Now I Understand Everything
Thud! Thud! Thud! Unlike the other zombies, Yang Myeong-suk was just standing there with her mouth agape, repeatedly slamming her face against the door. Occasionally, she would shuffle backward a few steps before lunging forward again, as if trying to express an intent to break through. Her left leg was torn away below the thigh, and her arms hung limp, likely broken, rendering them useless for applying any force.
“……”
“We were trying to evacuate the residents from this living area to the courtyard when it happened. We managed to save three people, but… they were bitten.”
Jun-ho nodded at Choi Ui-su’s explanation.
“I see.”
“But why Yang Myeong-suk?”
“Sigh…” Jun-ho let out a low sigh before answering. “There are two young siblings where I live. Yang Myeong-suk is their grandmother. She’s their only guardian. They’re a grandparent-headed household.”
“Ah…” Though there wasn’t a single soul in this world without a tragic story, Kim Hui-yeong, a woman who was the quintessential type to be strong against the strong and weak against the weak, and who possessed a deep well of compassion, let out a pained sound.
“So, what are you going to do?”
“This isn’t something I can decide on my own.”
Having prepared for every scenario—whether Yang Myeong-suk was alive, dead, or turned—Jun-ho immediately sent a transmission.
“Yeong-su.”
- Yes, Boss.
“Are the kids downstairs asleep? Can you check the CCTV?”
- Just a second. Uh… the elementary schooler is asleep, but the middle schooler is awake.
Knowing that Jun-ho had gone to the Hanalreum Nursing Home today, it seemed she was staying awake, waiting for news.
“Then… tell Baek Ha-il for me. Have him take a tablet and a headset and bring them to her. And can you link my mini-drone feed to that?”
- I could, but the image quality is pretty bad. I’d rather send one of our drones. It’s small and quiet, so the zombies won’t even hear it. Go up to the rooftop when I send the signal.
“Got it.”
About five minutes later, a transmission came from Yun Yeong-su. Jun-ho went up to the roof, retrieved one of the small drones operated by the shelter, and headed back down. Standing in front of the door to Room 207 with the drone, configured to operate only its camera, Jun-ho spoke.
“What about Baek Ha-il?”
- It’s me. I’m about to go in now.
“Yes, sir. I’m counting on you.”
- Right.
A moment later.
- H-hello? Mister Jun-ho?
“Ha-yun.”
- Yes, yes. P-please tell me. But, are you hurt anywhere?
“No, I’m fine.”
After watching her for quite some time, Jun-ho knew Kim Ha-yun was kind and diligent. During the day, she would find whatever work she could do, and without a hint of annoyance, she looked after her younger brother and Choi Jung-woo’s daughter. She even found time to teach them their studies. Though Jun-ho had no connection to teenagers of that age, he could tell that Kim Ha-yun was not like the kids these days. But now, Jun-ho had to tell that kind girl a cruel truth.
“Ha-yun, listen to me carefully.”
- Yes, yes. Mister…
“I found your grandmother.”
- Ah! R-really!? You found our grandmother? Grandmother, where is our grandmother?
“Ha-yun.”
- Can’t you show me our grandmother? Is she hurt anywhere? She’s okay, right? Yes?
“Ha-yun. Grandmother… she has changed.”
- …What?
“She has changed, just like those things. So.”
- No!!!
Kim Ha-yun screamed, a sound so loud it startled Jun-ho.
- No! That can’t be! Y-you saw wrong, didn’t you? Right? Our grandmother…
Jun-ho held the drone up in front of the door to Room 207. The drone camera captured Yang Myeong-suk’s face, her chin bloodied, mouth snapping open and shut as she slammed her head against the door.
- Ah, ah…
“……”
- No. G-grandmother… Aaaaaah!
Kim Ha-yun’s sobbing filled the headset. Jun-ho stood perfectly still, listening to the girl who had been left alone with her young brother in this harsh, cruel, apocalyptic world. He could not offer comfort, nor should he. As the master of the shelter and an adult, Jun-ho had to show her the reality and present a path to overcome it. Even if Kim Ha-yun was still young, she had to do it to look after her even younger brother, Kim Jun-seo. She had to prepare to become an ‘adult.’ Because that was what the apocalypse demanded.
“Ha-yun, listen to me.”
- Sob… sob…
“Now you have to decide. What to do about your grandmother.”
- W-what? Sob… what should I do?
She asked back, her voice choked with tears.
“First, leave her as she is. Second, grant your grandmother peace.”
- P-peace?
She seemed not to understand for a moment, but then she raised her voice.
