The Shelter's First Night
"Because I've already been through it."
Inside the electric truck, illuminated by the warm glow of an LED light, Choi Jung-woo swallowed hard. He was currently being transported in the cargo bed of an electric truck—a vehicle commonly used for deliveries, lacking even windows and furnished with only a few makeshift seats.
"Daddy, I want to see the puppy."
"Yeah, we'll be able to see the puppy in a little while. Our Ji-woo can hold on a bit longer, right?"
"Yeah. I can hold on. Hehe, I want to see the puppy soon. Mommy needs to get better quickly too, so Mommy, the puppy, and I can all play together."
"Y-yeah..."
Choi Jung-woo gritted his teeth as he wiped the face of his five-year-old daughter, who was smiling while clutching her favorite Koromi bag to her chest. His wife... she had turned into a monster. Today was supposed to be the day the whole family went to Everworld for the holiday. His wife, insisting that gimbap made in advance and kept in the fridge wouldn't taste good, had woken up at dawn to prepare it. She had gone to the supermarket in front of their house because she forgot the crab sticks, and she had returned 'bitten.'
He couldn't bear to show his daughter her mother with her arm torn off in agony. He had lied, telling her that Mommy was just a little sick, and had tried to provide simple first aid before calling an ambulance. But that was when he realized something was wrong; both 119 and 112 only played automated messages saying call volume was too high. Just then, his wife, her eyes turned a milky white, had lunged at him to attack. After barely managing to fend her off, she had hit her head on the corner of the bed during the struggle and stopped moving. In the midst of his shock and confusion, his young daughter had kept knocking on the door. So, he had grabbed his daughter, who was whining while dragging her favorite character bag, and left the house to find a police substation...
"Hoo..."
Finally letting out a long sigh, Choi Jung-woo pulled his young daughter deeper into his arms. One of Choi Jung-woo's strengths was his ability to adapt quickly to reality. Even though he was filled with heart-wrenching sadness, fear, and confusion, he knew he couldn't collapse—not when he had to be a father for Ji-woo.
At that moment, Choi Jung-woo's eyes met those of Kim Ha-yun, who was sitting across from him with her younger brother. She was the neighbor's girl he had happened to meet in front of his chaotic home and brought along. Choi Jung-woo forced a smile and said, "Ha-yun, are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere? What about Jun-seo?"
"Yes, Jun-seo and I are both fine. But, Mr. Jung-woo... w-will our grandmother... be okay? She'll be okay, right?"
Seeing the expression of the middle school girl with bobbed hair, her eyes brimming with tears, Choi Jung-woo’s forced smile froze. Kim Ha-yun, a second-year middle schooler, and Kim Jun-seo, a first-grader, were siblings from a single-parent household who lived in the same public housing complex. Because there was only a two-year age gap between Kim Jun-seo and Choi Jung-woo’s daughter, Choi Ji-woo, the neighbors had been quite close. Their guardian and grandmother, Yang Myeong-suk, had supported the three of them by working as a silver care assistant and part-time kitchen helper at a nursing home in Gahyeon-ri. Today, unfortunately, was a day she had to do both, so she had left for the nursing home early in the morning.
"Grandma will be fine. Don't worry too much... Jun-seo? Are you okay?"
"I'm okay too."
Kim Jun-seo nodded, holding his sister's hand with one hand and clutching the water bottle given to him by the strange, heavily armed man from earlier with the other. Suddenly, Choi Jung-woo shivered as he remembered the man who had introduced himself as 'Lee Jun-ho.'
'Firing a gun openly in this country? And that gun...'
It wasn't the K2, the standard-issue rifle of the South Korean military. Was it an M16A2? A carbine? He didn't know the exact name, but it looked remarkably similar to the ones special forces used in movies and TV shows. Above all, Lee Jun-ho, his savior, didn't just have one gun. He had another slightly smaller rifle, a long air rifle, and even a pistol holstered on his tactical vest. All of them were equipped with suppressors, scopes, and various other attachments.
'Who is this guy? And this truck... where did it come from, and where is it going?'
A young man wearing a plastic mask and gear similar to Lee Jun-ho's, and a middle-aged man with a stubborn-looking expression had arrived late, driving two delivery trucks along with another man who wore a quarantine mask but couldn't hide his youth. And that was when Lee Jun-ho had made his offer.
- Do you want to go back home? Or would you rather ride in this truck and go to a safe place for now?
