The Price of Survival
“Who do you think is responsible for you being safe right now?”
Alpha D was over 185 centimeters tall with an incredibly robust physique. Judging by the training gear from a university famous for its judo program, he had likely been an athlete when he was human. Furthermore, considering his face and build hadn't changed much since I first spotted him a couple of months ago, it was clear he had been ‘dining’ every three or four days. An Alpha that eats well and has a large pack is strong. They are quick-witted and exceptionally cunning. Those man-eating beasts that the legendary hunter Jim Corbett once tracked—the ones that devoured dozens or hundreds of people? You have to assume that every experienced Alpha is on par with, or even superior to, those creatures. Unlike those solitary man-eaters, however, a Zombie Alpha could control its own pack. Just like this.
“Gwargh!”
The moment Jun-ho turned his head toward him, Alpha D, having sensed something, let out a roar. The zombies on the rooftop lunged between the creature and Jun-ho.
Tak! Ta-tak! Tak! Tak!
The Glock 17’s rounds were blocked by the wall of zombies. Jun-ho, who had been moving in a straight line, slightly adjusted his running angle to create a firing line, but the cunning creature had its zombies interfere with even that. Kwargh! As five or six of them thrashed about, obscuring the line of fire, three others leaped toward Jun-ho.
Swish!
The machete in Jun-ho’s left hand drew a black arc through the air with a sharp whistle. The 3.2-kilogram blade, nearly three times heavier than a standard jungle knife or machete, severed the zombies' necks or completely separated their faces.
Thud! Thump!
The moment the three fell, spraying blood and brain matter, Jun-ho’s eyes met Alpha D’s. That meant he had a clear shot. Without hesitation, Jun-ho aimed at the creature and pulled the trigger.
Click!
The moment he realized the magazine was empty, Jun-ho dropped the Glock 17, pulled a throwing knife from his waist, and hurled it.
Thwack!
But in that split second—less than a heartbeat—Alpha D used another zombie as a shield and vanished. Realizing the creature had fled down the rooftop stairs, Jun-ho calmly cut down the remaining zombies on the roof with his commando dagger and machete before speaking.
“Alpha D is going to head outside the building. Attach a drone to him.”
— Understood!
Perhaps because he had just witnessed Jun-ho’s unbelievable combat, Yun Yeong-su’s response was brimming with intensity.
— Delivery drone has arrived, Boss. I’ll finish the delivery and attach it to Alpha D immediately.
Less than ten seconds after Yun Yeong-su’s transmission ended, Jun-ho had finished off all the zombies that had climbed onto the roof. As Jun-ho indifferently surveyed the corpses of nearly fifty zombies, the sound of a drone’s rotors grew closer.
Whirrrrr…!
It was originally a pesticide sprayer, but Baek Ha-il had modified it into a medium-sized drone capable of carrying around 20 kilograms of cargo. It approached the rooftop with a loud hum, and its 50x50x30 centimeter cargo bay slowly descended via a Kevlar wire.
Clank!
Jun-ho quickly opened the lid of the cargo bay and shoved the magazines and equipment inside into the pouches on his tactical vest.
— Boss! D is out now!
At Yun Yeong-su’s urgent voice, Jun-ho ran toward the AR-15 he had discarded on the floor, snatched it up, and swapped in a fresh magazine.
— Alpha D. Heading to 113-2 Gahyeon 3-gil. He’s fleeing with other subjects. Distance to Master Lee Jun-ho is 60 meters. 65 meters.
Listening to AI Akina’s monotone voice, Jun-ho aimed his thermal scope at Alpha D’s back. As expected of such a cunning and shrewd creature, it was running while mixed in among the zombies it controlled. Unfortunately for Alpha D, it was nearly a head taller than the other zombies, making its head stand out.
‘An Alpha’s brain has an abnormally high temperature.’
Aiming at the creature’s head, which glowed like a burning incandescent bulb, Jun-ho pulled the trigger.
