The Son Who Came for His Father
"Open the door!"
"It's Go Jeong-nam."
"I'm Choi Ui-su."
"I'm Kim Hui-yeong."
"I'm Kang Su-ah. I'm a nursing assistant."
Among the survivors stating their names one by one, Choi Ui-su and Kim Hui-yeong were the doctor couple. Choi Ui-su, who looked to be in his mid-50s, and Kim Hui-yeong, who seemed a few years younger, stood close together, looking at Jun-ho with expressions of mixed expectation and anxiety. Go Jeong-nam, a stern-looking man who appeared well over 70, watched Jun-ho with a subtle sense of wariness and fear. Kang Su-ah, around Jun-ho's age, couldn't hide her terror as she faced him.
Including Lee Jae-seok, the people who had been trapped in Room 203 for over two weeks were beyond disheveled; they looked like homeless people. Furthermore, the stench was unbearable. They had been eating, sleeping, and even relieving themselves in that room. The four elderly people who had originally lived there, including Go Jeong-nam, were in the same state. No, it was three elderly people now. One had died this morning.
"He was so healthy... but we couldn't drink much water, and we only ate one thing a day, like crackers or raw ramen... *sob*..."
Kang Su-ah, the nursing assistant with a somewhat dim-witted look, teared up while looking at the corpse of the elderly person whose face was covered with a towel. The two other elderly people, excluding Go Jeong-nam, were just wheezing with labored breaths, seemingly lacking the strength to move. Even that was only because they had managed to drink water mixed with sugar brought from the kitchen.
"Nutritional status is a problem, but the necrosis and bedsores are the real crisis. I asked Mr. Jae-seok to bring some clean water and towels while he was at the kitchen, but..."
There was water in the kitchen, but no clean towels. Unlike nursing hospitals, this nursing home was for elderly people without major illnesses, but given their age, everyone had one or two minor ailments. On top of that, they had been injured while fleeing during the chaos, and because they hadn't received proper treatment, the wounds had festered.
They had likely held on this long thanks to the two people in front of them, Choi Ui-su and Kim Hui-yeong. Jun-ho took out two pouches attached to his tactical belt and handed them to Kim Hui-yeong.
"This is an IFAK (Individual First Aid Kit). It contains alcohol swabs, a tourniquet, and hemostatic gauze. Use them for the urgent cases. This is emergency food; you can dissolve it in water and feed it to them. Be careful, it's high-calorie."
"Ah...! Th-thank you. Thank you so much. Mr. Jae-seok, Ms. Su-ah. Help me."
"Yes, Doctor."
"Yes, yes!"
Lee Jae-seok and Kang Su-ah, who had grabbed the emergency food pouch, rushed toward the two elderly people, following Kim Hui-yeong, who was holding the first aid kit.
"Okay, carefully, carefully... Yes, that's it."
Kim Hui-yeong, who looked to be around 50, received assistance from the two and laid the elderly person on their side with practiced movements, then rolled up their clothes. She dumped the contents of the first aid kit, put on sterile gloves without hesitation, opened the saline ampoules, and applied them to the gauze, cleaning the bedsores quickly but meticulously.
"If we had waited any longer, it would have progressed to stage 3. *Haa*... Thank goodness, really. Prepare the dressing, Ms. Su-ah."
"Yes."
Jun-ho, who had looked away from Kim Hui-yeong applying ointment to the wounds, looked at Choi Ui-su, who had a stiff expression, and Go Jeong-nam, the only 70-year-old in decent condition, and said,
"We don't have time, so I'll be blunt. I've taken care of the things in the yard and the parking lot. All that's left is what's inside this building."
"Things...? Did you just say 'things'?"
Go Jeong-nam frowned. Jun-ho glanced at him and said in a cold voice,
"Then, do those look like people to you?"
"......!"
"Have you seen a person tearing into another person? Even a living person? Those are not people. Mr. Choi Ui-su, you're a doctor, right?"
"...Yes."
"From a medical standpoint, can you call those people? Those things with a body temperature of 28 degrees, that eat people, and whose heart rate is twice as slow as a human's in their normal state?"
"...No."
Choi Ui-su continued with an even stiffer face,
"They cannot be considered human. Those... should be called a new species."
Jun-ho spoke again to Go Jeong-nam, who had his eyes widened in shock,
"I know you've grown attached while living here together, but don't ever think of them as people again. The people you knew are all already dead. Those are monsters newly created by a virus entering the bodies of the dead."
"...*Ahem*."
