The Shelter Is Not That Amateurish
"Oh, right, the phone..." Choi Hyun-woo hurriedly searched for his phone and tapped the number at the very top of his recent calls list. But it wouldn't connect.
"Damn it..." Muttering a low curse, Hyun-woo tossed the phone back onto the mattress. Although electricity was still being supplied and water was running, for some reason, the communication network had been flickering since this whole disaster started and had gone completely dead a few days ago.
[Use what's in the house. Mom can hold out somehow. Don't worry about Mom. Don't leave there and just hold on. Absolutely do not come out.]
Checking the last message from his mother again, Hyun-woo bit his lip. He still didn't know the situation of his father, who had been on a naval ship for joint training when the outbreak occurred. But his mother, who had returned home at dawn after finishing her shift—whether it was patrol duty or a joint crackdown during the holiday—had told him that she would be able to hold out well thanks to the 'gifts' Jun-ho had piled up in the house. Indeed, with that amount and variety of supplies, his mother could easily survive alone for several years. However, no matter how much of a high-ranking police officer or a martial arts expert she was, Hyun-woo was incredibly anxious about his mother, who would be turning fifty the day after tomorrow, being home alone. Moreover, his anxiety grew even more once wireless communication was completely cut off.
Eventually, referring to the aerial view map Jun-ho had left behind, he had been trying to find a path to the apartment complex for the past few days. But.
"This damn neighborhood of Bucheon. Why are there so many people crawling around like cockroaches, damn it for real..."
The roads and alleys were packed with people—no, zombies—everywhere. He knew Bucheon was quite small for a city, but Hyun-woo, who had moved around a lot since childhood thanks to his naval father and settled in Bucheon in high school due to his mother's transfer, didn't know that the population of Bucheon was nearly 800,000. That many people were crowded into a narrow area, roughly the size of two districts in other cities. Even with a few mountains and a fairly large industrial complex, it was packed.
That was why there were so many zombies that it made him want to vomit, even on the path that was about 4 kilometers in a straight line, or a little under 6 kilometers along the road. Hyun-woo had already had to turn back three times without even moving 1 kilometer from this house.
"Anyway, if it's this bad in this neighborhood, to get to Jung-dong through Chunui Station... Ugh!"
Hyun-woo scratched his head frantically, letting out a frustrated sound. No matter how he thought about it, that area where residences were concentrated seemed like it would have more, no, several times more zombies than this outskirts area. But he couldn't give up. Above all, didn't he have this mini-shelter and various equipment that others couldn't even dream of, prepared by Jun-ho, the older brother and benefactor he respected?
"...There's that, too."
Hyun-woo's gaze rested on a hard case lying right in the middle of the various equipment that could be used as weapons in one corner of the basement. It was an air rifle. According to the notebook Jun-ho left behind, it was a modified item that increased its power to inflict fatal wounds on humans or zombies within 150 meters. There were even about 1,000 rounds of ammunition prepared separately. But...
"What's the point of having an air rifle? I can't take it with me..."
If you include the air rifle, several hundred rounds of ammunition, three spare air tanks, and even a portable manual pump or compressor just in case, the weight approaches 20 kilograms. On top of that, in this hot summer, even if it's Gore-Tex material, what if you wear long sleeves and long pants, and even put on the armor and helmet Jun-ho left behind?
"I'd be screwed, that's what..."
No matter how strong he was and how confident he was in his stamina, he would be exhausted after running just a few hundred meters while wearing and carrying all that. Above all.
- The air rifle must be used strictly for base defense only.
- Don't forget that in the short time you aim and shoot at one, the distance to the others will have closed by more than 10 meters.
"Hyung-nim... how on earth did you already know all that?"
Recalling the contents of the notebook Jun-ho left behind and the zombies he had seen and experienced himself, Hyun-woo shuddered. Jun-ho had told him never to take the air rifle with him, even if there was a one-in-a-million chance he had to go outside. He said it was a hundred, a thousand times better to run away without looking back than to spend time catching one or two with an air rifle. And as a result of his own experience, that was true. It was best to keep his body as light as possible, wearing only long sleeves, long pants, and basic armor.
"Whew... let's just sleep for now."
