Plan Change
Kim Jun flipped open a book under the glow of an HD lamp and began reading the dentist’s analysis of the zombies.
[Month n, Day n. This record contains everything that has happened to the world so far. I hope that whoever finds this will survive the fight against those things.]
“Pretty grandiose for a diary,” Kim Jun muttered.
He checked whether the writer was still alive and continued reading the analysis.
[It all started at the public health center. After I retired from my private clinic, I volunteered at the local health center once a week, treating patients with my juniors.]
[I had only ever seen zombies in American movies. But I learned they were real.]
“Hmm…”
[The first patient was a man in his seventies who had been brought in with a neck wound. It wasn’t even an emergency room—just the nearest health center. He begged us to save him, but his heart stopped almost instantly and his skin turned pitch black. We assumed poisoning and were about to transfer him to a nearby hospital to issue a death certificate when the corpse suddenly moved.]
Kim Jun read on with great interest.
The story of the doctors who first encountered a zombie, mistaking it for a poisoning victim. What came next was downright absurd.
[At that moment the thing woke up again and bit the doctor. Right after that, when I ran outside to call the police, I saw a scene of pure madness—people were tearing into each other everywhere.]
Whatever the virus was, the moment the corpse reached the health center, everyone there became infected at once and began biting one another.
[If you get bitten, your breathing suddenly becomes labored, then your heart stops from shock. After some time passes—right around when a death certificate would normally be issued—the corpse wakes up and bites anyone it sees.]
[They are especially obsessed with biting the head and neck. After they devour the person they attacked and fill their stomachs, they leave. In that spot, a person dies… and is reborn as a zombie.]
Kim Jun nodded, recalling the zombies’ behavior he had witnessed himself.
The first time, when he and Rana had gone to the seaside to loot a sashimi restaurant, a zombie had suddenly attacked. When it lunged for his head, he barely twisted away and it ended up face-planting into a pile of salt.
The second time was at the hospital. He and Mari had been attacked by things wearing doctor and security guard uniforms. They had mistaken them for survivors at first. When he opened the door to deal with them, he saw one bite a person’s nape, devour them alive, then turn the corpse into another monster. After feeding, they targeted new prey, and the infection spread in the meantime.
Finally, there was the incident in Sinreung-myeon when they faced the Jeilpa Thugs. When the zombies swarmed, they had closed the door. The creatures tore into the gangsters alive. Kim Jun had barely managed to put them down.
Through all of it, he had roughly figured out how zombies behaved.
[One peculiar thing is their movement. After death and reanimation, most become significantly slower than living humans. However, some zombies turn pitch black upon revival and move at much higher speeds.]
“So the ones that turn black while being bitten immediately awaken as runner zombies?”
Kim Jun considered this valuable information and stored it in his mind.
The rest of the entries described how, on the way from the health center to this location, people had died one by one because of the zombies.
To summarize: patients suffering from unexplained heart attacks appeared simultaneously. Those whose lives ended as humans would awaken as zombies and spread the infection endlessly. Anyone bitten had a 100% fatality rate with no way to save them. Normal corpses became walking zombies, while those that turned black became fast-moving runner zombies.
After that, people who fought them used blunt weapons to smash their heads, but they couldn’t overcome the sheer numbers and died.
Even this temple, which originally had around twenty monks, now only had four left. The rest were dead.
The one silver lining was that people who had died long ago and were reduced to bones or cremated did not rise. Recently buried bodies might thrash around and crawl out, but so far there had been no such cases.
Kim Jun stayed up all night reading, then lit a cigarette.
At that moment, something occurred to him and he knocked on the door that had been locked from the outside.
Knock knock.
“Monk, are you alright?”
“…This humble monk is not dead yet.”
“Good, you’re alive.”
If he was still alive after a full day of fasting, he definitely hadn’t been bitten.
It was inconvenient, but they had spent the night there. When morning came and the Head Monk approached, Kim Jun quietly stood up.
“From now on, this humble monk will stand guard. Benefactor, please go and rest.”
“I usually don’t like relying on others, but… I’ll take a quick nap.”
“The lower part of the room should still be warm.”
Receiving the Head Monk’s polite farewell, Kim Jun quietly entered one of the inner rooms.
When morning arrived, the temple became bustling with activity.
