Comrades
From the top of the building, I had taken stock of everything inside and out.
This wasn't something that would blow over if you just toughed it out for a day or two.
That meant the bone-deep cold, at least, was a problem I had to solve no matter what.
The chill of the concrete floor I'd used as a makeshift bed last night had soaked into every inch of me.
At this rate, I won't even make it through another night.
The building was clearly divided by structure. Floors one through three were sections where some of the interior finishing work had already begun. From the fourth floor up through the thirteenth—including the tenth, where I was—it was nothing but bare frame. No sashes, no interior materials installed at all.
Wide open on every side, without so much as a window frame to break the wind. The spot I was sitting in was little better than open ground with a roof just barely keeping off the rain.
If I wanted to get through tonight in one piece, I needed a proper place to sleep.
Survival required three things: insulation to cut the cold rising off the floor; plastic sheeting or plywood to block the wind driving in from every direction; and firewood to keep a frozen body warm.
All of it was material that would be lying around on the lower floors.
But I couldn't go down empty-handed. The way those things had moved in the dark was so far beyond anything human that the memory still sat wrong in my gut.
I needed a weapon, and a bag to haul materials back up in.
I started with the weapon.
I combed through the scrap piles. D10, D13, D16—the usual rebar diameters you found rolling around any construction site. Too thin and it would bend. Too thick and every swing would wreck my own arm before it wrecked anything else.
My hand went to a length of D13 deformed bar without thinking. Thirteen millimeters. A gauge my hands already knew from years of placing wall main bars and reinforcing beams. Thick enough to punch clean through a person, light enough that I could carry it all day without my arm giving out.
I checked it over—eyes first, then rolling it in my palm—for heavy rust or any bend in the shaft. I set it on the floor, pinned it with my foot, and measured the length. Using my shoulder height and arm reach as a rough guide, I scratched a mark with a nail at about a meter and a half.
Too long and I'd never get a clean swing in a tight room. Too short and I couldn't keep any distance.
For something I'd be using like a spear inside unfinished units with no window frames installed, this length was about right—short enough not to snag on door thresholds or temporary wall corners.
I pulled a grinder from the power tool case. Out of habit I checked the disc first—no cracks, flange nut snug. If a disc blew apart mid-cut, that would kill me faster than any infected.
I plugged into the temporary distribution box, wedged the rebar tight in a gap in the scrap pile, and stomped down once more to lock it in place. I clenched the cuffs of my gloves so my hands wouldn't slip free.
Wheeeeeeee—
The disc spun up to speed and spat out that sharp, screaming whine. A dangerous gamble—the noise could stir up everything on the floors below. I had to finish this fast.
I held my breath and set the blade to the cut line. A slight angle so the disc wouldn't bind, pressure controlled so nothing kicked back toward my body. Angles worn into muscle memory over years of work.
Tsssssssss—
Red sparks and a shower of metal dust. Ten seconds, maybe less. A dull clunk, and the bar parted.
Take your time and the disc bites, or the noise just drags on longer. I killed the power immediately and listened hard, straining for any reaction from below.
…Nothing. Lucky.
I put the grinder back on the cut end, this time standing the disc up to grind a point. No heavy pressure—short, scraping passes, again and again.
Tssik— tssik-tssik—
After a few brief bursts of friction, I had a decently sharp spear tip. At D13 thickness it was better for thrusting than for swinging from the side. I took a few practice cuts through the air. The heavy steel balance settled solidly into my palm. It was close to the length of the tying rods I used to shove slab rebar into place, and my hand adjusted almost at once.
"Not bad."
With the leftover bar I made a sidearm—a short steel spike cut to the length from my wrist to the tip of my middle finger. Gripped in a fist, about a handspan of point stuck out past the knuckles. I sharpened only the tip, then slotted it into a pouch on my tool belt like an arrow, oriented for a quick draw. If a fight went hand-to-hand, I could pull it with one hand and drive it straight into a side or the base of a neck. Iron kept on the body, ready to yank free and throw in a pinch.
Ready to search.
