Covert Spread
The officetel construction site was still reeling from the chaos when the wail of sirens rose in the distance, drawing steadily closer.
Waaang— waaang— waaang—
Brakes screeched on the nearby road, and two 119 ambulances swung onto the site in quick succession. The moment they stopped, paramedics piled out, white gear bags, oxygen tanks, and defibrillator cases swinging from their hands as they sprinted toward the scene.
One of them ran straight to the security guard whose throat had been bitten. He yanked on gloves, checked the wound, and barked for what he needed.
"The wound is deep! Suspected carotid damage! Get me a pressure bandage!"
Another paramedic slapped a wad of gauze and a compression wrap into his hands. The first man felt along the neck for a pulse point, then centered the gauze below it and started winding the bandage tight, eyes locked on the direction of the spurting blood as he worked faster.
"Sir, checking consciousness. Can you tell me your name?"
"……."
"Patient's unresponsive, blood pressure unstable. We need to move him to the nearest hospital. Radio HQ."
"Copy. HQ, HQ! Paju New Town officetel construction site, multiple casualties. Two critical patients—we're transporting to hospital now."
The other team examined the worker whose shoulder had been torn open. They lifted his arm, cut the sleeve away with shears, and peered closely at the ragged flesh.
"The bite marks are too even… Did a person do this?"
One of the workers standing nearby nodded and held out his own arm.
"Yeah. Some crazy bastard bit him. Got me too, right here."
"For a human bite, this is deeper than I'd expect. Looking at the tearing, it seems like whoever did it clamped down and shook their head to rip the flesh free. That's not how people bite—that's an animal. Just to be safe, I'm disinfecting every spot that came into contact with saliva."
A brief exchange passed between the paramedics. The thing that had done this had looked like a beast, but it had definitely been human.
A few minutes later, a police car arrived. An older sergeant and a young patrol officer stepped out. The sergeant shut the door and swept the area with a single look—paramedics hustling with stretchers, a handful of workers hanging back with their phones held up to film.
"Officer Kim, get me a headcount on the victims and how bad they're hurt. Cross-check anyone who had contact with the paramedics too."
"Yes, sir!"
The young officer jogged toward the scene. The sergeant approached the site manager.
"Where's the perpetrator?"
The site manager pointed at me.
"Hey! Kim Seongmin! Show the officer where you tied up that lunatic."
I nodded and indicated the direction. The site manager sidled up close and muttered under his breath.
"You didn't hit him too hard or tie him too tight, did you? If this turns into an excessive-force complaint later, we're screwed."
People's lives hanging in the balance, and he was worried about excessive force.
"Of course not. I only bound him tight enough that he couldn't move."
The site manager gave me a dubious look.
"You remember when Foreman Kim dislocated his shoulder last time?"
I kept walking as I answered.
"That was because I was breaking up a fight between Foreman Kim and Foreman Choi, and Foreman Kim wouldn't let go of the other guy's collar. Even Foreman Kim admitted that."
"You sure?"
"Positive."
While we traded that worthless chatter, we reached the scaffolding post where I had secured the attacker.
And then we both lost the words.
The man who should have been there was gone. Only a bloodstained tarp and a slack sling belt lay tangled on the ground.
The sergeant stepped in, bent at the waist, and studied the dirt. He picked up a snapped length of wire—the binding wire I had used to lock the sling belt down at the end.
It broke?
Not untied. Broken.
There was no clean cut from a sharp tool. The fracture face was ragged, metal fibers stretched thin like frayed thread. A classic fatigue break—plastic deformation under repeated stress until the grain of the steel elongated and failed.
Binding wire leaves the factory with a rated load capacity. At this gauge, it normally holds several hundred kilos. In site talk: three or four grown men hanging off it and it still wouldn't budge. Even on the day a tower crane boom bent, the binding wire I'd hung on the scaffolding had held. The crane cable went first. This stuff didn't.
I'd left a little play on purpose so it wouldn't dig into his flesh…
If he had used that slack to twist and thrash, applying force over and over, then yes—in theory the wire could snap. But no ordinary skin, tendon, or bone could endure that kind of strain. This was steel binding wire. Friction alone should have shredded the flesh right off him. No normal human strength or willpower could do what I was looking at.
The sergeant rolled the broken wire across his palm and stood. His eyes found me.
"You're the young man who subdued him, correct?"
"Yes."
"Description of the suspect, from the top. Height, build, clothes, manner of speech—everything you can remember."
