Vines and Fists
I ended up inside a zombie apocalypse novel. But the room wasn’t clean in the way I’d hoped. There were still zombies. One piece of common sense I learned the hard way: a clean room and safety have nothing to do with each other. I swallowed the urge to mutter, Thanks, I really wanted to know that, and raised my bat.
I could smash the skulls of normal zombies without much trouble now. But there was a problem. Plants were growing out of the zombie corpses here. “Of all things, why vines?”
They were the sticky green kind. The most common type of vine species, often used by survivors to trap people’s feet. But because these same vines could also bind zombies, people eventually switched to improved varieties. Of course, for the zombies right now, this was more than enough. Because my feet wouldn’t come free easily.
A zombie wouldn’t care about pain or its body, so it would just stomp forward. I was different. I had to put real strength into it two or three times just to lift my foot. Still, I couldn’t ignore this place and move on. With plants growing like this, if I left it alone, who knew what kind of variant might pop out.
So I had no choice but to circle around and search the room. Whenever a zombie appeared, I cracked its skull, then continued searching. I regretted not wearing an outer layer. If I had a jacket, I could have laid it on the floor and moved across it.
Unfortunately, I was only wearing jeans and a sports bra. While thinking, Is this why people say you should always wear something decent?, I swung the bat again. A zombie with its head split open toppled onto the vines. I stepped on its corpse and moved inside, scanning the surroundings.
That was when I noticed one strange fact. There were way too many zombie corpses here. Normally, zombie bodies didn’t get left like this. They’d either get eaten by other zombies or used as materials for variants’ abilities. Like being processed into Poisoner’s arrows or something.
One possibility did cross my mind, but it seemed unlikely. The idea that some survivor had gone on a rampage here and then fled. If that were the case, there should have been traces. At the very least, a convenience store or somewhere should have been looted. You couldn’t survive without food or water.
But it didn’t take long to figure out what had happened.
“Mommy… shiiiit… huuuuugh, Mommmyyyy…”
“Grrrrrr…”
There was a boxer. But not just any boxer. A boxer wearing steel knuckles on both fists. Getting punched by bare fists already hurt like hell. Getting beaten by a boxer with knuckles? That was pure nightmare fuel. Your life would be in serious danger.
But could I just leave it alone? No, I couldn’t.
…Vines sometimes bore fruit that accelerated zombie evolution. And if all these vines in the karaoke room were growing fruit specifically to strengthen this boxer? If the boxer ate every last one and gained intelligence before walking outside?
I’d die. I’d be murdered.
That meant I had to face it right now.
“Huuuugh…!”
“Grrrrr!”
By the time I got here, I’d already figured out that the karaoke hallway was wide enough to swing a bat. So I pulled the bat all the way back with everything I had and slammed it forward. The boxer threw a straight left at the same time.
There was a sound like something bursting, and I saw the baseball bat crumple. More importantly, that bastard had just gotten into a proper stance. That meant it was far more dangerous than a regular boxer. It was throwing punches with actual technique.
“Mooommm…”
I really missed my mom. I hadn’t done anything for her, just lazed around scratching my belly all day. But she still worked hard to give her only child allowance so I wouldn’t feel discouraged. If I could get out of this novel, I swore I’d be a good daughter and take care of her properly.
I immediately twisted my body to dodge the boxer’s jab. The boxer was smart enough not to step onto the vines. It knew that once it entered the sticky green vines, it wouldn’t be able to use proper footwork. Plus, I was currently standing on zombie corpses. Naturally, I had better mobility than it did.
So it was deliberately forcing me to choose. Would I risk my life and fight? Or would I turn around and pretend I hadn’t seen anything? The bulging veins on its fists made it clear that if I chose to fight, it had no intention of letting me die easily.
But there was never a real choice. When you encounter a tiger cub, you have to kill it before it grows into a tiger. And right now, that tiger cub was right in front of me, and I knew I was about to get bitten by its fangs.
“Huuuuuuugh…”
Maybe because I’d been beaten so many times by other boxers, just seeing its fists made my heart pound. If that fist hit my arm, it felt like my arm would break. If it hit my solar plexus, my breath would catch and I’d pour out snot and tears. If it hit my stomach, I’d collapse without realizing it and vomit gastric fluid.
It was terrifying. I wanted to run away right this second. But pain was better than death, so I gritted my teeth and took one step forward.
“Grr.”
“Mommy!”
The boxer’s punch shattered the karaoke wall. The speed was something I could dodge if I watched carefully, but the power seemed greater than a normal boxer’s. And with the knuckles on top of that, the destructive force would be doubled.
Part of me wanted to test the waters and win that way, but I didn’t have that kind of talent. I was an idiot. The only thing I knew how to do was some weird multi-fluid clone technique. I was a troll account who got off on people’s attention and contempt. The kind of trash society kept at arm’s length, the kind who lived like a ghost in college. If I went back to school, I’d obviously become an oblivious outcast and loser.
There was no way someone like me could beat that boxer. That boxer had killed all the other zombies in the karaoke room and then died itself. We were fundamentally different.
It was genuinely scary. Even now, the baseball bat was shaking in my hands. But I had decided to change. So I couldn’t back down. I had started exercising even though I used to ignore it, endured pain to kill zombies. Unlike myself, I had saved Lee Yeji and even helped her father.
