Kind Neighbors
Maybe it was because they had seen blood in a battle where lives hung in the balance. The people of Villa Street had begun to show the unmistakable signs of true apocalypse survivors. The old man had relentlessly hunted down the traitor, eventually hanging the snitch’s corpse from a roadside tree. The street’s residents no longer feared combat. Instead, they actively took up weapons, their eyes gleaming with a bloody thirst. The apartment raid had failed, but they had grown through that failure. I liked what I saw. It was fortunate that the marauder members hadn’t carried out their virus terror plan. At this rate, we could coexist for the time being.
Live separately, almost no obligations or rules, and a residential area that can withstand waves. That was why I acted alongside them as a kind neighbor and a member of Villa Street.
The electric lock buzzed.
“Door’s open.”
“This stun gun works great. Thanks.”
The villa door had lost all function in front of the taser. It wasn’t my Peace Villa, but another empty house on Villa Street. A third-floor unit that was difficult to access with a ladder. A treasure vault where food lay sleeping. And of course, every treasure vault came with its own threats.
Zombies.
We gauged the presence beyond the door. The old man raised his fist and shouted the slogan loudly.
“Safety! First!”
“Good! Good! Good!”
Our sharp cries, meant to stay alert and lure the zombies, drew a response. From beyond the door came the clear sound of something scrambling and rushing toward us. We kept shouting and smoothly fell into our familiar formation. One person gripped the handle and pressed close to the door. Another held up a makeshift net woven from thin blankets. The old man adjusted his grip on the steel pipe.
“Open it!”
“Opening!”
The door flew wide. The person who opened it hid between the door and the wall. The zombie charged recklessly but tripped and fell after being covered by the hastily thrown blanket net.
“Grrraaagh!”
A blunt weapon slammed down on it with a heavy thud.
“Kill it!”
“Stay alert—there might be more inside!”
Thud, thud, thud, thud. The dull sounds rang out in a cheerful rhythm like raindrops. Dust flew everywhere, and red stains spread across the blanket. Soon the zombie’s thrashing stopped. The people breathed sighs of relief.
“Good thing there was only one.”
But letting our guard down was premature. I looked down at the blanket with suspicion and gripped my hammer. It was right when the net handler began rolling the blanket back up. The zombie, which had been curled up tightly, suddenly lifted its head. Blood and saliva dripped from its torn mouth. With murderous intent burning in its bloodshot eyes, it sprang up like a coiled spring.
“Graaaah!”
“Whoa!”
Its leg must have been broken—it stumbled awkwardly, yet still lunged desperately. I had been waiting. I swung the hammer lightly. A crisp clang and a solid impact traveled up my arm. I muttered quietly.
“So just because it fell doesn’t mean it’s dead…”
Whether zombie or human, a confirmed kill was essential. Even if it looked truly dead, you had to hit it a few more times. Once you learned something, you had to put it into practice immediately. I brought the hammer down several more times on the back of the zombie’s head as it lay sprawled. The grotesque sight of blood and gore splattering made the others turn their eyes away.
“D-do you really need to go that far?”
“Even if it’s a corpse… it used to be a person…”
I shook my head seriously.
“People don’t die easily. Since zombies used to be people, you can’t let your guard down. Just now, any one of us could have died.”
Even after its head is cut off, a chicken’s body still twitches for a while. The same with snakes—the severed head can keep snapping its jaws and bite for some time. Humans possessed that same stubborn vitality. They could die from the smallest things, yet sometimes survive injuries that should have been fatal. Only the old man, who had grown significantly as a survivor, showed a truly practical attitude.
“Young man from Peace Villa, what was your name again? I forgot.”
“Kim Dain.”
“Dai? Dying? Is that an English name?”
“No. It’s ‘Dain’ from ‘many’ and ‘benevolent.’”
“Nice meaning. Anyway, maybe because you’re young, Dain, you’ve adapted to these times better than anyone. We should learn from you.”
The meaning didn’t really matter much. From what my late parents told me, they chose the name because they liked how “Dain” sounded and just picked fitting Chinese characters to match. The old man squatted down. He reached out and began rummaging through the corpse. Once the hunt was over, the natural follow-up was looting.
“Let’s see. Who were you?”
He searched the pockets, pulling out car keys, a wallet, house keys, and so on. Then he took out an ID card from the wallet and read it aloud.
“Mr. Kim Gwi-sik. As a neighbor from the same area, I can only feel deep regret that things turned out this way. May the deceased rest in peace.”
He offered a brief moment of silence. It was a heartwarming scene. In times like these, who would pray for the repose of the dead? And for a zombie that had tried to kill me, no less. Wasn’t this the true spirit of neighborly love, the last shred of humanity left in the apocalypse?
Next, the old man took out stickers, a notebook, and a ballpoint pen from his pocket and wrote something down. When I glanced over, I saw he was attaching a sticker with the address to the house key and recording it in the notebook. Cars and houses were all valuable resources, after all. The short ceremony ended. The old man extended his pipe.
“Right, let’s start looking for food.”
We spent a long time going through the empty houses on Villa Street. Sometimes we killed zombies inside. Sometimes we cleaned up the bodies of people who had committed suicide. Sometimes we released starving pets whose owners had vanished. Naturally, the harvest was plentiful. Just counting the rice and kimchi, there was enough for the street’s residents to hold out for quite a while. We lined up cardboard boxes along the street. Inside the boxes, food was divided equally. It was the share for those who had searched the houses and for the elderly and weak who couldn’t participate.
A man whose facial wounds hadn’t fully healed looked at his portion and muttered quietly.
“Isn’t it a bit unfair to divide everything equally like this? We risk our lives searching the houses, yet the people who stayed behind get the same share.”
