I Am Necromancer (1)
Even after handing Arjun two kukri-like knives, my exploration of Dongtan continued. It wasn't that I had any specific goal. I was just out because I was already this far out anyway. To be precise, I was like a cat patrolling its territory? Of course, this wasn't my territory. But I felt I needed to know what was in the vicinity of where I lived, so I kept wandering around.
Having a drone is truly a blessing. I parked the car and climbed the tallest apartment building nearby. It was nearly twenty stories high. If I hadn't been exercising regularly, it would be a height I’d never want to climb again. Thanks to that, my back was soaked with sweat. It was exhausting enough to kill me. Still, I had no choice. I had to climb up like this. That was the only way to be even a little bit safe.
The rooftop door was locked, but that didn't matter. I could just force it open. A crowbar really is a magnificent tool. It was worth the effort of carrying it all the way up here. After forcing the rooftop door open and finding a spot, I launched the drone. It’s not bad to hit zombies while driving, but exploring with a drone is definitely the most comfortable way. It feels like pleasure without responsibility, doesn't it? It doesn't matter if the drone gets caught. Even if the drone is discovered, there's no way they could figure out my existence. So, as long as I’m careful during retrieval, I can keep exploring as much as I want.
Dongtan remained the same. The city of "missy" women had vanished, replaced entirely by zombies and plants. Well, it’s not like those missy women ever really existed in the first place, though.
I spent a few more days going back and forth like that, exploring. Every time I came, I changed the apartment building and the area I was scouting. And then, around the time November arrived, I discovered a suspicious place.
There were no zombies. That was a part I could confirm clearly. To be precise, there were no standing zombies. There were plenty of dead ones. But because there were no other zombies around to tear into those corpses, the bodies were just piling up. That much was clear. Someone was killing the zombies. And the only thing that would kill them like that and just leave them there is a human. If it were animals, the zombie corpses would have been mangled.
So, I focused my drone exploration around that area. And then, I discovered a place where there weren't even any corpses. Around a large mart. It was clean. No corpses were visible. No long-dead bodies, just neat and tidy. A mart, huh. It’s the best place for survivors to be, indeed. Even if they just tore into the cereal inside, they could have survived easily until now. Since there must have been plenty of drinks and water, they wouldn't have to worry about food for a while. I don't know how many people are inside, but if the number isn't too high, surviving the winter wouldn't be difficult.
So, I decided to keep a closer eye on the mart. But I couldn't come here every time to fly a drone. It’s annoying and cumbersome. There’s also the risk of being discovered. So, I used a dashcam. A car battery and a dashcam are essentially the same as CCTV, so I could just record the footage and check it later. If communication were still alive, I could have checked it comfortably from my base. Since that’s not possible, I have no choice but to record it first and check it later.
The mart had a front entrance and a back entrance, but the back entrance was blocked with carts. That meant if the people inside were coming and going, they would only use the front entrance. So, I only needed to film the front entrance. I prepared the dashcam. Let’s see... it says it can record for 70 hours, so I’ll record for two days and come back to retrieve it. If I do that about twice, I’ll at least know who is in there. And how many of them there are.
Under the cover of night, I installed the dashcam in a spot where the mart's front entrance was visible. While installing it, I saw a light inside the mart. That meant it was certain there were people inside. Hmm. Are they not very smart? If you’re going to turn on the lights, at least block the light from leaking out. That’s just like advertising, "People are here!" But come to think of it, they might not be used to being that cautious. I don't know how many people are in there, but looking at the number of zombies in the surrounding area, I could roughly guess what they were thinking. They probably thought they were the only ones who survived. So, they might have become careless. Maybe they’d even welcome someone finding them after seeing the light? Ah. That’s not it. No matter how low their intelligence is, that’s a bit of a stretch. At least for me, it is.
Anyway, I finished setting it up and left the spot. Two days later, I returned to retrieve the memory card and insert a new one. I returned to my base and checked what was captured on the memory card. A vast amount. About 48 hours of playtime. Even at 8x speed, it’s a 6-hour video. At 16x, it’s 3 hours. However, I didn't keep an AI just to boil it in soup. This is what it’s for. Even if it’s not familiar and I can't trust it completely, I can at least make it do this much work. It’s cross-checkable anyway.
I set the AI to process the video and went off to do something else for a while. When I returned about two hours later, it had finished the job. It’s convenient, indeed. Of course, that’s assuming the judgment is accurate. I looked at the output. People appeared in the video quite often. To the point where I thought, "There are this many?" So, I went through the footage myself, checking those time slots one by one. And I began to get a rough idea of who was in there.
After analyzing it for two days and retrieving the memory again, I fed it back into the AI. And based on the four days of footage, I could roughly confirm the number of people inside the mart. About 11 people. More than I thought. But the funny thing is, one died during the four days I was checking the footage. Originally, there were 12. Actually, I can't be certain they died. It’s just that 6 went out and 5 returned. But the one who disappeared after that never returned. At least for the four days, that was the case.