I settled my hard hat, slung the empty tool bag across my body, and cinched my coverall cuffs and pant legs tight with gaiters so nothing would snag. Iron spear in hand, I stopped in front of the scaffolding pipes.
All right. Let's go.
I took hold of a vertical pipe the way I always had and lowered myself down. Hands on the diagonal braces, feet finding the clamps where the pipes joined and stepping clear of them. My body still remembered the path.
The air changed the moment my boots hit the ninth floor. Only one story down from the tenth, but the smell was different—or maybe that was just my nerves. Through open unit doorways the interiors were empty shells. No sashes, no doors hung yet. Instead, exposed mechanical piping and conduit ran under the slab like a spiderweb. Nothing but the hollow moan of wind.
Cold air bleeding in through the scaffolding pushed dust and the copper stink of blood out of the vacant units toward the corridor.
Eighth floor. Seventh. Sixth. The farther down I went, the clearer the traces became.
On the eighth-floor corridor corner, a stack of plywood left standing from formwork stripping still waited in place, a crumpled work vest crumpled in front of it—someone's, abandoned. On the seventh, ductwork and pipe the mechanical crew had laid out blocked half the passage, blood spattered across the top in places. You could almost read the escape routes in the mess. The sixth-floor slab was littered with ownerless hard hats, a crushed coffee can, cigarette butts.
On any other day I would have walked over that scenery a dozen times without looking twice. Now it was just the past, already gone.
From somewhere overhead came a slow metallic scrape—scaffolding shifting in the wind, or loose material hung up and grinding. I couldn't tell which. Every small sound set my ears on edge.
…What was that?
No infected in sight. That didn't mean I could relax. With traces like these, something could come boiling out of any doorway at any second and it wouldn't even be surprising.
I passed the fourth floor and turned onto the stair toward the third. From here on, interior work had been underway. Gypsum board and stud lumber were piled in the corridor like small hills, and unfinished partition walls cut the path into a maze. Efficient staging if you were the one placing the material—now just obstacles that killed your sight lines. Far more blind corners. Something could come at me from behind and I wouldn't know until it was right on top of me.
I adjusted my grip on the spear and killed the sound of my footsteps.
I had just stepped into the third-floor corridor when it came.
Grrrrrr—
A low, wet sound from a unit at the far end of the hall. Like an animal working its throat. I dropped behind the nearest stack of lumber at once, held my breath, and watched the direction of the noise.
They were still in the building.
Keeping as low as I could, I checked the corridor end past the corner of the lumber pile. A little farther and I would have been close enough to hear the breathing itself. Back flat to the wall, I eased my weight toward the open unit the sound was coming from. Knees and the balls of my feet instead of full soles, picking footholds that wouldn't crunch on scraps of board.
Through the wide-open doorway, a single infected stood in the middle of the room staring up at the ceiling. Less like a person than a machine that had locked up mid-cycle and frozen there.
Why was it doing that?
I followed its gaze. A silver cable tray mounted to the ceiling came into view—the run for power and data lines. And lying on top of it was a person.
…?
At least three meters off the floor. High enough that no amount of thrashing would let those hands reach. The silhouette on the tray looked familiar. Old coveralls. A tool belt at the waist.
No way… Foreman Yeo Ildu?
Right then, mixed in with the infected's wet growling, a faint sound slipped through.
Drrrr— hooo—
Snoring.
He was alive.
I eased back without a sound, slipped out through a window onto the exterior scaffolding, and moved two bays over to another unit. I needed the noise to come from farther away if I was going to pull the thing for certain.
Back inside through the window gap, I slammed the rebar spear hard against the cable tray on the opposite wall.
KLAANG— klang— klang—!
Sharp metal rang through the room. The sound would draw the infected—and wake Yeo Ildu sleeping up on that tray.
A moment later, frantic footsteps tore down the corridor.
Grrrk— tadadadak—!
I was already back out the window onto the scaffolding, closing fast on the unit where the foreman was. When I looked in, Yeo Ildu had just jerked awake, a short wrecking bar in one hand leveled straight at me.