- No! Don’t kill our grandmother, Mister! I’ll do whatever you say. Please, don’t kill our grandmother, Mister Jun-ho. Sob…
“Pull yourself together, Kim Ha-yun.”
- Sob.
At Jun-ho’s cold voice, her sobbing subsided.
“Your grandmother, Yang Myeong-suk, has already passed away. That thing is not your grandmother. It is a monster that has taken over your dead grandmother’s body.”
- Sob… sob.
“So you must decide. Leave her as she is, or grant your grandmother true peace.”
- Sob, sob. Mister.
Kim Ha-yun, forcing herself to swallow her sobs, called out to Jun-ho and continued.
- O-our grandmother’s face… sob… please show me one more time. Just, just once. Please?
“Okay.”
Jun-ho held the drone up to the door again. He watched Yang Myeong-suk’s face, her expression blank, mouth opening and closing as if trying to bite through a small, invisible window.
- Grandmother… sob, sob!
After crying for a brief moment, Kim Ha-yun spoke.
- M-Mister Jun-ho. Our grandmother… I will…
“……Okay. Yes, I understand.”
Listening to Kim Ha-yun’s voice, now mixed with the sound of her sniffling, Jun-ho nodded several times.
***
Strangely enough, Go Seok-jin was good at his job. Not just good, but incredibly so. In less than an hour, he and Lee Jae-seok had gathered all the corpses inside and outside the nursing home building into a pile in the courtyard. He even managed to recover over 60 percent of the shell casings, a feat in itself. Watching him apologize profusely for not finding the rest, saying he would find them all once it got brighter, was a bit pitiful, but Jun-ho was inwardly impressed by how many he had found in the dark.
“He’s good at following orders, that one. It’s just that whenever he tries to think for himself, he messes it up.”
Thanks to Go Jeong-nam’s sigh-filled grumbling, Jun-ho understood Go Seok-jin’s style. Apparently, the reason Go Seok-jin had stayed in the military so long was because he was so good at ‘following orders.’ In the army, that made him an A-class soldier. His seniors, platoon leaders, and even the administrative officers had praised him, saying the military was his true calling. That was why he had applied to become an NCO, and even when he was a Staff Sergeant, he was known in other companies as a highly capable soldier. Staff Sergeants usually only did what their superiors—the company commanders and administrative officers—told them to do.
But after he was promoted to Sergeant First Class, as time passed and he became older and more experienced than the platoon leaders, he had to become a leader who made his own decisions. That was when his hidden flaws were revealed, and after failing to be promoted to Master Sergeant several times, he was eventually discharged.
“Good work. Get some rest now.”
“Ah, yes, sir.”
Go Seok-jin, drenched in sweat, sat down in a corner of the courtyard and gulped down the water his wife brought him. Come to think of it, his wife looked much younger than him, which felt a bit strange. ‘To think he’s only thirty-four with that face…’ He had assumed Go Seok-jin was well over forty, but in reality, he was nearly ten years younger. While most long-serving NCOs looked older than their age, Go Seok-jin’s case was particularly severe. Plus, he was slightly balding.
“Elder, Doctor.”
At Jun-ho’s call, Go Jeong-nam and Choi Ui-su nodded and stepped forward. As representatives of the Hanalreum Nursing Home, the two of them had decided to send the dead to their true rest.
Click.
The two men, having lit the gasoline-soaked wooden beams, exchanged a firm look before simultaneously tossing them onto the pile of corpses.
Whoosh!
Flames erupted over the bodies, which had already been doused in fuel and surrounded by firewood. The fire gently embraced the bodies of those who had died twice, radiating the heat of their lingering resentment into the air. Zombies might be drawn to the flames, but there was no need to worry. They had already cleared the corpses and built barricades up to the corner where the road turned away from the nursing home entrance. Working without making much noise had been tricky, but thanks to Go Seok-jin’s A-class manual labor skills and Jun-ho’s superhuman strength, it had gone more smoothly than expected. Even if zombies did swarm, they would be stuck outside the barricades. Eventually, they would either return to where they came from or wander the perimeter, serving their purpose as a ‘biological alarm system’ for the nursing home.
Whoosh…
The flames burned the dead, heating up the summer night that had only just cooled down after the typhoon.
***
August 25, 2024, 06:40 AM, Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province.
“Huff…! Huff…! Huff…!”
Choi Hyun-woo ran like a madman. About thirty meters behind him, the zombies that had been feasting on a few corpses until a moment ago were chasing him, their arms flailing wildly. Though he was large, Choi Hyun-woo had great athletic ability, capable of running 100 meters in 14 seconds. He sprinted back the way he came and vaulted over the low wall of a villa. He ran quickly along the side of the building, glanced back, and jumped over the wall once more.
