Another Place
Honestly, you could call it sexual frustration, but I held back.
Leaving Lee Soyeon all worked up and walking away was a shame, and part of me just wanted to take her then and there—but I still had to slaughter as many of the remaining zombies as possible before the day was out.
I rode the electric bike past places littered with zombie corpses. The bodies of the ones I'd already dropped lay scattered everywhere, and as I pushed back onto the road the shopping district came into view. Keep going straight through here and the school would appear. With the pack I'd led as a vanguard now gone, approaching was a little easier. Still, aside from those dozen or so, there weren't many zombies in plain sight—
“Kyaaaah!”
Never mind. A few were trapped inside the vehicles. But I didn't need to smash them open; I'd wait until they came out on their own. I scanned the surrounding commercial buildings, watching for others. These ones were peculiar—they showed real interest in sound and reacted with their eyes. Considering how zombies usually went berserk chasing noise, this was a slightly unusual strain. In other words, there was definitely one somewhere in the shops or buildings right now, already keyed in on the racket.
Just as I raised the crossbow and lined up a car window, the blood-smeared glass shattered on its own.
“Bye.”
I put one straight through its head. I wasn't falling for a diversion like last time. Whether that noise carried or not, windows suddenly started exploding with a crash. Yeah—no way there weren't more. How many?
I re-aimed the crossbow and swung toward the sound.
“Kyaaaah!”
One came charging hard, another latching on beside it. Two? Drop one and bat the other—
That was my miscalculation. Suddenly zombie noise rose from every direction. Worse, the sounds were coming from behind me. This was dangerous. I revved the electric bike and shot forward blindly, zombies flashing into view in the gaps between wrecks. A few seconds later—
“Kuaaaah!”
Their roars literally rang in my ears, turning me into the Pied Piper. Damn it. At least the bike had been modified to hit eighty kilometers an hour—that was lucky. Full throttle made control impossible, though, so I held it at fifty. More than anything, the road was a disaster: cars that had smashed into buildings while fleeing, vehicles parked alone taking up whole lanes like they owned the place. Anything that made smooth driving impossible kept appearing. I had no choice but to zigzag.
When a gap opened and I glanced back, I saw one zombie leaping across car roofs, even pulling off a flashy crawl-over stunt from there. Scary. I'd need a different approach than the usual zombie-fighting methods. But because the direction was toward the school, the zombies were laid out almost perfectly. Go a little farther and they'd spot me and give chase. Keep this up and even reaching the school would mean getting swamped by a horde. It was time to cut them off properly. But I had no good way to handle numbers like this… My gaze shifted from the commercial buildings to the two-story-and-up houses. The moment I spotted a five-story residential building, the handlebars turned that way.
The second the bike arrived I abandoned it and scrambled up, hanging onto the windows. Why leave the entrance alone? To keep zombies from pouring in that way for now—and because the windows weren't far apart, so slipping onto a balcony was easy. I climbed one floor to a balcony streaked with dried blood. No one seemed inside. Beyond the broken glass lay a fully rotten corpse. Lucky. Better that it was already dead. If it had been alive, things would have gotten awkward. The body looked like a suicide—knife still stuck in the neck.
Anyway, I checked the zombies outside. There were more than twenty of them.
“This is no joke.”
They kept body-slamming toward my direction, trying to jump up.
“You first.”
I raised the crossbow at the head of one leaping high. It took the bolt in midair and never moved again. But the others were desperately pleading toward me, so I had to answer their cheers, right?
“The crossbow bolts are back on the electric bike… Hmm.”
How to deal with these guys. Better to work from high ground for now. Then, looking around the house, I spotted a dining table—not the modern kitchen-connected kind, just a table dragged into the living room. Come to think of it, this wasn't my house. Why not throw heavy stuff? The moment the solution clicked, I grabbed the table and ran for the balcony. I hurled a return gift at the zombies who immediately sent up fiery cheers the second they saw me. The desk fell hard, scoring direct hits and toppling them in droves.
“Three? A bit disappointing.”
But plenty more still wanted more cheers.
“Wait.”
Then I should give my fans a really big gift too, right? I went into the room, yanked out an entire desk, and ran back to the balcony. A hot gift for hot cheers. The heavy desk slammed down on them as a group.
“How many? Quite a few.”
Four not moving, five writhing underneath. This was decent. Since it wasn't my furniture anyway, how convenient. I had to be a man who gave generously. Soon I pulled every weapon from the kitchen and started throwing them at the zombies.
“Ladles really shouldn't be counted on.”
At least the kitchen knives stuck in heads and finished the job; ladles barely made an impact. And the kitchen highlight—I pulled out the big pot used for boiling beef-bone soup. No point filling it with water; the plumbing was shot. I just full-swung and hurled it down. A cheerful clang rang out and zombies toppled one after another. By the time the work ended, only the immobile ones were left moaning on the ground. The rest was cleanup. I went down with my special bat and finished them with continuous swings.
“Haa. Feels lighter now.”