Following the principle of “one day, one work; one day, one meal,” both Gaya and Do Kyung gently touched their teeth—whose pain had lessened overnight—and helped prepare a simple breakfast while cleaning the temple grounds. They then received the morning offering.
The somen noodles made from the flour Kim Jun had provided, rice cakes kneaded with mugwort, and various wild greens all had the clean, light flavor typical of temple cuisine.
“I’m not sure if it will suit your taste?”
“No, it’s really delicious.”
Do Kyung beamed, clearly enjoying temple food for the second time.
“Bodhisattva, your tooth…”
“Yes~ I’m only chewing on one side.”
Avoiding the newly filled molar that hadn’t fully hardened yet, she chewed carefully on the other side and savored the happy flavor.
“Here, try this too.”
The nurse auntie who had been cooking inside and Hajun’s Mom sliced freshly grilled ham and shared it with Do Kyung, Gaya, and the rest of the group.
“Oh my, ham?”
When they asked if Buddhists could eat it, the Head Monk smiled gently and said it was fine. Of course the monks themselves didn’t eat any. The ham had been offered by the believers inside so that Gaya, Do Kyung, and the baby Hajun could have some.
“Once you’re finished, we’ll prepare a portion for that donor as well.”
“Yes~ I’ll take it to him.”
Do Kyung confidently raised her hand. Kim Jun, who had only managed a short nap after coming in at dawn, was finally able to eat the temple meal that had been brought to him.
“What is all this?”
“Just some things we have.”
When they were about to finish packing and leave, the monks had given them dried mugwort, shepherd’s purse, bracken, acorns, and more.
“Aren’t you short on food yourselves?”
“We only lost a little rice and wheat. We have plenty of vegetables. If we leave them piled up they’ll just become fertilizer anyway.”
Kim Jun loaded the car with the mountain of vegetables the monks had given him for the return trip. He promised to come back next time to get his gold crown fitted, then waved goodbye.
“So… are we heading back now?”
This time the question came from Do Kyung, who was sitting across from him.
Kim Jun thought for a moment, then opened the center console.
Inside were paper boxes of pistol rounds, lead pellets for the air gun that he had barely used, and several slug bullets rolling around.
“Do Kyung, and Gaya in the back, come here for a second.”
“Yes?”
Gaya poked her head between the seats from the back, tilting it in curiosity.
“It’s still morning. We have time to loot a bit more.”
“Where are we going besides the dentist?”
“Ah, I got it! You said we were going to a nursery or a gun shop to get soil, right?”
“That’s right.”
Kim Jun nodded while looking at the ammunition in the console and said,
“We’ll get the soil next time. For the remaining time, I want to check out a gun shop.”
“Where is the gun shop?”
“There are two. One is a place I’ve raided several times already, so I don’t know if there’s anything left. The other is the one I went to with Emily… we’d have to take National Route 1.”
That meant heading toward a major road where there could be even more zombies.
Gaya and Do Kyung thought for a moment before nodding.
“Then we’ll follow wherever you go, oppa.”
“Yeah. My tooth doesn’t hurt anymore, so I can shoot the slingshot or crossbow just fine now.”
Now that their aching teeth had calmed down, the two idols said they had no problem moving around. Kim Jun nodded and decided to head for National Route 1.
It was the place where he had spent the night with Emily and the alley where they had set a fire to escape.
He stepped on the accelerator, intending to get there as quickly as possible.
But a main road was still a main road.
Ting—
Shuuuk— Crack!
“I hit it!”
“You don’t have to shout so loud.”
“Ah, sorry.”
The air gun and crossbow fired at the same time, dropping two zombies.
“No problems from the rear, and I don’t see any zombies coming from the sides either.”
Gaya moved around, checking all three windows and completely eliminating any blind spots.
Whenever Kim Jun spotted a zombie, he stopped to take it down, then drove on again, repeating the process.
Glancing at the gauge, he noticed the engine was idling far too often. On top of the extra weight from all the anti-zombie reinforcements stuck to the camper, fuel efficiency was getting worse and worse.
“When we get there, I’ll have to fill up on gas first.”
“Oh my, gas?”
When Do Kyung asked in surprise, Kim Jun knocked on the rear door and said,
“Eun Ji, when the car stops, get the gas ready in the back.”
“Ah, yes. Just a moment.”
Gaya began searching for the fuel inside the vehicle and lifted a four-liter gasoline can.