Pang…!
The subsonic round, traveling at 310 meters per second, struck the back of Alpha D’s skull in about 0.3 seconds. As the back of its skull caved inward, a spray of red blood and grayish-white matter erupted, and the creature’s head snapped forward.
As Alpha D slid face-first onto the pavement and stopped moving, the zombies that had been running diligently beside it stopped in their tracks as if by agreement. Then, they suddenly began to twist their limbs in a grotesque fashion, and after about ten seconds, they took off running in one direction as if nothing had happened. Normally, they should have returned to the areas where they were infected or their primary haunts in life, but what was stimulating them most right now were the incessant screams and noise erupting from Gahyeon Elementary School.
However.
“G1 Unit 2, fire.”
— G1 Unit 02. Engaging.
As soon as AI Akina’s cold voice finished, the G1 drone, which had been hiding by the side of the national highway, fired a volley of tungsten rounds. The zombies, having lost their Alpha, were cut down on the road before they could even reach the school.
“What’s the situation at the elementary school?”
— The thugs ran into the gymnasium. The older folks jumped the wall and fled to the villa next to the school. Since you killed a lot of the ones you were chasing earlier, none of the older folks were hurt.
— But the thugs are screwed. Those idiots broke the gym windows to get in, so all the zombies in the playground and in front of the main building went to the gym.
As Yun Yeong-su explained, the video on the tablet attached to Jun-ho’s tactical vest was absolute chaos. Although Jun-ho and G1 Unit 1 had killed quite a few, the sight of over 500 zombies rushing toward the school gymnasium was terrifying. The thugs who had fled inside were likely defending it desperately, but their total annihilation was only a matter of time.
Jun-ho sensed that the time had finally come to finish this. “Send Jun-hyeok and Deok-cheol to the detached house with both G1 units. Execute Operation A as planned. As for the G1s…”
— Akina will handle the targeting personally.
“Okay.”
Jun-ho collected all the empty magazines, dumped them into the drone’s cargo bay, and tapped it twice. “Go.”
Whirrrrr! As the wire retracted and the cargo drone moved away, Jun-ho gathered his Glock 17, magazines, and throwing knives before heading down the stairs.
Pang! Pang! Pang!
After killing the zombies wandering the highway and in front of the elementary school, Jun-ho quickly crossed the playground while keeping his body low.
Pow…! Pow…!
Even then, G1 Unit 1’s fire continued. Thanks to that, Jun-ho was able to approach the main building of the elementary school without having to engage the remaining zombies in the playground himself.
Thump, thump!
“It’s a human. Open this up. The people you were protecting have all safely escaped to the villa next to the school thanks to me and my friends.”
However, there was no answer from inside the main entrance. Jun-ho knocked harder and spoke.
“If you don’t answer or open the door within five seconds, I’m going to smash this place up and make a lot of noise. There are over 500 of them swarming the gym behind you right now; do you think you’ll be okay when they come back here? Five, four, three…”
“D-don’t! We’re opening it!”
“Are you crazy!? How do you know who it is…”
Pang!
A 5.56mm subsonic round was fired into the air.
“Eek!”
“Who do you think is responsible for you being safe right now? Don’t you realize that because you locked the door, everyone who went out to the playground almost died?”
“W-we’re opening it. We’re opening it. P-please don’t shoot.”
After the sound of the shutter rising behind the reinforced glass, a space just wide enough for one or two people to pass through appeared, accompanied by a sliver of light. Seeing the faces of several people trembling in fear, Jun-ho stepped inside immediately.
“Hic!”
The startled people recoiled, each raising their weapons. But the moment they saw the firearm in Jun-ho’s hands, they turned pale and stood there awkwardly, unable to do anything.
“Everyone, put those down. If I had wanted to shoot you, you’d all be dead already.”
