A Seemingly Fraudulent, Yet Not Fraudulent, Proposal
“They’re all men in their 40s and 50s. Only one has a gun. An air rifle? A shotgun? Anyway, the rest are carrying weapons, too.”
“I don’t think their route will lead them up toward your position, boss. Still, they might reach the spot where our turret took down that water deer carcass within 20 or 30 minutes.”
“The guy in the lead is pretty good at mountain climbing… Wait? There’s a dog, too? Is it about the size of Kkamsuni? Anyway, it looks like a hunting dog.”
Listening to Yun Yeong-su’s transmission, Jun-ho picked up the modified air rifle and the spare air tank he had placed on his A-frame carrier. Then, he spoke to the idol siblings, who had dropped low to the ground the moment they heard his warning.
“They’re still far below, so they won’t be able to see us here. For now, you two head back the way you came. You know those two large boulders stacked together that we passed about five minutes ago? Hide there. And take this.”
Jun-ho handed Park Deok-cheol a portable radio equipped with an earpiece.
“I’ve set it to frequency 1. You can only communicate with me. Do you know how to use a radio?”
“Yes, sir. I know how.”
“Good. Sometimes someone other than me will talk to you. When that happens, don’t ask questions, don’t argue, just do exactly as they say. They’re someone watching from up there.”
Jun-ho raised his index finger and pointed upward.
“……?”
The idol siblings looked up toward the sky where Jun-ho’s finger was pointing, and their eyes widened simultaneously. A tiny dot was hovering in the distant sky.
‘A, a drone?’
‘As expected of a professional killer!’
Realizing it was a high-performance drone, the siblings swallowed hard and looked back at Jun-ho.
“You can run away somewhere else if you want. That is, if you’re confident you can survive in this world as just the two of you, leaving your friend behind.”
“N, no. We will never run away.”
“We have no intention of going anywhere else anyway, and I’d never leave Yuna alone.”
True to their lineage as descendants of the ‘Rooftop Korean’, the idol siblings didn’t lose their composure even in this situation. Jun-ho mentally gave them a few extra points and said,
“Good. I trust you’ll do well. Now, go.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes.”
Nodding their heads, the idol siblings quickly headed back the way they came. As they did, Park Seon-hui suddenly stopped and looked back.
“Um.”
“……?”
Jun-ho, who was busy plotting his movement route while listening to Yun Yeong-su’s transmission, glanced at her.
“P, please be careful. Don’t get hurt.”
“…Right. You two be careful as well.”
Perhaps because it was an urgent situation and the day was still hot, Park Seon-hui’s face and neck were flushed red as she hurried after her older brother, Park Deok-cheol.
“…….”
Jun-ho checked the condition of the modified air rifle he hadn’t held in a while and the Glock 17 he always carried, then sprinted down the mountainside.
- According to Akina’s prediction, they seem to have come from the direction of Yeongho 2-ri.
Yeongho 2-ri was a small village located to the northeast of our shelter and the safety zone. Of course, even if it was small, it had nearly 200 households and a population of over 400 people.
- It’s not the center of Yeongho 2-ri. Is it Boksagol? Anyway, there’s a high probability they came from the village where the original residents who lived in Yeongho 2-ri for a long time reside. That place is the most remote and also the closest to the mountain behind the shelter.
Jun-ho nodded as he looked at the map on the tablet screen, which showed the dotted line of the predicted direction inferred by Akina.
“I suppose that’s right.”
Even just looking at Gahyeon-ri, it was a relatively densely populated area with apartment complexes and villa towns, as Mokuri, where the subway station was located, was only a 10-minute drive away. However, beyond the mountain behind our shelter and outside the safety zone, especially to the north and east, it was a village where it was quite inconvenient without a personal vehicle, and if you missed a bus, you were stuck waiting for 30 minutes.
Except for the center, which had a supermarket and a few shops around the village hall, almost all the houses were scattered far apart. And the residents of such villages, regardless of whether they were in the metropolitan area or the countryside, had a higher survival probability than those in the city.