I took off the helmet and wiped the sweat. Somehow, by leading a zombie pack, I'd arrived quite close to the target. GPS didn't work here—that was why I'd saved map images and carried them around. But given how hard I'd ridden, it wouldn't be strange for the school to be right in front of me. I got back on the electric bike and headed straight up the road toward the school. Curiously, the higher I climbed, the fewer zombies there were.
“Kyaaa!”
Just one every now and then.
“If there was a school or civil defense…”
Not impossible. They wouldn't have just stayed inside either. What to do when I met survivors. The environment would unfold a little differently from the previous situation with only Lee Soyeon. Take the ones I liked and do as I pleased. Nothing had changed here. I did as I pleased, and I decided. Having resolved that, I was now looking at the school firmly sealed behind iron gates.
Seolin High School. From early on, large numbers of people had gathered here for communal living. The school itself had been designated a shelter, so it was natural for people to flock in during an emergency. That meant more manpower and better response than most places, and real advantages in holding the grounds—up to around the three-month mark, that is.
Having many people also meant many mouths consuming food. Hundreds had crowded into the school. Food was far too scarce to run things stably. So, centered on teacher Gang Haseong, they took the lead in clearing the surrounding zombies. They lured packs that appeared everywhere and even threw chemicals from the chemistry lab, cleaning diligently. And of course they scraped up anything nearby that could serve as food. But it was never as easy as it sounded. Unless you were equipped from the start as thoroughly as Jin Dohyuk, the reality was that you took casualties.
“Another one died today. Minseok.”
The expedition returned with the sad news. Gang Haseong clutched his head.
“Minseok…”
A big, strong student who had been a real asset on these runs. Even he had died today.
“Haa… I don't know what to do anymore.”
“Numbers have dropped a lot too, right?”
Fellow teacher Lee Sanggu bitterly tossed his protective gear aside.
“How's the auditorium side?”
“Those thug gangs keep causing trouble. Once they even tried to drag the girls off.”
“Those trash really…”
Gang Haseong slammed the desk. Unfortunately the school was now split into two factions: the force that had controlled the place from the beginning, including Gang Haseong, and the students who had grown dissatisfied, broken away, and set up their own power base in the auditorium.
“What are they all trying to do at a time like this?”
“We have to guard the inside now too. These guys are looting the cafeteria and acting completely out of control.”
“But we can't just kill them…”
“There's one zombie in the basement. Looks like a student, and it's been mutating more often lately.”
Only bad news kept coming. Gang Haseong gathered everyone again and delivered the unfortunate report.
“Minseok has died. A kid who always worked hard for us…”
Under the weight of the news, gloomy expressions spread through the room. Most of the people here were on restricted rations and uniformly undernourished.
“Teacher Gang Haseong. Can't we do something about those auditorium kids?”
“Yes. Their numbers are already over ten. A few more switched sides recently.”
“Why on earth? The kids are acting strange.”
Complaints changed nothing. The other side had already formed a force and turned hostile.
“We need people's help if we're going to get food.”
“We can't leave it like this! There's a person who turned into a zombie underground. We have to deal with that too…”
They were cornered. Gang Haseong had no choice but to bring up the civil-defense group.
“Let's ask them for help.”
“What? The civil-defense side…”
Unlike them, that was an organization that had banded together starting from a mart. Talking with them would never be easy.
“They'll demand something in return.”
“Don't tell me—women, like last time…”
The moment someone said the unspeakable, the room stirred.
“No way! Even if there's no police left, they're not even human.”
Gang Haseong's voice turned sharp.
“That's exactly why there are rules and laws. Anyway, excluding that, we'll have to look for other trade goods.”
The problem was that any deal required something both sides would find satisfying. Food? They themselves were desperate for food right now.
“Current numbers forty… excluding the thirteen…”
“It's dropped a lot.”
In six months since the outbreak, hundreds had dwindled to dozens. People left seeking hope elsewhere, died in combat, or simply vanished. The result was the current fifty—and even then ten had rebelled and split off.
“Whew. Tough.”
Gang Haseong wiped his forehead and summoned the combat team of about fifteen.
“We'll rest with this for today, but we have to guard thoroughly. Who knows what the auditorium side will pull.”
They stood watch in shifts and kept eyes on the auditorium. Then they confirmed something was wrong.
“Oh my god—those guys…”
They were charging toward the cafeteria with clubs raised.
“No—have those bastards gone crazy?”
“Stop them!”
Even the little remaining food was what they were rushing to snatch.
“You bastards! Min Doyoon!”
Gang Haseong shouted the ringleader's name and hurried down toward the cafeteria. As he reached the door, something went tok against the wall.
This is…?
A pebble came into Gang Haseong's sight. At the same moment another stone grazed past his cheek.
“Slingshot?”
Startled, he ducked for cover. Outside the noise swelled.
“Min Doyoon! Why are you doing this?! Breaking the rules!”
“I know exactly what you've done!”
A sharp voice cut through from beyond the door—an angry, cat-like woman's voice—then men came pouring in.
“Kill them! Take all the food!”
And so a small war began inside the school.