Recalling Jun-ho's golden rule to take rest during the day if possible and wake up before sunset to live, Hyun-woo lay down on the mattress. Because a high-performance surveillance camera and CCTV monitoring the area around this house 24 hours a day would sound an alarm immediately if they captured anything. He felt somewhat relieved, but he sighed deeply and periodically while thinking of his mother who was alone. He forced himself to try to sleep, which didn't come easily.
Deciding to continue surveillance using drones until tomorrow morning as a stopgap measure, Jun-ho left the nursing home with Jun-hyeok and returned to the shelter. The couple Choi Ui-su and Kim Hye-yeong decided to stay there for a few more days because of two elderly people at the nursing home who were still not in good health. After returning to the shelter, Jun-hyeok went back toward the nursing home with Choi Jeong-woo in an electric truck loaded with various equipment. It was because the sooner the CCTV and repeater installation work was done, the better.
Jun-ho washed up quickly, changed his clothes, and rode the electric cart down to the container residential area. Then he put Kim Ha-yun, whose eyes were swollen from crying, into the cart and went up to the shelter. Since the Kim siblings were now members of 'Our Shelter', there was no reason to hide their location anymore.
She might have been surprised by the scale and facilities of the shelter she was seeing for the first time, but Kim Ha-yun, who couldn't possibly have the mental capacity for that, just followed Jun-ho with a dazed face. Jun-ho took Kim Ha-yun to the medical room prepared on the second floor of the shelter's workshop. In the middle of the medical room, where various medical equipment and facilities purchased from the Volcano Group were covered in plastic, a silver stainless steel mortuary table was placed, and a black body bag was left alone on top of it.
"Hic...!"
Kim Ha-yun, who recognized what it was, hurriedly covered her mouth. However, she couldn't stop the tears that finally burst out.
"......"
Jun-ho, who walked to the mortuary table without a word, lowered the zipper of the body bag a little and turned his head toward Kim Ha-yun.
"You should say hello to Grandma."
"Ugh... sob."
Shaking her small, slender body, Kim Ha-yun walked unsteadily. Then, she saw the face of Yang Myeong-suk, who had a bright skin tone and was closing her eyes peacefully, unlike when she saw her through the drone camera. It was the work of Kang Su-ah, a nursing assistant at the nursing home. Because she was quite close to the deceased while she was alive, she had done the favor at Jun-ho's request that he had to take the body to her granddaughter. Since Jun-ho had deliberately dealt with it by stabbing her inside the ear with an awl, there were no major wounds visible on the outside.
"Gr, Grandma..."
Jun-ho stopped Kim Ha-yun, who was reaching out to Yang Myeong-suk's face without realizing it while shedding tears.
"You shouldn't touch her with your bare hands. Wear these."
Kim Ha-yun, who put on latex gloves, stroked Yang Myeong-suk's face with careful hands, as if she were touching a sandcastle that would break immediately if she touched it. Jun-ho just watched the girl, who was crying while calling for her grandmother incessantly, in silence. As an apocalypse regressor who had seen, experienced, and even directly committed numerous deaths, his heart had already dried up, but as he was human, he couldn't help but feel complicated.
"Let's go now. You need to sleep early to send Grandma off with Jun-seo... no, with the people here tomorrow morning."
"Sob, sob. Yes..."
It was useless to wipe them because they would flow again, but Kim Ha-yun wiped her tears diligently. And to Jun-ho, who was putting about 10 more sealed ice packs inside the body bag and turning the medical room's air conditioner to the lowest temperature.
"Ju, Jun-ho Mister."
"Yes?"
"Thank you."
She bowed her head.
"Thank you so much for saving me and Jun-seo, and for finding Grandma. And thank you so, so much for granting my request... sob, my request."
"...It's nothing."
There was only one thing Kim Ha-yun had asked of Jun-ho. Because she had lost her phone while running away in a panic and didn't have a single photo of her grandmother, she asked him to take just one photo so she could remember her usual appearance as much as possible. So Jun-ho had photographed Yang Myeong-suk with the drone and tablet's camera, and Yun Yeong-su had reconstructed it into a face smiling peacefully while she was alive using the AI Akina. That photo would be given to the Kim siblings and also used as a funeral portrait.
"No, it's not. Thank you so much. Mister, I... I will really work hard here. I will teach our Jun-seo well so he doesn't cause trouble, and so he doesn't become a useless person here..."