‘If it’s Boksagol, did about 50 or 60 people live there originally?’
Then, one had to assume there were at least 20, or at most over 30, survivors. And since two-thirds of them were likely over 60 years old.
‘They must have left only the minimum security personnel behind. Then…’
The men from the direction of Boksagol would never discover our shelter. There were no paths for people to walk on, and the mountain terrain was so formidable that even someone accustomed to hiking with full gear would take a whole day to cross it. In the first place, there was no trace of anyone coming to the pension before the regression.
However, judging by the direction they were heading, the possibility of them entering the ‘safety zone’ was quite high. And once they entered, they would definitely come again, and then they might eventually discover one of the guard posts.
‘I should make sure they can’t even set foot here in the first place.’
Jun-ho recalled several plans he had established in preparation for such a situation and said,
“Are you sure they’re residents of Boksagol? They aren’t gangsters or anything like that, are they?”
- I’ll zoom in now.
The zoomed-in footage from the drone camera immediately appeared on Jun-ho’s tablet. However, perhaps because the terrain was rugged and the trees were dense, the video quality wasn’t very good.
- The guy with the gun is wearing that Saemaul hat? Anyway, he’s wearing a green hat that country folk often use. The rest are just country uncles through and through. Their weapons are also things like sickles and knives used for weeding.
Then, there was a 99 percent probability that they were indeed residents of Boksagol in Yeongho 2-ri. If so.
“Check the Cheonmok Tunnel area once. See if there are any threats at the entrance or on the mountain.”
- Roger.
A few minutes after Jun-ho descended, hacking through the trees in the direction of Cheonmok Tunnel.
- There’s nothing. There seem to be some zombies near the tunnel entrance and inside, but there’s nothing visible above the tunnel or in the vicinity for now.
“Good. Keep watching those people and let me know if there are any unusual developments.”
- Roger!
The route Jun-ho chose was toward Cheonmok Tunnel, which led to what was known as the ‘Yangjin New Town’ in Namyangju. In other words, he intended to act as if he had come from that direction—northwest of the shelter’s mountain and the safety zone—to encounter the five men.
- The Boksagol uncles are also going up over the tunnel. The dog, the owner, and the guy with the air rifle are in the lead. The dog is 10 meters ahead.
- They will enter within 150 meters of your position soon. You’ll see them in a moment.
“…I see them now.”
Through the digital monocular he always carried when going outside, Jun-ho observed the five men. Only one looked to be in his mid-40s, while the other four appeared to be over 50. But, as expected of country folk, they all had tanned skin and seemed to have considerable stamina. And that meant.
‘Their food situation is decent.’
Well, even if it was the metropolitan area, if it was this kind of countryside—especially if the neighborhood name was ‘Boksagol’—one had to assume every house had a small low-temperature warehouse. And nearly half of the food filling those low-temperature warehouses in country houses was grain like rice, barley, or flour. The rest was seasoning and condiments like sugar, salt, and soy sauce, along with fruits, vegetables, and alcohol. In other words, if the Boksagol survivors had dealt with all the zombies in the village, they would have naturally raided the low-temperature warehouses as well. Then, one could assume they had no worries about food.
‘And yet, if they came all the way up here carrying air rifles…’
Combining all the conditions—the number of five people and the hunting dog—Jun-ho reached a conclusion and initiated his action the moment they entered the perfect effective range.
Thwip…! Thwip…!
Two tungsten rounds flew through the trees, embedding themselves one meter in front of the yellowish dog and right in front of the man with the air rifle who was leading the group.
“……!?”
The dog stopped, and the man holding the air rifle and wearing the Saemaul hat was shocked out of his wits, stepping back. Just as he was about to speak to his group while taking a pointing stance with the air rifle slung over his shoulder and scanning the area,
“Freeze! Move and your head gets blown off!”
Although it was quite a distance away, Jun-ho, who had deliberately modulated his voice to sound deep, shouted a warning, yet the man in the Saemaul hat instinctively turned his muzzle and body toward the direction the voice came from.
