A Leader's Tax
Well, fuck. I must have drifted off to sleep while lying in bed, fondling Ye-jeong's breasts. She was shaking me awake.
"Wake up, Son-in-law Park. It's lunchtime."
An early bird wake-up call! It felt a bit awkward hearing that after so long. Turning me into a literal early bird instead of just an "early bird"—man, the apocalypse is terrifying. Can someone hurry up and bring back the internet? I'm bored out of my mind. Looking around the room, I saw Hyeong-uk, Ju-ho, Minji, Ji-hun, Jihye, and Jeong-a all gathered together.
"Jihye, how's the shield-making going?"
"Of course. The large shields are too bulky to fit in the vehicle, and the small ones don't offer enough protection, so we're making medium-sized ones. We're attaching two straps—one to slip over the left forearm and one to grip with the left hand. On actual police shields, the large ones have three attachment points, and the small ones only have one, but the medium ones have two. I based it on the medium shield design."
"Why do the large ones have three handles?"
"To explain that, I have to start with the medium ones. With a medium shield, you can slip your left arm through the two straps to hold it while keeping your right hand free for a baton, but you can also grip one handle in each hand and use both arms to hold it."
"So even medium shields can be held with both hands."
"Yes. Large shields have an extra horizontal handle near the upper middle. You slip your left arm through the two straps and use your right hand to grip the horizontal handle for better control, or you can just grab it with both hands to push back rioters."
"Alright. I'll take a look at how they turned out in a bit, and then we'll run some combat formation drills with them."
"The new medium shields are rectangular, about fifty centimeters wide and slightly longer in height, making them compact and easy to handle. The older medium shields are oval-shaped, sixty centimeters wide by forty centimeters tall, which actually feels a bit too small and awkward for blocking. The only downside to the ones we're making now is that they're made of plywood instead of police-grade materials, so they're pretty heavy. You should try holding one yourself later."
By the way, old man Hyeong-uk's glare was practically burning a hole through me. Was it because I just got out of the same bed where I'd been lying with his wife? Well, what the fuck was he going to do about it? Hehehe. It's just like in school—the loser's girlfriend gets bullied by the queen bees first, and then ends up gang-raped by the alpha bullies. Since they're juveniles, they either don't get punished at all or get off with a slap on the wrist, so they have absolutely nothing to fear. If he just played nice and listened to me, I might have thrown him some other female later on. But since he's acting so hostile, the old bastard's days are numbered. I won't kill him myself, but putting him on the front lines of a few battles should do the trick nicely.
"Jeong-a, please make some tuna kimchi stew for lunch today. Ye-jeong, you handle the rice and grill some spam."
Jeong-a had been looking depressed lately, so I assigned her the cooking duty to help her snap out of it. When people are depressed, sitting around doing nothing only makes it worse. You have to keep your body moving to keep your mind off things. Still, when I addressed her as "Jeong-a," both Ji-hun and Jihye shot me a look. What of it?
"Minji, brush my teeth for me."
Chika-chika. I was too lazy to brush my own teeth after eating, so I made Minji do it. Even though she looked utterly disgusted, she complied without a fight. The Brand must be working beautifully. Or maybe not? Honestly, even if I asked Ye-jeong, she'd probably do it too.
After lunch, I visited the shield-making workshop, where Hyeong-uk, Ju-ho, and Ji-hun were hard at work under the watchful eyes of Jihye and Minji.
"Did you cut this with a hand saw? Was it too big?"
"Yeah. A larger shield is better for blocking, but it's too hard to carry around. Still, we layered two or three sheets of plywood together, so even if we run into another Fast Zombie, it won't pierce through easily. I mean, zombies are strong and fast, but they don't exactly feel superhuman, right? Well, except for that Fast Zombie—that thing definitely didn't move like a human."
"Why did you line the inside of the shield with towels?"
"It's good to have some shock-absorbing material on the inside. Especially when our opponents are stronger than normal humans."
Fair enough. Humans weren't the only enemies we had to worry about. I picked up one of the finished shields, slipped my left forearm through the left strap, and gripped the right strap with my left hand.
"So this is how you hold it. Did you cut up backpack straps for this? It's heavier than I thought, though. Jihye, hold one up. Let me test it with my Hwando."
Jihye slipped a shield onto her left forearm. I gave it a light slash with my saber, but it didn't cut through in a single blow.
"Well, it doesn't slice through in one go."
"Don't state the obvious."
"Hold on, let's bring out the traditional bow and the crossbow to test it."
