(Side Story) Zombie.
(Side Story) Zombie.
A man fled the zombies and quickly made for the sixth floor.
As if to confirm he had not seen wrong, the sixth floor showed signs of habitation, its entrance barricaded with all manner of iron fences.
There was just enough space for one person to enter, and though the dangerous blades everywhere forced him to move carefully, the man had no time for that.
The zombies had closed in right on his heels...
With no other choice, the man sprinted through the iron fence and inside.
"Aaargh!!!"
"Fuck."
He had wanted to avoid the blades as much as possible, but the zombies drove him to rush through the wire mesh, and his clothes and skin were torn to shreds.
Fortunately, the man made it inside the iron fence by the narrowest of margins.
Looking at the entrance, he could see zombies impaled on the wire mesh and blades, doing nothing but screeching.
"Huff... Huff..."
The man sat beneath a window where moonlight streamed in, tearing his shredded clothing into strips to bind his body.
The bite mark on his right hand was starkly visible.
Finding no more fabric to use as a bandage, the man covered his right arm with his left hand.
In the dark space, lit only by moonlight, he sensed a presence and instantly gripped his dagger.
He prayed desperately that the presence was human...
"Hah... Huff... Who's there...?"
At his words, a small shadow stirred cautiously before revealing itself in the moonlight.
A face that looked terrified, yet eyes that gleamed with curiosity.
Like a timid cat, she approached the man slowly without making a sound.
The girl spoke carefully, as if afraid her voice might echo.
"A-are... are you okay...?"
Seeing the man clutch his right arm, the girl reached into her pocket as if she had medicine.
"Kid... do you have any cloth I could—"
While the man looked down at his arm, the small girl had somehow already raised a dagger above his head.
The man's shock, so great he could not even speak, was written plainly on his face,
while the girl's expression, which had seemed terrified, had now gone completely blank.
The scene of the girl driving something into the man's head was hidden by shadow in the moonlight.
"Hah... If you got bit, you should've just gone outside and died quietly, you pain in the ass..."
Like a child told to take out the trash by her parents, the girl spoke as if annoyed, then spent a long while searching the man's cooling body.
"Oh... lots of useful stuff here..."
A pistol fitted with a suppressor. Daggers that looked military-issue.
The girl slowly stripped off his armor as well, checked the man's right arm, then tilted her head.
"Looks like this happened a while ago...?"
The bleeding had already stopped, and the bite mark was swollen as though he had scraped it against a tree.
The girl saw the bitten area swelling up, shrugged, and opened the window.
Looking down, she spotted a zombie whose throat had swollen purple.
"Kreeeeeeek!!!!!"
"Why are there so many Screamers lately...?"
The girl loaded her crossbow, aimed at the shrieking zombie, and shot it.
Twang!
Then, grunting with effort, the girl heaved the man out the window.
"It's Si-yoon!!!"
The audience had been utterly transfixed, but the silence shattered at Da-yeon's bright voice.
Lee Jin-seok, who had been covering Da-yeon's eyes whenever something disturbing appeared in the film, was caught off guard.
"Da-yeon, you have to be quiet in public places."
"Yes, shhh... but... Si-yoon was on screen..."
I laughed watching Da-yeon.
Da-yeon was so different from the other little kids I knew.
Thinking about how Da-yeon, who had grown up seeing only good things, was being bullied at school, I felt anger rise in me once again.
Chewing on my popcorn, I let myself look forward to going to the same middle school as Da-yeon.
An agent who had never before exceeded a one-hour margin of error in his reports was now out of contact.
The situation room fell silent under the grim news. A man in glasses spoke.
"...Jang Jae-hyeok appears to have failed his mission."
""....""
An old man placed both hands on the desk and slowly interlaced his fingers.
"How many vaccines remain...?"
"Ten. The lab is short on materials... we can't produce any more than that."
The old man brought his interlaced hands to his mouth, deep in thought.
"The case Jang Jae-hyeok was carrying... the odds of recovering it."
"The odds are good. We'll need to move with that possibility in mind."
Among those listening to the exchange, a young man rose to his feet.
"I want to do it."
""......""
Silence fell over the room. The man with glasses looked at the young man.
"Min-seong."
"Yes."
"I won't stop you, but you must come back. No matter what."
"Of course."
The man in glasses brought up a map on the screen.
"Jang Jae-hyeok's last reported position was in Uijeongbu. Our final objective is the MS Pharmaceutical Factory in Dongducheon, Gyeonggi-do."
"..."
The man in glasses slid a case across the table.
"Deliver this to the survivors there."
"Yes!"
The man named Yoo Min-seong clutched the case to his chest.
Yoo Min-seong changed into combat gear.
"Min-seong..."
The door opened, and a survivor approached Min-seong.
"...Se-jin."
"...I'm not going to tell you not to go. You must've wrestled with this plenty just to volunteer."
Yoo Min-seong smiled and gently touched the face of the woman looking up at him.
"I'll be back. I promise."
