Prologue
The police officers who had rushed in hesitated and fell back. The infected man's momentum bordered on madness. Even as his skin tore and blood streamed down, he hurled his entire body against the bars. “Kwaaak!” Saliva sprayed like mist from a nozzle. The masked officers recoiled in alarm. A flustered voice broke the tension.
“Can we even subdue him?”
“No, subduing him isn't the problem. We need to treat that bleeding guy first!”
The officers' gazes shifted past the zombie. I glanced at the drunk man as well. Blood from his neck had already pooled across the floor. Without immediate pressure, even paramedics wouldn't be able to save him. And that would become a burden for the police. There was a difference between someone dying in a holding cell and someone being loaded into an ambulance alive, after all.
I clasped my hands together and prayed. Please, just open the door. That was the only way I'd be safe.
The officers stared at the violent, tattooed young zombie, then gritted their teeth.
“If someone dies here, it'll be a huge problem. Leaving that infected guy alone is dangerous too. Open the door. Hold the infected one so he can't escape. And you—bring the Taser!”
“Yes, sir!”
At the apparent leader's command, two officers moved. One approached the cell cautiously with keys while the other sprinted off to fetch the Taser. I quietly shifted my body backward. Rushing out the moment the door opened would be dangerous—the zombie's path might cross mine.
As expected, the zombie reacted first. The moment the iron door clanged open, he lunged toward the gap.
“Whoa, he's coming! Stop him!”
“Agh!”
The zombie and the officers tangled together. The infected man snapped his teeth, trying to bite, while his flailing hands struck at the officers. One policeman threw his whole body against the zombie while the others grabbed its joints or swung their batons.
“Get off him! No—damn it, he can't understand a word!”
“We can't hold him! He's too strong!”
“Aagh! He's hitting me!”
Chaos erupted. Baton strikes rained down indiscriminately on both the attacking zombie and the officer clinging to it. The struck officer screamed. That was my cue. I rose slowly from my seat. Confusion was opportunity. My eyes locked on the wide-open cell door and the exit beyond it. I could run now.
But should I?
—Immortal Company's virus dispersal has been confirmed to have begun three weeks ago—
I had seen it on the news. Drones from Immortal Company spraying the virus. Snow piled high at the terminal, a rally banner dated three weeks earlier. A scenario began forming in my mind.
The dispersal happened three weeks ago. Yet the zombies are only manifesting now.
That meant the zombie virus had an incubation period of roughly three weeks. And during that incubation period, the virus could still spread. Even with COVID, transmission began days before symptoms appeared.
I clenched my fists. The apocalypse is coming.
Until they turned, the infected showed no symptoms. The tattooed young man had transformed without any warning signs. During that asymptomatic window, there was no telling how many people he had already infected. This wasn't a simple zombie apocalypse. The zombies were merely symptoms—the real threat was the virus itself. It was as if a zombie apocalypse and a pandemic apocalypse had struck simultaneously.
Even the most advanced modern society couldn't withstand this. With the virus spreading unchecked from every direction, how could anyone hold out?
Run.
I slipped out of the holding cell naturally and walked briskly along the wall. If the apocalypse was coming, there was no point waiting for a trial. Given enough time, the courts and the police would all lose function.
I moved toward freedom.
The key was naturalness. No awkwardness or sense of dissonance—just blending into the background like an extra in a film. Even if someone saw you, they wouldn't register your presence.
I walked leisurely, like part of the holding cell's scenery.
“Aaaagh! Stop, stop hitting me! You're going to kill me! Agh! My bones, my bones!”
The reinforcements that had arrived were entirely focused on the zombie. They had no attention to spare for small fry like me. They swung their batons with single-minded intensity. Any thought of first aid had vanished in the face of the actual threat. The zombie, perhaps stimulated by the assault, grew even more frenzied. Fortunately, its aggression remained fixed on the officers.
I passed through the holding cell door without interference and entered the violent crimes squad office beyond it.
No detectives around?
Whether they were overwhelmed with cases or responding to a surge in violent crime reports, the squad room was empty. Aside from the distant commotion in the holding cell, silence reigned. This reality only reinforced my suspicions.
Even killing a zombie counts as murder…
That meant any citizen who committed a violent crime against a zombie would also become a target for arrest. The zombies must have appeared in large numbers, keeping the detectives busy. So busy they couldn't even guard their own office.
The situation was perfect.
I casually lifted a detective's coat from a nearby desk and slipped it on. I pulled a cap over my head, donned a leather jacket hanging on a chair, and even pumped some hand sanitizer from a newly stocked bottle. In my mind, I pictured the chairman of Immortal Company.
That man was smiling even as they dragged him away.