The blade had only nicked the surface without cutting through, but how would it fare against a traditional bow or a crossbow? I propped a two-ply shield and a three-ply shield against the wall and shot them. *Whizz—thud! Whoosh—crack!*
"The traditional bow slightly pierces the two-ply but can't get through the three-ply. The crossbow pierces right through the three-ply, though. Is that why you put the towels inside? To reduce the risk of injury even if an arrowhead breaks through?"
"That wasn't the original reason, but it does seem pretty useful now that you mention it."
"But the three-ply is too heavy for the girls to use. Even the guys won't be able to hold it for long. Let me grab the scale from my room."
I brought the scale over from my room and weighed them. The two-ply plywood shield was 6.5 kg, and the three-ply was a whopping 10 kg.
"Fuck, ten kilograms is going to be a drag. Especially for someone like Minji, who relies on speed. She won't be able to use it at all."
"We have to make do with the materials we have."
"But if it can be pierced by arrows, a spear or a throwing javelin would go right through it. It might stop a sword slash, but thrusts are a different story."
"What if we reinforce the front with a steel plate?"
"Do we even have steel plates?"
"Couldn't we just cut up one of the front doors?"
"Ju-ho, can you cut up a front door and attach it?"
"The steel sheet on a front door is thin, so we can cut it with an angle grinder. The inside of the door is mostly hollow anyway. But to do that, we'll need to bring the solar panels and batteries from the police substation. Grinders have a high startup power draw, so they won't run directly off the panels. We have to charge the batteries first and use them in short bursts."
"Then let's stick to two-ply plywood. If we go three-ply and add a steel plate on top, it'll be too heavy to be practical in combat."
"Good thing we've only made one of the three-ply ones so far."
Watching them assemble the shields got boring fast since it was just the same repetitive task over and over.
"Alright, Minji, Jihye, keep a close eye on them. Make sure they don't try to hide any scraps of hacksaw blades or wire that they could use to cut handcuffs or pick locks."
I said it loud enough for Hyeong-uk and Ju-ho to hear. That warning should have gotten through their thick skulls. I needed to brand someone else soon to secure another Branded Awakener, but to get points, I needed lottery tickets, and to get lottery tickets, I needed zombies. Isn't there a zombie farm somewhere? If I could breed them by throwing in captured slaves as feed every now and then, farming points would be a breeze. And if people bitten by zombies also dropped points, wouldn't that be an absolute jackpot? I could just turn everyone into zombies, run them over with a bulldozer or a dump truck, and slaughter them all at once. Hehehe. I should head back to my room and grope Ye-jeong until they finish working. Wait a minute. Jeong-a is home alone right now, isn't she? Maybe I should go play with her for a bit. It's been a while. With that thought, I headed back to my apartment.
Beep, beep, beep, beep—click! The digital door lock chimed, and the door swung open. Jeong-a must have been bored and gone over to Minji's room to hang out with Ye-jeong, because my apartment was completely empty. I scanned the room. Jeong-a's underwear, which usually sat in the laundry basket in the corner, was nowhere to be seen. Where did she hide her underwear? Out of pure curiosity—and because, as the leader of this group, I absolutely needed to stay informed—I began to search the room.
Opening my closet, I spotted her pastel-toned underwear in shades of yellow and pink. Ah, she separated the clean laundry from the dirty laundry on the left and right. To inspect Jeong-a's hygiene standards, I pulled out a pair of her unwashed panties. Dirty underwear isn't half bad. Since I'm the one securing the food and safety for this entire group, it's only fair that Jeong-a, who's freeloading here, pays her taxes, right? Just like how we all used to pay taxes to the government even when we didn't want to. I pulled down my pants and wrapped her panties around my cock. Thinking about how these panties touched a modest married woman's pussy makes it feel like NTR. It's fucking hot. *Splat, splat—* After rubbing myself with them for a while, I ejaculated. But as the post-nut clarity hit, reality came crashing back down.
Oh, fuck. What do I do? I need to wash this before Jeong-a gets back. Grabbing a bottle of water, I rushed into the bathroom and scrubbed her panties with soap. There's no way they'll dry before she gets back. What the hell am I going to do? If I get caught, I'm utterly humiliated. Not only Jihye, Minji, and Ye-jeong, but even Ju-ho and Ji-hun would stop looking at me like a human being. Hyeong-uk already hated my guts, so I didn't care about him, but I was actually terrified of how Jeong-a's perception of me would change. Up until now, she had viewed me in a relatively decent light.
I'll hang them up in one of the empty apartments. Once they're dry, I'll sneak them back. It's not like she memorizes the exact washing schedule of every single pair of panties she owns. Since hanging them on the second floor carried too high a risk of being spotted, I went up to the fifth floor and hung her panties in one of the abandoned units. Well, at least breaking into all these empty apartments earlier to search for water came in handy. They should dry in a day. I'll come back to retrieve them tomorrow.