Though his personality seemed hot-tempered, Go Jeong-nam seemed to have good judgment, as he avoided Jun-ho's gaze with a reddened face. Jun-ho checked his wristwatch and immediately continued,
"I'm busy, so I'll finish the explanation. First..."
That was when it happened.
"......!?"
Jun-ho, eyes wide at the successive communications, quickly approached the window.
"Wh-what is it?"
"Why are you doing that?"
The people were surprised by his sudden action, but Jun-ho didn't care; he pulled the curtain back slightly and looked at the road leading to the nursing home. Indeed, a vehicle with its headlights on was speeding along the cement concrete road in the distance.
* * *
"Son of a bitch..."
A curse slipped out from between Jun-ho's clenched teeth. The car coming this way wasn't the problem. The problem was the zombies following behind it like a herd of herbivores on the savanna.
"Yun Yeong-su! Calculate the distance between that damn car and B with the drone. Jun-hyeok, shoot every single one of those things near the nursing home's main gate from where you are. Don't worry about precision, just fire. If you run out of ammo, move to Point Two, switch weapons, and continue firing."
"Roger!"
"Got it, Hyung! Be careful!"
Jun-ho finished the communication and turned around.
"How do I get to the roof?"
"Th-the roof? Go out here and to the left... but there are, uh, those things outside..."
"Once I go out, lock the door and don't come out. If I knock twice, open it."
"Ah, no..."
Jun-ho didn't even wait for an answer and quickly went to the door. He swiftly took out his mini-drone and controller, opened the door slightly, and launched the drone. With a high-pitched whine, the drone slipped out the door, rose high in the hallway, and scanned left and right.
"Four on the right, three on the left."
Having confirmed the zombies in the hallway, Jun-ho set the drone to slow auto-flight toward the stairs and secured the small controller to the reinforced plastic mount on his tactical vest.
"Close the door as soon as I go out."
"Ah...!"
"No, wait..."
Before the people could say anything, Jun-ho lowered his thermal imaging scope, opened the door halfway, and turned his body to the right.
Tak! Tak! Tak! Tak!
Even though he was using a silencer and subsonic rounds, the sound carried well in a building like this. The moment the gunshot noise rang out, the zombies on the left whipped their heads around. Jun-ho, having instantly buried a subsonic round into the head of a zombie on the right, turned his body 90 degrees and continued firing.
Tak! Tak! Tak!
The zombies that had taken a couple of steps fell with quite a loud thud.
"Tsk. I told you to close the door."
Jun-ho, who had pushed the still-open Room 203 door shut himself, moved toward the central staircase in a tactical walk, keeping his KP9 close to his body and the muzzle slightly down in a Low Ready position, ready to aim quickly at any moment.
When he had moved a few meters, the door to the room at the very end opened, and... Grrr... three zombies came toward him, waving their arms wildly.
Tak! Tak! Tak!
Because they were elderly, their speed was slow, so Jun-ho handled them calmly.
Whirrr... The mini-drone that had departed first at a slow speed was flying about 2 meters ahead of Jun-ho. As the drone reached the stairs, Jun-ho glanced down at the LCD screen of the controller secured to his tactical mount. As expected, hearing the sound of zombies being shot and falling in the quiet hallway, the things on the floor below were climbing the stairs quickly—no, at a normal speed. Because they were all elderly people.
"*Hoo*..."
Jun-ho, catching his breath lightly, entered the stairwell using a pie slicing technique and granted eternal rest to those climbing the stairs by burying subsonic rounds into their heads. But there was no time to pray for their souls.
Jun-ho swiftly retrieved the mini-drone, put the empty magazine into his pouch, swapped in a new one, and bounded up the stairs three or four steps at a time.
* * *
Having reached the roof less than 30 seconds after leaving Room 203, Jun-ho locked the roof door, ran to the railing overlooking the paved road, and sent a communication.
"Yeong-su, distance?"
"It's staying at about 70, 80 meters! The road is narrow and winding, so I guess the car can't keep up its speed for long!"
"But Boss, this is a bit strange. The zombies that were following the car from far away suddenly gave up and aren't following anymore."
"That's normal. Anyway, how many are following right now?"
"Over a hundred? If you combine them with the ones that were on the road in front of the nursing home, it'll be about 200."
"Estimated time of arrival?"
"Uh... about 20 seconds? They'll arrive within that time!"
"Jun-hyeok, first clear out as many as you can near the nursing home's main gate and on the road. After that, move to Point Two and wait for further orders."