No matter how I looked at it, that wasn't the expression of someone whose terrorist plot had failed. The smile that had seemed to mock me resurfaced in my memory—confident, like a mad scientist's, a sneer that looked down on the entire world.
Without realizing it, I muttered aloud.
“I believe. I believe in Immortal Company. I believe in the chairman. The apocalypse will come.”
It was both a logical deduction and an emotional conviction. If the apocalypse didn't come, all that awaited me was trial, imprisonment, social stigma, a ruined dream, and a bleak future. But if it did come, then a ruined dream and a bleak future were all that existed anyway. The apocalypse meant I had less to lose.
Desperate for the end of the world, I walked on. A policeman carrying a Taser hurried back toward the holding cell but didn't recognize me as an escaped criminal. He simply muttered as he passed, “Finally got one borrowed,” before disappearing.
Just like that, I walked out of the police station.
The rising sun blazed down with a brightness that stung my eyes. I pulled the cap low, casting a shadow over my face. The commotion would only last a moment. Soon the police would realize I had escaped. I had to seize this fleeting window and move quickly.
I counted on my fingers. The point at which the zombie apocalypse—the I-Virus—would explode.
“A week? If I can just hold out that long…”
I didn't know exactly how many days before symptom onset the virus began spreading. But it was certain that zombies would soon appear everywhere. The incubation periods of the initial infected were ending. Those who manifested symptoms quickly would be followed by countless others turning. Zombies would create more zombies. The police wouldn't have time to worry about me.
So right now—
Avoid the police and prepare for the apocalypse.
Day two of the zombie outbreak. The former zombie skeptic had become a fervent doomsday believer, convinced beyond doubt that the zombie apocalypse was real, and was already moving for survival and freedom.
The world looked perfectly normal. Early in the morning, commuters, crowded buses, and cars lined up on the roads. Despite the appearance of zombies, people still hurried toward their jobs. The only change was the masks. Perhaps having learned from COVID years ago, everyone had pulled out white masks from somewhere. People with only tired eyes visible walked around like zombies themselves.
For now, that was a good thing.
The more people, the better. Blending into the crowd would make it harder to track me via CCTV. On top of that, I changed my appearance every few blocks—removing the cap and jacket, hunching to alter my height and build, slicking my hair back. I wasn't sure how effective it was, but I did my best.
Eventually, my mental stamina reached its limit. My steps stopped abruptly.
“What the hell am I doing right now?”
Sirens wailed faintly in the distance—police cars, ambulances, fire trucks. Every time one passed on a side street or flashing lights swept across my face, my heart dropped. What if they were coming for me? My hands trembled with fear. Conscience and ordinary civic sense wavered. I walked unsteadily, not even knowing what I was thinking.
“Aaaagh!”
“Watch out!”
Ahead, I saw a bus swerving erratically. It crossed between the sidewalk and the road like a drunk driver, sending pedestrians scattering with screams. Someone struck by the bus flew through the air in a cartoonish arc and passed right beside me.
“Agh!”
My mind snapped into focus. I let out a short scream and leaped aside. The bus veered back onto the road with a roar. I turned my head to follow it, eyes wide despite the wind. In the instant our paths crossed, the scene inside the bus burned into my vision like a photograph: the driver with teeth clenched, passengers clinging to handrails or fallen over, and two glowing zombies.
With a screech of brakes, the bus finally stopped. Windows flew open almost simultaneously, and countless hands reached outside. Shouts rang out.
“Run! Zombies, zombies, aagh!”
“Help me!”
People tumbled out the windows. Some were dragged back in by their ankles; others limped away after bad landings. Their faces were frozen in terror. As I turned my back on the scene, a thought flashed through my mind.
Public transportation is dangerous. Confirmed.
A regular bus was one thing, but if zombies appeared on a subway, an airplane, or a highway bus, that would be certain death. I had been thinking only of safety when I suddenly chuckled. The laughter came out strangely.
“Apocalypse. Right. Pointless worries don't matter.”
Survival was the only issue. Conscience, the future—none of it was worth the time. From now on, I'd be struggling just to live day by day. Maybe because I'd killed a person before a zombie, some thread in my mind had snapped. My thoughts cleared, and only apocalypse survival scenarios played out.
I approached the person who had fallen ahead. They had been riding a bicycle when the bus clipped them. They clutched their leg, groaning.
“My leg… I think the bone's broken.”
My shadow fell over them. Sensing the presence, they looked up. Pretending to help, I first righted the bicycle. The fallen person spoke.
“Hey, my phone's broken—could you call 119? Uh, the bike—my bike! Bike thief!”
I laughed loudly and pedaled away. The fallen person's cries faded behind me, along with the sound of people fleeing the bus. The wind blowing against me felt refreshing.