"A lot of people are waiting for you... I mean it."
Yoo Min-seong smiled and nodded.
The moment he stepped outside, Yoo Min-seong replayed his mentor Jang Jae-hyeok's words in his head.
One, never create any smells or noise.
Two, do not stop unless you're in a secured zone.
Three, move through wide-open spaces where you have a clear field of vision.
Four, depending on the situation, prioritize your own life over the success of the mission.
Five, trust no one outside our group.
Exploiting the fact that the zombies outside had lost their sight to ocular degeneration, Min-seong moved both cautiously and swiftly.
He stopped to catch his breath against a wall and unfolded his map.
Jang Jae-hyeok's last known position: Uijeongbu-dong, Uijeongbu City.
"You have to be alive, Jae-hyeok..."
Min-seong looked down at the case strapped to his side.
Having covered a fair distance, he began to move in earnest to secure a safe zone before nightfall.
"Hoo... I can do this."
It was what he always told himself to ease the tension.
Yoo Min-seong loosened up, then took out a pouch fitted with awls.
The house was pitch-dark. Yoo Min-seong switched on the flashlight mounted on his shoulder.
In the bright flash, four zombies became visible in an instant.
"Screech!?"
Yoo Min-seong switched off the flashlight and stepped back out through the front gate, and the zombies, reacting to the sudden burst of light, rushed out after him.
"Four of them..."
Dodging the first zombie coming at him, he drew the awl from his pouch and drove it into its head, then checked behind the fallen corpse.
He closed in on the next zombie charging right behind it and drove the awl between its eyebrows.
"Two of them are children..."
One child zombie lunged at him—he finished it off by hurling the awl with force, then kicked the other zombie to the ground and crushed its head underfoot.
"Hoo..."
After retrieving his awl, Yoo Min-seong entered the house and drew the baton from his hip.
Shrrrk.
The compact baton extended to a one-meter staff, its tip lethally sharp.
Confirming he had not imagined it, an elderly zombie crawled out before him.
Yoo Min-seong drew every last zombie out of the house, verified the entire interior was safe, then shut and locked the door.
'The buildings are packed tight... I'd better use the rooftops from here on.'
On top of an apartment building, a man and a woman were eating.
"Min-ji, Min-ji, look over there."
"Ji-seong, stop messing around and eat your food."
"No, just look."
The woman called Min-ji shot Ji-seong an exasperated look, then turned her head toward where he was pointing.
There, Yoo Min-seong, clad head to toe in protective gear, was sprinting across the rooftops.
"Whoa... he's practically flying."
"Look at what he's carrying. Think it's worth something?"
Greed crept into Ji-seong's eyes.
The woman stared at him, utterly unimpressed.
"Ji-seong. Keep that up and your head's gonna fly off. Just eat your food."
"No, seriously... I think we could pull it off... He looks like he's searching for something—the way he keeps checking around."
Min-ji snorted as she spoke.
"Pretty sure the zombies who just got their heads torn off by him could tell you the same thing. You try throwing hands with that guy, you'll end up just like them."
Min-ji kept talking as she ate her ramen.
"And look, I get it—you want to see if you can shake down some sucker... Ow, hot..."
Min-ji pulled out a mouthful of noodles and blew on them before continuing.
"...in a world like this, what sucker's gonna still be alive?"
Kim Ji-seong looked at Min-ji, then nodded.
"...Right?"
Min-ji looked at Kim Ji-seong and let out a sigh.
"Sigh... just eat."
But Ji-seong could not answer her.
"...Huh? Hey, Min-ji... is he going into the Grasslands?"
At Kim Ji-seong's words, Min-ji spat out the ramen in her mouth and looked outside.
"Shit... is he serious? Is he insane...?"
As he neared Jang Jae-hyeok's last reported position, Yoo Min-seong was using his comms to report in.
"This is Yoo Min-seong."
-"Yes, Min-seong."
"Currently in Singok-dong, roughly one kilometer from Jang Jae-hyeok's last reported location."
-"If you find yourself unable to communicate, just press the ‘position report’ button."
"Understood."
Yoo Min-seong noted that the number of zombies in the area had sharply dwindled.
Not a single one on the streets.
Yoo Min-seong pulled out a pound cake that would not give off a smell, bit into it, and quietly scanned his surroundings.
A person tied up and dead inside a car with shattered windows.
A dead person hanging from a cross.
As he continued observing the area, a noise rang out in the distance.
The kind of sound once heard from an ambulance.
Weee-ooo-weee-ooo-wonnng!!!!
"Kyahaha!!!"
A motorcycle raced along with its siren blaring. The man riding behind the driver, watching their rear, shouted.
"It's a Runner!"
"What, one survived? What was the lead group doing?! Are they kidding me?"
Dozens of zombies trailed behind the motorcycle.
Closing in on the location where Jang Jae-hyeok had died, Yoo Min-seong, still on the rooftops, followed the retreating motorcycle to observe the situation.