He had wanted to choose the latter without a second thought, but Lee Jun-ho had added, - If you go, you might have to stay locked up for at least two weeks, maybe longer. But you will get three meals a day and water. You'll be able to get some fresh air for 30 minutes every morning and afternoon.
His extremely firm and cold attitude had frightened Choi Jung-woo. However, he decided to trust Lee Jun-ho, who hadn't just saved them but had also offered them a 'choice' instead of threatening them, despite possessing guns that smelled of gunpowder. The Kim siblings, who were minors with nowhere to go and a desperate need to find their grandmother again, had no other choice.
'Anyway, they don't seem like bad people, but...'
Clunk.
The truck, which had been driving for about 20 minutes, stopped slowly with a few vibrations. A moment later, the door opened.
"Get out."
At the words of the young man in the plastic mask, Choi Jung-woo, who had stepped out of the truck while holding his daughter, widened his eyes.
"······!?"
With a fairly large open space in the middle, standard-sized containers were packed tightly together, forming a rectangular living area. Even at a glance, there were over ten containers, all covered with mottled tarps.
'How did the car get in here...?'
Choi Jung-woo was confused. This small container village, or living area, was perfectly blocked off on all sides. There were no underground passages, and literally, unless a car could fly, there was no way in or out.
"Mr. Choi Jung-woo."
"Yes? Oh, yes!"
To the startled Choi Jung-woo, Jun-hyeok, who was wearing a tactical mask under his ballistic helmet, said, "Please go into this container with your daughter."
"Y-yes, yes..."
He didn't feel the same 'overwhelming pressure' he felt from Lee Jun-ho, who had saved them, but Choi Jung-woo hurried to the container he was directed to, holding his daughter.
"Mister, Mister."
Just then, Choi Ji-woo spoke up. "Where's the puppy? When is the puppy coming?"
"...Yeah, you'll be able to see the puppy later. In the evening."
"I want to see it now... but okay."
"You're a good girl."
Jun-hyeok, his eyes curving into crescents above his mask, said to Choi Jung-woo, "There's simple food, bottled water, and emergency medicine inside. There's also a TV. There aren't many channels broadcasting yet, but anyway, you won't have any trouble staying here with your child."
"Yes, yes. Th-thank you."
"Don't mention it. Now, Kim Ha-yun, Kim Jun-seo?"
"Y-yes..."
As the siblings, terrified and cowed, walked over, Jun-hyeok couldn't help but look at them with pity. But he quickly regained his composure and said in a forced, deep voice, "You two go in there. There's water and food. There's a bathroom, too."
"Yes, thank you."
"Th-thank you."
When Kim Ha-yun nudged him, Kim Jun-seo placed his hand on his belly and bowed. "...Right. Go inside and get some rest."
Choi Jung-woo’s phone had already been confiscated, and Kim Ha-yun had lost hers while running away. Of course, even if they had hidden one somewhere, they would be caught immediately. Because inside these containers, which had been slightly modified from what the construction workers used during the shelter's construction, tiny cameras and microphones were hidden. Invasion of privacy? Illegal filming? In the world that would soon cease to exist, there would be no one to judge or punish such things.
* * *
Under the perfect surveillance support of drones operated by Yun Yeong-su and the shelter's AI computing system, 'Akina,' Jun-ho, along with Baek Ha-il and his son, moved all the bodies of the zombies they had killed today inside the tunnel. While Baek Ha-il endured it well, Baek Su-ho, seeing the zombie corpses with their heads smashed into pulp, took off his mask and vomited several times. Yet, even while crying and snotting, he managed not to give up on the work.
The three of them stacked the zombie corpses neatly in the cargo bed of the electric truck lined with waterproof plastic, covered them, and returned to the shelter. They brought them to a small dual-combustion incinerator installed near the entrance of the walking trail and were in the middle of burning all the bodies.
"I never imagined the incinerator's first use would be burning corpses..."
Having experienced all sorts of hardships on construction sites and even having seen bodies of workers who died in industrial accidents, Baek Ha-il muttered in a low voice, his face noticeably pale.
"We might have to do this often. Whether it's a person or a zombie, you should burn bodies killed by firearms if possible."
"Yeah, I know that too. That way, no traces are left."
Right now, the infection had just begun and was in full swing, so it was chaos itself, but in about two or three weeks, those who were meant to live would live, those meant to die would die, and those meant to mutate would mutate. And by then, survivors who had lost electricity and run out of water and food would start coming out one by one. If left alone, there was a high probability that someone would discover the zombie corpses Jun-ho had killed today.
"By the way, did you know that friend and his son from before?"