Under normal circumstances, these people would have been swarmed by zombies drawn by the noise of the fight in the playground, resulting in half of them dying or turning. In the end, Jun-ho had essentially saved their lives by drawing the zombies out himself, thinning the ranks of the thugs, and luring the undead into the gymnasium.
“Ah…”
Most of them were middle-aged or older, or women, but the men, knowing the power of the gun, obediently lowered their weapons. Jun-ho spoke to the youngest man among them, who looked to be in his early 40s.
“Can you get to the rooftop from here?”
“O-oh, yes, yes. The rooftop d-door is unlocked.”
“Good. Take this.”
“……!?”
Jun-ho continued to the man who had reflexively taken the radio he’d thrust at him. “If you speak into that, my friends and I will hear you. And if someone gives you instructions over the radio, don’t ask questions—just follow them. We’re watching everything from above with a drone.”
“Ah… yes.”
“And there’s a Dongwon Villa next to here, right? Everyone who was in the playground has taken refuge there.”
“Ah!”
“Y-Yeong-su’s dad… sob!”
“Oh my, oh my…”
Hearing that their respective husbands, fathers, and children were safe, the people let out sighs of relief and burst into tears.
“No one else is coming in here, so don’t open the door for anyone. Bring some furniture or something to barricade it completely. Stay put until someone tells you otherwise over the radio. That goes for everyone else, not just you. Don’t move—just stay still.”
Speaking in a cold voice, Jun-ho didn’t even wait for an answer before sprinting up the school’s central staircase.
“Block it! Block it, you bastards!”
Even while screaming like a madman, Han Chang-oh pulled the trigger of his air rifle without a moment’s rest. But after firing about ten more shots—
Click. Click.
The sound of the trigger pulling was there. But what followed wasn’t the heavy, compressed-air discharge sound—it was a weak, pathetic hiss, hiss. It was nowhere near enough to propel the pellets.
“God dammit…”
Han Chang-oh, who had raised the air rifle—now nothing more than a stick made of wood and reinforced plastic—high to strike with it, immediately changed his mind, looked around, and shouted, “The rooftop! We can make it to the rooftop! The gym and the school are connected!”
A few employees came running at his words, but—
Gwargh…! Kwargh! Kyaaaa…!
Those who couldn't hear him over the roar of hundreds of zombies were busy desperately blocking the windows with shields, attacking the ones trying to shove their heads through the gaps.
“M-Manager!”
“Screw you, we’re going on our own!”
Having bought a little more time, Han Chang-oh, a thug who would throw loyalty to the dogs, bolted toward the gymnasium’s emergency exit, followed by four employees.
“Huh? W-wait!? Where are you going! Hey!”
The other employees and the people from the townhouses shouted when they noticed them too late, but Han Chang-oh and the traitors didn’t even look back; they opened the emergency exit, slipped inside, and slammed it shut.
“You fucking bastards…! Aaaargh!”
Rumble! Crash!
The makeshift barricades and defensive walls they had hastily constructed at the main entrance and broken windows using the gym’s flimsy materials couldn't withstand the mass of hundreds of people pushing against them, and they collapsed.
Kwargh! Kwargh!
In an instant, dozens of zombies crawled through the collapsed barricades.
“Aaaargh! Save me… ugh!”
“Ugh… ughhh!”
“Run!”
The men who had been blocking the other windows stopped what they were doing the moment they saw their colleagues being pinned under the collapsed debris and torn apart by zombies, and ran toward the emergency exit. But—
“Huh? W-wait!?”
Thump! Thump!
Even though several men clung to it, pushing and pulling with all their might, the emergency door wouldn’t budge. Han Chang-oh and the traitors had jammed it shut from the inside with a steel pipe.
“You fucking bastards!”
“Ugh! Ughhh!”
The five or six men still alive let out desperate, scream-like curses, but—
Kwarghhhhh…!!!
“H-huff…!”
No one could help them, and before long, the man-eating monsters that had finished chewing, tearing, and tasting their colleagues simply came running with their grayish-white eyes gleaming.