"Okay."
Having given the orders, Jun-ho switched his digital monocular to thermal mode and looked at the car visible in the distance. '240, 230.' And the distance between that insane car and the herd of zombies chasing it was about 100 meters. Jun-ho set the KP9 aside, pulled the AR15 from his back, rested it on the roof railing, and took out all four 30-round magazines, placing them on the railing. Soon, the IR laser pointer attached to the AR15 stretched out through the rain that had subsided slightly. Jun-ho estimated the point where the laser wouldn't be distorted, set his aim further out, and waited for the car to pass.
'Should I shoot the car?'
He had that thought for a moment, but Jun-ho shook his head internally. It was already too late. All the zombies in the vicinity would have popped out, and whether he shot that car or not, it was guaranteed to become a zombie field. Above all, it was a rainy night, so long-distance shooting conditions were terrible. To hit the tires or the occupants of a fast-moving car, he would have to avoid obstacles like houses, walls, and trees, and even calculate for ballistic drop; it was never an easy task, even for Jun-ho.
"Boss, there are two people in the car! A man in the driver's seat, a woman in the passenger seat. They're just normal people."
Vroom!
With a roar of the exhaust, the car passed between the houses below the laser aim point in an instant. And... Grawwwr...! The terrible wailing sound emitted by the following zombies in unison grew closer. Even if neighborhood dogs, not wolves, howled all at once, one would naturally feel intimidated, but the wailing sound made by monsters that tore people apart and ate them was chilling to the bone. Perhaps all the survivors in Gahyeon-ri who heard that were trembling and huddled inside their homes. However, Jun-ho, the 'only' person who had heard that roar countless times, was not.
'Ballistic drop is approximately 1.5 meters...'
He might not be able to hit the fast-moving car, but the relatively slow zombies were certainly shootable.
"*Hoo*..."
Jun-ho, catching his breath lightly, fired at the zombies rushing in a swarm under the flickering streetlights in the distance.
Pang! Pang! Pang! Pang...!
The subsonic rounds that pierced through the pouring rain hit the bodies of the zombies running in the lead ranks. Some were lucky enough to be hit in the head and die instantly, but most were hit in the torso or lower body. However, the effect was quite significant. They didn't die, but several fell forward at the speed they were running due to the impact of the bullets, and the ones behind them, running mindlessly like crazy, tripped over their fallen kin and tumbled over in a pile. Moreover, because it was a narrow paved road common in the countryside, the lead and the rear were cut off in an instant. Jun-ho, having succeeded in Bottleneck control, didn't miss the gap and quickly fired again.
Vroom...!
Thanks to the sound of the car, the gunshots became even less audible, and as the magazine emptied in an instant, another 20 or so died instantly or fell. Jun-ho swapped magazines again and this time aimed and fired at the zombies that had entered the range where the laser pointer reached without distortion.
Vroom! Thud! Thud! Thud!
The sound of the gunshots was completely buried by the engine noise of the car speeding toward the road just below the nursing home and the collision sounds of the zombies that had been roaming there hitting the vehicle. At the same time, the zombies that were all hit in the head by bullets had their heads snap back and their necks twist due to the inertia of running at full speed, and they flew off, rotating their bodies in that direction. Some fell backward, their skulls cracking once more.
Pang! Pang! Pang...!
90 meters, 80 meters, 70 meters. The 20 or so zombies that had been running for about 50 meters all fell in about 10 seconds. However, those 10 seconds were enough time for the ones behind, who had tripped over their kin, to get back up and run.
Grawwwr!!!
At that moment, which was desperate for someone as the things completely covering the narrow paved road entered within 70 to 80 meters of the nursing home's main gate, Jun-ho switched his weapon to the KP9 he had placed beside him, pulled the trigger, and raised his voice.
"Now!"
Mindless charge, mindless fire. Jun-hyeok, who had been waiting at Point Two, and Jun-ho on the roof poured bullets simultaneously at the things swarming in like cockroaches. But at that moment.
Pang! Pang! Pang!
"Open the door! Open the door! Father! It's me, Seok-jin! Father! Mr. Go Jeong-nam!"
The man in the driver's seat of the car that had pulled up in front of the nursing home's main gate—a madman, or rather, a devoted son who had risked his life in the apocalypse to find his parents—honked his horn and shouted at the top of his lungs.
However.
"That crazy bastard..."
He might have been the most devoted son in the world to some, but to Jun-ho, who was firing like a madman amidst the thick smell of gunpowder, he was just a villain.