“No, that’s not right. Aren’t they working just as hard in their own way?”
As a kind neighbor, I quickly stopped him. Not out of conscience, but because of the value of the elderly and weak. Old people? Children? Weren’t they energy-efficient machines that consumed less food while still contributing one person’s worth of labor? In reality, they hadn’t just waited at home. They had been working hard at farming. They had gathered plastic bottles and flowerpots and planted seeds obtained from the Hope Community. After all, this was the apocalypse—a world where you couldn’t eat if you didn’t work.
The old man quickly smoothed over the slightly tense atmosphere. He pointed his steel pipe toward the far end of the street—in the direction of the apartment complex.
“Let’s not be too picky with each other when we’re all from the same neighborhood. There aren’t many of us left anyway. We have to think about those apartment bastards.”
An external enemy. Because of the clash that day, many street residents had died. Quite a few had been killed on the spot. Others had died alone from untreated injuries. Some had gone looking for a hospital only to be hunted by cunning zombies, or so I heard. A battle that hadn’t ended in total annihilation had only deepened the rift of conflict. The people shared the same emotions.
Anger. Bloodlust.
“Those crazy bastards. They dragged out the power outage, then opened fire while surrounding us, trying to kill us all.”
“If they were sane, would they have killed a cop and stolen his handgun? Those guys are just murderers.”
I poured oil on the fire.
“They’ll definitely come to kill us and loot. They need a lot of food to feed that many people. We have to prepare to fight them.”
The survivors, sharpened by the apocalypse, had blood in their eyes. A satisfying level of killing intent.
“…Should we strike first? What can they do if we set the place on fire?”
“If we could just get our hands on some guns…”
Resources were no longer the issue. Right next door lived an enemy who had crossed a river of no return. Only by erasing them could we feel at ease. The old man shook his head with a grim expression.
“No can do. Those guys have tightened their security. It got even worse after I caught and killed that snitch. They’ve set it up like a military base.”
He turned his gaze to me.
“Got any good ideas? We won’t ignore you like last time. The more vicious, the better.”
I put on a troubled face. I wasn’t exactly an expert in this. Ideas didn’t just pop out because someone asked. Virus terror? Zombie saliva in a water bottle? No good. People were on high alert now and boiled all their water. I had done the same. What about cola or other drinks? Or rubbing zombie saliva on stray cat fur? If they touched it without knowing… Or maybe on cigarettes? No. Too impulsive. A plan that wasn’t meticulously refined wasn’t a plan at all.
“I’ll need some time to think…”
“Alright. You take care of the attack plan, Dain. I’ll focus on defense.”
It seemed like a productive day was passing. The people who had been about to hand out boxes to the elderly and weak suddenly looked behind me. They set the boxes down with serious expressions and gripped their weapons. When I turned my head, a rather neat-looking man was approaching.
A man with an intellectual air, dressed in a crisp suit and wearing cracked glasses. He looked like a young businessman in his thirties. As soon as he saw us, he quickly bowed.
“Hello! My name is Sa Gihyeok! I was wondering if there are any empty houses. Would it be alright if I moved in?”
“Move in…?”
The people muttered blankly. I focused on his name. Sa Gihyeok? A conman? The lighthearted thought slipped out unconsciously.
“A conman?”
“Haha. How amusing. This is the first time I’ve been teased about my name since my school days.”
…What? Was he sarcastically calling me childish? But everyone around me lived up to their names. I was someone with great benevolence, Jeon Dohyeong was an electricity thief, and Park Yanggun was a thief. While I was having these thoughts, the others had already raised their weapons. This wasn’t an era that welcomed strangers. A harsh voice followed.
“You one of the apartment bastards? Where did you come from?”
“Ah, yes, I used to live in an apartment. A three-billion-won unit. But does that matter anymore? Dividing people by housing type feels a bit much.”
A slick response. At least he didn’t seem to be one of our apartment enemies. Still, we couldn’t let our suspicion go. The old man pointed his steel pipe at the corpse hanging from the roadside tree. It swayed back and forth, showing us the back of its head.
“Hey. Go read what’s written on that sign.”
Sa Gihyeok walked over confidently, adjusted his cracked glasses, and checked the placard.
“Snitch? Ah, ‘traitor.’ The pronunciation has a nice rustic charm!”
What the hell was this guy? Why did it feel like he was mocking everything? Sa Gihyeok returned to stand in front of the old man and smiled boldly. He wore confidence like a tailored suit.
“I’m not the kind of person who would do something like that. I used to run a small business, but after the I-Virus broke out everything collapsed. I’ve been wandering around looking for a decent place to live. Would it be okay if I moved in here?”
I took a deep breath. I couldn’t get a read on what kind of person he was. If the Pastor had been thoroughly mysterious, this man just seemed… odd. A subtle feeling that made judgment difficult. The old man raised a hand to his head as if it hurt, then quickly lowered it. He seemed to be wary of viral infection. He frowned, thought for a moment, then pulled out one of the collected keys.
“We are short on people in the neighborhood.”
The number of combat-capable individuals and the elderly and weak were about even. It seemed he was willing to accept him to balance those numbers. The old man pointed menacingly at the traitor’s corpse and continued.
“If you pull any shit, I’ll kill you. I’ll track you down no matter what and make sure you die. If you’re confident, take the key.”
“Of course. Just give me work and I’ll do it diligently. Oh, should I start by moving these boxes?”
Sa Gihyeok took the key with a smile, then quickly lifted a box. And under our watchful eyes, he worked with pure diligence. He didn’t secretly steal any food, didn’t take out his phone, and bowed politely to everyone as he greeted them. Even when we subtly ostracized and ignored him, he smiled and tried to blend in. Just like a kind neighbor.