"No. I only know the father, Choi Jung-woo. No, wait. It's more accurate to say I've... seen him."
"Seen him?"
"Yes. I saw him dead alone in that tunnel earlier."
"······!"
To the startled Baek Ha-il, Jun-ho talked about the time he discovered Choi Jung-woo's corpse while staying at the 'Sky Forest Campsite' before his regression. "...That's how it happened."
"Ah, so that's why you ran out so urgently without asking any questions."
"Yes. I don't remember everything, but he had a certification for energy management or something, and a forklift license, and a few others. He seemed like a man who lived very diligently. I thought if he hadn't died early and had joined some survivor group, he would have been treated quite well."
"If he's an energy management technician, that's solar and boiler work. Plus a forklift, he'd be quite useful."
"Yes. For now, I'm going to keep him there while gauging his character. No matter how much skill someone has, if they're going to cause trouble, I have to let them go. That's why I deliberately made them take a winding path so they wouldn't know the location."
Everything—having them ride in an electric truck with no windows, having Jun-hyeok drive back and forth from end to end twice, and even going up to the shelter site, circling once, and coming back down—was all to ensure they wouldn't know the exact location. Furthermore, from the container village where Choi Jung-woo and his group were currently staying, they couldn't even see the shelter, let alone approach it. In other words, Choi Jung-woo would currently believe he was in a completely different area, quite far from Gahyeon-ri.
"I think I'll be able to make a judgment within a week at the shortest, or two weeks at the longest. But since he's a father, he'll probably cooperate actively."
Jun-ho recalled that all parents who had young children and had survived the apocalypse with them were like that. "That's probably right. And since I watched on CCTV, that friend Choi Jung-woo, he kept looking after other people's children even while running away. I think his basic character is decent enough."
"Yes, I think so too for now."
"Right. Anyway, I'll leave that matter to your judgment. But Ho-ya, did you have any other calculations in mind when you went to save them?"
"Did you notice?"
Baek Ha-il chuckled and nodded. "It's been over two years since I've known you. It's obvious. You did that to reassure the boss of the Sky Forest and our kids, right?"
"Yes. But this time, it was only because I happened to know Choi Jung-woo was a technician... that won't happen again. From now on, you won't be able to check CCTV in the living room or the rooms."
"That's right. You can tell the situation outside just by watching the TV news. It's probably better if only you and Yeong-su check that CCTV."
Watching the raw, unrefined destruction of the world in real-time was terrible for mental health. Moreover, while Jun-ho was okay because he had already experienced it once, others—especially Baek Su-ah, who had pretended to be strong while doing all the housework in place of her mother since she was young, but was actually compassionate and fragile—could have their mental state shattered.
"I only showed it today to let them know the reality. For the time being, everyone will have to do their best to maintain their mental state. You're not doing well right now either, Hyung-nim."
"...If you see something like that and are okay, are you even human? Ah, I'm not saying this to you, Ho-ya."
"Yes, I know. I've already... been through it once."
At Jun-ho's calm attitude, Baek Ha-il's gaze turned sympathetic. It was only the first day, and the apocalypse hadn't even truly begun, yet even he felt like vomiting and losing his mind from time to time. But this hell... between someone experiencing it for the first time and someone experiencing it for the second, who could truly say who had it better? Was it really more painful to experience it for the first time, or was it easier to endure the second time? Baek Ha-il thought the latter would probably be even harder. Yet, Jun-ho, the young man before him who was now no different from a younger brother with a large age gap... had come this far, doing everything he could to confront this hell without avoiding it. Without ever showing a single sign of weakness to anyone.
Baek Ha-il, who found Jun-ho newly awe-inspiring and even felt a small touch of emotion, patted Jun-ho on the shoulder. "Anyway, I'll only trust and follow you. So Ho-ya, don't try to do everything alone, and leave what you need to leave to me."
Only then did Jun-ho offer a faint smile and say, "Yes, Hyung-nim. Then, in that sense, I have something for you to take care of starting today."
"What is it? Just say it."
"We need to install the air rifle turret in the shelter now."
"Ah. That's right."
"And."
"What else is there?"
"Of course."
Jun-ho pointed to the mountain in front, where the valley water flowed, far away. "We need to build guard posts and bunkers there, and install CCTV, repeaters, and amplifiers."
Until now, he hadn't executed it for fear of being discovered by someone, but now he had to. Only then could he frequently scout the entire Gahyeon-ri area using drones to obtain information as quickly as possible, and only then could he plan to bring in the 'doctor couple' he had originally planned to have join the shelter first, excluding the initial members.