Kim Jun’s car turned off the main Route 1 into a side alley. Unlike when it had been dark, seeing the path clearly now gave him a completely different feeling.
“After the underpass, turn at the alley, then go straight…”
When he arrived exactly as he remembered, he saw patches of ground scorched from the fire he had set last time. As he drove inside, Kim Jun brought the vehicle to a stop.
Beeeeeeeeep—
He honked the horn once, lit a cigarette, and waited. After about ten minutes, he moved first.
Just like last time, he pushed the burnt iron mesh gate shut, then slowly let the girls come out.
The gun shop located in this remote area showed no signs of human activity since his last visit; weeds had grown thick everywhere.
“Gaya and Do Kyung, fill up the gas. I’ll go inside.”
“Okay.”
Gaya had Do Kyung bring the coiled hose and opened the fuel can.
In the meantime, Kim Jun opened the door to the gun shop he had already looted once before.
Creeeeak—
Squeak— Squeak—
Click!
The moment Kim Jun reflexively raised his shotgun, he saw several rats inside the dark gun shop sense the presence of people and scamper away in a panic.
“Whew~ Zombies are bad enough, now I have to deal with these damn rats too…”
With humans gone, all kinds of wild animals had multiplied—rats, wild boars, raccoon dogs, pheasants, roe deer. He had seen countless creatures while traveling.
After chasing the rats out, Kim Jun put on gloves and rummaged around looking for usable weapons.
That was when he found some sealed firearms.
“Oh~”
An air gun. And a semi-automatic one at that.
Kim Jun’s heart raced as if he had found Excalibur. He aimed it here and there, testing it.
The barrel was a bit long, which would make it inconvenient inside the car, but the fact that he could use lead pellets again made his mouth stretch into a wide grin.
Next, when he discovered the mold for making lead pellets, Kim Jun became certain that he could become completely self-sufficient with the air gun from now on.
“The problem is the remaining ammo… Can’t I open this safe somehow?”
It looked like the bullets were inside. He considered just carrying the entire safe.
After looking at the multiple safes, he decided he couldn’t open them here and would have to take them with him.
Out of more than ten safes, he selected three that weighed around thirty to forty kilograms each and loaded them into the car.
When he examined the other guns, Kim Jun found another one and inspected it carefully.
“Hmm.”
A double-barrel shotgun.
It was mainly used for clay shooting—loaded with two shells and fired.
“I’m taking this.”
After that, when he found shotgun shell casings and gunpowder, Kim Jun felt like he had struck gold and took them all.
Legally this would get him sent straight to prison, but if he had the shells, he could make his own ammunition.
Of course, with the current equipment, he could only make low-stopping-power rounds filled with plaster or lead in the center, but the fact that he could produce his own ammo was huge.
After gathering plenty of weapons, Kim Jun took one last look around the gun shop.
There was still a lot left, so he could come back anytime and dig up more.
He glanced at the warehouse next to the gun shop—the place where he had shot the infected owner—and bowed his head in silence.
When they returned home, Kim Jun immediately began cracking open the safes.
Wiiiiiiiiiiiiing—
Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing—
Using a drill, he bored through the area around each safe’s dial one by one.
It took a considerable amount of time just to drill four holes around each dial. Emily, Do Kyung, Rana, and the others watched the process with fascination.
“Wow~ It’s actually drilling through?”
“Oppa really knows how to do everything, huh?”
“I wonder what’s inside? I hope there’s something good.”
Instead of preparing dinner, the girls chatted while watching Kim Jun dismantle the safes.
After drilling all the way through, Kim Jun picked up a hammer and smashed the dial without mercy.
Bang— Bang— Bang—!!!
After destroying the dial with brute force, he inserted a grinder blade through the gap in the hinge and spun it.
Crunch— Click!
The moment the dial was ripped away and the door opened, several metal boxes appeared inside.
“Oh~ What is this?”
Click.
When Kim Jun opened one, it was packed full of shotgun shells.
Wrapped in paper that read “[Act on the Safety Management of Gunpowder],” there were red boxes of buckshot, blue boxes of birdshot, and even slug bullets—each type neatly organized in its own box.
“Hahahahahahaha!!!”
Kim Jun burst into loud laughter like a third-rate villain.
Looking at the remaining two safes with a blissful expression, he gave a thumbs-up.
“Jackpot!”
“Hooray!”
Everyone raised both hands and sincerely celebrated this haul.