“Don’t run away! Fight back!”
I shouted that loudly at myself, then pointed the end of the bat at the boxer and charged forward. I leaped high in the middle of the run and thrust the tip of the bat straight at it.
But a powerful shock suddenly ran through my hands, and the literally crumpled bat bounced out of my grip. The boxer naturally drove a fist into my stomach and stared at me as I gasped.
“Kuh… ugh!”
It was a clean body blow. Up until hitting the opposite wall, it was relatively okay, but the moment I slammed into it, my mind went blank for a second. Still, if I stopped, the boxer would beat me to death, so I gritted my teeth and stood up. I raised an awkward guard and glared at it.
Fortunately, I still had a weapon. Poisoner’s arrows. If I used them, I might be able to take it down. The problem was getting close while avoiding those fists.
But when I thought about it, the only thing I could do anyway was get close.
“……Huk!”
“Grr?”
“Ugh… ha, it… doesn’t even hurt…”
“Grr.”
“Kyaak!”
My clumsy guard was pierced by the boxer’s precise straight. I swallowed the gastric fluid rising in my throat and tried to act tough, only to get hit in the solar plexus and fly backward. Because I hit on my back, it hurt like hell. My breath caught, and I turned my head to vomit. The bruises that hadn’t healed yet made my back throb. My arms and legs were visibly shaking.
The boxer seemed to think I could still stand, because it was stepping around. Yeah, the boxer was right. I could still stand. Even though I was vomiting from my mouth and blood was flowing from my nose, I could still move. There was even something nearby I could throw, so it should be fine.
No, it wasn’t fine. The boxer stepped in, landed one hit on my left arm and one on my right, then retreated. The bones weren’t broken, but the bruises were definitely there. Wait, was I an idiot? The boxer in front of me was moving exactly like it had in life. That meant I had to copy its movements too.
Put yourself in its shoes. If I could tell where the power was going, I might be able to dodge. Or maybe not, fuck it.
Slowly, clumsily and sluggishly, I started stepping like the boxer. And I braced myself for the pain that was about to come. Right now the boxer was acting to subdue me. It probably thought I’d make a good zombie. Of course it would. A survivor of my level would be high-quality material.
But I had no intention of screaming that pathetic “Kieee” shriek, so I endured with everything I had.
“Grr.”
“Fuck!”
I hurriedly ducked my upper body to the right. The boxer’s fist flew through the spot where my solar plexus had just been. The moment I reset my stance and threw myself to the left, the boxer smashed the right wall. I could dodge it. Once I realized that, hope appeared.
But then stars suddenly burst in front of my eyes.
“Grrrr…”
“Kuh, shiiiit…”
It was because the boxer had closed in, landed a straight to my solar plexus, and then hit my stomach again before I could fall. Still, I refused to collapse. I desperately grabbed the belt of the jeans the boxer was wearing and clung to it. Giving up meant death. So all I had to do was push forward.
If I acted like I was still full of energy, the boxer would never try to kill me. It would keep trying to subdue me, hoping to preserve me in fresh condition. So I stayed on my feet. After clinging to its waistband for a moment, I suddenly stood up and threw an awkward punch. Of course the boxer dodged. So I kept swinging. Panting, I threw jabs, straights, hooks, even body blows.
But the boxer walked backward, moving only its upper body to evade everything, as if it already knew all my attacks. Its movements were incomparably more precise than my clumsy ones. That was called weaving.
And now. I hurriedly crossed both arms and blocked the straight the boxer threw straight at me. I had anticipated the counter and prepared for it. Getting hit in the same spot twice could break bones, so I deliberately used a different arm to defend properly. Of course, even though I blocked it, I couldn’t reduce the impact. My body floated up, and I slid and rolled across the karaoke floor. My limbs trembled and drool flowed from my mouth.
But I could still move, and the situation had become what I wanted. I shot up like I’d been burned and grabbed a nearby withered potted plant with both hands. Then I threw it at the boxer.
The boxer naturally smashed the pot with a jab. The dirt and gravel inside spilled onto the floor, followed by a shower of glass shards.
“Eat this, you bastard!”
“Grr?”
While the boxer was distracted by the pot, I grabbed the fire extinguisher next to me and pulled the pin. To use a fire extinguisher as a blunt weapon, you had to empty its contents first. That was something Park Sunyoung, the protagonist’s heroine and my junior in college, had thought of. And the situation unfolded almost exactly the same way.
I immediately pulled the handle and sprayed the contents. White powder with a slight pink tint covered the boxer. Startled, the boxer swung its fists wildly. I kept pulling the handle, and the boxer kept swinging.
“Heh.”
The boxer was panicking because powder had gotten in its eyes. So I slowly grabbed the hose, walked straight forward, and smashed the boxer’s head with the fire extinguisher. Again and again. Like a madwoman, I beat the boxer’s head with the extinguisher. The thought that I would die if I stopped kept me swinging. Even when I got hit by the boxer’s punch in the middle, I told myself the bones weren’t broken so it was fine, and cried as I swung the extinguisher.
The fire extinguisher shattered, and the boxer’s head split open too. The moment I confirmed that the twitching boxer had stopped moving, I slowly dropped to my knees. Then I carefully caught my breath.
I was fucking exhausted. And my stomach hurt like hell.