakly. The detective holding me clicked his tongue and yanked me forward roughly.
“Zombies my ass. They’re all just virus-infected patients. Killing one of them is still murder, you idiot.”
He was right. Because the world was still functioning normally.
When we left the villa, I saw an ambulance that had just arrived and a student zombie being strapped to a stretcher. The student zombie, bound tightly with ropes, thrashed violently. Paramedics were giving emergency treatment to the student whose face had been torn off. Two bodies were being taken care of as well.
I lowered my head deeply.
Day one of the zombie outbreak. I, Kim Dain—an aspiring scenario writer—had killed people before zombies, society was still operating normally, and I, a murderer, was being taken to a holding cell.