And I could roughly guess what those who went out periodically were doing. They were hunting zombies. And they brought back piles of things they could carry from the surroundings. Most of them appeared to be food. Especially water; I saw a lot of that. Since I saw them dragging carts and filling them up, it was certain. Did they think what was inside the mart wasn't enough? It didn't look like they had consumed it all yet.
Everyone who went outside and came back in was a man. Men who repeated the work of going out with iron pipes, bats, or whatever they had, and returning with piles of groceries. I felt a slight sense of discomfort there. Why are there no women? It’s not that women can't hunt zombies just because they’re women. Even if they can't hunt zombies, they’re capable enough to carry things. They can at least push a cart, right? A thorough division of labor? That could be it. Since the dawn of humanity, hunting has long been the men's share. If so, it would be one of two things. Either they are a normal community where men and women are in equal positions with a division of labor, or they are a strictly macho group where women aren't considered equals. Well, personally, I think the probability of the latter is 100,000 times higher. It’s hard for it to be the former. That requires too many prerequisites. It might be possible if they all had families to protect or were truly close friends. But that’s hard to believe. No matter how I think about it, it is. So, I’ll watch them a bit longer. Since I only need to retrieve the memory every two days, it’s not that difficult.
After two weeks passed, I was able to confirm that my thoughts were correct. The video showed the 5 men who went out around lunchtime bringing back a woman. Of course, if they had brought a survivor politely, the former would have been correct. But they brought her by force. If they brought her with her hands and feet tied, they must have brought her by force. Unless that woman has a strange taste. In that case, the number of people there becomes 11+@. But I don't think I need to worry much about the @. They’re probably women. And there’s a high probability they’re having their freedom restricted.
Now that I’ve grasped the scale of the survivors, the important thing is what to do with them. Actually, it wouldn't matter if I left them alone. They aren't causing me any harm. However, I have an idea, so it seems they’ll have to become the subjects of that experiment. I should do it before it gets any colder. It’s already quite chilly now. A little more, and it will be winter in earnest. Then, there’s a high probability that the zombies won't move properly. It’s natural that they’d be affected by the cold and the environment. So, I’ll prepare immediately.
What I want to do isn't that complicated. If I were to name the project, it would be something like Project Hamelin. Hmm. No. Would Project Necromancer be more fitting? That sounds better. I’m going to clear them out. If they were a group that cared for each other and worked hard for survival, I probably wouldn't have gone this far. Maybe I would have negotiated peacefully. Like I did with Elder Choi’s place. But now that it’s been revealed to be the latter, there’s no reason to leave them be. It’s better to clear them out early, as I never know when or how they might trip me up. But it’s a bit burdensome for me to clear them out myself. First of all, there are many of them. And I don't know what they have. So, I’ll borrow the power of the zombies. I have lymph nodes, after all.
So, I started the work. First, the thing I need to do is gather zombies around this vicinity. It’s not a very difficult task. First, I go to a place with many zombies. And I can just drive the car slowly to lure them to a place a little away from the mart. Zombies are slow. So, just by teasing them, I can gather a lot of zombies. But if I gather them too close, I might be discovered by them, so I keep a proper distance and gather the zombies like that. I’ve probably gathered at least several hundred zombies. I’ve gathered all the zombies in this vicinity, haven't I? So, they’re gathered to the point where even I find it disgusting.
Well then, now I just need to deliver these zombies to them. That’s not very difficult either. I have lymph nodes. With just this, making those zombies follow me is a piece of cake. Deep at dawn. I stood in front of the massive swarm of zombies. Because I was holding the lymph nodes, they didn't even look at me. They just stood there blankly, without any interest at all. In front of such zombies, I put the lymph nodes into a sealed container. As the lymph nodes disappeared, the zombies soon began to show fierce hostility toward me.
The zombies swarmed in. Their appearance was so aggressive that there were plenty of them bumping into each other and falling over. I drove those zombies to the mart. There’s no worry of being caught. Zombies are slow. Like that, I arrived at the mart entrance and smashed the poorly locked mart door, going inside. The zombies followed me as well. Once the first floor of the mart was filled with zombies, only then did I take the lymph nodes out of the sealed container. The zombies calmed down. I slipped out through them leisurely. Without any obstruction.
Having come outside, I continued to gather zombies by putting the lymph nodes in and out again. Eventually, the zombies filled the area outside the mart as well. The situation was such that there was nowhere to run. Having finished my work, I held the lymph nodes again and left the place.
Now. I just need to see what happens. The guys inside will probably be stunned when they wake up in the morning, right? I’m curious to see how they’ll react. I wish morning would come quickly.