Ep7. When the Corpses Run (6)
Squeak—
Do-woon and I yanked on the rope we'd tied to the goalpost and benches earlier. The two of us hauled with everything we had, and the objects bound to it came dragging along, one after another, sliding into the stadium. We pulled until the rope went taut, then secured it to a pillar of the stands. With that, our barricade stretching across the field was complete.
Of course, neither of us expected this flimsy fence to hold for long. Still, it had to be better than playing tag in the middle of open ground.
"Hippo—Ha Yu-ju! Snap out of it, we're moving!"
At Gwak Jae-gyeom's shout, Ha Yu-ju forced her eyes open. She was soaked head to toe in sweat, as if she'd been caught out in the rain alone.
We loaded the body into the rol-ainer we'd found in the storage shed and settled Ha Yu-ju in beside it. This part, Jang Han-bin would have to push alone—all the way to the center of the field, and then to the goalpost. We'd considered lashing a rope to it and pulling together, but since we had no idea how strict the victory conditions were, an unnecessary gamble wasn't worth it. Instead, Jae-gyeom and I would hold back the incoming zombies as best we could.
"Let's go."
At Jae-gyeom's signal, Jang Han-bin pushed the rol-ainer. The contents weighed nearly 150 kilograms, but with a high school boy putting his back into it, the thing rolled along well enough.
Krahk—! Kek—!
Damn it, their reaction time is razor-sharp. The zombies in that corner came shrieking toward us in a wave. I'd thought pre-clearing the sprinters would make things easier, but the sheer crushing weight of numbers had a terror all its own.
"Don't look at them. Keep moving!"
Pressing steadily forward while a swarm closed in beside you was easier said than done. Even I wanted to bolt for the far side of the field that very second. Gwak Jae-gyeom seemed to sense that coward's instinct in me, because he kept up a stream of encouragement.
"You're fine, there's plenty of distance! Just like this—go!"
Screeech—!
By the time we barely reached the center of the field, the zombies had hit the barricade. They snagged on the rope and the obstacles, flailing blindly. A few of them crumpled like rag dolls and were trampled under their own kind.
"Good, now to the goalpost!"
We sent Jang Han-bin toward the goal and stayed behind at midfield. By then, the barricade—once a straight line—was steadily bowing inward. The rope, unable to bear the weight of the surging bodies, was being pushed back.
Creak— creak—
The cover objects lashed to the rope groaned and shuddered along with it, for a moment. Then—
Pop—!
The nylon rope, wound layer upon layer, finally gave way. The barricade collapsed into a tangled mess, and corpses spilled through the gap.
Taang—!
Jae-gyeom shot the one leaping in from the front. Bang— bang—! The one behind it, and the one behind that. He dropped them instantly, but it made hardly any difference. The sheer volume on the other side was simply overwhelming.
"Hurry up!"
Gwak Jae-gyeom, growing frantic, shouted over his shoulder. But rushing was the worst thing to do.
"What are you doing, now!"
"Th-the wheel's stuck—!"
Jae-gyeom bellowed at Jang Han-bin, who was shuffling in place. Panicked, Han-bin started shoving the rol-ainer by brute force.
"No—don't push it!"
My shout came too late. The rol-ainer toppled over, and the impact sent Ha Yu-ju tumbling out. The man's corpse bounced loose as well, spilling free of the mylar blanket.
"Oh, damn it—!"
Jae-gyeom sprinted for the rol-ainer without a second's delay.
"Hippo, grab the small pouch!"
Ha Yu-ju, barely clinging to consciousness, hugged the small pouch to her chest. At the same moment, Gwak Jae-gyeom scooped her up in his arms and broke into a run toward the goalpost.
"Jang Han-bin! You drag that thing over here too!"
The stadium floor was covered in slick artificial turf. Even a ninety-kilogram load could slide across it if you dragged it flat along the ground. And there were only about twenty meters left to the goal.
And yet, Jang Han-bin didn't move.
"Hey!"
Even when Jae-gyeom yelled again, nothing. Jang Han-bin stood frozen, pale as death, staring at the dead man.
Two of the Running Corpses brushed past me and charged toward Han-bin. Even then, the kid just kept standing there, locked in ice.
Taak—!
Using the three-section staff Jae-gyeom had handed me, I swept the legs out from under the zombies trying to pass me. But they were like newspapers caught in the wind—touching the ground for an instant, then rising again and pressing on.
Shoving past them, I yelled at Jang Han-bin.
"Get up!"
Whether he heard me or not, Han-bin flinched at the shoulders. But his gaze stayed nailed to the dead man.
Flap—
I covered the man with the mylar blanket, hastily cinched it shut in a few rough twists, and shouted again.
"You already won—don't chicken out now!"
"……!"
"If you don't want to look at it, then get rid of it for good."
I jerked my chin toward the goalpost. Jang Han-bin looked at me, then hauled himself up. He began dragging the man, mylar blanket and all. The slippery foil glided easily across the artificial turf—but the zombies, flailing and shambling toward him, were just slightly faster.
If they stole that corpse now, it was over. In my urgency, I heaved the rol-ainer upright to block them.
Clang— wham—!
The zombies, charging blindly, slammed into it. But when several of them threw their weight against it all at once, it was me who got shoved backward, sliding bit by bit. I threw everything I had into holding out just a few seconds longer—and then came Gwak Jae-gyeom's voice from behind me.
"Hyung, get down!"
If I get down now, I'll be trampled to death! I turned to yell exactly that—and, damn it. The muzzle was already pointed this way!
WHAMWHAMWHAMWHAM—!
I flung myself flat, and the world came apart in sound. Ungh, not the mart trauma again—! I clamped my hands over my ears and endured with everything I had. I don't know how long that lasted.
"Hyung……! ……up!"