“Huff, huff…”
Pressed tightly against the base of the wall, he tried to catch his breath while making as little noise as possible.
Grawwwr!
The sound of the running zombies and their grotesque cries brushed past the wall he had just jumped, then faded into the distance. But he didn’t move, staying perfectly still in that position.
“Zombies have poor eyesight. It varies by individual, but their vision limit is usually around 120 meters.”
“If they can no longer see their target and there’s no movement nearby, they usually stop chasing within 1 to 2 minutes.”
“But they have excellent hearing. So, even if you’ve hidden in a place that seems safe, don’t move for at least 3 minutes.”
Recalling the notes his respected older brother Jun-ho had left in the basement, Choi Hyun-woo waited for over three minutes under the wall before finally moving. Keeping his posture low, he chose a path with as many trees and bushes as possible and climbed the hill next to the villa.
About 30 minutes later.
Arriving at the safe zone on the mountain marked with string, Choi Hyun-woo carefully scanned his surroundings before leaning his body into a hollow under a tree stump.
“Haa… haa…”
After roughly wiping away the sweat pouring down his face, he took out a small plastic bottle, cupped some water in his palm to wash his face, and drank the rest in one go. He didn’t throw the bottle away but tucked it into his cross-body bag. From the bag, he pulled out a folded map. It was an enlarged aerial view of the area.
“This route is blocked too…”
Choi Hyun-woo marked an ‘X’ on one spot with a red ballpoint pen. With this, it was confirmed that three of the various routes to his family home were impassable.
“Four left.”
Muttering under his breath, Choi Hyun-woo folded the map neatly and put it back in his bag. Then, he took a long, steadying breath, stood up, and returned to the ‘mini-shelter’ Jun-ho had left for him.
Whirrr…
Launching a drone from the mountain overlooking the residential area, Choi Hyun-woo thoroughly scanned the perimeter through the camera of the drone flying at an altitude of 120 meters. After retrieving the drone, he quickly descended the mountain. This mini-drone, which cost well over a million won, was also one of five that Jun-ho had bought and left in the basement for him.
***
Choi Hyun-woo took a quick shower with cold water in the bathroom, then, while still naked, hurried back into the basement, returned the cupboard to its original position, and locked the blast door. In the basement, which was stocked with all kinds of groceries, equipment, and even a few makeshift weapons, he dried his body and hair with a towel. Only after changing into fresh underwear and a tracksuit did he finally let out a sigh of relief.
“Haa~ I feel alive.”
Choi Hyun-woo sat down on a mattress in one corner of the basement. He looked around the room slowly with new eyes. When he had first entered this basement about ten days ago, he had been in total shock. There were various groceries and water stored in airtight containers that could easily last one or two years. On one side, a refrigerator and freezer were running, stocked with fresh and frozen food in airtight containers, along with separate supplies of refined emergency medicine and antibiotics. Furthermore, everything in the basement was powered by solar energy, and there was even a small backup generator for emergencies. On top of that, except for the air conditioner drain and the ventilation shaft, the room was perfectly soundproofed. He had turned up the volume on the videos stored on the basement PC and secretly gone out to the courtyard to circle the house, and not a single sound leaked out.
The outdoor air conditioner unit was also well-hidden in a secluded spot in the backyard, so the sound of the air conditioner running could barely be heard in the courtyard, let alone the alley outside the house. This house and basement were, quite literally, a ‘mini-shelter’ where a small number of people could survive safely for a long time in a disaster or apocalyptic situation.
“Brother Jun-ho… thank you so much.”
Choi Hyun-woo muttered with genuine sincerity, as if Jun-ho were standing right in front of him. Why had he delivered all those supplies to his house as a gift? Why had he told him about the existence of this basement—which he hadn’t known about despite visiting the house several times—and told him to come here if anything happened? Thinking about it now, why had he left these arrangements behind without telling him, even though he clearly knew the world would turn into this hell?
Now, he understood everything.
“Since my parents were public servants, he couldn’t have done anything else…”
That was it. Choi Hyun-woo’s parents were public servants; his father was a naval officer and his mother was a police officer. That was why he couldn’t tell them, and why he couldn’t take them to ‘that place’ where the Jun-ho brothers were likely living now—a place that was surely bigger and safer than here. If he had said such things to his parents, they wouldn’t have believed him in the first place, and it would have only caused a disaster.