At that moment.
Thwip…!
Jun-ho aimed his air rifle scope at the highly visible green Saemaul hat and fired a tungsten round.
Pow!
The hat was blown off backward with a hole through its brim. The man in the Saemaul hat, who had almost had a hole in his head if it had been off by a few centimeters—no, the 50-something balding man whose bare forehead was revealed as the hat vanished—plopped down on the spot.
“Next time, it’s a real headshot! Drop your guns and weapons! Everyone take ten steps back!”
The balding man threw the air rifle he was holding. Then, the other men, who had been wandering around in confusion, also dropped the sickles and knives they were holding to the ground and carefully stepped back 7 or 8 meters.
However.
Woof! Woof, woof!
The dog was different.
“Ttol-ah…! No…!”
Despite its owner’s desperate cry, the yellowish hunting dog dashed toward the direction where Jun-ho was.
Jun-ho stood up abruptly, pulling a machete from the sheath strapped to his thigh. He raised the blade toward the hunting dog running up from below, intent on splitting its head in half. And the moment he made eye contact with the hunting dog named Ttol, which had run up quickly.
Startled!
The hunting dog that saw Jun-ho stopped right on the spot. And then.
Whine… Whine, whine.
It tucked its tail between its legs, trembling in confusion, and as Jun-ho slowly approached, it lay flat on the ground and started leaking urine.
- Wow… Boss, your charisma is insane. It’s like watching that video of the dog butcher from back in the day.
Jun-ho had also seen that video in the past. And the sight of the hunting dog lying flat in front of him, constantly reading the room, was identical to the reaction of the fiercest dogs in the neighborhood—the ones that would bark like crazy when they saw a dog butcher from afar, only to tuck their tails and crawl into their kennels when the butcher got close.
“Boksagol? You mean the one in Yeongho 2-ri?”
“Y, yes. We’re all people who live there. The… Boksagol Youth Association.”
Since most people in country villages are over 60, naturally, those in their 40s and 50s are the ‘youth’.
“Why did you come all the way here from there? Looking at your condition, you don’t seem to have been starving.”
The men of the Boksagol Youth Association, seen up close, were somewhat haggard, but they didn’t seem to have any issues with their stamina. It was proof that their food situation was decent, just as Jun-ho had expected. Although their guns and weapons had all been confiscated, the Boksagol men, sitting in relatively comfortable positions, answered while reading Jun-ho’s expression.
“Well… we were short on meat.”
“We caught and ate the rooster a long time ago because it kept crowing. We thought the meat in the fridge would run out soon… s, so we were trying to catch a water deer…”
“Then you should have gone to the mountains in your own neighborhood. Why did you come all the way to our zone?”
“Well, since when did Cheonmok Tunnel become anyone’s zone… S, sorry.”
The man who received Jun-ho’s cold gaze immediately stopped grumbling and bowed his head. They also had eyes to see, and they were all military veterans. With a special-looking air rifle, a pistol, and that pitch-black blade that was different from their own logging knives, they could tell that Jun-ho, who was armed like a special forces operative, was no ordinary person. Moreover, Jun-ho had subdued Ttol—a dog famous for being so fierce that no one but its owner could handle it—using only his presence and aura.
The men of the Boksagol Youth Association were both afraid of and fascinated by Jun-ho.
“Anyway, this area is a region we have been managing for several days now.”
“…….”
Their expressions stiffened at Jun-ho’s firm words. But they had already had their guns and weapons taken away, and even their hunting dog had been subdued; there was nothing they could do. In this world, they should be grateful just to have been spared rather than killed.
“However.”
And to those men of the Boksagol Youth Association, Jun-ho decided to ‘propose a job’.
“Seeing as you seem to have your own circumstances, I’m saying this.”
“……?”
A proposal that seemed like a scam but wasn’t, and one that wouldn’t be bad for them either. If you looked at it closely, it was a win-win for both sides—or rather, a proposal where our shelter would benefit a little more.