At some point Jae-gyeom was beside me, grabbing my arm and shouting. But my ears were ringing so badly I couldn't make out a word. I blinked around in a daze and turned toward the goalpost. Ha Yu-ju and Jang Han-bin were inside it. The corpses were inside with them, exactly as they should be. That was good news and bad news at once.
A bad feeling crept over me, and I looked ahead. Sure enough, the zombies were now sprinting toward us. I grabbed Jae-gyeom and scrambled to my feet.
Krahk— Ket—!
The first thing I hear when my hearing comes back is this—?! Chased by the howling of zombies, I ran flat out, mind blank. But when I angled toward the goalpost—the shortest route—Gwak Jae-gyeom yanked me hard by the arm.
"Sideways! The kids are in there—go around!"
Oh, so you couldn't have run the diagonal from the start—?! Never mind the sudden change of direction, a zombie was closing in so near it might as well pounce on me.
Kachek—!
Its damp breath brushed my forearm.
Thwack—!
Gwak Jae-gyeom hammered the zombie down with his elbow, then seized me and took off. I went along half-dragged until we crossed the white line. The instant we did, he let go, and I rode the momentum into a gloriously uncontrolled tumble. Roll, roll— crash—!
"Haa— haa— haa!"
"Hyung, you okay?"
"Haa, haa, don't, haa……."
"Got it, no need to talk."
God, I really might throw up. What about the kids? Jae-gyeom had carried Ha Yu-ju while he ran—did that cause any problems? I forced my head up to check on them.
And then an enormous shadow fell across the stadium. I looked up without thinking, and froze on the spot. A hand—a hand one could only call divine—was descending from the sky. A hand of the same black texture as the void overhead. That dark hand, swallowing the light as it revealed its outline, was vast enough to blanket the entire field. And at the same time, it carried the most exquisitely delicate lines.
I couldn't tell whether the sight filled me with terror or with awe; my breath caught in my throat. The two hands passed through the goalpost, and one closed around Ha Yu-ju and Jang Han-bin, the other around the corpses. The hand gripping the living curled upward into the sky; the hand gripping the dead lowered toward the center of the field. When that hand finally unfurled, we were reunited.
With the man who had died wrapped in mylar—and who was now one of the Running Corpses.
If Jang Han-bin had seen that, it would have set off the match all over again……. Even for me, who had just witnessed a human being turn into a zombie with my own eyes, it left a sour taste. And just as I was swallowing down that tangle of feelings—
Cha Si-eon, of all people, was delivering good news. The moment we heard it, Jae-gyeom and I grabbed each other in a hug and thumped each other's shoulders.
What a relief. The people from the neighboring team who'd been dragged into this for nothing, and the teenager who'd just happened to be picked up along the way—they were safe now.
But after about thirty seconds of celebrating, a cold dose of reality came washing in.
"Jae-gyeom."
"Yes, hyung."
"What do we do now?"
Gwak Jae-gyeom stared at me for a long moment, then broke into a wide grin. It was the face of a man asking, why are you asking me that?
"I think I'm going to have a panic attack."
"If you keep looking, you actually will."
That wasn't hyperbole—I really thought it might happen. I was looking past the fence of the stadium. I'd wanted to see what lay outside, whether there was any way out, and instead I was met with an utterly astonishing sight.
Beyond the fence was perfect, unbroken black. Void. Darkness. Abyss. Nothing. It looked as if this space alone had been carved out and set inside a black hole. Is this what it feels like to be stranded in the middle of a spacewalk……? Afraid that staring too long might give me a phobia of places that don't exist, I climbed down off the trash can I'd been using as a footstool.
"Hyung, sit down and rest a bit."
Gwak Jae-gyeom spoke from where he was sprawled across the spectator seats. He looked as light and easygoing as ever. Just minutes ago his brow had been knotted tight, and now—. It was good that he'd found his composure again, but the man looked too damn relaxed for my taste, so I gave him a hard time.
"Your girlfriend left, and you're letting yourself go that much?"
"Huh? She's not my girlfriend! She's not!"
"……."
Is now really the time to care whether I meant girlfriend or female friend?
When I stared at him, Jae-gyeom realized his slip and launched into a fit of coughing. "Ahem, ahem! The Team Leader will tell us how to get out of here soon. They're discussing it right now, so……"
Right. Cha Si-eon would bring back a plan shortly. And I had a pretty good guess what that plan would be. He'd probably procure sacrificial bodies weighing roughly the same as me and Jae-gyeom. And with high probability, those would be inmates from the Bureau's custody.
Special Zones are a genuine mess, so the Bureau that responds to them is inevitably a mess too. This was no time to be picky about cold rice versus warm, but honestly, surviving this way didn't sit well with me. So this was what Kwon Mu-seop meant when he told me to always build myself a reason to survive.
Feeling needlessly conflicted, I changed the subject.
"How did you find out the escape rule for this place?"
"It's written up over there."
At my question, Jae-gyeom pointed at the stadium's jumbotron. The massive screen was working perfectly, glowing like a light tower. Of course, the characters on it were unreadable.
"Don't stare at it too long. That thing doesn't end at a panic attack."
I knew. The script of a Special Zone can't be read at all—and if you force yourself to try, your eyes burn as if they're about to be scooped out.
"There's a Contaminated Person who can read Special Zone script. That person told us the rules here."
"And they had the nerve to publish that in the rulebook."
"Better than dying without being able to do anything, right?"
Fair enough. The situation was already a disaster—what else could anyone do? All we could do was settle for the second-worst option instead of the worst and make peace with it.
Steeling myself, I waited for Cha Si-eon's plan.
And then, from the spectator stands across the stadium, someone appeared. Had they been hiding there, watching Ha Yu-ju and Jang Han-bin escape? The figure began waving a jacket toward us.