He flipped open a notebook and clicked his pen. I described the bloodshot eyes, the foam at the mouth, the unnatural strength in as much detail as I could. The color of the jumper. The fact that he'd been wearing sneakers instead of work boots. That he had barely spoken at all. I dug through every scrap of memory.
"Where was he standing when you first saw him? Was he alone? Anyone else with him?"
"Yes. Alone. He staggered in deep onto the site. The security guard tried to stop him, and then…"
My voice trailed off on its own.
The sergeant exhaled hard.
"Damn it. Another one of these…"
The site manager glanced between us.
"Officer, is this some kind of new drug? That stuff they're talking about on the news…"
The sergeant shook his head.
"We don't know for sure either. Calls like this have been spiking lately. Perfectly normal people whose eyes roll back and they start attacking everyone around them. Yesterday it was an apartment complex over in Ilsan. Day before that, a supermarket parking lot on the outskirts of Seoul. Same pattern every time—they don't respond to words, and if you try to restrain them they hit you with insane strength."
Spiking lately. So this wasn't the first time.
"Some people are blaming that new virus in the news… some doctors insist it's just psychiatric emergencies. We can't set a proper response if we don't know the cause. We're already short-staffed, and now the calls just keep coming."
Virus. The word snagged on the news I'd seen at lunch on the Hamba Restaurant TV.
CV-7.
A military-grade virus out of Russia.
Maybe this wasn't simple rampaging after all.
Officer Kim finished his canvass and reported back to the sergeant.
"Victim statements all match. An outsider came in out of nowhere and attacked. Several of them described the suspect's eyes as 'completely rolled back.'"
The sergeant nodded. The police said they would secure the site CCTV and continue the investigation, then started packing up to leave. Before he went, the sergeant handed me a business card.
"If you ever see the suspect again, do not engage him alone. Call me immediately."
Once the ambulances and the police car were gone, silence settled over the wrecked site. A space that minutes earlier had been stuffed with sirens, radio chatter, and shouting now felt hollowed out. The only sound left was the plastic sheeting on the safety fence rustling in the wind.
The site manager raised a megaphone.
"That's it for today! Everyone go home! We'll contact you individually about tomorrow's work!"
Relief and uneasy muttering broke out among the workers at the same time.
"Hey, you think that old guy's gonna make it?"
"This'll be on the news for sure."
"Don't advertise that you work here. People'll give you hell."
Someone stuck a cigarette between trembling lips and fought the lighter. Someone else pulled out a phone and called family. Sweat shone on palms still gripping hard hats.
I stared at the empty scaffolding post. The snapped pieces of binding wire. The bloodstains on the ground. I could still hear the thrashing man's breathing in my ears.
I peeled off my work gloves, shoved them into a pocket, and checked my phone. The portal homepage was still plastered with CV-7 breaking news—headlines about mass infection fears across East Asia, spikes in unexplained violent incidents, one after another.
Stories I had written off as someone else's problem on a screen somewhere far away were, for the first time, connecting straight to my own life.
This was not a simple incident.
As the sun sank over Paju New Town, the back alleys behind the commercial buildings stood nearly empty, nothing like the crowded main roads. In daylight, delivery trucks came and went; at this hour, with shops winding down, there was only the whir of exhaust fans and the low thrum of refrigerator compressors.
Tall buildings on either side poured darkness into the narrow lane.
The man who had fled the construction site crouched beside a dumpster like an animal. Blood and grit caked his body. One arm hung at a grotesque angle, clearly broken. He did not seem to feel the pain.
Grrrr—
A low, threatening groan leaked from deep in his throat at uneven intervals.
A young man turned into the alley with earbuds in, eyes on his smartphone—a shortcut home. A few steps in, he spotted the crouched figure and jolted to a stop.
"Hey—are you okay? What happened?"
No answer. The man only lifted his head. Red eyes fixed on the youth.
The young man raised his phone to call 119.
"I'll get you an ambulance. Where are you hurt?"
He took one more step and reached out to touch him.
The crouched body uncoiled like a spring. In the blink of an eye he lunged, slamming into the young man and bearing him down.
"Ugh—!"
The scream was short. The man's teeth sank straight into the side of his neck.
Kurrk—
The wet, awful sound of tough flesh tearing open rolled down the alley. The smartphone slipped from the young man's hand and hit the asphalt.
Thuk—
Alone on the dark pavement, the screen glowed.
A moment later, the young man's limp body began to twitch—fine, convulsive tremors running through him.
It did not take long for one hunger-starved thing to become two.