At the sight of the girl who, despite losing her grandmother, was worrying about her remaining younger brother and diligently appealing for her 'usefulness', Jun-ho placed his hand on the top of her head and said.
"I understand what you mean, but there's no need to think that far ahead yet."
"Ah..."
"Kids should grow up like kids. If you come in here and live, you'll only work in the morning. In the afternoon, you'll study for school, and whatever it is, you'll learn a lot first."
There were early graduates from KAIST, pharmacy students, head nurses, specialists, technicians skilled in all kinds of technology, and culinary experts who could open a restaurant right away, and Jun-ho himself had graduated from a business school at a university in Seoul. So, although it would be impossible for the minors of 'Our Shelter' to be exactly the same as in the past, they would meet the purpose of a 'shelter that can do anything', studying to some extent and living a life appropriate for their age. Because 'Our Shelter' wasn't so amateurish that it would make even kids like this do heavy labor.
Yang Myeong-suk's brief funeral took place in front of the shelter's incinerator. Some of the shelter people, who had changed into the darkest clothes they could find, saw Choi Jeong-woo's father and daughter and the Kim siblings in person for the first time. However, because of the occasion and because the Kim siblings were crying so sorrowfully, people couldn't help but look at the two siblings with complicated faces.
Kim Jun-seo, who had always been quiet and unobtrusive, unlike a first-grader in elementary school who was at the age to cause trouble, also cried like a young child in the face of his grandmother's death. Choi Ha-neul approached and hugged him tightly from behind. And Baek Su-ah comforted Kim Ha-yun by her side repeatedly.
Yang Myeong-suk's body was turned to ash in the shelter's double incinerator, which had been cleaned beforehand, while the people of Our Shelter watched. It was clearly a tragedy, but considering the reality that almost no one in the apocalypse decorated the end of their life 'like a human' in this way, Yang Myeong-suk herself would probably be satisfied from far away.
"I'll take care of the kids for now. Ha-yun, Jun-seo. Follow your aunt."
"Me too, me too."
As Choi Ji-woo, who thought the grandmother next door had gone to the hospital where her mother was, clung to her, Choi Ha-neul smiled brightly.
"Yes. Our Ji-woo should come with aunt too. By the way, who am I?"
"My mom's sister. Cousin!"
"Oh my, our Ji-woo is smart. Should aunt make you something delicious today?"
"Yes, yes! Make me chicken!"
"Okay. Aunt will make you chicken in the evening."
"Yeaaah! Hehe!"
Choi Ha-neul, holding Choi Ji-woo's fern-like hand, took the siblings, whose eyes were red and swollen, away.
"Still, it feels like a place where people live when young kids come and it gets noisy."
As Baek Ha-il smiled bitterly, Jun-ho nodded.
"Yes. It wasn't intended, but it's not bad. The kids are all kind, too."
"Well, where in the world do things go exactly as planned? When this happens and that happens, you just solve them one by one and sort them out. By the way, Ho-ya."
"Yes."
"The turrets and ground drones are almost finished."
"Ah, that's good news."
Jun-ho's face brightened at the good news for the first time in a while. But it wasn't just good things that were happening.
"But you'll have to consider mounting the replica KP9 on them. The gun structure is simple, so it's easy to replicate, and the power is decent. The problem is that you guys used too much ammo this time. Especially 9mm rounds."
"Ah..."
The total amount of 9mm subsonic ammunition secured through the Volcano Group was 6,000 rounds. They had already consumed about 500 rounds through various experiments and shooting practice before the apocalypse hit, and they had used quite a lot of ammunition from then until resolving this nursing home situation.
"About 4,800? 900? Anyway, that's how much is left. If you keep using it like this, I wonder if it will even last a year, what are you going to do?"
"We'll have to use the air rifle as our main weapon for the time being."
"Okay. I thought you'd say that, so I mounted the air rifles on the turrets and ground drones first. But, hehe..."
"......?"
Jun-ho looked puzzled at Baek Ha-il's meaningful smile.
"I increased the power of the air rifles mounted on the turrets and ground drones. The effective range is 180 meters."
"Oh!"
Moreover, Jun-ho's expression brightened instantly when he heard that he had mounted industrial oxygen tanks as air tanks, so they would be able to fire 300 rounds continuously at once.