"The hell—?"
"It's me. Seongmin."
Recognition hit his face, then open surprise.
"You're alive?"
"Of course I am. This place isn't safe—we should get upstairs. One floor up and there's nothing infected."
Yeo Ildu nodded.
"Yeah. Let's do that."
Together we climbed the scaffolding to the fourth floor. Only once we had settled somewhere safe, with sunlight on us, did either of us let out a real breath.
"Foreman—were you up there the whole time?"
"No. At first I tried to get out of the site entirely. But outside was as bad as in here, if not worse. Roads blocked, people tearing each other apart."
"So you came back in."
"Yeah. Came back looking for somewhere to hole up, couldn't find a clean spot to settle, so I stretched out on the cable tray. Height was the one thing I figured I could trust."
He wasn't wrong. At that height, anyone who didn't know how to climb scaffolding wasn't getting up—and that included the infected.
"Why sleep right over one of them, though?"
"Ah—wasn't there at first. I dozed off, rolled over, kicked the tray by accident. It heard that and came up underneath." He shrugged. "Saw it couldn't climb, so I just left it. Hell, with it standing guard down there, nothing else was getting in either."
Falling asleep—snoring, even—with an infected parked directly below him. That was the kind of nerve you got out of the 707 Special Mission Group.
Just having someone across from me to trade words with made it a little easier to breathe.
"What about your family?"
"Called home. Said Yeongwol's still quiet so far. Mountain valley, maybe that's why. Call kept dropping, so I couldn't ask much. Voice sounded fine, though."
"Mine too… We're over toward the Taebaek Mountains. Nothing there yet either, they said. They're probably just watching the news and worrying."
The talk stalled for a moment. I had the sense we were both seeing the same faces at the same time—everyone else we knew.
"You try the other guys?" Yeo Ildu asked.
"A few phones are completely dead. A few ring out and nobody picks up. Foreman Kim and Park… you already know."
There was nothing more that needed saying.
"Yeah. Right now we stay alive first." He let out a short breath and went on.
"I'm setting up the tenth-floor work area as a base," I said. "I've already blocked every way up. But it's freezing at night—I need insulation and something to burn, at least."
"No sashes up there either. You don't button that place up right, you'll freeze solid. All right—grab what insulation we need and we'll haul it up together. Better to pull everything scattered around into one place anyway."
Yeo Ildu and I each slung three sheets of pink XPS insulation across our backs. Light, but so bulky it made climbing the scaffolding a clumsy mess.
We reached the ninth floor. The decking had been stripped out here, and even the horizontal pipes were gone—a blank vertical wall of more than three meters between us and the tenth.
I set the insulation down on what decking remained.
"Hang on a second, Foreman. I'll go up and drop a plank down for you."
I hugged the thin vertical pipe tight and hauled myself up on arm and leg strength alone. At the top I caught the horizontal pipe three meters up, hooked an elbow over it, got my torso across, then dragged my knees up one after the other.
On the tenth, I carefully lowered one of the deck planks I'd pulled up the day before, angling it so it wouldn't bang, setting one end down on the ninth-floor level first.
Yeo Ildu watched, then spoke.
"You really locked it down, huh? Anybody who can't climb scaffolding is never getting up here."
Once he was on the tenth, he took in the stairwell barricade I'd built and the plastic she'd temporary-taped over the window openings. He nodded slowly.
"Yeah. Staying here's the right call."
He looked around, then drifted toward the pile of spare scaffolding pipe and started poking through it like he was hunting for something. I already knew what he wanted. I set the cooler I'd stashed the day before down in front of him.
"Foreman—this what you're looking for?"
"Heh. Sharp kid."
I pulled out the snacks I'd scavenged from the other crews' areas and set those beside it too.
"Turned over everything from the fourth floor to the thirteenth for this. We need a real plan before we burn through it all."
Yeo Ildu picked up a Choco Pie.
"Yeah. From what I caught on the news last night, this isn't blowing over in a day or two. We dig in proper. First things first—let's find something we can build a fire with."